Table of Contents

Cover

The Cost of Command – Sandy Mitchell

Whiteout – Andy Clark

Monolith – Chris Dows

Hollow Beginnings – Mark Clapham

Dishonoured – Ray Harrison

Yarrick: The Wreckage – David Annandale

The Eagle's Talon – John French

The Shadow of the Beast – L J Goulding

Tower of Blood – Tony Ballantyne

Shadow Knight – Aaron Dembski-Bowden

In Hrondir's Tomb – Mark Clapham

Necessary Evil – Rob Sanders

Action and Consequence – S P Cawkwell

Cause and Effect – S P Cawkwell

A Mug of Recaff – Sandy Mitchell

Vermilion – Ben Counter

Irixa – Ben Counter

Thunder from Fenris – Nick Kyme

The Arkunasha War – Andy Chambers

Bitter End – S P Cawkwell

Hunters – Braden Campbell

About the Authors

Legal

The Cost of Command

Sandy Mitchell

This wasn’t the first time Lanthus had duelled in the arena; the Astral Knights were dour by temperament, even for heirs of Dorn, and guarded their honour jealously. Even the most trivial of disagreements could easily escalate to the point where the symbolic shedding of blood seemed the simplest way to determine who was in the right. But never before had he entered the ring as a sergeant, let alone one whose judgement had been called into question. Most of the faces of the spectators in the tiered seats were hostile, resentful, unwilling to give him the benefit of the doubt.

This didn’t surprise him. Aldwyn, his antagonist, was liked and respected by many of the battle-brothers in the wider company, not just those of their own squad, while Lanthus had always preferred to hone his skills and piety without the distractions of companionship. In this matter of honour, he stood alone. The Chapter Master, gazing down from his crystal throne opposite the ampitheatre’s entrance, had a neutral expression, more pensive than judgemental. Master Amhrad hardly ever attended an affair of honour in person, and Lanthus wondered why this relatively minor matter merited his attention: perhaps it was a good omen.

Even if it wasn’t, his conscience was clear. The mission always came first. His decision had been the right one.

He stepped forward onto the carpet of tiny crystals, each smaller than a grain of sand, glittering crimson in the dull ember glow of their home world’s sun. The only garment he wore was the duelling tunic tradition demanded, its plain white fabric dyed the colour of blood by the glowering Eye of Obsidia, forever nailed to the horizon by the planet’s tidally locked rotation.

Aldwyn approached from the opposite side of the arena, his face twisting with anger as Lanthus nodded a formal greeting. Good. Angry men made mistakes. Lanthus had killed enough of them to know that. The advantage was his.

‘Dorn and the Emperor watch over you both,’ Master Amhrad said levelly, the ritual phrase as old as the Chapter itself. ‘May they guide your hands and shards swiftly to the truth.’

‘By Dorn and the Emperor,’ Lanthus responded by rote, drawing his soul shard from its scabbard. Every Astral Knight carried one of the glittering blades, each as unique as its owner, and would as soon be parted from it as from his progenoid gland. The first time every initiate wore power armour was the day he went out alone, to scour the endless plains around the Obsidian Vaults until one of the millions of crystals littering the landscape called out to him; honed carefully into a razor-sharp blade, mounted in a hand-crafted hilt, the soul shard became permeated with the essence of the man who created and carried it.

‘By Dorn and the Emperor,’ Aldwyn said, beginning an instant later, and eliding the first word to finish the ritual phrase at the same time as Lanthus.

‘To the drawing of blood,’ Lanthus said, as he had done at the beginning of every previous duel, expecting the ritual acknowledgement he had always heard. But Aldwyn shook his head, his expression as venomous as an ork’s.

‘To the death,’ he said.

Although his face remained neutral, the Chapter Master seemed as surprised as Lanthus. Nevertheless, after a moment’s reflection, his head inclined in the briefest of nods. ‘Is this acceptable to you, Brother Lanthus?’ he asked.

‘It is.’ In truth, there was no other answer Lanthus could have given. To refuse would have smacked of cowardice, or a trace of doubt in the rightness of his cause. But he was shaken, nevertheless, by the depth of Aldwyn’s hatred. To take the life of a battle-brother was almost unimaginable, a duel to the death by mutual agreement the only way in which it could be done without incurring centuries of penitential exile. Even then, the survivor would bear an ineradicable stain on his honour for the rest of his life.

The Chapter Master nodded. ‘Then you may commence,’ he said levelly, taking refuge from any disquiet he might feel in the time-sanctified ritual.

Lanthus was cautious to begin with, holding back, waiting for his opponent to make the first move. Aldwyn, he knew, was impulsive, and the anger driving him on would exacerbate that.

There. A faint shifting of Aldwyn’s centre of mass betrayed his intention a fraction of a second before he moved, striking out with a speed and power no mortal man could have evaded or withstood. Lanthus was ready for him, though, and pivoted aside on his back foot, letting the blow glide smoothly past, striking down with his elbow at the suddenly exposed base of Aldwyn’s skull as he overextended himself.

For a moment he hoped he could put an end to it here and now, that Aldwyn would drop, stunned, to the ground at his feet and allow him to escape the taint of fratricide, but his opponent anticipated the blow. He ducked beneath it, robbing the strike of much of its power, bringing himself back on balance as he did so. Then Aldwyn drove suddenly forward, his reinforced cranium slamming into the sergeant’s sternum. Lanthus barely had time to pull back, riding the blow intended to drive the air from his lungs, and blocking the follow up strike from Aldwyn’s shard with a hard deflection, his forearm cutting down like the edge of a sword blade to impact heavily with Aldwyn’s, pushing his arm aside with only a fraction of a second to spare.

The razor-edged chunk of obsidian in Aldwyn’s hand flickered past his ribcage, missing by millimetres, and the two combatants drew apart, regaining both balance and breath, regarding one another warily.

Only the hand of the Emperor had saved Summerfall from complete annihilation. If Third Company’s battle-barge hadn’t passed close enough to the beleaguered system to pick up the babble of overlapping distress calls on their homeward pilgrimage from the Medusa Veil campaign, the ork migration would have overrun it long before the far-flung forces of the Imperium could have responded. But the Astral Knights had heard, and been blessed by a swiftly-flowing warp current through the local cluster, which the Chaplains agreed had been another unmistakable sign of divine favour.

So now Lanthus was prowling through the ruins of what had once been the primary industrial zone of Hive Bessemer, the rest of Squad Caromort hard on his heels. The greenskins had been quick to plunder the abandoned manufactories, and Captain Galad had decreed that the steady flow of machinery and raw materials to the orkish forges would cease today. Whatever it took.

‘Wait,’ Lanthus said, holding up a hand, although he knew his battle-brothers could see him clearly enough in their helmet displays. For that matter, even though he was on point, he knew precisely where all of them were in the wilderness of rubble behind him, their positions pinpointed by blue and gold icons, echoing the colours of their armour, in the tactical overlay. He swept through the full range of sensory enhancements, looking for heat sources, vibration, electrical activity. ‘I’m reading movement.’

‘The target?’ That was Aldwyn, of course, Lanthus would have recognised the edge of impatience in the speaker’s voice even if his helmet spirits hadn’t tagged the transmission with his battle-brother’s identity code.

‘Probably.’ Lanthus moved on, cresting the broken wall of what had once been a dormitory block, heedless of the twelve metre drop at his feet. He was looking out across a wide carriageway, littered with burnt-out cargo haulers, but most of the wrecks were in the lanes lining the edges, leaving the centre ones unimpeded. Which could mean only one thing. ‘The road’s in regular use.’

‘Can you confirm the contact?’ Sergeant Caromort asked.

‘Confirmed.’ The icons resolved, still fuzzy with distance, the auspex returns erratic through the obscuring ruins and distorted by the plumes of wind-driven ash gusting around what remained of the streets. But they were enough for him to be certain. ‘Multiple contacts, fast-moving, following the road. Numbers indeterminate.’ He hardly needed the helmet display, the plume of dust and noxious exhausts typical of orkish vehicles already clear in the distance. ‘We’ve got about seven minutes to set the ambush.’

‘More than enough time,’ Aldwyn opined, bounding forward to join him, his bolter raised. ‘It’s only a handful of gretchin scavengers.’

‘We can’t be sure of that yet,’ Lanthus cautioned, but before he finished speaking, Aldwyn had already gone, leaping out into the void without hesitation, or the most cursory of glances towards the onrushing horde.

The rest of Combat Squad Two followed him without pause or hesitation, dashing past Lanthus like blue and gold comets, jumping lithely to the carriageway below. The knee joints of their armour flexed as they hit the ground, easily absorbing an impact which would have driven the leg bones of a mortal man up though their ribcage, and they continued running the moment they found a purchase on the cracked and shell-pocked rockcrete. In a handful of heartbeats all had taken cover on the far side of the road, within the gutted shells of the shattered foundries, or dug in behind one or other of the wrecked and rusting vehicles.

A moment later Combat Squad One, Lanthus’ own subunit, appeared, under the command of Sergeant Caromort, and Lanthus raised a gauntlet in greeting.

‘Lanthus, Beves, stay here.’ The brother-sergeant’s golden faceplate turned to the two Space Marines. ‘Set up a firing position, and observe the enemy’s approach.’

‘By your command,’ Lanthus and Beves responded in unison. Beves carried the squad’s missile launcher, and was already hunkering down behind an outcrop of tumbled masonry, the heavy weapon unslung and seeking a target.

‘The rest with me,’ Caromort concluded, leading the way over the parapet.

Lanthus glanced down, just in time to see the rest of Combat Squad One vanish into places of concealment on this side of the road. Good. When the greenskins appeared, they’d be neatly caught in the crossfire.

‘Coming into optimum range,’ he told Beves, who acknowledged tersely, his attention still centred on the heavy weapon’s sights. This was to be Beves’ first taste of action with Caromort’s squad: from time immemorial, the newest recruit to an Astral Knights tactical unit had always been assigned as the heavy weapons specialist. It made the best use of their recent experience as a Devastator, and allowed them time to grow used to the more flexible role they’d inherited. It also felt less like they were stepping into the gap left by a fallen comrade. They usually were, of course, but every Astral Knight took it for granted that their service to the Emperor would only end in one way. Their entire progenitor Chapter had been lost millennia before, and were still mourned by those who carried their genetic legacy in their progenoid glands: the only thing about dying that mattered to an Astral Knight was to make his final moments a testament to his faith in the Emperor, and the means to a victory in His name.

By now, Lanthus could feel a tremor in the masonry beneath his feet, the vibration of dozens of vehicles travelling flat out – the only way the orks knew how to drive them. Had it not been for the audio filters in his helmet, he would already have been deafened by the noise of the badly tuned and barely maintained engines echoing from the surrounding rubble.

Beves’ gauntleted finger tightened almost imperceptibly on the trigger.

‘Wait,’ Lanthus cautioned. ‘Wait…’ Beves would be concentrating entirely on the picture through his sights, but Lanthus had a better view of the battlefield. This was why Caromort had left him up here, in a superior vantage point. His helmet spirits were casting the data they were gathering directly to his hidden battle-brothers, letting them pick targets before they even became visible from where they’d set up their firing positions. He switched to a general voxcast. ‘Trucks, mostly, a few outriders. They’re not expecting trouble.’ He paused for a moment. ‘No more than orks usually do, anyway.’ It might look like a soft target, but an unarmed ork was a contradiction in terms. The vile creatures were aggression personified and it wouldn’t take them long to rally once they realised they were under attack.

‘Take the lead truck,’ Caromort voxed to Beves, ‘then the last one. Box them in.’

‘Acknowledged.’ Beves triggered his missile launcher.

‘Wait,’ Lanthus said, an instant too late, as the auspex images in his helmet display finally resolved. A quick glance was enough to confirm the new tactical picture, his enhanced sight piercing the haze of dust and promethium fumes surrounding the onrushing cluster of vehicles. ‘That’s not a supply convoy–’

The rest of his words were drowned out by the explosion of Beves’ krak warhead against the side of the leading truck.

The shot was a good one: the ramshackle vehicle slewed across the road, rolled, and came to rest upside down, a trickle of smoke leaking from the bodywork. A heartbeat later it was barged aside in a shower of sparks by the monstrous bulk of a heavily armoured battlewagon.

In unison, the Astral Knights opened up from ambush, raking the still moving convoy with bolter fire. Greenskin drivers and gunners fell, trucks collided, but too many orks were scrambling from the wreckage, or retaliating with heavy weapons fire of their own.

‘Stop that battlewagon!’ Caromort commanded, and Beves sent a second rocket after it. The Emperor was clearly guiding his aim: the projectile must have struck an ammunition locker after penetrating the relatively weak top armour. A moment after it hit, the whole contraption exploded in a ball of greasy flame, the concussion jarring the rubble under Lanthus’ feet. A couple of trucks, following too closely, slammed into the burning wreckage and were instantly immolated in turn.

With the road now blocked, the whole convoy ground to a halt, engines revving. A few of the drivers tried to back up, ramming those behind, spreading the turmoil. True to type, several of them began brawling over the issue, heedless of the Astral Knights bolter shells hissing about their ears.

‘Pick your targets,’ Caromort voxed calmly.

Dozens of orks, over a hundred by Lanthus’ count, were pulling themselves clear of the wreckage, cohering into growing mobs, roaring with anger and bloodlust. Driven by rage, each group charged towards the Astral Knights, brandishing crudely fashioned axes and even more crudely fashioned guns. Instead of gretchin scavengers and a handful of orks to escort them, as the Astral Knights had expected, this was a warband on the move, racing to throw themselves into the fray against the Imperial warriors who were now pushing back what had, so recently, seemed an unstoppable advance across the war-ravaged continent. Which was fine with the Space Marines: so far as they were concerned, the greenskins might just as well die here instead.

‘Team Two, overlapping fire,’ Aldwyn voxed, punctuating his words with bursts of bolter fire which scythed down the front rank of blood-maddened greenskins howling towards him. The Space Marines on the far side of the road complied, laying down supporting fire for one another, making the best use of the cover they’d found. The tactic was always a sound one against orks. The brutish greenskins were so desperate to get into close combat that they would charge headlong into the most withering fire heedless of the cost.

‘Frag rounds,’ Lanthus instructed Beves. ‘Thin them out for our brothers on this side of the road.’

‘I need help,’ cut in Brother Prius, one of the Astral Knights who’d accompanied Caromort. Lanthus could see him from up here, backed against a crumbling wall, holding a horde of howling orks at bay with short, precise bolter bursts. The instant he paused to reload, they’d rush him, and in numbers too great even for a Space Marine to hold his own against. Lanthus estimated he had no more than seconds left before the fight below became a vicious hand-to-hand brawl, which could only have one end.

But Beves was already switching loads, slapping a magazine of fragmentation warheads into his launcher. The first round burst among the orks threatening Prius, reducing the closest to a mist of ichor and pulverised flesh, while a blizzard of shrapnel ripped its way through the others. Prius took advantage of the respite to reload, and disappeared into the wilderness of rubble, covering his retreat with carefully aimed shots at the handful of survivors too stupid or frenzied to back off. A moment later Lanthus caught sight of another flash of blue and gold in almost the same spot.

‘Kurtin’s with him,’ Lanthus reported. He turned, looking for some sign of Sergeant Caromort in the direction his icon indicated, feeling a flicker of foreboding as he did so. The battlewagon’s unexpected clearance of the first obstacle had carried the bulk of the convoy some way past the sergeant’s position, leaving him completely encircled by greenskin warriors.

‘Good.’ Caromort’s voice was grim, and it wasn’t hard to see why. His position was even worse than Prius’ had been, hemmed in by wrecked trucks and howling greenskins. His armour was pitted and seared by the relentless pounding of the ork guns, the sheer volume of impacting rounds ablating the thick ceramite that would normally have shrugged them off. The fact that many of their comrades were being felled by stray rounds and ricochets didn’t seem to inhibit the ork gunners at all, or deter the axe-wielders from pressing the attack as hard as they could. Caromort’s augmented blood was leaking from rents in his armour, hardening instantly as it met the air, and Lanthus felt a bitter chill; the sergeant must already be grievously wounded.

Beves fired a frag round into the baying mob, then a second, but all it achieved was delaying the inevitable. Caromort had nowhere to go, and with his left leg already shattered would be unable to run even if there was. The tide of greenskins broke for a moment as the shrapnel scythed through them, then flowed back into the hole the explosions had punched in their ranks, their feet slipping in the viscera of the fallen, and the spreading pool of promethium gushing from the fuel tanks ruptured by the hail of razor-edged metal.

‘Team Two, assault formation,’ Aldwyn voxed. ‘We’re punching through to relieve the sergeant.’

‘Hold your position,’ Caromort snapped. ‘I can barely move. If you try it you’ll die too.’ Then his bolter fell silent, the last round gone from the magazine, and with a feral howl the mob of orks fell upon him. For a moment he disappeared, and Lanthus feared he’d seen the last of his commander; with carefully placed single shots he sniped at the struggling knot of greenskins in the centre of the maelstrom, hacking and slashing at the beleaguered warrior in an insensate frenzy, heedless of the wounds they were inflicting on one another in the process. Then Lanthus’ careful marksmanship thinned them out enough for Caromort to shrug the survivors off.

The end was near, that much was obvious. One arm hung limply at his side, but his other fist backhanded a charging ork with casual ease, crushing its bestial features to bloody ruin. ‘Dorn and the Emperor walk with you,’ he voxed, and opened his hand.

The grenade fell with what seemed to Lanthus to be agonising slowness, while Caromort struck out again and again with grim determination. He was an Astral Knight, and would die on his feet. Preoccupied with their efforts to bring him down, it was doubtful that any of the greenskins even noticed the danger.

Then the grenade detonated, and the haze of promethium vapour in the air ignited in a fireball which swept the length of the convoy. Lanthus staggered from the blast, even with the protection of his power armour. When he looked again, the whole right side of it was scorched back to bare ceramite, blackened with smoke.

Caromort’s icon was gone from the tactical display, and the road between the buildings was a billowing inferno as far as the eye could see.

Everyone had expected Aldwyn to take Caromort’s place, and no one had been more surprised than Lanthus when Captain Galad announced that he was to be promoted to sergeant instead.

‘Do you doubt you can do it?’ the company commander asked bluntly, reading the momentary hesitation on Lanthus’ face before he accepted the honour of leadership.

‘With the help of Dorn and the Emperor,’ Lanthus said, before honesty compelled him to add, ‘but I thought you’d choose Aldwyn.’

‘Aldwyn wouldn’t have thought twice about accepting,’ Galad agreed. He paused for a moment. ‘Which is why I chose you instead. You think before you act.’

It was advice he’d taken to heart in the weeks that followed. The campaign against the orks remained a grim and murderous business, every metre of the world regained and paid for in pain and blood. Even the arrival of a couple of brigades of Imperial Guard, hastily shipped in from neighbouring systems, made little difference that Lanthus could see. Though the steady influx of Guardsmen gradually tilted the balance of the war in the Imperium’s favour through sheer force of numbers, there were still too many objectives the Astral Knights could hope to take in the face of the greenskins’ dogged resistance. The newly rechristened Squad Lanthus found itself facing an apparently inexhaustible supply of enemies.

Then, without warning, everything changed. The war reached a tipping point, and Lanthus found himself charged with bringing it to a swift and victorious conclusion.

The sun was westering, painting the sky over the shattered hive the colour of blood, when Lanthus got the orders which were to lead him ultimately to the duelling ground.

‘The greenskins are retreating,’ he told his squad, re-engaging the general vox circuit. For the last few minutes he’d been linked directly with Captain Galad and was still assessing the information he’d been given during the briefing. The captain’s words had been supplemented by a barrage of images and data files, which his helmet spirits had dutifully tagged and made ready for access. Even while he’d been assimilating this wider strategic picture, however, he’d continued to hold the tactical readouts in the periphery of his consciousness, aware of where every member of Squad Lanthus was.

They’d not been idle while his attention was diverted, continuing to drive the greenskins back from the hallowed ground of a ruined shrine to the Emperor with dogged, righteous fury. Fragments of the visage of Him on Earth could still be seen gazing down from niches in the collapsed walls at the stone corpses of Emperor and saints alike, shattered on the unforgiving ground, or by the brutal spite of orkish weapons fire.

‘These ones aren’t.’ Aldwyn didn’t flinch as a volley of stubber rounds rattled from the pock-marked rockcrete around them, a few ricochets whining from his armour. He turned to face the incoming fire in a single fluid movement, sending a short burst from his bolter through a window from which the stained glass was long gone, reduced to prismatic shards littering the ground at their feet. ‘We can flank them with Combat Squad Two, if one lays down covering fire for us.’ He started forward as he spoke, already snapping a fresh magazine into his weapon.

‘Wait,’ Lanthus said. Part of him shared Aldwyn’s burning desire to shed orkish blood in vengeance for the blasphemous vandalism surrounding them, but engaging the greenskins among the rubbled walls of the hab zone might let a few escape their deserved retribution, slinking away through the maze of devastation like the cowards they were. ‘Hold fire. They’ll think we’re out of ammunition, and move to close.’

‘Even orks can’t be that stupid,’ Beves said, readying his missile launcher. He’d integrated well into his new squad, Lanthus thought: he followed orders quickly, showing commendable initiative, and the older battle-brothers trusted his judgement. When they returned to Obsidia another recruit would be assigned to bring them up to full strength, and it would be time for him to relinquish the heavy weapon.

‘These ones are,’ Aldwyn replied, as a howling mob of greenskins erupted from the partially-collapsed building opposite, and began charging across the rubble-strewn carriageway towards the beleaguered shrine. ‘Good call, brother-sergeant.’

‘Let them get well into the killing ground,’ Lanthus said. It still felt strange to be addressed by his rank, especially by Aldwyn, with whom he’d served the longest. Certain that the entire mob was now out in the open, he gave the order. ‘Fire!’

Seven bolters opened up as one, tearing simultaneously into the left and right flanks of the onrushing horde. Those in the centre came on faster than ever, brandishing their ugly blades, and firing indiscriminately at the suddenly visible Astral Knights. Lanthus felt his index finger ache with the urge to trigger his own weapon, but suppressed the impulse, knowing he’d be better employed assessing the tactical picture.

‘Prius, to the left.’ He directed the fire with the skill and precision of an orchestral conductor. ‘Beves, their centre.’ Frag charges burst in the middle of the mob, tearing the front rank to pieces.

Within seconds it was all over, the boulevard littered with dead and dying greenskins. Lanthus turned away from the carnage, the defeated enemy already dismissed from his mind.

‘Where are the greenskins retreating to?’ Aldwyn asked, resuming the conversation as though the orks had never interrupted.

‘They’re pulling back into the main hive,’ Lanthus told him. No potential threats appeared in his helmet display, and he lowered his bolter. ‘Fortifying the central spire to stand a siege.’

‘That’ll take some cleansing,’ Aldwyn said thoughtfully. ‘There must be thousands of greenskins in there by now.’

‘Tens of thousands,’ Lanthus agreed, ‘and a hundred of us. Captain Galad’s moving the whole company up for the final assault. Enough battle-brothers to sweep it from pinnacle to sublevels.’

‘If they can get in,’ Aldwyn said, studying the topographical files Lanthus was casting to everyone’s helmets. ‘Those gates would need a Titan to breach them.’

‘Our squad won’t be going in through the gates,’ Lanthus said, highlighting a small section at the foot of the outer curtain wall. ‘The Techmarines have found a route in through the manufactory waste ducts. Once we’re inside, we’re to open the gates then blow the control chapel to make sure they can’t be closed again.’

‘Won’t the greenskins be waiting for us?’ Aldwyn asked. ‘They might be stupid enough to charge down our guns, but it’s not like them to leave a potential infiltration route unsecured.’

‘The ducts are full of toxic sludge,’ Lanthus pointed out, ‘which would kill even an ork in seconds. We’ll be completely submerged in the stuff as we pass through the sump. It would never occur to them that a strike team could get in that way.’

‘Some of these substances are corrosive,’ Beves said, his helmet spirits highlighting a few of the compounds in the long list of pollutants appended to the briefing document. ‘They won’t have time to damage the ceramite plating of our armour much, but they’ll degrade the joints and seals in a matter of minutes.’

‘Then we’ll have to be quick,’ Lanthus said. ‘Once we’re through, we’ll be able to clean the worst of it off.’

‘In ork blood, with any luck,’ Aldwyn added.

This close to their objective, the central spire of Hive Capital seemed to blot out half the sky, a stark silhouette of greater darkness wiping the heavens clean of stars.

The colossal smear of shadow wasn’t entirely dark, however: flickering sparks of orange flame were speckled across its face, as though its brutish inhabitants were trying to replace the purer lights of the heavens which their refuge now concealed, intermingled with the brighter pinpoint glare of luminators. Those would mark the guard posts, or areas where the hive’s resources were being looted, but the reason for the fires Lanthus could only guess. Perhaps they were for warmth, or had simply been set to gratify the orkish lust for destruction.

A few metres ahead of the Astral Knights, the mouths of the outfall pipes gaped in the darkness, viscid liquid seeping from them like pus from an infected wound to pool in the sluiceways that were supposed to carry them away. Lanthus jumped over the low parapet, expecting a splash as he landed, to find his bootsoles impacting on a dry, crumbling surface instead; the rockcrete channels had been shattered by conflict and neglect.

A moment later Aldwyn vaulted down to join him, landing a few metres closer to the outfall with a liquescent smack. Wary of losing his footing in the slippery sludge pooling beneath the pipe, he placed his feet carefully, testing the solid surface beneath it before trusting it with his whole weight.

‘I’ll go first,’ Lanthus said, striding past him through the puddle of filth to take up position at the head of the column. Aldwyn moved aside with a faint air of surprise, but Lanthus was determined to lead from the front. There would only be room inside the pipe for one man at a time, and he wanted to see whatever they ran into for himself, instead of relying on voxed reports and images.

At first, the going wasn’t too bad, despite the ever-present risk of losing their footing in the gradually deepening sludge. Every so often the pipes constricted, or the Astral Knights were forced to worm their way around tight corners never intended to be navigated by anything larger than a monotask servitor, and at times Lanthus’ armour scraped against the sides as he pushed his way forward. Nor was he the only one: the whole squad’s way was marked by periodic bursts of sparks as ceramite met corroded metal. Each time a short-lived constellation flared and died, he braced himself, anticipating the sudden combustion of the gasses filling the tight metal tube, but the Emperor was with them, and no explosion came.

It took no more than the thirty minutes he’d estimated to reach the surge chamber marked on the plan he was following, and he stopped abruptly as soon as the tunnel mouth opened out ahead. ‘Wait,’ he ordered.

There was no light at all this far from the open air, too little for the helmet spirits to intensify, and the cold, dank walls held no residual heat for them to use instead, but with no chance of the enemy being able to see them, he’d felt no qualms about kindling his luminator some time before. As the beam swept around the echoing rectangular space, he realised he’d stopped just in time: another step, and he would have tumbled headlong into the deep pool of sludge below.

‘We’re at the sump,’ he said, staring at the scum-flecked tank. ‘Auspex view, and keep close to the man in front.’ A ripple of acknowledgements ran around the vox circuit.

Certain that his squad would be right behind him, Lanthus stepped off the lip of the tank, the foul semi-liquid closing instantly over his helmet. He could see nothing, feel nothing, except the sticky resistance of the sludge; then his feet touched the bottom, and he began to move forward, following the icon in his auspex display which marked the pipe leading deeper into the hive. Faint currents tugged at his awareness, although whether they were caused by convection, chemical reactions within the toxic soup, or by the passage of his battle-brothers forging through it in his wake, he couldn’t tell. All he could be sure of was that, one by one, the rest of Squad Lanthus were plunging into the pool and plodding after him.

Nearing the far wall, he held out his hand, his gauntlets scraping across the rough surface of rockcrete pitted and scarred by the corrosive action of the waste. Mindful of the damage it would be doing to the seals of their armour, and the concomitant need for haste, he felt around for the mouth of the pipe feeding the sludge down from the heart of the manufactory. For a moment he failed to find it, then realised it had been sealed by a metal grille, which hadn’t been marked on the plan they were following.

‘Hold your positions,’ he voxed, groping in the suffocating darkness for a handhold. Then he got a purchase and pulled, exerting all the superhuman strength conferred by the Emperor’s blessing. Servos whined in his power armour, adding its strength to his, and, with a muffled grating sound, the lattice of rusted metal came slowly free. He shuffled aside as far as he dared, and dropped it, to settle slowly in the murk. ‘Obstruction cleared,’ he voxed. ‘Move on.’

This pipe seemed narrower than the other, although whether it really was smaller, or had simply been constricted by centuries of coagulation, he couldn’t tell. When, at last, his head broke the surface again, it took him a moment to realise the fact. He stood, wiping as much of the muck from his visor as he could, and looked around.

‘We’re through,’ he said, as, one by one, the members of Squad Lanthus rose from the mire. He checked the tactical display, and swept his luminator beam around the wide metal space enclosing them. It was roughly spherical, stalactites of congealed filth clinging to the overhanging walls, and a metal ladder leading to an inspection hatch about halfway up one of the curving sides. He clambered to the top, not without difficulty, as the narrow rungs had been intended for users of normal stature rather than the superhuman frame of one of the Emperor’s blessed. ‘Douse the lights.’

As his squad complied, he tripped the latch, and pulled the door open. It resisted a moment, then came reluctantly in a shower of rust and detritus, and with a howl like a heretic being put to the question. He waited a moment, but no greenskins came running to investigate the noise, and he lowered his bolter as the rest of the squad followed him through the hatch. Wide service tunnels curved away in both directions, following the equator of the tank, their outer walls pierced by radial corridors every forty-five degrees. Dim luminators flickered in the ceilings every few metres, still functional, by the grace of the Emperor; they’d make better time by their light, but would be more visible to prowling orks too.

‘There are two routes to the gate controls from here,’ Lanthus said, transmitting the map to the other helmet displays as he spoke, both potential pathways clearly marked. ‘Aldwyn, take Combat Squad Two to the right. I’ll take One to the left.’

‘That should double our chances of getting through,’ Aldwyn agreed, and trotted away into the shadows, four battle-brothers at his heels.

‘I’m picking up movement,’ Prius said, from the mouth of the other tunnel.

‘Confirmed.’ Lanthus checked his own tactical readings. ‘Single heat source, large.’ Too big to be an ork. He wiped the encrusted filth from his bolter, reciting the litany of armaments. ‘Have you got a visual?’

‘Not yet,’ Prius said, ‘but it’s closing fast.’ The blip was almost at the first junction in the labyrinth of service tunnels. Prius would get a clear line of sight within seconds. ‘Ready to engage.’ He raised his bolter, sighting along it, waiting patiently for a target.

‘Fire at will,’ Lanthus said. He would have preferred to have moved a little closer to their objective before the shooting started, but at least if they attracted the orks’ attention it would give Aldwyn’s team a clearer run.

‘We can circle back and assist,’ Aldwyn offered, having monitored the vox traffic.

‘Keep going,’ Lanthus instructed, barely waiting for Aldwyn’s acknowledgement before turning his attention entirely to the matter at hand.

‘I can see it,’ Prius said, his voice taking on a hint of surprise. ‘It’s a beast of some kind.’ He pulled the trigger of his bolter, eliciting nothing more deadly than a muffled click. Before he could clear the faulty round from the chamber, something huge and vaguely spherical came howling out of the darkness, barging him aside in a welter of claws and fangs.

Lanthus reacted instantly, sending a hail of explosive bolts towards the onrushing creature, distracting it from the prostrate form of Brother Prius. Most of the rounds missed the fast-moving target, but a couple impacted on its back, gouging bloody craters which should have felled a lesser creature. This monstrous beast only seemed enraged, however, turning and charging at Lanthus.

‘Beves, krak rounds,’ Lanthus ordered, leaping aside in the nick of time. The creature seemed to consist mostly of a gaping, razor-fanged maw, on two legs thicker than a Space Marine’s waist. Thick scales armoured its bloated head and vestigial torso. He fired another burst, chewing bloody lumps out of the monster, but nothing vital had been hit, and it turned to charge again. ‘Kurtin, see to Prius.’

‘Krak,’ Beves confirmed, already swapping magazines with precise, economical movements. Expecting to be facing orks, he’d preloaded the missile launcher with anti-personnel warheads instead of armour-piercing rounds. Kurtin, about to fire, lowered his own weapon, and hurried over to his fallen comrade.

Lanthus stood still for a moment, allowing the thing to get back on balance, and sent a couple of bolter-rounds ricocheting from the beast’s thick armoured skull. Provoked beyond endurance, the creature roared a challenge, and charged straight towards him, thick strands of drool trailing from the corners of its mouth to mingle with the noxious ichor dripping from its wounds.

He timed it perfectly, pivoting aside at the last possible instant. The beast barrelled past him, its scaly hide abrading a layer of encrusted filth from his armour, and slammed into the wall, embedding itself in the hatch they’d so recently climbed through, bending and tearing the thick metal around the sill as it rammed itself home. Jagged edges ripped into its rounded flanks, releasing more trickles of blood, but it thrashed wildly nonetheless, lacerating its own flesh in its determination to be free and renew the attack.

As Lanthus turned aside, Beves fired the missile launcher. The krak warhead penetrated the monster’s armoured hide easily, detonating in a shower of bile and viscera.

‘Good shoo–’ Lanthus began, only to be interrupted by a massive fireball, which ripped through the chamber. The detonation had touched off the noxious fumes from the sump, now mixed with the oxygen in the air around them to create a lethally volatile mixture.

Lanthus felt himself lifted from his feet and hurled across the room, amid a shower of deadly shards from the ruptured tank. Huge chunks of masonry plummeted from the ceiling, bouncing and cracking against the floor. One of the largest pieces pulverised the rockrete where Prius had been lying only a moment before, an instant after Kurtin dragged him to the safety of the tunnel mouth. Through his ringing ears, Lanthus heard both battle-brothers thanking the primarch for their deliverance. Beves had made it to the refuge too, protecting his heavy weapon from the hail of smaller detritus with the bulk of his armoured back.

‘What was that?’ Aldwyn’s voice echoed from the helmet vox. ‘It sounded like an explosion.’

‘It was,’ Lanthus said, rising to his feet. The other members of his combat squad were standing too, he was relieved to see, although everyone’s armour was pitted with impact marks, and Prius’ left shoulder was moving awkwardly where the creature’s first charge had damaged the joint. ‘No casualties.’ He looked around the chamber. The corridor down which Aldwyn and his group had disappeared was blocked by tonnes of rubble; neither combat squad would be able to come to the aid of the other now. ‘Proceed to the objective. We’ll rendezvous there.’

The route to the gate controls led through a labyrinth of corridors, tunnels and chambers, every one of which bore the scars of desecration by the greenskin invaders. The closer they got to their objective, the more of the foul creatures there seemed to be, swarming in uncountable numbers, the noise of their quarrelling frequently interrupted by brief bursts of violence. In and around the milling orks the gretchin scuttled, even more numerous than their bulkier cousins, forever bickering among themselves and evading the anger of their hulking masters.

Despite the burning desire he felt to visit the vengeance of the Emperor on every enemy they saw, Lanthus held his own feelings, and those of the men he led, firmly in check, conscious that every metre they gained before discovery would improve their chances of success. From half-forgotten gantries and service conduits he observed their enemies at a distance, avoiding detection by a hair’s breadth over a score of times, only giving the order to shed blood when it could be done silently. The greenskins that died, marking their passage with a trail of cadavers, did so in ones and twos, falling victim to the razor-edged crystal shards of the Astral Knights rather than being reaped in droves by their bolters.

It came as no surprise to him that Aldwyn advanced with far less circumspection, carving his way up from the underhive in a hail of bolter shells. The distant echoes of his progress could be heard reverberating through the corridors and service shafts, and many of the orks Lanthus’ combat squad encountered were hurrying in the direction of the noise, so intent on throwing themselves into the fray that they never even noticed the four Astral Knights crouching in ambush mere metres away. The larger groups Lanthus let go, only giving the order to attack when he and his men had the advantage of numbers as well as surprise on their side.

None of them liked these tactics, he could tell, but then neither did he. Only once did anyone venture to object, after a group of half a dozen greenskins had hurried by and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor ahead blithely unaware of how close they’d come to death.

‘Surely we could have taken them,’ Beves said, secure in the neophyte’s privilege of asking for clarification of established procedures in the squad he’d just joined, although the statement had been phrased with only just enough of the inflection of a question to avoid an accusation of insubordination. Prius and Kurtin nodded, almost imperceptibly, making their own reservations known. ‘One burst would have…’

‘Brought the greenskins down on us as hard as they’re harrying Aldwyn,’ Lanthus said, making it clear the subject was closed. ‘There’ll be fighting enough when we reach the gates, I can promise you. But the mission comes first.’

‘Of course, brother-sergeant,’ Beves said, accepting the self-evident truth, but the reluctance with which he did so was all too clear.

After such slow and frustrating progress, the first sight of their objective almost came as a surprise. Even more so, Lanthus thought grimly, than the fact that they’d made it this far without bringing an entire army of greenskins down on their necks. He held up a hand to stop the battle-brothers at his back.

‘We’re there,’ he said, edging to the mouth of the service tunnel which had brought them so close. A thick grille closed it off from the wide piazza, almost a kilometre across, which, in happier times had been a place of commerce and leisure, affording the combat squad he led a measure of much-needed concealment. Traffic in and out of the central hive had once congregated here, just within the gates, attracting innumerable traders, cargo brokers, guns for hire and pickpockets. Now it swarmed with orks and gretchin, snarling and squealing at one another, and, inevitably, coming to blows or casual slaughter. Not all the weapons fire Lanthus could hear seemed directed over the walls at the besieging Astral Knights beyond, and he smiled grimly, content to let the bestial creatures thin one another out a little more before commencing the job himself.

In the distance, across the heaving mass of greenskin bodies, he could see two thick bronze doors, each twenty metres wide and twice that high, set in the far wall. Above them, the wide walkway was even more crowded with orks than the main concourse, fighting and struggling to reach a vantage point from where they could blaze away ineffectually at the rest of the company, which by now would be dug in just beyond the gates, eager to carry the fight to the invaders as soon as Squad Lanthus completed its mission. More than one greenskin failed in the attempt to gain the overcrowded ramparts, falling instead to a messy death, to the loudly evident amusement of the others.

‘We can see the gates,’ Lanthus voxed. ‘Combat Squad Two, location and status?’

‘Still two levels to go,’ Aldwyn voxed back. ‘Meeting heavy resistance.’ His words were interrupted by a burst of bolter fire, probably his own. ‘We’ve lost Spaets, but everyone else is still standing.’ The sound of firing intensified. ‘We’ll be with you as soon as we can.’

‘It won’t be easy getting through that many,’ Beves said speculatively, gazing out over the sea of orks, hefting his missile launcher as he spoke.

‘We won’t have to,’ Lanthus said, indicating a nearby staircase. ‘The control chapel’s up there.’ The lowest tread was barely a hundred metres from where they stood, but three or four score orks were milling around between them and it, passing the time in their usual fashion, with food and casual violence. The stairway had once been as elegant as its prominent position demanded, bannistered with marble filigree, incorporating finely-chiselled images of the aquila and an assortment of local saints, but now much of the intricate carving had been shattered into fragments and dust.

‘Ready to move on your signal, brother-sergeant,’ Prius said, standing aside from the metal grille, and holding up a detonator. Strips of det tape now wound their way around the steel bars, and as soon as he pressed the activation rune, the resulting explosion would sever them simultaneously.

‘Wait,’ Lanthus said, his eyes on the greenskins. A visible change was creeping over them, one or two breaking off their argument to listening to something all but inaudible, and a couple of others were sniffing the air. Gradually, they began to cluster together, the sparks of aggression between them dying out, to be replaced by something else, harder and more focused.

‘Waaaaaaaaaaagh!’

With a sudden bellow Lanthus could feel vibrating in his bones, the whole group suddenly began to move, charging away in what seemed to be a single mass of ork flesh.

‘Combat Squad Two, you’ve another mob heading your way,’ Lanthus voxed. How the greenskins had sensed the distant firefight he had no idea – perhaps they’d heard the bolter fire, or been drawn towards it by their innate affinity for conflict. But, in being impelled to respond, they had left the way clear for the party of Space Marines to reach their objective.

‘Acknowledged.’ Aldwyn’s voice held an uncharacteristic edge of tension. ‘But we’re hard pressed already. Klymer’s down too.’

‘Hold as long as you can,’ Lanthus said, and signalled to Prius to detonate the charges.

The explosion echoed hollowly along the service duct, but Prius had placed them well, and the heavy metal lattice fell out and away, crushing a couple of stray gretchin whose reflexes had been outstripped by the speed of the blast wave.

Even before the grille had come to rest, Lanthus was out of the duct, his bolter barking, confident that his companions would be hard on his heels. Stunned gretchin scattered, squealing, or exploded into mist as his bolter-rounds detonated, carving a bloody path through their obstructing bodies towards the all-important stairway. Prius and Kurtin were firing as well, driving the smaller greenskins back from their flanks, and after a moment Beves’ missile launcher coughed too. The rocket detonated ahead of them on the stairs, its frag charge hurling out a whirlwind of deadly flechettes, which cleared the lower flight of everything except cadavers and body parts.

Inevitably, the orks closest to the carnage began to notice the new threat as soon as the firing started, breaking off from their headlong charge towards Aldwyn’s beleaguered combat squad, and turning back to face it. Crude stubber rounds began to rattle from the Astral Knights filth-encrusted armour, scoring bright slashes and pockmarks in the dried sludge, though many more missed their mark than hit it. In their eagerness to engage the Space Marines, the ork gunners cut down almost as many of the intervening gretchin as Lanthus and his men.

‘Guards!’ Beves warned, as a group of orks appeared at the top of the stairs and began to charge downwards, brandishing their heavy axes, trampling the gretchin trying to flee upwards as they came. Lanthus dropped them all with a single burst of bolter fire that blew apart their legs. Carried onward by momentum and gravity, they collapsed, bounced, and continued down the staircase in an avalanche of flesh. The Astral Knights hurdled the toppling, roaring bodies without breaking stride, and the luckless greenskins carried on to the bottom of the flight, skittling the first group of orks to have started upwards in pursuit.

‘Secure the stairs,’ Lanthus ordered, and the bolters of Kurtin and Prius began a continuous roaring, which all but drowned out the war cries of the enraged ork warriors below, sweeping the treads clear of the vanguard. Beves placed a couple of frag rounds further back, taking out a brace of other groups which had begun charging across the concourse to join the fight.

‘We can’t hold them for long,’ Beves said, and Lanthus could see at once he was right. Despite the disruption the carefully placed warheads were causing, preventing them from coalescing into a single unified swarm, the greenskins were advancing inexorably, like the tide up a slipway, each wave reaching higher than the last before being swept clear by the disciplined bolter fire. If it hadn’t been for the steadily growing pile of the dead and dying impeding their progress, the orks might well have been on them already.

‘We won’t have to,’ Lanthus assured him, sprinting towards the control chapel at the end of the balcony. Once it had been glassed in, allowing the tech-priests who tended the mechanica it housed to observe the gates they controlled, and richly decorated with devotional icons of the Cult Mechanicus; now the glass was shattered, and the embossed cogwheels battered or ripped away. Crude modifications had been made to the control lecterns, no doubt intended to simplify them to the point where they made sense to the average orkish intellect, and Lanthus had no difficulty in deducing their operation. He slammed home the heavy levers, muttering the benedictions provided for him by the company Techmarine, and breathed a silent, additional prayer to the Emperor.

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, then a loud grinding echoed across the plaza, drowning out even the bellowing of the orks, and the roaring of the Astral Knights bolters.

‘Set the charges,’ Lanthus ordered, and Beves hurried to obey, attaching small packs of explosive to the control lecterns. ‘Detonate as soon as they’re fully open.’

As he re-emerged onto the balcony, he could already see movement by the opening gates, and magnified the image in his helm: Rhinos and Land Raiders were swarming through the widening gap, firing as they came, sweeping all before them in a blizzard of explosive and incendiary death. Behind them, the smaller figures of the Assault and Tactical squads were visible, dispersing smoothly to their assigned objectives, the greenskins falling back in the face of their well-disciplined advance.

‘They’re breaking,’ Prius reported from the top of the stairs, and Lanthus saw that it was true: most of the orks still clustered around the foot of the staircase were turning away, galvanised by this new and potent threat, charging to meet it with the beserker fury of their kind. The few too steeped in bloodlust to follow them, remaining determined to engage the small party of Space Marines above, fell almost instantly to the disciplined bolter fire of the Astral Knights, and for a few brief moments Lanthus found himself a mere spectator to the slaughter. Then the boom of the demolition charges echoed across the balcony, the sharp sound swallowed almost instantly by the clamour of the battle raging below, and a plume of smoke billowed from the shattered control chapel.

‘Objective secure,’ Lanthus voxed to Captain Galad, savouring a moment of pride in the fulfilment of his duty, then opened a command channel to Aldwyn. No doubt his hot-headed subordinate was as relieved at the success of their mission as he had been. ‘Combat Squad Two, status report.’

Nothing but the hiss of static answered him. After a moment, he tried Klymer, then all the others in turn, even Spaets, the first to fall. The same lack of response greeted him every time.

‘Could we have lost them all?’ Beves asked, clearly unwilling to believe it. Lanthus shook his head with an assurance he didn’t feel.

‘We’ll know when we find them,’ he replied, leading the way back to the head of the stairs. There could well be survivors, and even if there weren’t, their gene-seed would have to be recovered. Trying not to believe the worst, he led the way back down the stairs, kicking the obstructing ork corpses aside as he went. But he’d made the right decision, he told himself. The mission always came first.

As the last greenskin cadaver rolled out of the way, he caught sight of something plodding towards them, a single figure, too far from the battle-brothers still pouring in through the wide-open gates to be one of them. An Astral Knight nonetheless, the blue and yellow of his armour almost invisible beneath its coating of filth and ork blood. His helmet was off, hanging from one hand, its visor smashed. Wearing it, the Space Marine would have been blind.

‘Aldwyn.’ Lanthus stepped forward to greet him with a surge of relief, then hesitated, reading the fury in his battle-brother’s eyes. ‘Where are the others?’

‘They’re dead.’ The accusation was short and venomous. ‘We were a diversion, weren’t we? That’s why you separated the combat squads.’

Lanthus’ momentary silence was all the confirmation the enraged Space Marine needed. In truth, he hadn’t been entirely certain that Aldwyn’s combat squad would distract the orks from the objective for the crucial few seconds which had ensured his success, but, given their leader’s impulsive character, he’d felt it more likely than not that they’d engage the enemy before reaching it. ‘The mission comes first,’ he said. ‘And we succeeded. The losses were acceptable.’

‘Not to me.’ Aldwyn’s face grew even darker, holding his rage close, nursing it into white heat. ‘Now is not the time.’ He turned, gunning down a wounded ork which had tried to raise its weapon, then swung back to face Lanthus anew. ‘But there will be a reckoning, brother-sergeant.’ He spat out the rank like an insult. ‘This I swear.’

Lanthus felt the tide of the duel flowing inexorably in his direction. Strike after strike had failed to connect, and Aldwyn’s frustration was blazing out of him, bright as a plasma flare. Soon, Lanthus knew, it would overwhelm him, impel him to some desperate act, and the fight would be over.

No sooner had the thought come, than the act followed. Lanthus feinted, opening his guard in a way a cooler opponent would surely have recognised as a ruse, but all Aldwyn saw was a chance to strike at his hated enemy. He took it, stabbing upward at the exposed nerve cluster beneath Lanthus’ armpit, but Lanthus moved in towards him, trapping Aldwyn’s elbow against his arm, keeping his opponent’s shard too far behind him to cut. He brought up his knee, hard, into the pit of Aldwyn’s stomach, and the Space Marine fell, winded, to the sand. An audible ripple of indrawn breath echoed around the arena from the tiered seats surrounding it, but Lanthus refused to be distracted.

Twisting the trapped arm, Lanthus prepared to strike down with his shard, but Aldwyn was too quick. Just as the razor-sharp crystal kissed his flesh, raising an amber welt across his ribcage which burst through the rent in his tunic, he grabbed Lanthus’ leg and threw him. Lanthus crashed to the ground and rolled away, making distance from his opponent. Both men scrambled to their feet, their shards glittering in the diffuse glow from the stars above.

‘You were wise not to accept first blood,’ Lanthus taunted, then hurled himself back into the fray.

Goaded, Aldwyn charged again, all caution forgotten, intent only on bringing down his enemy. Lanthus evaded easily, feeling Emperor and primarch alike at his back, sure now that their judgement would be with him. He kicked out, shattering Aldwyn’s nose, and sending him sprawling, then moved in for the coup de grace. His shard was in his hand, and he raised it, bringing it down in a short, terminal arc, burying it to the hilt in Aldwyn’s throat.

This time, the collective gasp of his battle-brothers was louder; no enemies of the Emperor, or horrors of the warp, could dismay these hardened warriors, but the spectacle of fratricide struck at the heart of all they believed in. Numb disbelief overtook Lanthus, at the sight of a fellow Astral Knight’s life blood pouring over his own fingers. Then pain flared as his kneecap shattered, and he fell heavily, the mortally wounded Aldwyn lashing out with the last of his ebbing strength. Before Lanthus could block it, Aldwyn stabbed his shard into the exposed nerve point he’d tried to attack before. White agony coruscated through Lanthus, paralysing his left side, and he fell heavily to the sand.

‘The judgement of Emperor and primarch is clear,’ the Chapter Master said, his voice carrying easily across the silent arena. ‘Brother-sergeant Lanthus is exonerated.’

Feet crunched on the carpet of blood-flecked crystals. Lanthus turned his head, expecting to see the Apothecary approaching to tend him, but to his surprise he looked up into the shadowed eyes of Chapter Master Amhrad himself.

‘My lord.’ He tried to rise, but his shattered body refused to obey him. He looked round. Beves, Prius and Kurtin, the last survivors of the squad he’d inherited, were waiting on the fringes of the arena, though whether to tend to him or mourn Aldwyn, he couldn’t tell. But no one would approach the fallen combatants while the Chapter Master wished to have words with the survivor.

‘Your first taste of command has cost you much,’ Amhrad said quietly. ‘Half your squad. And the taint of fratricide can never be expunged.’

Lanthus was silent for a moment. ‘We beat the greenskins,’ he said at last. ‘Any sacrifice is acceptable if the stakes are high enough. Aldwyn should have realised that.’

‘Indeed.’ For a moment the Chapter Master seemed lost in thought. ‘And your honour?’

Lanthus didn’t hesitate. ‘An acceptable loss,’ he replied.

WHITEOUT

Andy Clark

Crimson light bathed Lothar Redfang as the drop pod plummeted through Atrophon’s atmosphere. He grinned fiercely around at the rest of the Deathwatch kill team as their craft juddered and shook.

‘The fires out there would roast us in a heartbeat, eh? We’re in the hands of the Allfather now!’

The Ultramarine, Sergeant Cantos, didn’t respond. Sor’khal, the White Scar, scowled.

‘We trust our lives to a damned machine, Fenris. That’s all.’

Lothar’s reply was overridden by the grinding voice of the Iron Hand, Brother Gorrvan.

‘I have advised on seven previous occasions, Brother Sor’khal. Statistical chance of drop pod mechanical failure is less than zero seven two. You have virtually no cause for concern.’

Sor’khal snorted.

‘Virtually, he says.’

Oblivious to the irony, Gorrvan continued.

‘Brother Redfang, this vehicle is a device of the Omnissiah. If you fear for your safety, pray not to your Allfather but to Him.’

‘A Space Wolf fears nothing!’ barked Lothar. ‘Hot Fenrisian blood in these veins! Not like that sump-oil you got in you!’ The Space Wolf’s brash laugh faltered as he realised none of his brothers were joining in. Gorrvan stared blankly, and Sor’khal’s scowl deepened. Brother Kordus, of the Raven Guard, merely tilted his head slightly and regarded Lothar askance.

‘What?’ muttered Lothar. ‘None of you got a sense of humour?’

‘Battle is no laughing matter, Brother Redfang,’ declared Sergeant Cantos, ‘and before us lies a fierce one. Brothers, three minutes to impact. Make ready.’

Immediately, the kill team began checking equipment while muttering benedictions to the machine-spirits. Helms were locked in place. Sor’khal’s narthecium clicked and whirred as he tested its functionality. Kordus reached across to where his jump pack was mag-locked to the drop pod’s central column, fingers dancing over the pack’s activation runes. As they worked, Cantos ran through a final brief, reiterating the key points of his squad’s strategos briefing with the typical thoroughness of a veteran Ultramarine.

‘As you know, the orks of Waaagh! Dregsmasha invaded Atrophon eighteen months ago. Atrophon militia were reinforced by the Catachan Jungle Fighters. However, extreme wintry conditions on the planet have worked against them.’

‘Worse,’ he continued, ‘the orks have deployed a string of super-weapons, to their great advantage. They carried Frostclaw Ridge with volleys of gravity bombs, deployed super-heavy war effigies in the fight for Honorium, and undermined the Ironfields with tunnelling machines.’

‘Strategos link these inventions to an ork mechanic named Badklaw,’ put in Gorrvan. ‘Their augur-skull probes have ascertained his location amid the factorums of the Strakendorf Peninsula.’

‘However,’ continued Cantos, ‘that information is useless to the Astra Militarum. Eighteen hours ago, the greenskins staged a push on the Strakendorf front. The Catachans and Atrophons fell back over the River Strakk, demolishing its primary bridges behind them. This has bought the defenders time to marshal their forces. However, it has cut them off from the orks.’

‘Cowards,’ grunted Sor’khal.

‘Just men,’ offered Brother Kordus quietly, ‘but not us.’

Sergeant Cantos nodded. ‘Correct. The Emperor has blessed us with the ability to take the fight to our foe. Judging by pattern matching of rising energy signatures within the ork’s factorum stronghold, it has been estimated we have approximately six hours until Badklaw’s latest device reaches completion. Then our target likely moves up to join the attack on the Strakendorf front.’

‘Then we kill him first, eh?’

Sor’khal shot Lothar a humourless grin.

‘First sensible thing I’ve heard you say, Fenris.’

Lothar grinned back, baring his canines.

The next moment, the drop pod’s electrosconces pulsed and an urgent chime rang from its vox-casters.

‘Collision warning!’ barked Cantos.

‘Not buildings,’ gritted Sor’khal as he gripped his restraint harness, ‘we’re still in clear sky!’

‘Then what…?’

Lothar never finished his question as, with a sudden, shocking bang of metal on metal, the pod was slammed sideways. The lights went out, and Lothar felt gravity crush him back into his harness as the drop pod spun wildly. Alarm tones pinged and whooped, and Lothar let out a groan of effort as he braced against the forces clamping him like a vice.

There was a thunderous impact and everything went black.

Lothar’s vision swam as it returned, light and shadow churning in a sluggish, nauseating ballet. Pain pulsed in his skull. For several heartbeats, disorientation tried to drag him back down into unconsciousness. With a defiant growl, Lothar forced his eyes to focus. The Space Wolf’s helmet chron told him he had only been unconscious for a handful of minutes. The fact that he was still breathing told him that, whatever else had happened, he was still alive.

Lothar sat up, grimacing, and realised he’d been staring up into a thick snowstorm. Sor’khal was crouched next to him, checking readings on his narthecium.

‘Ah! Fenris lives.’ The White Scar stood, extending a gauntlet to help Lothar up. As Sor’khal hauled him to his feet, the Space Wolf took in his surroundings. The two of them stood shin deep in a snowdrift, engulfed by the shadow of a ruined hab-block. Snow fell thickly, dragged this way and that by gusting winds that Lothar’s auto-senses warned were well below freezing. Through the murk, the Space Wolf could see more skeletal ruins all around. Blasted habs loomed over the snowy streets like ghosts.

‘The crash landing knocked you senseless,’ said Sor’khal. ‘Our pod came down in this ruin and we dragged you clear. Damn machine managed to fire its retros just in time to stop us being smashed to bits. By the Emperor’s grace we all came away in one piece, more or less.’

‘Was it the Iron Hand’s impossible failure?’

Brother Sor’khal shook his head and turned away, jogging off through the snow with his bolter ready. Lothar followed, drawing his own weapons as he went.

‘No failure,’ said the White Scar over his shoulder, ‘Gorrvan was right about that. Something hit us, ork aircraft most likely. Emperor knows no Imperial pilot would be aloft in this mess.’ They crunched across a road junction, picking their way around the half-buried wreckage of a Chimera and its slain occupants.

‘Mess?’ scoffed Lothar. ‘On Fenris we’d spar in this without armour!’

Sor’khal glanced back at him. ‘In that case, on Fenris you must all be deficient.’

Lothar’s booming laugh was swallowed by the muffling shroud of snow.

‘Hah, remind me to bash your teeth in for that sometime, eh?’

‘You’re welcome to try, Fenris. If Laedas couldn’t take me, you don’t stand a chance.’

‘Laedas?’

‘Our former squad mate. The Imperial Fist who got torn apart by genestealers just so we could enjoy your sorry company. I liked that big bastard – we all did. And he was twice the warrior you are.’

Lothar’s rejoinder was drowned out by the howl of a jump pack as Brother Kordus dropped from the sky in front of them.

‘The sergeant is in the cathedrum up ahead. Problem.’

Sor’khal gestured around.

‘You mean, besides being stuck in a snowstorm on the wrong side of an uncrossable river?’

Kordus paused for a moment.

‘Yes.’

With that, he turned, fired his pack, and soared away into the falling snow.

‘All talk, that one,’ grumbled Sor’khal as they pressed on. Lothar chuckled, then pulled up short.

‘Wait. Wrong side of the river?’

‘Did I not mention that? Vox is shot to hell with all this stuff in the air – we can barely reach each other, let alone anyone useful. Come on, Fenris, the sergeant will have a plan.’

They found their battle-brothers in the blasted ruin of the cathedrum of the Emperor Resplendent. Shattered figures in stained glass stared down at them with cracked and sorrowful eyes. Snow fell through rents in the domed roof and had piled in drifts across the nave. The kill team’s briefing had indicated that, while the orks had not yet made it across the River Strakk on foot, their aircraft had been pounding the city for days. It seemed they had been thorough. Lothar frowned as he took in the tangles of fire-blackened bodies strewn around the cathedrum’s ruined interior. Many of the Atrophon citizenry would have gathered here to pray for salvation, now finding only death as the bombs fell. Lothar felt anger surge hot in his chest at the pitiful sight. These people would be avenged.

Cantos, Gorrvan and Kordus were at the far end of the building, staring out through a hole in the cathedrum’s east wall. Sor’khal and Lothar moved up to stand alongside them.

‘It is good that you are unharmed, Brother Redfang,’ grated Gorrvan, his voice echoing through the ruin.

‘We Space Wolves are made of sterner stuff, Iron Hand,’ said Redfang. ‘Needn’t worry about me, eh?’

‘My concern was not for you,’ responded Gorrvan. ‘If your inability to endure the crash had left you compromised, that weakness would have negatively impacted our chances of mission success.’

Sor’khal snorted, but his amusement died as he followed Sergeant Cantos’s gaze.

‘Oh…’

Before them, the fire-blackened city dropped away steeply, marching down to the banks of the River Strakk. Through the tattered snowfall, they could see the river churning with breathtaking fury, great white crests of foam boiling upon its surface. The far bank was obscured, but from their briefing they knew the Strakk to be more than a kilometre wide and extremely fast-flowing. Even a Space Marine wouldn’t survive an attempt at crossing it. Yet the river was not the problem.

‘Is that…?’ Sor’khal began.

‘Indeed,’ Cantos cut in.

‘Didn’t they…?’

‘Evidently not.’

‘So we should…?’

‘Absolutely.’

Sor’khal blew out a breath.

‘Well. Let’s get going then, eh?’

Cantos nodded.

‘Brothers, we move. Twenty-foot spread to maintain visibility, assume hostile contact as possible. Kordus, stay high. Gorrvan, see if you can get a vox-link to Atrophon High Command. They need to know about this.’

As the Space Marines clambered through the rent in the cathedrum’s wall and set off at a jog, the snow swirled about them. Ahead, the river thundered along beneath the un-demolished span of Strakkendorf’s third primary bridge.

The bridge was enormous, a plasteel and ferrocrete monument to the might of the Imperium of Man. It consisted of three roadways, each wide enough to accommodate a trio of Baneblades driving abreast, and separated by jutting, armoured barriers. At intervals, towering support columns rose from the churning waters of the Strakk to bear the bridge’s weight. From what the kill team saw as they advanced from the west bank towards the bridge’s mid-point, each support was a substantial building in its own right, studded with access hatches, snow-choked gantries, stairways and ladders. Thick steel cables stretched between the supports, the wind singing a cold dirge between them.

As they reached the centre of the bridge, the kill team were confronted by the most imposing structure yet. Here stood a mighty fortress, a bastion wall of armoured ferrocrete that incorporated the central support columns and stretched the entire width of the bridge. A vast marble aquila spread its wings across the fortress’s imposing facade. Heavy gun emplacements and banks of darkened floodlights studded it. At its feet, the three roadways plunged into darkened tunnels, and it was here, within the blackened maw of the central tunnel, that the Deathwatch found a code-locked door leading into the fortress proper.

Cantos ordered Gorrvan to gain access, reasoning that such a structure would boast hardened vox-relays and military-grade augurs. The survival of a bridge across the Strakk changed the wider strategic picture enormously, and the sergeant was determined to gain access to up-to-date intelligence before his kill team made their next move. Leaving the Iron Hand to work on the code-lock, the rest of the squad spread out to scout their surroundings.

Lothar stepped from darkness into murky, snow-curdled daylight. He stared east, along the span of the bridge, scouring the swirling snow for signs of movement. The immensity of the fortress loomed above him, lights dark and guns mute and inactive.

‘This is Lothar. I’m at the eastern mouth of the central tunnel. Not seeing anything.’ He waited for a few moments, the hiss of the vox underpinning the moan of the wind through the tunnel.

‘Kordus,’ came the Raven Guard’s quiet tones over the vox. ‘Eastern mouth of left-hand tunnel. The auspex is showing some unusual energy spikes nearby.’

‘I’ve got the same on the right,’ came Sor’khal’s gruff voice.

‘Elaborate.’ Cantos’s clipped tones cut through the background static. ‘What are you seeing, brothers?’

‘One signature, approximately two hundred metres to the east,’ reported Kordus. ‘Large, constant and concurrent with a shield generator or sizeable weapon system.’

‘Again, same,’ added Sor’khal. ‘Doesn’t look orkish, sergeant. Too steady.’ For a few moments, the vox was quiet, then Cantos’s voice came again.

‘Understood. Hold your positions, brothers. We’ll know more once Gorrvan gets this door open.’

Lothar gritted his teeth in frustration, snapping a quick glance at his helmet chron. Four hours and forty minutes remaining. He checked his own auspex, banging it against his armoured thigh when its readout remained annoyingly neutral. The device flickered, then a stuttering signature appeared on its screen.

‘This is Lothar,’ he voxed. ‘I think my auspex got damaged in the crash. It’s just picked up another signature. The fix can’t be right, though.’

‘Explain,’ replied Cantos.

‘Looks like I’m stood right on it, more or less,’ replied Lothar, scowling at the flickering readout. Exasperated, the Space Wolf gave up on the damaged device and peered out along the bridge once more. He narrowed his eyes and increased his helm’s magnification as he caught the suggestion of a large, humped shadow a little way east. Something he had missed amidst the swirling snow. Lothar raised his bolt pistol and chainsword, readying for a fight, but the shape wasn’t moving.

Curious now, the Space Wolf decided to investigate. He crunched forward with a hunter’s caution, wolf-tail totems whipping in the wind, until the shape resolved itself into a wrecked, snow-buried vehicle.

Still wary of potential foes lurking in the snowfall, Lothar moved up to the blackened wreck. It was a Taurox, lying stricken on its side in a snowbank like the corpse of some slain beast. The vehicle had clearly been gutted by fire, its hull torn open by what looked to have been forceful explosions against its rear armour. Lothar took in Catachan regimental markings on the wreck’s scorched hull and, as he dug out the snow around it, he found several of its ill-fated passengers. Fire-blackened mummies in the tattered remains of Catachan uniforms, the dead men had been twisted by the agony of their deaths and then frozen solid by the sub-zero conditions. Once more, Lothar found his anger stirring at the sight of proud soldiers of the Emperor so diminished and defiled. He looked away from their clawing hands and screaming, black-fleshed skulls, and rose to his feet.

‘Cantos,’ he voxed, ‘I’ve found something. About a hundred feet east of the tunnel. It’s a wrecked Catachan Taurox and what’s left of those riding in it. Coming this way at speed, I’d say, then took a few rockets to its arse and went up in flames.’

‘Brother Redfang,’ came the reply, ‘you were ordered to hold position.’

‘Aye, but then I saw this mess.’

‘Evidently,’ came the dry response. ‘Well, as you’re there, what’s your assessment?’ Lothar thought for a moment, eyes roving across the bleak and empty roadways of the bridge.

‘Not part of the evacuation,’ he responded eventually. ‘If the orks had disrupted then there’d be wrecks everywhere, not just this one. Stragglers, maybe?’

‘Or sappers?’ voxed Sor’khal. ‘Trying to blow the bridge? The greenskins might have caught them before they could finish the job. They tried to run and… boom.’

Lothar nodded slowly as he stared at the wreck. Perhaps. Just then, Gorrvan’s monotone cut across the vox.

‘Brothers, the machine-spirits have been rendered compliant. We have access.’

‘Good work, brother,’ responded Cantos. ‘Kordus, keep watch. If the orks know this bridge is open, they may be on their way. The rest of you, regroup with Brother Gorrvan. We shall find our answers inside.’

Minutes later, the kill team, minus Kordus, stood around Gorrvan in the stronghold’s cavernous command chamber. Cantos and Sor’khal had removed their helmets. The Iron Hand, meanwhile, knelt in data-communion with the fortification’s cogitator bank. The kill team had found the fortress’s systems powered down and its hatches locked tight, rendered inert by the garrison during their retreat. Now, Gorrvan was restoring power one system at a time, lumin globes and data-banks flickering back to life all around. Mechadendrites stretched from the Iron Hand’s gauntlets into the cogitator’s ports, and every few moments he twitched, or emitted a blurt of binary.

Sor’khal grimaced with distaste. Sergeant Cantos clapped a gauntlet against his comrade’s shoulder guard.

‘I know you mistrust machines, brother. But this is necessary. We need to know why the bridge wasn’t demolished. We need to know if it’s a viable route of advance.’

Lothar stopped pacing and turned.

‘Advance?’

‘Yes, brother. You disagree?’

The Space Wolf frowned, opened his mouth to speak and paused. Cantos’s ice-blue eyes bored into him. The sergeant’s paired service studs glinted in the half-light as a reminder that he was many decades Lothar’s senior.

‘Cantos…’ Lothar began.

‘Brother-sergeant to you.’ Cantos’ voice was not raised, but it cut like a combat knife.

‘Brother-sergeant. The Atrophons and Catachans think this bridge is down. Reckon they think they’re safe, eh? But they’re not – there’s a great big hole in their shield wall.’

‘“Shield wall”, Brother Redfang?’

Lothar banged his gauntlet against a datastack in exasperation.

‘You know what I mean! If we leave, what’s stopping the orks rolling straight over this bridge and catching the Astra Militarum taking a squat in the snow?’

Brother Sor’khal frowned. ‘They’ve not crossed the bridge yet, or we’d have been neck deep in greenskins already. Maybe this was just the chance? A bunch of orks catch up to the Catachans and kill them, then carry their rampage off somewhere else? These are orks, Fenris. You know they’re not much for strategy.’

‘I know they do whatever you least expect, and when you least expect it,’ replied Lothar. ‘For all we know, they left themselves a way in on purpose, and the whole Waaagh! is approaching right now!’

Sergeant Cantos nodded.

‘A fair assessment, Brother Lothar. But we have a mission. Already we’re out of position, and time is against us.’

‘But we can’t…’

‘We can,’ interrupted the sergeant, ‘and we must. I’ve no more desire than you to leave a hole in the Imperial defences. But our target takes precedence.’

‘Besides,’ put in Sor’khal, ‘how are we going to demolish a bridge? Tell me that, Fenris. Shoot it with bolters till it falls down? We’ll be here a while.’

‘By the Allfather! I’m not saying we demolish anything! I’m saying we hold the damn bridge like real warriors.’

‘Hold it?’ replied Cantos sceptically. ‘With what? Five battle-brothers? Rash foolishness.’

‘More like heroism,’ retorted Lothar angrily. ‘Think of the glory!’

Sergeant Cantos’s eyes flashed with anger.

‘We are not here for glory, Brother Redfang. We are here to complete our mission. If you can’t grasp the difference, I’ll send you back to Fenris where you can engage in all the wasteful glory hunting you please.’

Lothar growled, the sound raw and angry. Sergeant Cantos stood, a cold stare locked with the Space Wolf’s. The grate of Gorrvan’s voice punctured the moment.

‘Sergeant. Brother Redfang may be correct.’ Cantos turned his glare from Lothar to Gorrvan.

‘Explain.’

‘I have interrogated the machine-spirits and data-logs. When the stronghold garrison pulled back, they did indeed leave a team of Catachan sappers to take care of the bridge itself. I believe we can safely assume that they did not succeed. However, they seem only to have been interrupted at the last moment.’

‘The energy signatures!’ exclaimed Lothar. ‘They got their charges set, but didn’t have time to blow the bridge?’

‘I believe so,’ nodded Gorrvan, ‘I have inloaded our squad’s auspex data. Cross-referencing with the Catachans’ logged demolitions schematic, I believe there are two extremely large plasma bombs located a short distance east of here, and another in the support girders beneath this fortress. In addition, though meteorological conditions are becoming increasingly adverse, long-range auspex suggests dramatically increased movement on the river’s east bank.’

‘This may have been deliberate, then,’ nodded Cantos grimly. ‘The orks have left themselves an attack route, and now they gather to exploit it.’

‘And in this throne-damned weather, no-one’s realised,’ said Sor’khal. ‘But then, surely they’ll be on their way?’

As though summoned by Sor’khal’s words, Kordus’s voice crackled over the vox.

‘Enemy movement in the east. Scattered infantry and light vehicles crossing the bridge towards your position. Numbers unclear.’

Sor’khal exchanged a look with Cantos.

‘Sergeant?’ For a moment, Cantos stared intently into the middle distance. Lothar drew breath to speak, but Sor’khal motioned him to stay quiet.

‘Very well,’ said Cantos. ‘Brother Gorrvan, I assume we are still cut off from Atrophon high command?’ The Iron Hands legionary nodded.

‘Correct. Long-range vox contact is impossible at this time.’

‘Then we must deal with this matter ourselves. A random greenskin incursion into the Imperial lines was troubling, but an acceptable risk. This is not random. There will be little gain to the Imperium if we eliminate our target at the expense of the entire Atrophon war effort.’

‘So we fight?’ asked Lothar eagerly.

‘Yes, Brother Redfang. We fight. But not for glory, and not in some forlorn last stand. We still have a mission to complete. Gorrvan?’

‘Yes, sergeant?’

‘The plasma charges. How difficult would it be for us to rouse their machine-spirits?’ For a moment, Gorrvan retched binary. From Kordus came three insistent vox-pips. Situation urgent, orders required.

‘Viable,’ grated Gorrvan. ‘The data-logs indicate that the charges require only the final rituals of arming to synchronise them in a data-choir with this cogitator bank.’

‘Good. Exfiltration? We need to be on the eastern bank when this bridge comes down.’

‘There are maintenance and drainage ducts running through the bridge superstructure just below surface level,’ replied Gorrvan after a pause. ‘Large enough for us to move along at a run, all the way to the eastern bank. Some systems are still inactive, sergeant. I cannot promise that the duct-ways are fully accessible, or that the foe will not have found a way into them. However, I calculate a seventy-six per cent chance that they will provide a suitable, uncontested exfiltration route once the charges are primed.’

‘It will have to do,’ barked Cantos, donning his helm. ‘Gorrvan, remain here, provide us with strategic oversight and guide us in the arming rituals. And get the east-facing servitor guns up and running as your first priority. Sor’khal, Redfang, with me. We’ll press on and prime those charges.’

‘Sergeant, I’ll take the bomb below the stronghold,’ voxed Kordus, ‘I can reach it quicker than any of you.’

‘Agreed,’ replied Cantos. ‘Once all charges are set, we fall back here. That should lure the orks onto the stronghold’s guns and, while they are fully distracted, we slip away through the ducts before the charges blow.’

Sor’khal nodded.

‘No more bridge. No more orks. Brilliant. By the Khan, then, brothers, let us be about our duty!’

The Space Marines emerged into gloom of the central tunnel once more, the door’s code-lock rune flashing from green to red behind them. Now only Gorrvan would be able to unlock that portal from the central command chamber. Cantos led his brothers at a run to the eastern mouth of the tunnel, where they ducked down for a moment with weapons held ready.

Lothar stared hard along the bridge, noting that the weather was worsening fast. Already the crashed Taurox and its slain cargo were lost to sight amid the wind-whipped snow. He could hear engines snorting and snarling out there, but couldn’t yet see the foe.

‘With me,’ voxed Cantos, ‘Lothar left flank, Sor’khal right.’

The three Space Marines loped out along the bridge, steadying themselves against shrieking gusts of icy wind. As they jogged along the bridge, their boots crunched in the snow and the sound of motors and crude bellowing voices got steadily louder.

‘You are now less than one hundred metres from the charges,’ voxed Gorrvan. ‘There appear to be two, one to either side of the bridge.’

Just at that moment, the first of the foe loomed from the swirling snow. The orks were huge beasts, as tall as the Space Marines themselves and easily as broad. Despite the icy cold they were clad in ragged cloth and scrappy armour that left much of their green flesh exposed. As the hulking silhouettes emerged from the storm, Lothar grinned in recognition.

‘Contact left,’ he snarled and, raising his bolt pistol, shot the first beast through the face. The ork’s head exploded in a wet spray. Behind it, its comrades roared in anger, but Lothar was already charging. A few crude slugs whined off his armour in showers of sparks, then he was in amongst the greenskins, his chainsword howling. His first stroke lopped a greenskin’s head from its shoulders. His second hacked through the haft of a scrap-iron axe and severed the arm holding it. An ork hatchet clanged against Lothar’s shoulder guard, hacking a chunk from the ceramite and driving the Space Wolf to one knee. In return, he drove his chainsword into the ork’s guts and snarled his satisfaction as the alien’s innards sprayed red across the snow.

More orks closed in, a metal club crunching into Lothar’s chest with enough force to crack the black carapace beneath. The Space Wolf growled as he tasted blood in his mouth.

Bolters thundered as Lothar’s brothers joined him. Cantos and Sor’khal gunned down the greenskins with practised skill, the muzzle flare from their weapons lighting the snowbanks with its strobing glare. Within moments only butchered meat remained, pools of xenos blood steaming as it swiftly cooled and froze.

‘…sily recognisable. Vox me whe… cated the charges.’ Cantos paused, one hand pressed to the side of his helm.

‘Brother Gorrvan, repeat. You’re breaking up.’ Static whistled through the vox.

‘We need to move,’ muttered Sor’khal, scanning the whirling snow. ‘That was just the first handful. The sound of fighting brings the bastards running.’

Lothar revved his chainsword.

‘Let them come. Stormtooth hungers for their blood!’

‘Atmospheri… terferance is increasi… sergeant,’ voxed Gorrvan. ‘Reiterati… each charge is located at the ba… a support column, and will be easily recogni… Vox me when… located the charges.’

‘Acknowledged,’ replied Cantos. ‘Sor’khal, take the left-hand side of the bridge. Brother Redfang, right. I will remain central and retain their attention while you complete the rituals. Go.’

The two Deathwatch brothers nodded, turned, and forged off into the snow. Cantos remained where he was, stood alone amid the orks’ contorted corpses. Engines roared, louder now and getting swiftly closer. Cantos raised his combi-melta and waited.

Brother Kordus triggered his jump pack, launching himself from the gantry. Snow whipped around him as he flew through the air, auto-senses overlaying his vision with trajectories and the wireframe mapping of the bridge’s structure. For a long moment he sailed through white nothingness, the thuggish wind trying to bludgeon him off course, before his boots clanged down on another strut. He stood on a censer-spar that jutted precipitously from the bridge’s underside. Far below, the river churned and roared. The Raven Guard calmly calculated his next leap, ignoring the wind screaming around him, then fired his jump pack’s thrusters again. As he flew, he listened to his brothers’ vox chatter. Sor’khal and Redfang had almost reached their charges now, and Cantos was engaging another wave of greenskins. Kordus had no doubt they would complete their duties, even the newcomer. Meanwhile, he would see to his task.

Kordus’s leap carried him down, under the ferrocrete mass of the bridge and into its shadow. Down here, a vast cradle of gantries, girders and cables helped support the stronghold, lest its weight pull it down into the fury of the Strakk. He landed on a long, wide girder and paused, getting a fix on the energy signature of the plasma charge. With whipping snow and shadow all around, the Raven Guard’s visibility was now down to a few metres at best; his helm’s auto-senses would have to be his eyes.

Kordus’s contemplation was broken as a bullet whined off the girder to his left. Another clanged from his helm, then more were raining around him. Obeying ingrained training, Kordus triggered his jump pack and executed a twisting, evasive leap to carry him out of danger. He crossed the vaulted space between two spars then cut his engines suddenly to drop like a stone. Kordus fell several metres and grabbed the edge of a lower platform as it flashed up at him out of the murk. Swinging into shadow, he waited, twin hearts thudding steadily, aware of the constant, hungry roar of the river far below. More gunfire rattled, then petered out. His assailants had lost him. Hopefully.

Scouring the gloom, Kordus saw the foe as flickering heat-signatures. The creatures swarming along the cables and girders weren’t orks. They were smaller, gangling things that clung on for dear life as they climbed. Gretchin, a whole mob of them heading right for the plasma charge. He could see its power readings from here, and gauged that the device was nestled close to a support column directly below the stronghold’s main mass. It wasn’t far away. Kordus pulled himself up with one fluid motion. The Raven Guard crouched, palmed a frag grenade, and drew his bolt pistol. He would need to be quick.

Lothar was almost at the plasma charge, and could see it pulsing green through the snow when the orks struck. Only the sudden howl of his instincts saved him. Lothar threw himself sideways, a smoke-belching rocket whipping over his head. The projectile corkscrewed into the bridge and exploded. He hit the ground, rolled, and came up with his pistol raised. The snow around him erupted as a mob of orks burst from hiding. They were clad in a jarring grey and red pattern that Lothar realised was meant to be camouflage, and many had a crossed-axe glyph smeared crudely on their skin or wargear.

‘Die, filth,’ snarled the Space Wolf, blasting the ork with the smoking rocket launcher off its feet. The next greenskin roared and shot Lothar point-blank, cracking his armour and sending him staggering back. The Space Wolf howled with rage and charged, sawing his chainsword into the ork’s face. Blood and broken teeth sprayed, even as Lothar’s next two shots blew chunks of flesh from another assailant. The ork came on, despite the craters blasted in its torso, and Lothar took a resounding blow to his helm, amber warning runes flickering in the corners of his vision. Spinning, the Space Wolf brought his blade whirring around in an arc and hacked the head from his tenacious foe. As this latest ork fell, neck-stump jetting gore, the last of Lothar’s attackers lost their nerve and fled. His instincts bayed at him to give chase, but he had a mission to complete. Instead, he dropped to one knee next to the humming bulk of the plasma charge and stared in incomprehension at the wires and cables that spilled from its innards.

‘Gorrvan, I’m at the bomb. What in the Allfather’s name do I do now?’

For a few moments there was silence, followed by the sound of Cantos engaging the orks somewhere behind him. Muffled bolter fire thudded through the air, interwoven with bestial greenskin warcries. Lothar grinned fiercely at the sound of something exploding with a hoarse boom. For an Ultramarine, he thought, it sounded like Cantos could really fight. Suddenly, Gorrvan’s voice broke through the choppy static.

‘…rother Redfang… see a panel with a …echanicus cog. It… about ha… way up the dev…’

For a moment, Lothar was at a loss. Then his eyes found the panel. ‘Got it.’

‘Ver… ood. Intoning the thir… cantica… of the Omniss… pre… the red rune ne… the pane…’

Lothar scowled. The wind howled around him, gathering pace by the second. A particularly fierce gust snatched a clutch of icicles from a gantry high above, flinging them down to shatter upon his armoured shoulders.

‘…n the circumstance… think we can dispense with the chanting. Just hit the red rune Brother Redfa…’

Lothar grunted and thumped his fist against the blinking red rune. With a puff of incense, the panel slid aside, revealing a nest of wires and switches. Squatting amongst them was a device that Lothar recognised. A melta bomb. A secondary charge, presumably placed to violently dissuade tampering. As the panel opened, a runic display on the small charge’s front began to count downward.

‘Fenrir’s arse,’ cursed Lothar. ‘There’s a bomb here, Gorrvan. Another one, and its machine-spirit doesn’t like me! Now what?’

‘Ah,’ came Gorrvan’s response.

‘Ah? What do I do?’ snarled Lothar. For long, agonising seconds, the only response was static, hissing and whistling through the vox. Lothar’s twin hearts thudded, and every nerve screamed at him to get clear, but he had a duty to discharge.

‘Gorrvan? Gorrvan! By the Allfather, you metal bastard, if you don’t tell me what to do right now this thing’s going to blow my head off!’

Finally, Gorrvan’s voice returned, still infuriatingly unruffled.

‘Remain cal… Brother, I will hel… you. Thr… wires shoul… from the top of the melta charge, yes?’

Lothar searched frantically, sweat rolling down the back of his neck as the runes counted down towards zero.

‘No… yes! I see them. Now what?’

‘…ood. Rip out the … ed and blue. Lea… the green.’

Sliding his thick, armoured fingers into the bomb’s workings, Lothar gingerly grasped the wires and, with a muttered prayer, yanked them out. For a second more the rune counter spiralled downwards, and then it blinked and went dark.

A breath that Lothar hadn’t realised he was holding escaped his lips in a rush.

‘Brother Lo… ar, do you sti… live?’

Lothar barked a humourless laugh. ‘I do, Gorrvan. I do. I owe you a debt, brother.’

‘You are ver… elcome, Brother Redfa… but no debt has… en incurred. Your immolation, along with… plasma charge, would ha… been sub-optimal for our chances of missio… uccess. Now… the panel, do you se… switches?’

‘Aye.’

‘…ount along fro… the left… ick the third switch…’

Lothar swore as the signal finally deteriorated into a roar of static. With a wary glance at the huge, pulsing bomb, Lothar counted the switches from the left and placed his finger on the third one.

‘Hope this is right, brother,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t want another mechanical failure eh?’ Wincing, Lothar flicked the switch.

At the same moment, Kordus, having monitored Gorrvan’s instructions to Lothar, flicked his own switch and gunned down another two gretchin. Already, heaps of the vile creatures lay scattered around the platform, blown apart by bolts and frag grenades. The rest had hunkered down behind struts and spars, preferring to pelt Kordus with fire from a safe distance. He was bleeding from several superficial wounds, his armour a mess of bullet-scars, but as the charge’s rune flashed from red to green he knew he’d completed his task.

‘Charge primed, Gorrvan,’ he voxed. ‘Returning.’ The wind screamed, its ferocity increasing with each moment. As he watched, several gretchin were plucked from the nearest gantry and sent spinning away into the storm with reedy shrieks of terror.

Steeling himself, Kordus took a running leap into the maelstrom, jump pack roaring as it propelled him past a knot of greenskins and into the darkness. He landed with a clang, steadied himself, leapt again, and again. His auto-senses warned him the wind speed and temperature were becoming untenable for flight. A storm of ice chipped and scratched at his armour. Yet just a couple more jumps would carry him up onto the bridge’s surface.

At that moment, his vox coughed static in his ear, along with Cantos’s ragged, distorted voice.

‘…rothers, if any of you… hear this… plete the mission… can’t… hold…’

Kordus was little given to displays of emotion, but he had fought with Cantos on a dozen battlefields, and he swore as he heard the pain and defiance in his sergeant’s voice. Desperate urgency gripped the Raven Guard, and he took a running leap before firing his jump pack once more. Heavy with accumulating ice, the engines burned hard for a moment, sputtered, then cut out. Kordus stretched desperately for the nearest strut, just grasping the frozen metal. Behind his faceplate, Kordus’s black eyes widened with horror as his fingers slithered off the rime of ice, then he fell wordlessly towards the roaring river below.

Sor’khal pounded through the snow. Behind him, hidden amid the snowstorm, his plasma charge was primed. Ahead, even over the wind, he could hear roars and gunfire. The snow parted, and the White Scar cursed. Cantos was on his knees in the snow, blood running freely from his rent armour. The wreck of a ramshackle ork transport burned nearby, as did several blasted bikes. Orks were piled high around the heroic Ultramarine, yet more still surrounded him. Sor’khal ran faster, drawing his power sword from its sheathe. A massive, armoured ork with a roaring chain-cleaver loomed over the sergeant, its face split in a hideous leer. Then it raised its weapon to deliver the killing blow.

‘Cantos!’

The cleaver swept down, only to slam against a chainsword inches above Cantos’s head. Sparks flew, and the huge ork roared its outrage. Lothar Redfang surged forward, driving the greenskin back with a series of lightning-fast cuts. The ork punched the Space Wolf in the face, denting his face-plate and shattering one eyepiece. Rallying, Lothar feinted high then swung low and hacked off his foe’s leg. The ork leader crashed down, only to sink its tusks into Redfang’s thigh. Blood jetted as ceramite parted under the immense pressure of the ork’s jaws. With a roar of pain the Space Wolf rammed his whirring blade through the ork’s eye socket, causing its head to come apart with gratifying violence. By this time, Sor’khal had reached his brothers, impaling another ork, then pounding bolt shells into several more.

‘Get the sergeant up,’ voxed Lothar, parrying a whirltoothed axe. Sor’khal nodded, only to be sent staggering as another huge, armoured ork shoulder-charged him. The White Scar and the greenskin exchanged a vicious flurry of blows, and Sor’khal roared in pain as his opponent managed to ram its rusted blade through the armoured cables protecting his midriff. Blood welled through the wound and the ork roared its victory, pushing the blade deeper. Its eyes widened as Sor’khal bellowed a curse of his own. The Apothecary slammed his armoured fist repeatedly into his attacker’s face until bone broke and blood spurted. As his foe leaned desperately away from the punches, Sor’khal jammed his narthecium up, under its jaw. Drills whined, armour separators cracked out through bone and sinew, and the White Scar messily tore off the ork’s jaw.

Showered in greenskin blood, Sor’khal kicked his gagging, dying attacker into the snow. He wrenched the beast’s blade from his stomach and hurled it contemptuously away.

‘Are you alive, brother?’ Sor’khal answered Lothar’s question with a pained nod, before sliding one shoulder under Cantos’s arm and hauling the sergeant to his feet. Already, Sor’khal’s gene-enhanced metabolism was at work, clotting the flow of blood from his wound and beginning to heal the catastrophic damage that would have killed a lesser man thrice over. Cantos, however, was more sorely wounded. Blood dribbled in ropes through the cracked vox-grill of his helm, and welled slowly from a dozen savage rents in his armour. He grunted in pain, but managed to get his feet under him all the same.

‘Lothar,’ growled Sor’khal. ‘We need to fall back, now!’

The Space Wolf rammed his chainsword through an ork’s throat, before backing towards his brothers.

‘Agreed. They’re thick as hook-tics on a kraken, eh?’

The Deathwatch retreated along the bridge, firing as they went. The enemy were all around, but the howling, snowy gale hampered the orks worse than the Space Marines. Though their ferocious resilience made them all but immune to the cold, the xenos still had to labour for every step. Meanwhile, the Deathwatch had servo-motors to help power their limbs, and gyroscopic stabilisers to keep them upright. Still, all three were hard-pressed and cursing the orks’ incredible tenacity by the time the silhouette of the stronghold rose through the snow.

‘Gorrvan,’ voxed Sor’khal. ‘Cover would be good!’

‘…oing what I can, Brother Sor’khal. The storm has compromised the servit… guns’ targeting augurs. I cannot risk triggering them at this time. They may hit you.’

‘Perfect,’ spat Sor’khal, blasting another ork as it loomed from the snowstorm. It took the round to its shoulder, staggering as blood and meat exploded from the wound before roaring its defiance and charging again. Sor’khal cursed and shot it square in the face, sending its headless body flopping back into the snow. Sergeant Cantos activated his vox.

‘Brother Kordus?’ he gasped, ‘Where are you? We need to go…’ Silence answered him, and Sor’khal swore again as his bolter clicked uselessly. An ork slammed into him and Cantos, spilling them all into the snow. Sor’khal’s helm hit ferrocrete as the greenskin landed atop him. The alien cracked one big green fist into his face-plate, breaking the ceramite and drawing blood.

Meanwhile, Lothar fought ever-increasing odds. He tried to reach his fallen brothers, but several huge orks hurled themselves at him all at once. He crushed in his first assailant’s skull and shot the next, but the third managed to hack its blade into his shoulder. Howling with pain, Lothar headbutted the greenskin, only to be knocked off his feet as an ork shell exploded nearby.

‘Sor’khal,’ he groaned, trying to crawl towards the Apothecary. He saw the White Scar’s assailant deliver another clubbing blow. Then a black shape hit the ork like a thunderbolt. Engines roaring, Kordus tackled the greenskin off his brother, snapping its neck as they tumbled to a stop. Standing, the Raven Guard rattled off a volley of shells, gunning down a pair of masked greenskins before they could fire their bulky flame-throwers.

‘My thanks, brother,’ voxed Sor’khal. ‘Thought I was dead.’

‘What happened?’ asked Lothar, as he staggered to join them. Kordus calmly shot another ork through the throat as it burst into view.

‘This storm,’ replied the Raven Guard. ‘Fell. Climbed. Not really the time for long explanations.’

‘I concur,’ cut in Gorrvan, ‘you need to exfiltrate. Augur shows ork tanks moving up the bridge in great force.’

‘Well let us in then, brother!’

‘Negative, Brother Redfang. There is a duct hatch beneath the snow about five metres to your left. Enter there, it will be quicker. I will finish setting the timer then catch you up.’

‘Understood,’ grated Cantos. ‘Get those guns firing the moment we’re clear.’

A rune flashed on their auto-senses, as Gorrvan showed his brothers their exit route. While Kordus laid down covering fire and Sor’khal busied himself with Cantos’s wounds, Lothar swiftly dug down and hauled open the heavy hatch. A dark tunnel lay below, and the Fenrisian winced.

‘Like crawling down a troll’s gullet,’ he muttered. Then he loudly announced, ‘Who’s first?’

‘Go,’ ordered Cantos, ‘Sor’khal and I will follow. Kordus, rearguard.’ Lothar nodded, then dropped into the hole. As he did so he saw Kordus blazing away while Sor’khal helped Cantos to his feet. This was his pack, he thought with a surprised surge of pride, these and Gorrvan. He heard his brothers drop down behind, heard the hatch clang down, then the sudden roar of the servitor guns opening fire at last. The tunnel shook and dust trickled with each heavy concussion.

‘Twenty minutes,’ voxed Gorrvan. ‘Move, brothers.’

Some minutes later, Lothar emerged from the tunnel’s exit amid a ruin that flanked the bridge on the eastern bank. The place had been gutted by fire, but it was cover, and there were no orks inside. He could hear them without, voices raised in warcries. The storm was lessening, and the servitor guns of the stronghold thundered in the distance as the orks poured across the bridge and into their fire.

Sor’khal emerged behind him, still aiding Cantos, and Kordus jogged from the shadowed tunnel a moment later.

‘Gorrvan?’ asked Cantos. Lothar shook his head.

‘Brother Gorrvan,’ voxed Cantos. ‘Location?’

‘Stronghold command chamber, sergeant,’ came the reply. Sor’khal swore. Cantos closed his eyes. Lothar, meanwhile, lunged back towards the tunnel exit, only to be physically restrained by Kordus.

‘By the Allfather, Gorrvan, what’re you thinking?’ yelled Lothar.

‘It was the storm, brothers. Remote detonation was impossible while it persisted.’

‘So you stayed to do it manually.’ Sergeant Cantos’s tone was weary.

‘Confirmed. Meteorological augury indicated when the storm would abate. I simply fed that data to your helm chrons.’

‘So get out now!’ urged Sor’khal.

‘Negative, brother. Five servitor guns are dry.’ Gorrvan’s words were punctuated for a moment by the choppy roar of his bolter. ‘The greenskins have breached the east wing, and several have already reached this chamber. If I leave, detonation is uncertain. Logic dictates that I stay.’ For a moment, silence fell, then Cantos opened his vox again.

‘Your sacrifice will be remembered, Brother Gorrvan. Your Chapter will be notified.’

‘Thank you, sergeant. I calculate that you still possess an eighty-two per cent chance of mission success. Please prove me correct.’

‘We’ll kill him for you, brother,’ growled Lothar. ‘I swear it on the Fang.’

‘Again, Brother Lothar, my tha–’

And then, like a new sun dawning among the Atrophon snows, the plasma charges went up. A monstrous flash of light came first, followed by a thunderous roar that grew louder and louder. The blast wave rolled out, causing the ruin to shake violently and rubble to crash down around them. As one, the Space Marines were thrown from their feet, the earth shaking furiously beneath them. A vast fireball rose skyward, wreckage raining down around it. The brothers of the kill team clung to the juddering ground as their shelter came apart and toppled down upon them like an avalanche. For a while detonations continued, accompanied by the monolithic roar of the bridge collapsing into the Strakk.

Then it was finally over.

A short while later, rubble shifted on the east bank of the Strakk. With groans of exertion, the surviving brothers of the Deathwatch heaved fallen masonry off of themselves, clambering bloody and bruised into the smoky daylight. Blackened ork corpses lay everywhere, many crushed under chunks of ferrocrete or scrap metal. Here and there, flaming wreckage still blazed, and ash swirled thick in the midst of the snow. Lothar stared at the destruction they’d wrought.

‘Impressive…’ he breathed.

The span of the bridge still rose from the east bank, but it terminated a little way out across the river. Most of it had been vaporised, or devoured by the hungry Strakk. Now, two stubs of bridge jutted from opposite banks, severed cables swinging and creaking in the wind.

‘Not an ork left alive,’ noted Sor’khal. Cantos, his wounds patched for now, stepped painfully up next to him.

Lothar lowered his gaze for a moment. ‘Our brother shall have a seat in the Allfather’s feasting hall, eh?’

Cantos nodded grimly.

‘Indeed. There’ll be scattered survivors, but the Imperial lines are safe. Gorrvan would be pleased, may the Omnissiah keep him.’

Kordus tested his jump pack’s engines, nodding with satisfaction as they burned steady again.

‘More likely, Gorrvan would lecture us on the inefficiency of standing around talking.’

Lothar chuckled.

‘You’re right. Come on, brothers, we’ve an ork to kill, and only four hours left to do it in.’

‘And some glory to win?’ offered Cantos with a wry smile.

‘No, sergeant,’ replied Lothar, showing his fangs, ‘not glory. Revenge.’

Cantos nodded. ‘Revenge then. Brothers, for Gorrvan.’

Filled with new resolve, the brothers of the Deathwatch struck out into the snow, making for the outskirts of the factorum district. Somewhere ahead lay their quarry. At their backs, the falling flakes erased their footprints as they vanished into the white.

Monolith

Chris Dows

‘I repeat – this is Colour Sergeant Pedahzur of the Cadian 46th. Traitor Space Marines equipped with jump packs have overrun our position. We cannot offer any covering fire or assistance. We need reinforcements. Now!’

Despite the rattling din of equipment and weapons, the colour sergeant’s voice was clear enough through Zachariah’s vox. It wasn’t panic in the Cadian’s tone, but the urgency of his delivery said it all – this was going to be a tough one.

The briefing on the Obliteration had informed them that intelligence was ‘incomplete’, but it was clear enough that the situation had deteriorated.

Somewhere below, on the surface of Ophel Minoris, the Cadians had lost control of an installation vital to security in the Arx Gap – a massive structure of unknown origin with, it was said, similar properties to the famed Cadian Pylons. With their experience of these mysterious structures, the Cadian forces had been the obvious choice to occupy and defend them.

When the first distress call had come, the Obliteration had been the closest Imperial vessel, but it had still taken nearly a week to reach Ophel Minoris. Surviving an attack for so long under normal circumstances would have been a tough call for Cadians, who were amongst the hardiest fighters Zachariah had ever met. It was apparent these were far from normal circumstances, and if any had survived against a foe of such terrifying myth and legend then this only increased his admiration for them.

‘Chaos Space Marines… Emperor’s Throne,’ muttered Adullam.

Over the years Zachariah had heard whispers about these dreadful creatures. Space Marines who had rebelled against the Imperium and turned to the worship of dark powers.

He felt Beor shift uncomfortably in his seat, tightly wedged into the meshed metal bench he currently shared with the hulking brute to his left and Adullam to his right. Directly in front, the three troopers’ heavy boots almost touched the feet of veteran Guardsmen Sojack, Melnis and Coarto, the other half of Zachariah’s team, who sat quietly, conserving their energy for the mission. Their thoughts were drowned out by the roar of the Valkyrie’s twin engines as they hit the upper atmosphere.

Zachariah nodded once, and within seconds respirators were connected to helmets and tinted visors flicked over eyes, each man moving expertly inside the straps and harnesses holding him in place against the violent shaking of the ship.

‘Drop point in two minutes. All ships are holding formation. Clear skies, Elysians – we’ll get you down in one piece.’

The voice of the Valkyrie’s copilot warbled with the buffeting of the plunging ship and Zachariah acknowledged the message. Signalling his team to keep vox silence, he knew the other five squads somewhere behind them would do the same; comms would likely be monitored by the enemy and the last thing they needed was to give away their pitifully small numbers.

It bothered Zachariah that they had been sent in with such little preparation and, for that matter, recuperation after the fighting on Rysgah, but they’d been assured that reinforcements would join his beloved 158th as fast as they could. Whether it would be fast enough was immaterial; they had a job to do, and despite his many years of service he still felt a flutter of excitement in his stomach.

Slipping off the restraints from his shoulders, Zachariah reached below the bench and retrieved his grav-chute by its battered nozzles and heaved it off the deck. Sitting forwards, Adullam and Beor took a side of the pack each and lifted it up and over Zachariah’s head. He put his arms through the straps and began clipping them together. Leaning forwards to create more space, Adullam and Beor followed the same practised routine until all three were ready for the drop. Within seconds, Coarto, Sojack and Melnis had done the same. This was always the most uncomfortable part of any mission, trying not to clang and crash into everyone and the bulky weapons containers taking up the rest of the drop ship’s interior before making the way to the exit hatch. It was the very reason the veteran squad waited until the last minute of a drop, as well as one of a thousand things they had learned over countless missions.

Wham.

Zachariah looked sharply to the starboard side of the hold. He knew the normal clatter of orbital entry and that wasn’t it. Something had hit them, and hit them hard, brutally illustrated by a dent in the grey metal wall. A frantic shriek of metal on metal filled the hold, choreographing the movement of the six men as they writhed to free their strapped-down weapons.

A sliver of light became a ragged, gaping hole as two sets of razor-sharp talons punched inside, and the Valkyrie’s pressure warning alarm blared into life. A bulky bronze and scarlet figure gripped onto the entrance it had brutally torn open and stared impassively at the men. Buckles popped, webbing slid back and straps loosened, but it was all too late.

The creature screamed.

A fist of sound hit the men, smashing their senses into submission. Ducking down, the armoured monster launched itself inside, slashing talons cutting furiously through the racks and webbing. The ship lurched to one side, throwing the intruder towards Melnis, Coarto and Sojack, who were eviscerated in a scarlet flurry before Zachariah’s eyes. Facing the three remaining troopers, the massive figure raised a powered arm, but its swing was unbalanced by the Valkyrie, which shuddered violently and dropped.

The shrieking Chaos Space Marine was thrown up onto the ceiling with a crunch, silencing its mind-splitting howl with the impact. The ship spiralled to starboard, throwing the traitor along the ceiling then back out of the hole it had made, taking a good part of the fuselage with it. Their reprieve was short-lived as Zachariah watched a fracture line run up and across the top of the hold, and with a mighty crack the vessel split in half.

In a blink, Zachariah found himself in free space, still strapped to the bench between Beor and Adullam. Experience overtook shock as the freezing air cleared his head, and he began assessing how to free himself from the plunging rack. Pieces of the Valkyrie fell past: an angled wing section, torn plates of the container floor and the entire nose of the dismembered ship. Zachariah caught a whirling snapshot of the pilot and co-pilot clawing desperately at the jammed cockpit mechanism. Their escape would never come.

Pulling his legs sharply underneath the bench, Zachariah fought the sickening gravitational forces and withdrew his combat knife from its sheath. Three slashing cuts across his restraints and a hard kick against the seat sent him tumbling into space, closely followed by Beor and Adullam, who had followed his cue.

Zachariah threw out his arm to right himself with the horizon, sheathing and securing the weapon in a seamless movement. Spread-eagled to increase drag, the three men drifted into a classic fall position – just as a volley of bolts tore between them.

Zachariah looked around – the traitor was plunging towards their position, firing with little thought for accuracy. Adullam and Beor saw the threat and split out of formation to provide two smaller targets instead of a single large one. Zachariah twisted and turned his body, pulling in his arms and legs to increase his drop, but he knew he was an easy target. The option of hitting thrusters and returning fire was futile because any reduction in speed would make things even worse, and he couldn’t free his chest-strapped lasgun without stabilising himself.

He was in real trouble.

The dark green blur of a Valkyrie filled his vision, its speed startling him nearly as much as the fierce, breathtaking push from its twin exhausts. In all the confusion he’d forgotten the other five ships of the attack group. The new arrival roared down to the falling foe. The hulking creature powered towards the approaching ship but was met with a searing lascannon discharge that lanced a perfect hole through its chest.

Well, at least they can be killed, thought Zachariah as he watched the Chaos Space Marine plunge to the ground with broiling gore spewing from its back. An after-image appeared of Melnis, Coarto and Sojack’s horrified faces as they struggled in the Valkyrie and Zachariah shook his head to free himself of the dreadful vision. That creature had taken half his team. Half his friends.

He would have to deal with that later.

Just before he plunged into the thick blankets of cloud directly below, two shapes moved from either side into his peripheral vision. Surrounded by vapour-heavy whiteness, he felt a strong double pat on the fluttering arm of his jump suit. Through streaks of mist and drizzle on his visor, he saw Adullam nod once.

Zachariah returned the greeting and, despite the comms risk, tapped twice on the side of his helmet.

‘We’re about three miles up. They won’t be able to see us in this, and once we get through it the remaining Valkyries should protect our backs. Keep an eye out for a landing spot when we–’

‘Sarge, look at that.’

At this height the ground far below was a suggestion of detail painted by swathes of parched black earth and lush green forest. They’d seen variations on the pattern a hundred times or more, but the colossal, towering black stone monolith thrusting up to meet them was astonishing in scale and brutality. It had to be at least a mile high, terminating in a roughly triangular base. As it rose into the air, the weather-worn, pockmarked and partially eroded outer walls corkscrewed into an ever-narrowing spiral towards its summit. Thousands of randomly distributed outcrops, ledges and entrances suggested themselves thanks to the yellow-white gleam from Ophel’s sun. That’s how it attacked us, thought Zachariah. It jumped from the platforms on the top.

Greater detail formed as they fell towards the structure’s peak. Perched impossibly on the apex was a series of massive cracked and broken angled stone pillars: two giant cupped hands cradling the network of makeshift Imperial structures comprising the Cadian command post. The whole thing rested on a triangular platform supported by metres-thick buttresses projecting from the structure’s narrowing sides directly below.

How it stayed in place was beyond Zachariah, and his attention was suddenly drawn to flashes of colour from inside and out, pieces of debris and larger objects being thrown down to the ground. His jaw clenched.

The objects were men.

Zachariah unclipped his modified sniper lasgun and brought the telescopic site up to his visor, fighting the buffeting wind as best he could. The shaking image confirmed what he had feared. Through clouds of smoke and tongues of flame, he could see his Cadian brothers fighting, desperately and in close quarters. The crackle of static in his ear was replaced by the breathless, urgent voice of Pedahzur. They were close enough to pick up his short-range vox.

‘Regroup on the left of the – the left! Oranis, watch out for–’

A huge explosion ripped out the far side of the listening post, its prefabricated plasteel walls spinning out and down the steeple-angled black rock parapets. Screams could be heard over the open vox, cries of fury and agony as Pedahzur’s men fought the traitors to the bitter end. At such close range, it would be a massacre.

As if to confirm this, Zachariah’s razor-sharp gaze was attracted to movement within a ragged hole as he passed: a dozen men, perhaps more, backing out and firing repeatedly into the orange-black smoke. Despite unleashing withering fire, their unseen target kept at them until, inevitably, they tumbled off the ledge and fell to their deaths. Over a mile up, only a few would see out their doom to its bone-smashing end.

Zachariah’s scope bloomed with a brilliant flash from above. Instinctively he snapped it away from his eye, but blobs of colour punctured his sight with every blink. He felt something searingingly hot streak past, and his vision cleared enough to see the burning remains of two disintegrating Valkyries cascading out towards him in a lethal curve. The reason for their brutal demise became clear some seconds later when another pair of Valkyries turned and climbed upwards and away from each other in the distance as two Chaos Space Marines descended towards them.

‘No!’ shouted Zachariah uselessly as one pilot made the dreadful mistake of opening the hold door, clearly thinking it best to disgorge his precious cargo before it became victim to the traitor’s frenzied attack. The six Elysian men presented instant targets on their exit, such was the proximity of the rust-red streak of fury to their fragile hold. They died within seconds.

Despite its own relentless pursuer, the second Valkyrie swooped around to help its brother, whose port fin stabiliser had melted away. The traitor was torn into bloody confetti, but its crippled victim spun out of control towards its would-be saviour.

The second pilot pulled up and away, but it was too late; the Valkyries smashed into each other, creating a tangled mess of engines and fuselage that spun furiously past Zachariah and the others to the ground.

Zachariah looked in all directions, but he could only see empty space. Worryingly, the two other creatures were nowhere to be seen.

‘Head for that large outcrop at eleven o’clock. I’ll be damned if I lose all of you in one day. Move!’

The three remaining Elysians dipped heads, pressed their arms to their sides and pitched downwards at Zachariah’s barked order, arrowing towards the scarred and pitted wall of the monolith. Streaks of weapons fire flashed past from above, forcing another break of formation.

Zachariah twisted to try and find their attackers; the two monsters who had met the Valkyries were gaining on the Elysians, smoke belching from the underside of their massive jump packs. They must have landed then immediately launched, and Zachariah’s innate calculus told him they would intercept seconds before the Guardsmen reached the safety of the structure – unless he did something about it.

Tilting his body upwards, Zachariah hit his port thruster a fraction before the starboard, spinning him on his vertical axis, halting his fall with a sickening jolt. The renegades roared on, unphased by this impudent human wretch levelling its feeble weapon at them, revelling in the midair carnage they were generating.

Breathing deeply to correct his aim, Zachariah fired repeatedly at the lead traitor’s oncoming form, hoping to strike a vulnerable spot. The creature shook off the insect bites, but Zachariah kept on relentlessly, determined to buy the extra time Beor and Adullam needed. Somewhere inside the hideously decorated armour, he supposed the creature was laughing at his pathetic efforts as its own fire crept ever closer, but a flash of metal directly above had Elysian and traitor looking up as one.

The final Valkyrie was belching smoke from its port engine. A good part of the starboard wingtip was missing, but its multi-laser was still functional. Wildly inaccurate fire spat from the weapon, forcing the two monsters to break off their attack on Zachariah. Turning to the crippled ship, they fired into the cockpit, quickly reducing it to glass and steel splinters.

With the pilot certainly dead and the rear hatch gaping open, Zachariah saw his chance and aimed at the vessel’s underside. He struggled to centre his aim on the remaining Hellstrike missile, sitting proud on its pylon, but with the third shot the ship erupted in a ball of flame, engulfing the nearest traitor and sending chunks of metal into the remaining creature’s jump pack. One piece tore through the starboard nacelle, which disappeared in an oily bloom of brown and black smog, the port engine increasing its output to compensate.

Caught off-balance, the traitor flipped and rushed towards Zachariah, who cut thrusters and dropped out of the way. As he watched the hulking red form streak past, horror quickly replaced his relief. Despite its damage, his foe had found another target.

‘Beor, above and behind. Peel off!’

Zachariah’s warning was too late.

Beor seemed to fold in half around the Chaos Space Marine’s armour, his back snapping from the sickening impact. Only just managing to avoid a collision himself, Adullam was consumed by the inky black plume marking the traitor’s steep curving descent towards the enormous building. If the initial impact hadn’t claimed Beor’s life, the collision with the monolith’s side made certain of it.

Zachariah watched in utter dismay as the trooper’s smashed body fell away from the traitor’s mangled form and down the side of the massive structure, all dignity lost as he bounced doll-like off protruding sills and ledges.

Adullam became a shadow as he fell towards a huge triangular opening several levels below, his grav-chute deploying perilously close to the rough black wall. Stray fire darted from the still-raging battle from the listening post directly above, and Zachariah reached to hit his own thrusters as several Cadian bodies were expelled in a ball of fire. Most were dead, their lifeless forms taking on unnatural poses as they spun through the freezing air. But one clearly had some life left as he kicked and grasped at nothingness, one hand clutching a piece of flapping cloth. Even from this distance, Zachariah knew it was torn from regimental colours. Could it be Pedahzur falling towards him?

The swoop was going to be tricky. Midair rescues were hard enough with two experienced Elysians, even if they had practised as both rescuer and rescued repeatedly. Catching a falling, untrained individual was far more difficult. The man had no idea he could be saved. Attempts at communication were pretty futile, as it was hard to hear a vox while you were screaming your lungs out. Besides, the colour sergeant’s headset was trailing like a useless streamer around his neck.

Zachariah knew his thrusters had scant seconds of fuel left, so he would only get one attempt. Slowing his descent, the dead bodies passed in a ghoulish shower of khaki. The flailing Cadian plunged past as Zachariah’s pack began sputtering its own death throes. Taking a deep breath, Zachariah made some last-minute calculations before making his descent.

Fleeting, hurtling moments passed and then Zachariah slammed into the man’s side, his momentum and line of travel throwing both of them into the gaping hole and onto the cold, wet stone of the monolith’s interior with a gasping thump.

The insistent stabbing pain across Pedahzur’s right side told him he wasn’t dead. What swam into view was hardly the stuff of the glorious afterlife either – this was no vision of the Emperor looking down at him benignly, ready to embrace him into the heavenly fold. The face was filthy and bloodied, criss-crossed with scars and with a sunken left cheek rapidly darkening into a purple bloom.

‘He’s coming to, sarge.’

A second figure moved into view, the uniform immediately recognisable. Elysians.

‘Colour Sergeant Pedahzur?’

He nodded once, then tried lifting himself up. Searing heat coursed across his right arm and chest, and he dropped back onto the unyielding stone floor.

‘I’m Sergeant Zachariah, this is Guardsman Adullam. Your shoulder’s dislocated. I can fix it if you like, but it’ll hurt like hell.’

Zachariah’s matter-of-fact tone might have sounded callous to some, but Pedahzur appreciated straight talking. Adding the fact that the Elysian had just saved his life, the colour sergeant liked him already.

‘It already hurts like hell. Do what you have to.’

Zachariah nodded to Adullam, who retrieved a handful of field dressings from their discarded packs. Wrapping them into a roll, he tossed it over to his kneeling sergeant who carefully placed the soft material in the crook of Pedahzur’s injured arm, directly below his dented shoulder plate. Shuffling around on the black rock, Zachariah positioned himself astride the Cadian’s now outstretched arm and grabbed the man’s wrist between his gloved hands.

‘I’m going to push my boot against the padding while I pull. Are you ready?’

Zachariah leant back, pulled and then rotated the wrist slightly. Gauging it perfectly, he increased the pressure and was rewarded with a loud, wet pop from inside the shaking man’s tunic. Pedahzur slumped in immediate relief. Only then did he register that he still had a hold on the torn cloth in his other hand. He looked down at the precious material.

‘What are we up against, colour sergeant?’ asked Zachariah.

Pedahzur took a deep breath then gingerly brought himself to a sitting position. The pain hadn’t disappeared completely, but it wasn’t debilitating either. Tucking the colours into his tunic, he reached out his left arm to Adullam, who stooped down and pulled him to his feet. His back was wet from a cold sweat and lying on the slick floor. The Cadian did his best to smarten himself up, but knew he looked exactly like he’d just fallen off a building and been thrown back in on the way down.

‘The traitors came from nowhere six days ago. They hit the ground level garrison and the command post at the same time. It took us three days to destroy their air support, but most of our forces were wiped out doing it.’

Pedahzur retrieved his laspistol from the ground, inspected it momentarily, then holstered it as Zachariah pointed two fingers to his eyes then over to the triangular entrance through which they had all plunged minutes before. Adullam moved towards it. Pedahzur could see that the sky was beginning to turn orange as the sun moved lower on the horizon, the wind whistling in from outside.

Zachariah continued with his questioning.

‘What’s their strength now? And what are they up to?’

Pedahzur took a closer look around the massive cave-like level on which they’d landed. Squinting into the darkness, he moved his injured arm gingerly backwards and forwards to ease life into it.

‘Strength unknown, although there weren’t that many to start with. I’d guess a few dozen. As for what they’re up to… They’re going to blow the top off this structure.’

Adullam threw a look over to Zachariah and frowned. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘This place isn’t the same as our pylons, but the general consensus is that it’s similar. We’ve had tech-priests here for years doing various tests, but I don’t think they’re any closer to figuring out this monolith than they are the ones on Cadia.’

Pedahzur grimaced and corrected himself.

‘Were any closer. They’re all dead now.’

Zachariah exhaled, unbuttoned his canteen and offered it to Pedahzur, who took a couple of gulps then handed it back with a grateful nod.

‘I was in the command post up top when they cut us off from below. They used our own network of gantries and the scaffolding we’d built up over the years to reach us once they figured out we were dug in well enough to fend off jump pack assaults. Hitting us from the air and from below was just too much.’ Pedahzur gritted his teeth, more from recollection than from physical pain. ‘Too much.’

The Cadian looked to the high vaulted ceiling, greater detail coming into view as his eyes adjusted to the gloom.

‘Just before we lost it up there, I saw a lot of fyceline being hauled up by a couple of the Raptors.’

Zachariah cradled his lasgun lightly in his arms and frowned. ‘Is that what they’re called?’

Pedahzur looked back down and met the gaze of the Elysian. Of course. He wouldn’t even know what it was that had attacked him. ‘My captain knew what they were the second he saw them. He’d fought one before on another campaign, and lost most of his men bringing it down. The Chaos Raptors are amongst the worst of the traitors and if they’ve been sent here, it’s to do something very important as quickly as possible.’

Zachariah looked over to Adullam who nodded in agreement. Stories had turned to reality, and a grim reality it was proving to be. The veteran sergeant looked back to the Cadian.

‘Reinforcements are on their way, but they’re going to take time which we don’t have. No point in heading down to ground level – there’s no one left to help us. The Raptors will be putting charges into every possible nook and cranny. The captain also said the tech-priests believe this place will only work if it’s intact, particularly the temple on the summit.’

Zachariah raised his eyebrows at the description.

‘Temple? You mean those stone pillars?’

The colour sergeant nodded, a half-smile on his lips.

‘That’s what we called it. Seemed fitting, with its shape and location. Whatever it is, the traitors’ mission seems to be its destruction so that’s reason enough to stop them.’ He rested his hand over the cloth tucked into his tunic. ‘What’s more, they’ve got my colours.’

Zachariah saw the pain and anger in Pedahzur’s eyes. That, more than anything, would be playing on his mind. Before he had time to respond, Adullam shouted from his vantage point.

‘Sarge, there’s something–’

Adullam flew past the two men in a shower of rock and debris that caught Zachariah sideways. The remaining packs on Zachariah’s back and shoulder armour took most of the explosion’s force but he was still thrown to the ground, rolling to protect his precious rifle from a potentially damaging impact.

Within seconds he was in a defensive crouch. He could hear the groans from Adullam somewhere towards the centre of the chamber. The blast hadn’t killed him, but any help would have to wait; silhouetted in the entranceway was the battered form of the Raptor he’d thought he had lost with Beor, its breath rasping laboriously in the gloom.

Whatever it had used to create the explosion heralding its appearance had been discarded. Staggering forwards, the abomination raised its bolt pistol in a shaking hand, steadying itself with a clenched fist on the angled rock wall. It fired wildly, pumping bolts towards the three prone men, but none found their target, giving Zachariah just the time he needed to bring the scope to his eye and activate the intensifier.

A speckled green image of the monstrosity flickered before him, the reticule brighter than the surrounding field which partially obscured the enhanced details of the Raptor’s armour. He fired immediately, creating flashing blossoms of zero effect. The Raptor tried to summon a scream, but all that issued was a garbled, grating noise which made it stumble forwards with the effort.

The light changed imperceptibly but it was enough for Zachariah’s acutely trained eye. He’d never seen a Chaos Raptor before, but the small crack in its elaborate mouth grille gave him more than he’d need for a shot. A bolt whistled past his shoulder and impacted somewhere far behind, showering rock to the floor of the cavern, but Zachariah was in his zone now, breathing slowly, the outside world blocked out.

He fired twice. The first shot deflected away, but the second disappeared into the vertical slots. The creature’s head jerked backwards and it stood motionless for seconds until it pitched forwards, crashing face down. After the echoes had died in the massive room, the only sound was the loud ticking of the battered jump pack’s casing which, Zachariah assumed, was down to it cooling in the dank air. Even so, he kept a healthy distance from the Chaos Raptor’s hulking form. He snapped the intensifier off and walked over to his friend, who raised his eyebrows sardonically. Zachariah nodded. Lucky shot. Weakened target.

‘Can you walk, Adullam?’

‘I think I’ve broken a couple of ribs.’ His battered face contorted with pain as Zachariah pulled him upright. ‘Emperor’s Throne, I have. At least two.’

‘Get your jumpsuit off and I’ll strap you up best I can. I’m guessing we’ve got a lot of climbing to do, Pedahzur?’

The Cadian rose unsteadily to his feet.

‘That we have. I know which level we’re on. We’ve got twenty to climb. Some have good staircases, but there’s one that’s going to be difficult. It’ll leave us wide open too.’

Zachariah began rolling out a field bandage between his hands as Adullam painfully removed his bandoliers, webbing and various bits of kit. Retrieving his helmet, he flicked on its integrated image intensifier and the darkness of the cave’s far side flickered into an eerie green glow. He could make out large, steep rockcrete and metal steps disappearing up into the vaulted stone ceiling thirty yards up, and a large triangular shaft in the floor and ceiling.

‘At least we’ve got no issues with the darkness. We’ll lead you through,’ Adullam said.

Pedahzur laughed as he walked into the gloom.

‘I’ve been going up and down this bloody tower for nearly two years, sergeant. I could do it with my eyes closed, and have done before.’

Adullam looked to Zachariah with a frown as the bandages tightened around his ribs.

‘Fair enough.’

Despite every breath and movement being painful to Adullam, the first three levels were traversed with little incident. Remarkably, the traitors hadn’t raided the various weapons caches stored by the Cadians on every other level, so they weighed themselves down with as much ammunition and grenades as they could carry. They even found a compact missile launcher and, while it slowed them somewhat, they all felt comforted by their new acquisitions – particularly a short-range vox headset for Pedahzur, the old one having snapped off during his fall.

Despite having the ability to communicate, little was said and they fell into a silent, steady pace, their senses straining for the first sign of trouble. By the fourth level, the lack of resistance left them all feeling uneasy.

Pedahzur tried to recall how many Chaos Raptors he’d seen on the initial attack but still couldn’t reach a figure he felt comfortable sharing with the Elysians. Regardless of numbers, it was highly probable the traitors knew they were here and it was only a matter of time until an attack came.

While the floor space was decreasing with every level, the chambers were still massive, allowing them to avoid the huge, triangular shaft that ran upwards in the middle of the structure. Neither Cadian or Elysian had any idea what it was for, but they realised it was a long, fatal drop.

Coming to the base of a badly damaged staircase, Pedahzur beckoned them both to come within whispering earshot.

‘We’re heading into the final big chamber. It’s been crumbling away for decades so watch for bits falling off.’

He paused to wipe his heavily sweating face before continuing.

‘Like I said, it’s an absolute pain.’

The Elysians followed the colour sergeant up through the opening in the metres-thick solid rock floor. Zachariah looked up at the wall before him and took a breath. A series of metal gantries, plasteel tubes and ropes had been lashed together in ever-decreasing widths, zig-zagging up to the triangular roof and a large ragged exit hole at the junction of the wall and the ceiling. This chamber was the biggest yet, and he noted the central shaft terminated on this floor.

Adullam exhaled more noisily than he’d wanted to, his shortness of breath difficult to conceal.

‘Couldn’t you have done a better job?’

Pedahzur threw Adullam a grim smile.

‘The walls couldn’t take a single staircase so we had to do it this way. Engineers had to drill through this level’s ceiling, such is the unstable condition of the rock. It was originally separate to the last fifteen floors.’

Pedahzur gingerly placed his boot on the plates of the lowest platform, the whole walkway swinging and clanking as he began up its slippery surface. There was still enough light filtering in through a number of high triangular openings on all three sides, but he’d have to use the luminator he had retrieved from a supply cabinet a couple of floors below sooner rather than later.

Pulling himself along the rope guide with his free hand, he headed towards a flatter platform at the far end of the wall which, thanks to a stubby vertical ladder, connected to the next, shorter, upward-angled platform. He’d told Zachariah and Adullam to wait until he’d mounted the next level before following on, and ensure they traversed one person at a time. That’d spread them over three levels at the very least, and as there were a dozen stages to this ramshackle network and it would take them at least twenty minutes to cover it. He just hoped the Raptors were slow at positioning charges.

It was as Zachariah hauled himself up onto the fourth level that the world went green. Even though his helmet’s intensifier had a safety system built into it, there was always a lag before it could adjust to rapid changes in light, so he was effectively blinded by the huge explosion that shook the room.

Rocks, tubes and girders rained down past Zachariah, who clung for dear life to the safety rope running on the outside of the precarious walkway. A high-pitched shriek built to a deafening howl, sending the veteran sergeant to his knees on the bucking platform. His teeth felt as if they were being ground with a rasp file.

The Raptor’s meltagun dissolved the bottom three walkways, causing Zachariah’s level to pitch violently downwards. Losing his grasp on the rope, the Elysian slid uncontrollably towards the disconnected end of the gantry, watched by the traitor.

With its shrieking vox-caster still at full volume, the Raptor angled its weapon higher, vaporising a good part of the upper levels towards which Pedahzur was desperately trying to scramble. Glowing rockcrete rained down, the width of the platform directly above his head, diverting the lethal debris but still forcing him to duck away from blobs of molten metal.

With a roar of thrusters, the scarlet monstrosity fired up its jump pack and leaped towards the disintegrating network of ropes and metal, the flickering fire from its exhaust lighting up the cavernous interior of the chamber. Landing heavily on the near side of the gaping triangular shaft, it picked its way through stone and steel, staring up at Zachariah with an unflinching gaze.

‘How dare you try to fight us in the skies?’

The creature’s rage boomed around the unrelenting black walls, the force of its words causing chunks of stone to break loose and crash onto the floor or disappear down the shaft’s gaping maw.

‘We rule the skies! You are naught but prey, and a disappointing hunt at that.’

Zachariah’s head spun, his body ached and he had no real idea exactly where he was, but the traitor’s words cut through the mist like a white-hot knife. Old tricks he’d developed over years of bombardment and confusion played out: he forced his head clear, focus returned, and he found enough support on the safety rope’s steel rods to push himself upright against the steeply angled metal floor. The Raptor took a couple of steps closer, mounting a large rock, its meltagun held almost casually within its huge spiked gauntlets. Another piece of black granite crashed within a metre of its position without causing it to so much as a twitch.

‘We shall destroy this place and consume you all. There is nothing you can do against the glory of the Blood Disciples. Chaos shall reign!’

Zachariah brought the lasgun’s scope up to his eye, but he didn’t fire on the Raptor. Instead, he pointed the muzzle skywards and searched for the source of the falling rocks. Sure enough, he could see a fissure deep in the roof, a maze of cracks running from it in all directions. He pulled the trigger and fired repeatedly, aiming surgically precise shots into the weakened ceiling. The Raptor didn’t even bother looking up, such was his arrogance and hubris.

‘I will carve my name into your mortal body. Prepare for your death!’

The first chunk of rock to fall was barely a metre across, but it threw the Raptor off balance, smashing over its raised arms so that its meltagun’s lethal super-heated blast ejecting wide of Zachariah’s position. The second rock, however, was far larger and seemed to fall in slow motion, majestically gathering momentum until it piled onto the traitor’s head.

The sound thundered around the chamber, dislodging yet more rock from the walls and ceiling. Such was the weight of the slab, the Raptor couldn’t push it up and off. However, it could still move sideways and Zachariah realised it was only a matter of time until it prised itself free.

Strapping his rifle to his chest, the veteran sergeant threw himself towards the safety rope which was now trailing to the debris-strewn ground below, and rappelled down it in seconds. Grabbing a bandolier of frag grenades, he wrapped them tightly together as he ran, forming a large loop with the remains of the strap.

Before him, the huge slab was moving and he could see the arched projections of the Raptor’s jump pack intakes; it was freeing itself faster than he’d hoped. Pulling the pin on one grenade, he threw the makeshift lasso towards the opening gap in the rocks and saw it rattle downwards into the makeshift tomb he’d formed around the Blood Disciple. A single grenade against power armour wouldn’t do a great deal of damage, but half a dozen detonating in a concentrated area was something else.

This was a realisation evidently shared by the Raptor, whose movements suddenly became frantic. Zachariah turned and dashed towards the precariously dangling scaffolding, counting under his breath.

‘Ten… Nine… Eight…’

Zachariah had once held the regimental record for rope-climbing, but that had been on the vast training grounds back on Elysia, without full armour and exhaustion. Even so, the threat of dying in a shower of rock and Raptor shrapnel put urgency into his ascent. He continued his countdown as he climbed, until he had his hand on the crazily tilted platform. He was back where he’d started his attack, and prayed to the Emperor he was high and far enough away from the emerging form below.

‘One…’

The blasts threw the Raptor backwards towards the shaft, its left leg exploding into fragments and right leg completely dislocated from its socket. Screaming in pain and fury, the creature pulled itself along with its arms and tried to right itself, but it couldn’t stand. Weapons fire lanced into it from above. Zachariah craned his head upwards but he couldn’t see who was responsible.

‘Adullam… Pedahzur, come in.’

There was a crackle, then he heard the Cadian swearing to himself as he fired at the crawling Raptor below.

‘Adullam, respond. Adullam!’

Zachariah tried to keep the concern out of his voice but failed. Adullam had been in bad shape before the Raptor attack. He might be stuck somewhere above or, worse, buried below in a pile of rock. Regardless, the Raptor was still alive and, as such, still a threat.

Zachariah braced himself as best he could and aimed at the flailing abomination directly below. As the Raptor filled his scope, there was a brilliant bloom of light and the creature disappeared from view into the triangular hole. A few soft flickers of light suggested the creature was trying to ignite its jump pack but they faded to nothing as it plunged to its doom. Zachariah heard Adullam bark a laugh in his headset.

‘Sorry to worry you, sarge. I was too busy setting up this missile launcher to talk.’

Zachariah exhaled with relief.

‘Apology accepted, Guardsman. Now, let’s get off this bloody death-trap’.

Pedahzur was the first to haul himself up through the ragged hole in the ceiling before half pushing and half pulling Adullam to safety, despite his pained curses and protestations. While they caught their breath, the remains of the gantry gave up what little integrity they had left and collapsed. Pedahzur wiped his grimy face with a dust-covered sleeve, blood from numerous cuts and grazes streaking across his cheeks.

‘Not that we had any intention of leaving, but there goes our chance of going back down.’

Adullam doubled over with a coughing spasm and spat down towards the settling debris. All three moved towards the far corner of the dimly lit chamber and a sturdy looking set of ladders that disappeared into the relatively low ceiling.

‘The rooms get a lot smaller now until we hit the command post and temple,’ said Pedahzur. ‘If they haven’t sealed any of the entrances up, we should make good time. They probably assume we’re all dead after all that noise, so we might have surprise on our side.’

Zachariah and Adullam gave Pedahzur a raised eyebrow and a frown respectively, shouldered their lasguns and motioned for the Cadian to take point.

As they climbed, the ringing in Zachariah’s ears fell a tone as he screwed his eyes shut and worked his jaw. Despite the events of the last few hours, he felt very, very lucky.

Harking back to tales from the mess room, despite a soldier’s habit of exaggerating combat, he realised that to defeat even a single Space Marine was an extraordinary achievement, let alone two. That being said, the first had been crippled and the second had been in a less than ideal tactical position. He had no doubt that more than one in a confined space with a strong defence would make things very different.

The chambers approaching the apex were similar in configuration, save for the relative reduction in size, but as they came within two levels of the command post things changed dramatically. It started as a faint chemical smell that quickly escalated to an overpowering stench of burned flesh and promethium. Cautiously entering the chamber, it was brutally clear what had happened. Instead of sealing the floors below them, the traitors had dropped incendiary devices into whoever had been attempting to attack or retreat. Carbonised bodies and twisted metal formed distorted, hellish visions that might have come from the warp itself. Along with Pedahzur’s brothers in arms, the fires had also consumed all hopes of fresh ammunition.

They trod as respectfully as they could over the blackened, brittle bones of the Cadian 46th, the temperature rising from the heat still retained in the monolith’s walls and floor. The two sets of connecting ladders had been fused together, but were intact enough for them to reach the second level, which revealed an equally dreadful scene. A sudden rumble had them readying weapons, but no attack came from within or above the small, ash-covered room in which they stood.

‘Something heavy being dragged?’ whispered Adullam.

The sound came again, now loud enough for the vibration to disturb the thick layers of soot coating the windowless walls. Without respirators they had to bury their faces into the crooks of their arms to muffle retching coughs, and Adullam doubled over in pain again.

After a few seconds it stopped, and the heavy thumping of power armour could be heard moving away. The Guardsmen closed on the large smashed hole forming the entrance to the floor above. Light from the brightly illuminated Cadian facility filtered through, enough for Zachariah and Adullam to deactivate the image intensifiers in their helmets. Ducking underneath the hole, Zachariah could see no shadows of movement directly above. Looking to the wall, the ladders had been melted away completely; regardless of how they got up there, if they were spotted emerging they’d be dead in an instant. Of all the places not to have darkness, thought Zachariah ruefully.

Their only hope was that the Raptors would be too consumed with their business to notice their arrival. Retrieving a rope lashed around Pedahzur, Zachariah fashioned a grappling hook and waited patiently for more movement. As soon as it came, he tossed the hook up and tugged sharply.

Pedahzur was first up the rope, gingerly poking his head above floor level to see if their presence had been detected. Wreckage strewn in all directions obscured his vision, and the slain bodies of his Cadian brothers lay everywhere. In places, the reinforced flooring that extended out to the finger-like columns had been punctured, and the air whistled noisily through a number of gaping cracks and holes. One of the three sides had been blown away, as had parts of the ancient outer temple supports once cradling it. Closer and to his right, fallen beams and conduits were all that remained of the once out-of-bounds tech-priest laboratory, their arcane equipment at the mercy of the darkening sky above.

There was no sign of the traitors, so he tapped his boots twice to the anxiously watching Adullam and Zachariah, who prepared to ascend. Pulling himself onto his stomach, Pedahzur crawled to a heap of rubble and carefully readied his lasgun to cover the entrance hole. The climb forced a gasp of pain from Adullam, thankfully unheard by the enemy.

He’d not taken a lot of notice when he’d scrabbled to his position, but Pedahzur saw that one of the thick snaking cables he’d moved was a detonator cord – the Blood Disciples were close to blowing the place up. Very close.

Within seconds of Zachariah’s arrival, all three moved towards the middle of the smashed command post. Its state made it difficult to gain an uninterrupted view of the heavily protected central core where the transmitter and other vital systems would be located, and Zachariah dropped to a crouch and signalled the other two to follow his lead as he spied the shadowy movements of at least three Raptors in the middle distance.

Kneeling behind a partially demolished briefing table, Zachariah shifted position until he could clearly see two traitors working in front of a long grey box balanced atop a blackened console. It had a series of thick cables and thinner wires terminating in rubberised plugs along its top. From his own experience of special weapons, he suspected it was a detonator in the final stages of preparation. A third, much more ornate, warrior joined them in the work. Zachariah signalled readiness to Adullam on his left and Pedahzur to his right. All three had shuffled themselves into a fair line of sight, and unless other Traitor Adeptus Astartes were busying themselves outside the structure, they had a target each.

As they steeled themselves for the attack, the elaborately suited abomination suddenly straightened and thumped around in front of the other two, looking directly at Zachariah’s position.

‘So… the prey returns.’

The voice dripped with contempt. The Raptor clearly saw them as posing no threat whatsoever and, as one, the two remaining Blood Disciples turned and moved to flank him. The abomination on the right spoke casually, dismissively. Wrapped around its left arm was some material: torn, dirty and ragged. They were Pedahzur’s colours.

‘Shall I destroy them, Shamhuth?’

Somewhere from inside the metallic red form, a laugh devoid of humour crackled forth.

‘We shall all take them, my brothers. We have no time for this distraction.’

The left Raptor charged towards Adullam who ducked out of the way behind a steel plate, but his improvised cover took the full force of a bolt at close range and propelled both the steel and the man through the weakened exterior wall. As the creature moved to finish his attack on Adullam, Zachariah targeted Shamhuth’s weapon and fired repeated controlled bursts, crippling the bolt pistol into uselessness. The third, flag-carrying Raptor emitted an amplified howl and lumbered directly towards Pedahzur who, to Zachariah’s utter astonishment, started running towards the scarlet-suited behemoth, screaming oaths about his colours being lost and firing crazily as he went.

The flag-bearing Raptor shared Zachariah’s amazement for a split second then, regaining its bloodlust, powered towards the Cadian, bolt pistol now swapped for a chainsword which rattled in anticipation of a fresh victim.

Pedahzur jigged left behind a roof support, throwing himself towards a heap of bodies where he could see what looked like a missile launcher. It was damaged, but the firing mechanism seemed intact and there was a shell in the pipe ready to go. He hefted up the bulky tube. The Raptor was less than three metres away and nearly on him. At this range, Pedahzur didn’t even bother to aim – he pulled the trigger and the shell hit the Chaos Space Marine squarely in the chest. The blast shattered the creature, but at such close range, the shockwave hurled Pedahzur into the air. He never saw the fractured bulkhead strut that ended his life.

The same explosion rocked Shamhuth back on his heavily armoured feet and knocked Zachariah to the ground. Adullam’s attacker turned from his pursuit and screamed in fury at the loss of his brother, thundering towards the prone form of Zachariah. A krak grenade diverted the Raptor rather than stopping it, and as debris rained down on him, Zachariah scrambled towards the outer temple structure and a narrow maintenance ledge that ran around the battered shell of the command post.

The freezing wind whipped around his body, chilling his exposed cheeks and mouth, but it wasn’t the cold Zachariah was concerned about. He’d exited between a series of outer supports and there was no way he could bring his weapon to bear, even at close range, without losing his balance. He also couldn’t make it to the pillars above and to his left without negotiating half a dozen stanchions and exposing himself to attack.

Adullam’s attacker made no attempt to conceal its arrival from Zachariah. Ducking forwards, he peered around a thick vertical girder and saw an armoured foot clamping claws around the inspection ledge a few metres away, the sheer weight of its armour reducing the rockcrete to rubble. The creature’s jump pack roared into life and Zachariah flattened himself back against the command post wall, squeezing behind another support positioned closer to the prefabricated structure.

A volley of bolts sailed past the Elysian, but the Raptor’s angle of attack was as impeded as his own from this position. It was a stalemate the traitor legionary wasn’t interested in maintaining. Zachariah felt the floor beneath him shatter from carefully aimed fire. Within seconds he’d be standing on thin air.

He looked again at the temple columns. He would never make it to their cover. The creature moved a little closer, still firing into the ledge, and a plan presented itself.

Grabbing a grenade, Zachariah pulled the pin and counted up to three seconds of detonation, before heaving himself onto the ledge and hurling it at the base of the nearest pillar. He didn’t see the explosion, as he had to duck back to avoid a volley of bolts. Bellowing in frustration, the creature returned to its destruction of the ledge, causing a large chunk of floor to fall away.

A sharp crack filled the air, followed by the crashing of rock on metal. The firing stopped, and a scream of anger drowned out the whistling wind. Zachariah poked his head out and looked down to see the Blood Disciple disappearing from view. The grenade had done its job; his calculations had been correct. All he had to do now was work out–

A scarlet-armoured fist punctured the plating mere centimetres from his head. His instinctive turn away from the lightning-fast movement unbalanced him, pitching him into the rest of Shamhuth’s massive arm. The creature grabbed the Elysian by his shoulder armour and yanked him back into the panelling with all its lethal might.

The air fled from Zachariah’s lungs and he only just retained his balance by grabbing the stanchion he’d been hiding behind. The plating behind him was peeled away like the skin of a fruit and he could hear Shamhuth venting his fury on the structure. Once again a metal gauntlet took hold, this time around his neck.

Pulling him up, the traitor ripped Zachariah’s helmet off and inspected his bruised and bloodied face as the Elysian gagged on the stranglehold. Perhaps it was some distant memory of familiarity, or a grudging respect for a prey that had managed to dispatch several of its brethren that caused the traitor to pause. Either way, the veteran sergeant thought there was only one real response to such a situation and, with a supreme effort, spat where he thought its eyes might be. With a roar the warped Space Marine held Zachariah out at arm’s length, ready to drop him to his death.

‘Put him down. Now.’

It was more of a croak than a shout, but both Elysian and Raptor heard just fine. Over the abomination’s shoulder, Zachariah was astonished to see the battered form of Adullam, a meltagun trained shakily at Shamhuth’s back. After the briefest pause, its head turned. The Raptor’s words were spoken calmly and deliberately.

‘As you wish.’

Zachariah was used to the sensation of falling. It was as familiar as eating and drinking, but this time it was without a grav chute – a recurring nightmare become reality. He saw the traitor’s open hand ascending away from him and imagined rather than heard the scream of fury from Adullam as he fired the weapon at Shamhuth.

The Raptor launched its jump pack and managed to clear most of the shot, but the edge of the blast caught the right side of its shoulder armour and melted the starboard intake into a heap, spinning the creature at great speed past Zachariah’s freefall.

The veteran sergeant’s mounting panic fled, replaced by a whirl of calculations and adjustments. Shamhuth’s port engine sputtered briefly then died in a trail of smoke. The Elysian flipped himself around in midair and pitched his body downwards. His eyes were streaming from the wind, and breathing was virtually impossible, but his aim was true. The Raptor’s attempts to arrest his fall slowed his relative descent and within seconds the abomination was in range, no more than half a mile above the sprawling surface of Ophel Minoris.

Zachariah hit the Raptor’s smouldering armour around the waist, throwing them both into a spin. Shamhuth gave a grunt of surprise and flailed around, trying to swat Zachariah away. The traitor managed to catch him in the shoulder, sending him flying off into the air, but still falling at the same rate. Curling into a ball, Zachariah used every trick in the book to reposition himself, this time approaching from the Raptor’s blind spot. He hit the jump pack hard, just as the one good engine roared into life.

Zachariah gripped onto the rounded lip of the remaining intake with his gloved fingertips, heat searing through his battered gloves. He would have to let go. The creature furiously turned its head from side to side, writhing and jerking its arms to throw him off. It was then that Zachariah glimpsed something – a melted hole in the armour between neck and helmet, doubtless caused by Adullam’s shot. Holding on with a single hand, Zachariah reached for his final grenade. Releasing the pin, he thrust it into the gap and let go for a split second, grabbing onto the inactive starboard exhaust with charred fingers.

His hands were wrenched away by the force of the grenade’s detonation inside Shamhuth’s armour. Gobbets of flesh and shards of metal spewed in every direction, some slicing through Zachariah’s arm and leg. The pain meant nothing to him. He was entirely focused on the now separated jump pack which, unencumbered by the huge weight of the Chaos Raptor, rose into the air. Grabbing hold with both burned hands and ignoring the agony, Zachariah held on.

The speed was extraordinary. His arms screamed with pain, and his head spun with the increased altitude and the violently shaking pack. He couldn’t keep this up much longer. To his left the peak of the monolith came into view and the thrust increased, then stopped, the arc steepening into a drop. It wasn’t a perfect projection, but it’d have to do; at the closest point to the structure, Zachariah let go as the now useless jump pack fell away.

It took a few seconds for Zachariah to make sense of what he was hearing. The first distorted voice sounded like the captain of the Obliteration, the second Adullam. Opening his eyes, he looked down to see his legs splinted together, one arm tied roughly to his body and both hands heavily bandaged. An empty syringe case next to his head explained why he felt no pain.

‘The threat has been neutralised. Just come and get us. There are two injured to pick up at the apex of the structure. Adullam out.’

Cursing under his breath, Adullam staggered to his feet from the communications station, tripping over a series of re-routed cables. Standing over his friend, his grin revealed three broken teeth.

‘Your left leg’s broken below the knee, left arm above the elbow and both hands are a complete mess. Other than that, you’re fine,’ he grunted. He broke into a racking cough and slumped down heavily onto a broken chair.

‘Do something for me, Adullam,’ muttered Zachariah.

The Guardsman raised a weary eyebrow.

‘What do you need?’

Zachariah lifted his head as much as he could. It felt impossibly heavy, as did his right hand as he pointed.

‘Lay Pedahzur down and cover him in his colours would you? One of the traitors had them.’ It was the least they could do for the Cadian.

Adullam looked into the gloom of the smashed command post, sighed, then back again to Zachariah.

‘Already done, sarge. Already done.’

Hollow Beginnings

Mark Clapham

The ork fortress had been an ugly sight to begin with, and setting it on fire hadn’t improved the view. A scrap-built mass of metal the size of a town squatted on the dusty, lifeless plain, and a swampish lake of filth and toxic waste formed a shallow moat around its jagged perimeter. Its towers and parapets clawed the air, twisted black digits scraping against the reddish blue sky.

The fortress was the base of operations for Stumpgutz, ork warboss and plague of the Alixind system. Now it was aflame, artillery guns in the nearby hills having battered the fortress with incendiary shells for a day and a night. The guns were silent now, but the fires still raged.

It was a terrible place in the throes of dying, and it refused to die quietly or well. Clouds of noxious black smoke, hanging in the windless air above the fortress, lingered so high they almost seemed to touch the four visible moons in the sky above.

As flames licked the unstable walls and teetering battlements, burning chunks began to fall off and tumble down the walls, the orkish architecture fatally undermined by the heat.

It was an ugly sight on an unlovely world. Durrl had been the warboss’ first landing place within the system, his first clawhold in a twenty-year campaign against the Imperium. The planet bore the scars of occupation, its cities wrecked and cannibalised to feed the ork war machine, the majority of the population having fled or died years before.

Now it would make a fitting grave, or maybe a funeral pyre, for Stumpgutz and his ambitions. So thought Captain Anju Badya as she looked across at the burning fortress, a rough scarf wrapped around her mouth and nose to hold back the stench from the fiery ruin. Her horse moved restlessly beneath her; it was a disciplined beast of good Tallarn stock, but even a well-trained animal became uneasy in such a place.

Captain Badya was a rider in the Tallarn 14th, her regimental fatigues complemented by a long overcoat and a red sash at the waist, from which hung a gilt-edged blade. She sat tall in her saddle, and from between the layers of headscarf, her piercing green eyes surveyed the area around her, watching for any movement. It was hard, tense work as the plain was littered with debris and shrouded in smoke. Badya had one hand ready to grab her lasrifle at all times.

The Tallarn 14th, along with an alliance of other forces from the Imperium, had driven Stumpgutz’s forces back to the plains of Durrl, and were here to finish the job. The fire was building in intensity, and while the main structures still stood, the increasing damage was causing some of the inhabitants to flee. The orks were ferocious and incredibly dangerous, but also deeply stupid, and only now, at the last stand, was it becoming clear to some of them that Stumpgutz was finished.

Badya’s squad, and others patrolling the plains surrounding the fortress, were there to ensure no orks escaped the stronghold’s demise. She could hear distant gunfire, orkish bellows and human screams as distant comrades engaged the enemy.

‘Captain?’ asked Ejad, one of the younger riders under her command.

‘I hear them,’ said Badya, speaking loud enough that the rest of the squad could hear her as they rode behind, her voice hoarse from the dry desert air. ‘You know what to do. We stay on our patrol pattern. Any back-up comes in from the perimeter. If we ride to the rescue, we might let some of these greenskins through.’

‘Yes, captain,’ said Ejad.

Was he disappointed or relieved that they didn’t have to plunge into the smoke to save fellow Tallarns under attack? Badya neither knew nor cared. They had their orders: patrol, kill anything they find and call for support from the perimeter if things went south.

Badya had added her own orders for her squad: stay back, engage from as much distance as possible. Orks were stupid, but they were also savage beasts, squat green creatures with vicious teeth and thick, muscular limbs that could tear a human being apart with one hand. Tallarn riders were highly mobile and usually very able sharp shooters, even on the move, and Badya intended to fire on any orks they encountered from afar.

As the wreckage of a burnt-out ork vehicle exploded, a green fist punched the smouldering metal out of the way. Badya’s hopes were crushed. An ork burst through the obstruction, raising a stumpy pistol and firing at the nearest Tallarn, an older woman called Khai. The shot tore a lump of flesh from the flanks of Khai’s mount and the beast bucked in agony, throwing Khai out of the saddle.

Badya didn’t wait to see Khai hit the ground. She began to ride in as wide an arc as the debris-strewn plain would allow, staying as clear as she could of the wrecked vehicle from which she could now see a second ork emerging.

As she rode, Badya leaned low in her saddle, cradling her lasrifle under one arm and lifting it so that she had the barrel level. She adjusted the rifle in her grip, compensating for the rhythmic motion of the horse beneath her as she aimed at the first ork, which was now shambling towards the fallen Khai, pistol lowered in meaty hands.

She didn’t attempt anything clever while firing mounted, no head shots or other feats of marksmanship. Instead Badya tightened her grip on her lasrifle and muttered some familiar words of reassurance so that her horse knew what was about to happen, then she fired three las shots in close succession, all aimed at the ork’s torso. The movement of the running horse made her grip loosen a little, and one of the shots went wide but two hit their target. One shot winged the ork, causing it to drop its pistol, while another hit it square in the chest.

The ork rocked backwards and roared in protest, but it didn’t go down. Meanwhile Ejad was trying to ride away from the second ork, firing on it from dangerously close range, while a third emerged from the hole. Was there some kind of tunnel in there, or did the wrecked vehicle mask a channel leading back to the fortress? Badya didn’t have time to think. All around her Tallarns were engaging with orks, las shots wounding but not killing the monsters as they attacked.

Badya aimed her lasgun at the first ork once more, but before she could fire, Khai, with one arm limp at her side from falling off her horse, lifted herself up from the ground and fired her hellgun. The kickback from firing it one-handed was enough to throw Khai backwards, but it was close range enough to blow a hole in the ork’s face.

Finally, the creature died.

Badya changed targets. The third ork had killed Barro’s horse with one neck-breaking punch, and had used its other hand to break Barro’s own neck in a stranglehold. The horse had fallen but Barro still hung from the ork’s grip, body dangling limply like a doll. Badya resisted the urge to avenge him and searched for someone she could assist who was still alive.

Ejad was still on horseback but had been cornered by the second ork, and Badya rode straight for him, firing as she came. The ork turned its attention to her, tiny black eyes staring with animal hatred.

The ork pulled Ejad off his horse and threw him at Badya.

Ejad hit Badya hard and the two of them fell backwards off Badya’s horse, which panicked and ran away. They landed hard, and Badya felt Ejad shake in agony as one of his bones broke.

Her own body ached from multiple impacts. Badya pushed Ejad off her, ignoring his cries of agony, and searched for her lasrifle. The rest of her squad were coming to the rescue, but the ork that had thrown Ejad was running at them both now, gun raised and drool dripping from its huge yellow teeth.

Badya’s ears were ringing, so she barely heard the roar of engines before it happened.

An armoured blue-grey Rhino crashed into view, the squat vehicle throwing up clouds of dust as its tracks ploughed through the sands. The Rhino made a direct line for the ork approaching Badya, crushing it beneath its tracks, and the other greenskins had no time to react when its mounted storm bolter opened up on them, a furious barrage of fire bringing the survivors down in one sweep.

Before their bodies had even hit the ground the Rhino had gone, crashing through the wrecked ork vehicle and rolling off some kind of crude lowered road cutting through the plain that Badya had suspected was there. In the distance she could see the breach from which the orks had escaped the burning fortress.

Still on her knees, she watched from afar as five towering figures emerged from the Rhino, clad in armour the same colour as the Rhino itself and augmented with the furs of great beasts. All five were a head or two taller than a normal human, and broad to match – Space Marines, the Adeptus Astartes, favoured warriors of the Emperor himself.

The five Space Marines disappeared into the depths of the fortress. Its job done, their transport returned to base, leaving a cloud of dust behind it once more. As the Tallarns of Badya’s squad pulled together, assisting their wounded and wary of a further ork attack, the Rhino simply rolled past them without pause. The Space Marines clearly had their own mission to attend to, and didn’t stop for the Tallarns who cheered them on, grateful for their intervention.

Captain Anju Badya whistled for her horse to return to her and looked up again at the hulking fortress, its charred structures licked by fiercer and fiercer flames. A place even orks would flee.

Only Space Wolves would choose to go the other way.

‘Thank you for your gracious welcome,’ said Sindri, ramming a chainblade into the side of an attacking ork. ‘You do us honour with your hospitality.’

‘You forget your place, Sindri,’ shouted Anvindr Godrichsson, pack leader, over the roar of his own bolter. ‘I have command, it is for me to relay gratitude to our hosts.’

‘Apologies,’ said Sindri, bowing to Anvindr at the same time as an ork swung a red-painted hammer through the space his head had just occupied. ‘Here, you may do the honours.’ He slashed the back of the ork’s right knee with his chainblade, shoving the creature into Anvindr’s line of fire to be gunned down.

‘I am grateful,’ grunted Anvindr, concentrating fire as three more orks rushed at him, ‘but please keep any more to yourself.’

Within seconds of entering the fortress, Anvindr and his pack had been surrounded by orks. They had come almost immediately after the pack climbed through the breach in the outer wall, that uncanny ork talent of sniffing out the chance of a fight drawing them from the hive-like corridors of the fortress to face down the incoming Space Marines. While Sindri spoke with his usual infuriating levity, Anvindr acknowledged that the other Wolf was correct – the orks had prepared a substantial welcome for the Space Marines.

One of the approaching orks came at Anvindr with an axe, and Anvindr shot it down before it even got close, a bolt-round exploding within the ork’s chest in a mist of red blood and green scraps of flesh. Before that body had even hit the ground the other two were about to strike, chunky ork pistols raised to fire at near point-blank range. Anvindr grabbed one of the orks by its gun hand and pulled the great beast forward and down, enough for Anvindr to bring his knee up hard, breaking the ork’s arm and causing it to drop its gun.

He now had the ork in a hold close to him, the creature’s jaws dangerously close to his face. Anvindr was helmless, and the breath coming from the ork’s yellow-toothed mouth was rank as it pushed forward to try and bite his face off. Even against a Space Marine in full power armour, the ork was strong, struggling in Anvindr’s grip, but Anvindr had swung the beast between him and the other ork, which simply tried to fire straight through its comrade.

The ork took four or five ‘friendly fire’ shots to the back, dying with a look of annoyance in its tiny black eyes.

As Anvindr pushed the body away he raised his bolter again, firing twice before the other ork could get a clear shot, killing it instantly. Then he locked his bolter to the leg of his armour and unleashed his chainsword. As more orks charged at him, he wielded the blade back and forth, hacking through limbs and occasionally grinding against pieces of crude armour.

Around him, the rest of Anvindr’s pack was equally busy. They were brothers of the Vlka Fenryka, whom the rest of the Imperium called Space Wolves. They had fought so long together, for so many countless winters, that they worked side-by-side like a single organism, staying out of each other’s way without ever needing to look, pack instincts driving them forward together as one.

Anvindr was leader of this pack. Like any of his kind he was far taller than a human, and his heavy features were framed by long hair and matching beard, both streaked white and oily with smoke. Signs of age and marks of long service covered Anvindr’s body and armour: scars and dents on skin and plate, grey in the beard and lengthening teeth in his jaws, furs and other trophies hanging from his shoulders.

The others fought nearby.

There was Sindri, of course, agile even in full power armour, spinning between opponents, ducking under the arm of one ork to run him through with his chainblade, then bringing it around to cut straight through the knees of another. His blond curls were unusual for a Fenrisian, and even as the decades passed there was something in him that remained unaging. Although this meant he lacked the growing fangs and other traditional signs of a wolf brother’s maturity, there was no denying his warrior spirit.

Then there was Gulbrandr, steady as ever with a series of well-placed, thoughtful shots from his bolter that always found their mark, not letting an ork even get close to him. His once raven-black hair and beard showed thin streaks of white, but his impassive expression remained the same as it always had.

At the edge of the group was great Tormodr, heavy even for a fully-armoured Space Marine, wielding his flamer back and forth, roasting countless orks as they crawled out of holes in the wall.

And finally there was red-headed Hoenir, whose presence always surprised Anvindr, even after decades of fighting by his side. Although Hoenir, last survivor of his own pack, had joined Anvindr’s many years ago after their own loss, Anvindr still found a part of him always expected long-lost Liulfr to be there instead. Hoenir was no Blood Claw, and was a brother of many battles standing, but he would always be partially a newcomer.

One of Hoenir’s hands was encased in a great, red-painted power fist, and Anvindr saw him pick up an ork by the criss-crossed ammunition belts the creature wore across its chest and slam it hard into an already prone ork on the floor, killing both of them.

‘For Russ and for Fenris,’ shouted Hoenir, raising his bloodied power fist.

‘For Fenris!’ boomed Tormodr, and the others echoed the sentiment, even ever-terse Gulbrandr.

‘I think we’re thinning their numbers,’ said Sindri.

He was right. The numbers of orks attacking them seemed to be subsiding, with Anvindr able to count the time between his kills in seconds. However, this was not necessarily reason to celebrate – the smoke was thickening and the air was getting hotter around them. There may have been fewer orks attacking, but the fire consuming the fortress was also getting nearer.

‘We need to move now, while we have the chance,’ Anvindr called to his pack, striking another ork aside.

‘This way,’ said Gulbrandr, indicating an opening in the wall near him. They were all hunters, but the smoke and carnage could spin even a Space Wolf around. Gulbrandr, however, never lost his bearings, and would lead them where they needed to go – straight to the centre of the fortress. Ork hierarchies were simple, and their target would be close to that centre.

Anvindr had looked at the fortress from afar that morning, watching the bombardment from the Imperial cannon, and had decided that the long campaign that he, his brothers and thousands of other souls of the Imperium had fought in could not end like this – not with the uncertainty of a pile of anonymous ash.

Victory required someone to take the head of the warboss, even if it was just hacked from its scorched corpse. Proof of death was required, a trophy to take for the glory of the Emperor, and Anvindr decided that he and his squad would be the ones to take it.

So the artillery guns had been silenced, Anvindr and his pack had crossed the plain, and here they were in smoke and darkness and raging flame.

Initially they made slow progress, fighting every step through corridors that threatened to collapse around them, changing course as one potential route turned out to be blocked by wreckage, but otherwise staying true to their objective. Howls of orkish pain echoed from afar, but the number of orks seeking out the Wolves to attack them lessened as they got closer to the centre of the fortress.

The orks that did try to block their path fought savagely, but in isolation they were no match for the pack fighting as one.

Eventually Anvindr and his pack found themselves in a larger corridor lined with skulls and other trophies. It was ugly rubbish, crudely attached to the walls, but the meaning of such trophies was clear – these were the displays of the great warboss, whose throne room they approached.

The chamber they entered was more or less round and as tall as the fortress itself, the walls tapering to an opening high above. Any sunlight that reached down from that far was watery, thinned out by the oily smoke that clogged the air. Burning embers tumbled down from somewhere above, as did some larger chunks of flaming rubble.

The walls were littered with long spikes holding skeletons or other trophies, while others were bare. The central focus of the chamber was a crude balcony overlooking the chamber, on which a throne of scrap metal could be seen.

That throne sat empty, and as Anvindr had no idea what Stumpgutz looked like, he could not tell whether the warboss was amongst the horde before them.

His instinct told him that none of the orks before him was Stumpgutz, and that he would know the warboss when he saw it. Rumour was that long ago a captain of the White Consuls had got close to killing him, and had cut through the warboss’ legs at the knee. Those rumours also said that Stumpgutz wore that Space Marine’s helmet on one shoulder and his skull on the other – trophies of its eventual victory over the Imperium’s finest.

Neither Anvindr nor anyone else in the Imperium had any idea how the renamed Stumpgutz had managed to not only maintain his rule while suffering such a disability, but increase his power. Orks were dumb but treacherous, and wouldn’t hesitate to depose an injured or crippled leader. For Stumpgutz to prosper, the warboss would have to be something much more than the orks under his command.

The mass of orks that filled the throne room surged towards Anvindr and his Wolves as one tumultuous green mass of savage muscle. Looming over the horde were four great orks, presumably Stumpgutz’s bodyguards, dressed from head to foot in crude armour plating, with bucket-like helmets over their heads, wielding hatchets as well as stubby, over-sized pistols.

The gretchin and common orks were the first to reach the Wolves, who found themselves engaging ork warriors hand-to-hand while kicking away the smaller, dome-headed creatures trying to stab at the joints in their power armour.

‘Sindri, help me give Tormodr space to clear this rabble,’ shouted Anvindr, slamming a boot down on the skull of one gretchin while elbowing an ork in its thick jaw. ‘Hoenir, Gulbrandr, take the first chance to engage those big brutes. I want a path to the boss.’

The Wolves all stepped back a little, forming a circle around Tormodr, then as the big wolf readied his flamer, Sindri and Anvindr surged forward, slashing wildly with their chainswords, sweeping low to hack through the skulls of gretchin and the knees of orks, pushing back the forward line.

‘Make way, make way!’ said Sindri, slashing back and forth. ‘Brother Tormodr has some difficult buttons to adjust. Give him space.’

Tormodr boomed some filthy words relating to Sindri’s tribal ancestry, then shouted ‘Clear!’

Anvindr and Sindri rolled out of the way, letting the ork rabble surge forward over their injured and dead comrades, only for Tormodr to flame the lot of them. The ork advance faltered and tripped over itself, the dead and the dying blocking the way of those trying to both advance and retreat, and the flame scorched them all while the other Wolves fired into the carnage.

‘The smell...’ said Sindri in disgust. Anvindr grunted. He hated it too, but it was not very... wolf-like to express the sentiment that way. Typical Sindri.

Tormodr’s roasting of the orks was interrupted by a shot from one of the over-sized pistols wielded by the helmeted ork guards, which exploded near Tormodr’s feet with enough force to knock the huge Wolf brother backwards, his flamer setting part of the high ceiling alight.

The pack were already returning fire, with Gulbrandr firing precise bolt-rounds over the heads of the shorter orks, but these seemed to do limited damage to the ork guards’ thick armour. One took a well-placed bolt from Gulbrandr to the chest, only to keep walking with just a dent in his plate to show for it.

‘Get close and take these down now, quickly,’ bellowed Anvindr. ‘I want that boss.’

‘Nice easy orders,’ shouted Sindri back. ‘Should only take a second.’

Then the guards were upon them, shoving through the blackened remains that littered the throne room, kicking aside charred corpses. Anvindr ran towards the nearest ork, which thrust its crude dagger towards him. Anvindr lunged to the side, the thick blade cutting the air beside him. Gripping the handle of the ork weapon in one hand, Anvindr lunged forward with his chainsword, aiming for the weak point between the ork’s armour and helmet. The chainsword found some initial purchase, digging in between the lip of the helmet and the chestplate to open up a gap, but began to grind with a hail of sparks. As Anvindr held the dagger out of the way, the ork brought its gun arm around to try and shoot Anvindr at point-blank range.

Anvindr pushed back, letting go of both the chainsword and hatchet, and the ork stumbled without Anvindr to push against. Anvindr drew his bolter and fired just next to where the chainsword was jammed in place. The bolt-round found the point where the chainsword had created a small gap, and there was a muted thud as it exploded within the confines of the helmet. Blood dribbled from the helmet’s eye slits as the ork collapsed to the ground.

Anvindr twisted his chainsword to pull it free and turned to see the rest of the pack overcoming the other ork guards – one was staggering around, smoke pouring out of the seams of its armour after Tormodr set it alight, while Hoenir had torn the helmet off another with his power fist, finishing it off with a bolt pistol.

‘Do you think the warboss is one of these?’ shouted Hoenir.

Anvindr was about to answer when the double doors at the far end of the throne room were kicked open by a towering greenskin far taller than any present, a grotesquely over-sized ork wearing a mass of armour plating and furs, the skull of a Space Marine on one shoulder and a battered helmet on the other. The ork’s huge green hands were encrusted with barbed rings, and were wrapped around the shaft of a long, two-bladed axe.

Stumpgutz.

‘Great Russ!’ exclaimed Sindri, lost for anything smart to say.

‘Now we know how this thing stayed boss for so long,’ said Anvindr.

Stumpgutz did not walk in on the legs of an ork, that part of the legend was true. Instead he strode in on two long, pneumatic legs that dripped with oil, released hissing steam from the knees and ended in boot-shaped artificial feet that looked like they could kick a hole in a Rhino.

Anvindr raised his bolter but Stumpgutz jumped, his pneumatic legs carrying him a quarter of the way across the chamber in one leap. He landed with an impact that rocked the whole room, throwing up dust that mingled with the thickening smoke from the fires consuming the fortress.

Stumpgutz went straight for Anvindr, swinging the giant axe around in a long arc, catching the barrel of Anvindr’s gun. It was barely a scratch, but the incredible force of the axe blow was enough to wrench the bolter out of Anvindr’s hands and nearly pull him off his feet.

As Anvindr righted himself, revving up his chainsword, Stumpgutz was already swiping at the others with his axe, the great warboss stomping back and forth across the throne room with mechanical strides that shook the very ground, bolt-rounds exploding around it. Gulbrandr managed to hit the warboss in the shoulder, causing a howl of rage from the giant ork, but otherwise none of the Wolves’ shots managed to hit home. They were on the defensive.

‘Anvindr!’ warned Hoenir, and Anvindr saw the axe swing in his direction once more. He leapt over the huge, flat axe head, then prepared for the return swing, bracing himself against the ground and raising his chainsword. While the previous swing had cut low, this one came in high, and would have taken Anvindr’s head clean off his shoulders if he had had nothing to raise in his defence.

As it was, the chainsword barely stopped the axe. The two weapons clashed with an impact that shuddered through Anvindr’s body, every muscle straining as he struggled to hold his chainsword firm. The force of the blow pushed him backwards, his boots scuffing the dirt. The teeth of the weapon screamed against the rough metal of the axe head, sparks flying and machinery grinding.

‘Yield, you green wretch!’ shouted Anvindr as he forced every iota of his strength into pushing the chainsword.

Stumpgutz roared and twisted the handle in its grip, applying both hands to the job, turning the axe to force it downwards and letting gravity add to the pressure on Anvindr. Teeth began to fly off the chainsword and it sputtered. The chain broke and suddenly Stumpgutz’s axe was cleaving through the metal of the chainsword itself, an increasingly thin strip of metal and component parts between the axe and Anvindr’s skull.

‘Now, while I hold him back,’ said Anvindr to his pack.

Gulbrandr was first to move in for the kill, but Stumpgutz lashed out with one of his mechanical legs, kicking the Wolf in his helmless head so hard his jaw shattered, the bottom half of his face crumpling beneath the blow. The impact knocked him aside, but before he was out of sight Anvindr saw a copious spurt of blood come from his ruined face.

There was no time to worry about Gulbrandr, as both Hoenir and Tormodr were running to Anvindr’s aid. Hoenir used the body of a dead ork as a step to launch himself into the air, raising his power fist high.

‘For Russ!’ shouted Hoenir. Anvindr’s chainsword was about to break in two when Hoenir dropped, bringing his power fist down where Stumpgutz’s wrists overlapped, causing the ork to release the weapon with a howl. Stumpgutz battered Hoenir aside with one huge hand, tremendously strong even with a damaged wrist, but by then Tormodr was in close with his flamer.

‘Burn, xenos filth,’ he rumbled, a torrent of promethium from his flamer causing the ork to bellow further still, stumbling backwards across the chamber, unsteady on his tall artificial legs.

Anvindr knew this was his moment, while Stumpgutz was off-balance. He ran straight at the warboss, firing a burst from his bolter, and this time Stumpgutz was too busy trying to stay on his feet to dodge. Bolter-rounds slammed into Warboss Stumpgutz’s head and torso, some deflected by armour but others exploding within vulnerable flesh. He stumbled again, managing to control his descent enough to land on one knee rather than fall flat.

Then Sindri was in close, rolling beneath the wild flail of an arm by Stumpgutz, swinging upwards to jam his own chainsword into the warboss’ neck.

‘Hold him!’ cried Sindri, and as Stumpgutz scrambled to grab him and pull the Space Wolf away, one long arm was seized by Hoenir’s power fist while another was held by Tormodr, who wrapped himself around it to hold it back. Stumpgutz’s bionic legs scraped back and forth against the rocky floor but couldn’t help him escape.

He roared with rage, unleashing a torrent of incomprehensible orkish insults.

As his brothers held the warboss down, Anvindr ran up to Sindri and put his hands over Sindri’s on the chainsword.

‘Together!’ he cried, adding his strength, helping Sindri to force the chainblade deep into the sinew of the warboss’ neck. Blood poured down the blade, the motion of the teeth dispersing it as a fine red spray.

Then any resistance against the chainblade was gone, and with a judder Warboss Stumpgutz, scourge of the Alixind System, finally died.

The ork’s limbs went limp, allowing Tormodr and Hoenir to let go, dropping them to the floor. Anvindr let go of Sindri and stepped back.

‘They never die easily, do they?’ sighed Hoenir, flat on his back.

Sindri put his booted foot to the dead ork’s chin and used it as leverage to pull his chainsword free.

‘Anvindr,’ Sindri said with a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth, ‘will you have the honour of taking the head yourself?’

Sindri gestured towards the dead warboss, then gave an exaggerated look of shock at where Anvindr’s chainsword lay broken on the floor.

‘Careless,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘Careless, to break your weapon like that.’

‘I recognise my failing,’ replied Anvindr drily, ‘and will be sure to correct it.’

Then he remembered Gulbrandr.

‘Take the head,’ Anvindr told Sindri, running over to where Gulbrandr had fallen. He could not believe that in his moment of victory he had briefly forgotten one of his pack was down. What was victory if the pack did not claim it as one?

Gulbrandr was lying still on the filthy ground, face down so that Anvindr could not see his injuries, just the pool of blood spreading beneath him.

Anvindr was about to turn Gulbrandr over on to his back when a gauntlet on his shoulder stopped him.

‘Easy,’ said Sindri. ‘I saw the blow, turn him over without care and you might worsen the wound.’

‘Didn’t I order you to take the beast’s head?’ Anvindr spat.

There was a revving of Sindri’s chainsword from across the chamber, the grinding of the sword digging into thick muscle and bone.

‘Young Hoenir is fit to the task,’ said Sindri. ‘I felt over-dressed still holding my sword, now you have chosen to discard yours. Let’s turn our brother together.’

Anvindr nodded, and he and Sindri carefully turned Gulbrandr over, Sindri reaching under to support Gulbrandr’s neck at the back as Anvindr shifted the bulk of his armoured weight.

It was an ugly wound. Stumpgutz’s powerful kick had indeed crushed Gulbrandr’s jaw and torn open part of his neck, a wound that continued to bleed, albeit slower than before. His eyes were closed, the lids grey.

‘Brother?’ asked Sindri. ‘Do you still live?’

There was a grunt and a cough from Gulbrandr, blood trickling down from the centre of his mouth. He didn’t open his eyes, but tried to speak, finding that the words would not come from his broken face. Gulbrandr collapsed into a further series of coughs, spitting blood.

‘Silence brother, the boss is dead,’ said Anvindr. ‘Do not try and speak, let us help you stand.’

Anvindr and Sindri helped Gulbrandr to his feet. He was a dead weight.

Around them, the smoke in the throne room was thickening. Anvindr heard a rumble and a creak from somewhere nearby. A large flaming pylon toppled from high above, and landed nearby with a crash and shower of cinders.

‘Hoenir, get that head,’ said Anvindr. ‘Tormodr, come help carry Gulbrandr. We need to leave before this place collapses in on itself.’

They regrouped following the attack that had left Barro dead. Captain Anju Badya and her squad had spent hours riding back and forth searching for escaping orks. There had been the occasional individual greenskin, but the squad had not been overrun again.

Their patrols had brought them to a position with a clear view of the fortress. Most of that structure was now a skeleton of blackened wreckage, with only a few visible fires burning.

Captain Badya hadn’t seen any ork survivors in a while.

One of her riders whistled for her attention. She turned to watch as a large section of exterior wall collapsed like an avalanche, a stretch covering perhaps a sixth of the fortress perimeter just falling in on itself, huge chunks of blackened metal rolling across the plain, followed by an expanding cloud of ash.

‘Nothing’s walking out of there,’ said Khai, wounded but still alive.

It was then that they saw the figures, the same five that had disappeared into the fortress earlier.

Five Space Wolves, one of whom was carrying one of his fellows on his back, while another carried the largest ork head that Captain Anju Badya had ever seen.

‘Ejad,’ shouted Badya. ‘Ride to the Wolves and tell them that their brothers return, and they have both their prize and injured.’

Ejad nodded wordlessly, pulled on the reins of his horse and rode away back towards camp.

With the head retrieved, the cannons resumed firing for a few hours to pound the remains of Warboss Stumpgutz’s fortress into the ground, and then all was silence on the plain of Durrl. The Alixind campaign was over.

As night fell, celebrations began in the encampments of the Imperium forces. For the last months of the campaign, the Tallarn 14th and the Fourth Company of the Space Wolves had been encamped here in a sprawling temporary city of tents and mobile support units. Now the campfires burned high, and desert riders and Wolf brothers alike gathered to celebrate their victory.

They did so separately in their own ways. The Tallarns, as was their way, sat close around the fires, conserving warmth against the hard desert night, talking in low whispers of comrades lost in battles both recent and long ago.

The Space Wolves had their own traditions.

‘My money is on the youngster,’ said Sindri, in between gulps from a large tankard. ‘Tormodr may have strength on his side, but Hoenir has youth.’

‘Youth?’ replied Anvindr, snorting. ‘Hoenir has exactly as many winters behind him as you.’

‘And am I not still young, even after all these decades?’ demanded Sindri in mock outrage.

Yes, you are, thought Anvindr, looking upon Sindri’s unlined face in the firelight. But he didn’t say that out loud.

With Anvindr silent, Sindri looked elsewhere for support. He turned as if to find Gulbrandr, who usually sat back from the fire, then remembered that Gulbrandr wasn’t there. He was recovering, and would continue to recover, but his absence was felt around the fire. They were a close pack, whatever their differences, and any absence amongst them was always felt.

‘Brother Gulbrandr would support me,’ said Sindri stubbornly.

‘When he wakes, you will already have been proven wrong,’ said Anvindr.

Gulbrandr had been lucky. A blow that hard would cut the thread of a normal human, but Gulbrandr was a Space Marine and would recover once his jaw had been rebuilt.

Sindri was about to object to Anvindr, but the fight began before he could speak. Tormodr and Hoenir were wearing most of their armour, but without their helmets or the pelts and adornments that might provide treacherous handholds. They ran at each other and fell into a grappling hold, both trying to bring the other to the ground. When they clashed it was with a great clang and a shriek of metal as their breastplates smashed into each other then ground together.

Sindri made a gagging noise, as if his drink was foul.

‘That sound!’ he exclaimed over the metallic grinding. ‘It’s like knives sharpening in my skull, a stink for the ears.’

Anvindr couldn’t help laughing.

Hoenir had the advantage, as Sindri had said he would. Hoenir had a better footing, and beneath Tormodr’s thick grey moustache his mouth was set in a grimace of effort as he tried to maintain his position.

It seemed to be all over as Tormodr lost his footing and began to be pulled over by Hoenir, but then Tormodr stepped right into a stronger position, and allowed Hoenir’s own momentum to cause the red-headed warrior to slip forward. Tormodr took advantage of that momentum to grab Hoenir by the waist and pitch him face forward into the fire with a crunch of burning timber.

Leaving Hoenir face down in the flames, Tormodr walked over to where Sindri sat, plucked the tankard from his grasp, and drained the contents in one swig. He then dropped the empty tankard in Sindri’s lap.

‘Gracious in victory as ever,’ said Sindri, calling for a kaerl to refill his cup.

Tormodr chuckled his deep, low laugh and reached out a hand to help Hoenir stand up.

‘One day, brother, one day,’ said Hoenir, shaking burning embers from his hair. His skin was red from the fire, but already healing. He gratefully accepted Anvindr’s cup, and took a deep swig. He rolled the liquid around his mouth and stared thoughtfully into the cup.

‘Foul,’ he said. ‘Absolutely foul.’

‘Big words,’ said Sindri, ‘from a man who just tasted burning coals.’

‘If you wish to take on mighty Tormodr,’ said Hoenir, ‘I am sure he will oblige.’

Tormodr grunted his assent.

Sindri shook his head.

‘No need,’ he said. ‘After today’s victory we should not be contesting each other, brothers. We should be revelling in our glory! The humans lost this whole system to the greenskins, and we came from the heavens to take it back. We have slain their nightmares, and delivered the head of the monster. No wonder they look upon us as gods.’

‘We are not gods,’ said Anvindr uneasily. ‘We just have a sliver of godlike power gifted to us.’

‘True,’ conceded Sindri.

‘Besides,’ said Anvindr, ‘the mortals fought this campaign as much as we did, and have died in many greater numbers. We could not have won this campaign without the Tallarns or–’

‘True, true, all true,’ said Sindri. ‘The humans die easily, albeit sometimes bravely– this is true.’ Sindri paused for effect. ‘But were they the ones that brought back the warboss’ head?’

Anvindr laughed aloud, and so suddenly that he was surprised by the sound of the deep and rolling laughter that came out of him.

‘No, we took the warboss’ head,’ he told Sindri once his own laughter had subsided. ‘We definitely did that.’

‘Then let us celebrate our great victory,’ said Sindri, raising his cup. ‘As conquerors of this system, who came and took the head of the monster.’

Sindri’s voice was loud enough to reach other campfires, and when Anvindr’s pack cheered together it could be heard echoed by other packs through the dark of the encampment.

Anvindr sat back and watched his pack, or at least most of them, celebrate. Sindri was right to mark the moment. It had been a long campaign, and they had fought well. In an endless life of battle, this had been a good and notable victory to be spoken of and remembered, passed down in the verbal records of the Vlka Fenryka. There was something in Sindri’s manner and humour, his dismissive attitude to lesser mortals and his jokes about being a god, that rankled Anvindr – but then that was just Sindri’s way. He was a natural joker, a taunter and a mocker, and in spite of that he had saved Anvindr and every other member of his pack a hundred times over. Let him have his ways.

They had all survived this campaign, even Gulbrandr. That was a reason to celebrate and enjoy each other’s company, regardless of faults. The pack fought on.

The one loss the pack had suffered, that of Liulfr, had been long ago but still ached at Anvindr like an old wound in the cold. He still blamed Liulfr’s death on the Inquisitor’s lackey, Interrogator Pranix. It had been Pranix’s scheming and keeping of secrets that had prevented Anvindr and his Wolves from sooner defeating the daemon hidden within Hrondir’s tomb, and Anvindr blamed Pranix more for Liulfr’s death than the daemon itself.

Anvindr shook his head. This was a night for celebrating recent victories, not for dwelling on ancient defeats.

Something broke the darkness of the sky above, a fiery streak that passed overhead and disappeared past the line of tents behind them.

‘See?’ asked Sindri. ‘The heavens drop stars from the sky in our honour.’

‘Perhaps,’ rumbled Tormodr. ‘But only if stars fire their afterburners to slow their descent.’

‘A ship?’ asked Anvindr.

Tormodr nodded. ‘One that must have landed not far from here, on that path of descent.’

‘Let’s go find this ship before the mortals do,’ said Anvindr, reaching to pick up the scabbard containing his chainsword, before remembering with a curse that he didn’t have it anymore. He checked his bolter instead before re-holstering it. ‘If Sindri’s right and the heavens honour us, it is only fair we should get there first.’

The Wolves had to cut through the Imperial Guard encampments in order to exit the camp on the side the meteor fell. Uniformed men and women rushed out of their way as the four giant Space Marines stomped through their camp and towered over them.

At the perimeter, a group of Cadians were preparing to move out to where they had seen the ship land, and Anvindr spoke to their lieutenant.

‘We’ll engage first,’ he told the mortal. ‘Inform your commanders and the Wolf Lord, so that the camp may prepare.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said the Cadian, and as he went to relay his reports they set out into the desert.

They found it over a bluff, a small space vehicle stuck in the desert sands, embedded at an angle and covered in scars and scorch marks from entering the atmosphere. It was rounded and crude, an unwieldy vehicle, but it bore the aquila and ornamental skull insignia of a vehicle of the Imperium, as well as an unusual sigil with nine interlinked spheres.

‘Lacusian,’ said Sindri, indicating the linked spheres. ‘Remember them?’

‘Remind me,’ snapped Anvindr. So many worlds and armies he had encountered, he lost track. So old now...

‘Lacusians. The Hollow Worlds,’ said Sindri. ‘That’s their mark. Their guard wore green jackets. They were everywhere when we fought the tau.’

Anvindr remembered now. The Hollow Worlds, a system of artificial planets. He had never been there, but Imperial Guard regiments from those worlds had fought alongside the Wolves against the tau, a campaign that had ended for Anvindr in Hrondir’s tomb.

Allies, then. But what was a ship bearing the marks of both the Hollow Worlds and the Inquisition doing here?

The Wolves circled the ship, which was still white-hot from re-entry. Shortly, a rectangular panel in one side of the ship opened and a feeble glow came from inside: the red pulse of emergency lighting. Silhouetted within that dim light was a very dishevelled, but definitely human, man.

Anvindr tentatively lowered his bolter. The man had very little hair on his head, but wore a short, unkempt beard. Anvindr knew little of the ageing patterns of normal humans, but considered this man to be neither a child nor elderly. Beneath the beard, the dirty clothes and the overgrown fingernails, there was also something he recognised about this man.

His memory took him back to when he had stood in Hrondir’s tomb, with the Inquisitor Montiyf and the young Interrogator in his plain robes. This man was older, balder, carrying slightly more weight, but the eyes and manner, those were unmistakable. Anvindr found himself almost unconsciously lifting his bolter back up, taking a bead on the man before him. Sindri had been right in spite of himself, this was a portent of some kind, or a gift from the stars.

‘Captain Godrichsson,’ croaked the man, his voice clearly unused for a long time.

‘Interrogator,’ growled Anvindr through clenched teeth. The rank of captain was one the Space Wolves did not use, and this man knew it.

‘Inquisitor now,’ said the man, leaning on the interior frame of the ship hatch. He was clearly physically weak from his journey, and could not move out of the ship until the exterior had cooled sufficiently to touch. He was stuck standing where he was, in Anvindr’s sights.

‘Pranix,’ the Space Wolf hissed, his finger tightening around the trigger of his bolter.

‘Pranix?’ asked Hoenir. ‘That Pranix?’

‘Aye,’ grumbled Tormodr, raising his flamer.

‘So it is,’ said Sindri, quietly for once, without humour.

They all looked to Anvindr who looked to Hoenir, the only one of them who had not met Pranix before in Hrondir’s tomb. The only one with no reason to have let a grudge stew for long decades.

‘I am with you in whatever you decide,’ said Hoenir, also raising his weapon.

‘Nine worlds,’ croaked Pranix, with something that might have been a parched laugh. ‘Nine worlds fallen to the tyrant, and you think I’m the enemy?’ He leaned forwards, head low, and let out a chuckle, then threw back his head and laughed hysterically.

Anvindr realised the Inquisitor was delirious. Perhaps that was what stayed his hand. Or perhaps it was the memory that he had not acted against Pranix when he had the chance, all those years ago, and it had only been in the intervening decades that his resentment had stewed into murderous hatred. Had he lost his way?

‘I have wasted my journey,’ said Pranix, possibly to himself, but audible to Anvindr’s enhanced hearing. ‘All is lost.’

Then he collapsed backwards into the ship doorway.

Anvindr cursed, lowering his gun.

‘Help me get him out of there,’ he barked to Sindri.

‘What?’ demanded Sindri, outraged, his weapon still raised.

‘Just do it, damn you,’ shouted Anvindr, advancing on the ship, though he sympathised with Sindri’s bafflement.

Anvindr had wanted to kill this man for so long, but the nature of Pranix’s arrival, fleeing some great enemy of the Imperium, overrode Anvindr’s own desires. The Hollow Worlds, fallen to some tyrant? That could not be ignored, regardless of personal enmities.

Like it or not, and Anvindr hated it, one thing was certain – for now at least.

If they were to find out what calamity had occurred, if they were to rectify it and save the Hollow Worlds for the Emperor... they needed Inquisitor Pranix alive.

Dishonoured

Ray Harrison

Around the outpost of Blight’s Edge, a warhost of angels fell to earth.

They came to excise, to cleanse, to burn. To take back the planet of Schrödinger VII from the necrons, in the Emperor’s name.

Instead, they fell, they died. The ice turned black with their blood.

Marshal Helbrecht of the Black Templars saw the enemy approaching. Forty pairs of eyes hanging in the dark, burning with soulless fire. Beyond them, Blight’s Edge burned, explosions and crackling gunfire echoing out across the ice.

The vox squealed and roared in his ears. Between the ebb and flow of the static he could hear his brothers fighting at the other insertion points situated around the outpost. Where he had ordered them to be. Where he had been sure they could take their enemy by surprise.

They were already here!

Do not falter…

We are surrounded!

They were dying.

All of them.

The advancing necrons began to fire. Gauss fire whickered across the ice.

‘They think us undone!’ he called out. ‘Push them back!’

Helbrecht led the charge, the wholesale slaughter of his brothers ringing in his ears. He met the first necron warrior with a crash of ceramite and metal.

The creature didn’t get the chance to fire. Helbrecht punched his sword through the xenos’ throat, severing cabling and tearing the creature’s head from its body. The light in its eyes guttered out. He pulled his sword free and the necron’s body crumpled.

Before it hit the ice, it disappeared with a sound like a thunderclap, but Helbrecht was already moving to engage his next foe.

Around him, his brothers fought like war given form. The squad’s standard bearer, Evrain, had one of the necron creatures pinned to the ice, impaled on the banner pole. Garel and Thibaut stood at his side, keeping the necrons back. The standard was ancient. It had seen a thousand battlefields. Every burn mark and ragged thread was a testament to Helbrecht’s strength, to the strength of the Chapter.

It was a symbol. It was faith.

Evrain freed the banner pole from the necron’s ruined form and raised the standard high. A roar went up across the vox from eight battle-rough throats.

Helbrecht’s champion, Aergard, was by his side. He was Helbrecht’s shadow, and his sharpest blade.

‘They foresaw the location of our landing sites,’ Aergard said.

Helbrecht couldn’t deny his words, but that didn’t mean he had to like them. The Marshal engaged a necron warrior, separating its legs from its upper body with a brutal strike from his sword. It toppled onto the ice, but still its top half crawled towards the Marshal, clawed hands digging into the ground.

It should have been dead.

Aergard drove his sword into the top of its head, and it spasmed and sparked at the champion’s feet before vanishing completely.

‘What would you have us do?’ Aergard asked.

Helbrecht raised his bolter and fired over his champion’s shoulder, knocking one of the necrons backwards onto the ice with a burst of flame.

‘What we came here to do,’ the Marshal said. ‘Purge them. Every last one of them.’

Aergard turned away from the Marshal and fired his bolter. The bolts hit home, blasting holes in the chest of a necron warrior. The xenos kept coming, wounds re-knitting. It levelled its gun, and the maw of the weapon began to glow with emerald fire. Aergard rushed forward, taking the necron’s head with a sweep of his sword. The body fell backwards to the ground, the gauss blast it had fired screaming skywards, and as the body hit the ice it phased out with a clap of pressure.

‘That could have been the end of you.’ Thibaut’s voice was underpinned by echoing snaps of bolter fire.

‘Yes,’ Aergard said, turning and firing at another of the xenos creatures. ‘But it wasn’t.’

Thibaut snorted and cut the vox link.

Across the ice from Aergard, Thibaut and Lidas were battling with the necrons. The two Space Marines fought like brawlers, without grace, but with matchless ferocity. Where Aergard found clarity in the execution of his duty, Lidas and Thibaut both found joy. Lidas fought with his gladius in one hand and his chainsword in the other. He punched the gladius into the side of a necron’s metal skull. The short blade snapped off at the hilt. The necron staggered, twitching. Lidas took its head with a messy swing of his chainsword.

Aergard knew that behind the mask of his faceplate, Lidas would be grinning.

The Black Templars had pushed the necrons back, claiming the ice as their own. At Aergard’s side, Helbrecht tore the last of the xenos open from hip to shoulder. The life went out of it with a burst of wicked green light. It fell.

‘If they had looked to test us,’ the Marshal said, ‘then they should have sent more.’

Aergard didn’t get the chance to reply. The world lit up for a split second with a blinding flare of light. In its wake, the darkness parted as if a veil had been lifted. Seven necrons appeared. Six held bulky shields and wicked blades, but the seventh was smaller, hunchbacked, and twitching with synaptic misfires. It wore a rotten cloak around its lumpen shoulders. A single green eye looked out from under the hood.

At Aergard’s side now, Thibaut slammed a fresh magazine into his bolter.

‘How accommodating.’

Aergard silenced him with a look.

The Black Templars drew together, each protecting his brother beside him.

The hunchbacked creature cast its eye across each of the Space Marines. With a garbled machine-squeal, it raised its arm and pointed at Evrain.

‘I, Kheprys, demand this one,’ it said in halting Gothic.

The standard bearer cursed. He fired his bolter at the creature, only for the explosive shells to detonate in the air around it. For an instant, Aergard could see the reflective curve of some sort of shield, as if it were made of impossibly thin glass.

The creature, Kheprys, laughed. It sounded like air escaping from a valve. Its guardians started forward, closing ranks.

They were coming for the standard bearer.

Eight became seven.

One of the necrons had pinned Lidas to the ice, with its sword punched through his chest. Blood spread around the Space Marine on the ground like unfolding wings. The necron stood over him, one foot on his throat.

Lidas primed a krak grenade. In the heartbeat that followed, Aergard mourned his brother.

The grenade went off and Lidas and his necron assailant were consumed by flame. It was not a beautiful death. Lidas would have wanted to die on his feet.

Aergard armoured himself in fury and charged the closest of the necrons, swinging his sword two-handed. It connected with his opponent’s shield, staggering the alien. Before it recovered, he swung again, severing the creature’s arm at the elbow. The shield fell onto the ice and Aergard got a heavy kick in the chest for his trouble. The impact cracked his armour and took him off his feet. He landed hard, coughing a spatter of blood onto the inside of his faceplate.

Aergard expected the creature to come for him, but it didn’t. It turned away, heading for Evrain. The standard bearer was wounded, kneeling on the ice, while the hunchbacked necron stood over him. Garel and Thibaut were fighting like madmen to reach him. The Marshal was seconds away, Balinor and Vayn at his side.

A darkness moved around Evrain and the necrons like churning water. When it cleared, the xenos had gone.

They had taken Evrain and the Marshal’s standard with them.

Helbrecht stood at the spot where Evrain had disappeared.

There was a black mark there on the ice. The aftertaste of the teleportation in the air made Helbrecht want to spit.

‘My lord.’

Aergard was waiting for a command. They all were. Helbrecht clenched his fist. They had lost so much already.

‘My lord,’ Aergard said again.

Helbrecht turned to face the five Space Marines that remained of his honour guard.

‘Kneel,’ Helbrecht said. He didn’t raise his voice.

They all complied immediately with a clash of armour plates, bowing their heads. Helbrecht could not help feeling that they were avoiding his eyes. He drove the point of his sword into the ice, marking where Evrain, and the standard he bore, had disappeared.

‘This is failure,’ he said. ‘The Black Templars have failed.’

Helbrecht stalked to where Aergard knelt and pulled him to his feet.

‘The enemy have my standard. They have your brother.’

For years, Helbrecht had valued Aergard’s counsel. His champion was a balanced blade, not easily given to choler or spite. Yet in that moment, Helbrecht looked at his brother and saw nothing but his own failures reflected back at him.

And he could not bear them.

‘Speak,’ Helbrecht snarled.

‘We allowed the enemy to best us. I allowed it,’ Aergard said, head bowed. ‘What would you have me do?’

Helbrecht gestured at Thibaut and Garel.

‘Take these two and find my standard. I will continue on to Blight’s Edge. I will rally our brothers and retake the outpost.’

Aergard flinched as if he’d been struck.

‘We are sworn to defend you,’ he said. ‘I am sworn to defend you.’

‘Then I relieve you of that responsibility,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Return to me with my standard, or do not return at all. Do you understand?’

Aergard inclined his head, but said nothing.

‘Swear by your blade,’ Helbrecht demanded.

Aergard planted his sword in the ice. He dropped to one knee before it, eye-lenses level with the crosspiece.

‘I swear it, by my blood and by my blade. Lest I die dishonoured.’

‘Do not disappoint me in this,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Restore our honour and your own will be restored with it.’

Helbrecht turned away, looking to the horizon. The outpost of Blight’s Edge reared from the ice. Inside, fires were burning, lighting the sky with a false sunrise.

In Helbrecht’s ear, the vox pick-up crackled and stuttered.

‘… Seven dead… regroup…’

‘… Heavy armour sighted!’

‘… Hundreds of them! Steel yourselves!’

He would not filter the communications. He needed to hear it all: every drop of blood spilt, every brother lost.

Everything.

The name of the outpost was painted in massive letters on the external wall.

‘Drab,’ Thibaut read it aloud. ‘I hope it lives up to its name.’

‘Very amusing,’ Aergard said, not taking his eyes off the walls.

Drab lay to the west of Blight’s Edge. It was one of many smaller outposts on the planet’s surface that had been built directly on top of rich deposits of cryonite. It was a functioning mine with a population of around thirty thousand souls.

Aergard suspected that number was now grossly inaccurate.

Beyond the walls, palls of smoke rose, shrouding the frame of the mine head and the buildings that clung to it. The smoke was lit from underneath by the emerald flare of gauss fire and the blazing trails of missiles. The ice shook to the heavy tread of war.

The outpost was being brought to its knees, and it struggled as it died.

The three Space Marines were walking the perimeter, looking for a way to get inside. Drab had been locked down. Sealing it off had been an attempt to keep the workers safe. Instead, it had trapped them inside with the necrons.

Garel walked ahead of them, almost consumed by the shadow cast by the walls. The sun was coming up. Somehow, it made it feel colder.

‘Evrain’s locator signal is getting stronger,’ Thibaut said.

‘It is coming from the western quarter,’ Aergard said by way of response. The rune that signalled Evrain’s location flickered in his peripheral vision. While it could tell them where to find him, it couldn’t tell them whether or not he still lived.

‘How can you be sure that we will find the standard there?’ Garel said. ‘The locator signal only tells us where Evrain is. Or at least where his armour is. They may have taken it from him.’

Aergard clenched his fists. The thought of the necrons scavenging Evrain’s battleplate, ripping it from him like carrion birds worrying a corpse, was almost worse than imagining him dead. It was sacrilege.

‘We have to assume that Evrain and the standard are in the same place,’ Thibaut replied. ‘It is currently our best hope of finding either.’

‘Assumptions – always eminently preferable.’ Garel sounded irritated.

Thibaut laughed. ‘My assumptions over your eyes, any day, brother.’

‘That’s enough, both of you,’ Aergard said. ‘We need to focus.’

When Thibaut spoke again, he sounded concerned. ‘You are troubled,’ he said.

Aergard thought that somewhat of an understatement, but didn’t say so.

‘The battle plan that I helped devise is currently getting our brothers killed. I stood by and watched as that vile xenos disappeared with one of our own. I would say that is adequate reason to be troubled.’

Thibaut shook his head. ‘That is not your burden to bear alone,’ he said, ‘though you seem to be intent on trying.’

‘I swore on my sword. The oath is mine,’ Aergard said.

Thibaut’s faceplate hid his expression, but when he spoke again he sounded faintly amused.

‘You are so damned honourable,’ he said. ‘We are brothers. Your burdens are our burdens, until we are all too dead to bear them.’

Aergard smiled, just barely. ‘That almost sounded like good counsel,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Forgive me for interrupting.’ Garel sounded impatient even through the crackling, intermittent vox. ‘I believe I have found a way in.’

‘Good,’ Aergard said. ‘Then let us go and find the Marshal’s standard.’

‘And Evrain,’ Thibaut added.

‘Yes,’ Aergard said, feeling the acid touch of guilt. ‘And Evrain.’

After several attempts, Helbrecht had made contact with Unyielding.

The Thunderhawk gunship was now en route to pick up the Marshal and the two remaining members of his honour guard and relocate them to the heart of the battle, the outpost of Blight’s Edge.

He had also tried to reach Flight of Angels and Ascendancy, but the only answer had been a damning silence.

Helbrecht, Balinor and Vayn held their position on the stretch of ice that had been bought with Templar blood. Between the Space Marines and Blight’s Edge, the land was heaped with boulders of wind-carved ice. In places, the face of the planet was split. Some of the fissures were miles deep. If you were to fall, the planet would take you.

More necrons had come since Evrain was taken, and still more kept coming. They marched between the glistening blocks of ice, accompanied by a thousand watery reflections. The Space Marines kept them at bay, each protecting the other. Eventually, though, their bolters would run dry, and their swords would blunt and break.

They would use their fists if they had to.

‘How long until Unyielding reaches us?’ Balinor said. He slammed another magazine into his bolter.

‘Two minutes,’ Helbrecht replied. It sounded like no time at all, but it was long enough to get them killed. ‘Stay focused. We cannot afford a moment of distraction.’

Vayn spoke up over the thunderclap of a necron phasing out.

‘They are wasteful, spending resource without thought.’

‘They are wearing us down,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Forcing us to spend our ammunition and our strength. Do not underestimate them.’

Vayn ducked behind a frozen outcrop as gauss fire lit the gloom. It carved straight through the ice beside his head. Meltwater spattered his battleplate.

‘Noted,’ he said.

‘For every life they have taken, they will repay us tenfold,’ Helbrecht said.

He looked at Balinor, and Vayn beside him.

‘Keep faith,’ he said. ‘Or we are already lost.’

Overhead, the sky trembled with the roar of thrusters. A Thunderhawk broke the low cloud, trailing smoke and flame. The sound of its straining engines echoed around the frozen landscape.

It was Unyielding, and it was being hunted.

Helbrecht watched as three necron fighters burst from the cloud behind the ailing gunship. They rolled in the air with a peculiar, alien grace. Where the Thunderhawk bellowed and roared, the necron craft sang.

The sound was unbearable.

Unyielding deployed a burst of flares. The three fighters dipped and weaved around them, ignoring them completely.

Then the lead fighter fired.

A beam of searing light lanced from the ship’s underbelly, striking the Thunderhawk across the tail and shearing clean through the gunship’s layers of ablative armour plating. The tail section tore off completely. Chain explosions burst along the length of the Thunderhawk’s spine, and it shuddered in the air with an agonised groan.

Unyielding came apart before Helbrecht’s eyes and began to fall to earth. The Marshal cursed and turned to run, Vayn and Balinor beside him.

The dismembered gunship hit the ice behind the Space Marines and exploded, engines detonating with a thunderous exhalation of heat and pressure. Helbrecht was hurled into the air, the hot rush of flame blistering the paint from his armour. He landed hard, smoke rising from his battleplate. Dozens of necrons had been immolated by the blast, or crushed when Unyielding fell. One had been blown over the edge of a fissure and swallowed by the hungry darkness.

Helbrecht got up unsteadily. Fractured bone shifted in his chest. It hurt to breathe.

‘Balinor?’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘Vayn? Acknowledge?’

‘Still here, my lord.’ Balinor was lying not far from where Helbrecht stood. He got to his feet slowly. Flames were steadily consuming his tabard. He batted at them irritably.

‘Vayn?’ Helbrecht called again.

‘Aye,’ came the reply. Vayn staggered into view. His helm was a shattered mess, and his right arm terminated in a ragged stump just below his elbow. Half-clotted blood blotted the ice at his feet. Vayn pulled the remains of his helm from his head and dropped it.

‘Still here. Mostly,’ he managed, teeth chattering as his armour’s systems pumped coagulants and painkillers into his bloodstream.

‘Can you fight?’ Helbrecht said.

Vayn smiled through the blood on his face.

‘I can still hold a sword.’

Balinor was watching the wreckage of Unyielding burn.

‘Should I try and raise another transport, my lord?’

Helbrecht shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘The skies belong to the enemy.’ He pointed with his sword in the direction of Blight’s Edge. ‘We walk.’

Garel’s ‘way in’ turned out to be a maintenance tunnel that led through the outpost’s outer wall. It looked as though it hadn’t been used for decades. The shielding that covered the entrance was rusted shut and rimed with ice. Garel kicked the metal cover over and over, bending it away from the frame. The noise echoed in the shadow of the wall that loomed above them. Aergard and Thibaut kept watch.

In the far distance, monoliths of black stone bore inexorably down upon the Black Templars like an oncoming thunderhead. They were xenos constructs, raised up and guided across the battlefield by the hand of the enemy. Coruscating energy lashed from their capstones, raking claws of light across the sky. Everything that the light touched was obliterated. The Space Marines would not last long outside the walls once the monoliths reached them.

‘Quicker would be better,’ Thibaut said.

‘You are welcome to help,’ Garel snarled, between kicks.

‘If it is going to require two of us to get that panel off, I would start to worry about our chances of success here,’ Thibaut replied.

‘Quiet, both of you,’ Aergard said. His vox pick-up stammered in his ear. Between bursts of static, there was a familiar voice.

‘Reques… deple… into the outpost… pinn…’

Behind the voice there were sounds of furious gunfire and shouting.

‘Can you hear that?’ Aergard said, looking to his brothers. ‘It sounds like Leoric. Struggling.’

‘Leoric?’ Thibaut said. ‘Biting off more than he can chew? I am surprised.’

Garel snorted a laugh.

Aergard replied on the same channel, not even sure if Leoric would be able to hear it.

‘Hold your ground, brother,’ he said. ‘We will come to you.’

‘What are you doing?’ Garel asked.

Aergard looked to Garel and Thibaut. His armour’s systems had approximated the location of Leoric’s broadcast. He was inside the outpost.

‘Leoric’s position lies between us and our target. We can aid him.’

‘What about the standard?’ Garel said.

Aergard stared at his brother.

‘I will not abandon Leoric to die.’

Garel stopped kicking and stared back.

‘Leoric is not our concern. The Marshal’s standard is.’

There was no trace of cruelty in Garel’s tone, just cold dismissal. Aergard thought about Lidas pinned to the ice, dying. His own conscience would not be so easily dismissed.

‘Leoric and his squad are inside the outpost. So is the standard. We can aid him without forsaking our duty.’

‘You tell yourself that, if you wish,’ Garel said.

Aergard wasn’t about to let Garel goad him.

‘I do not need to. I am telling you.’ Aergard said, evenly. ‘Leoric is our brother. Our blood. I will not waste his life when we have lost so much already. We will offer Leoric what aid we can, then we will find the standard, free Evrain and return to cleansing this frozen hell.’

Garel looked at Aergard for several heartbeats, then shrugged.

‘As you say.’

Aergard could hear the dissent in Garel’s tone. He chose to ignore it.

Garel turned away and planted his foot hard into the maintenance panel again, and it gave way, dropping to the ground with a crash.

Aergard stepped into the tunnel. In the periphery of his vision, another locator rune blinked alongside the first. One for Leoric. One for Evrain.

Another brother. Another life.

Another oath.

‘We are not alone,’ Helbrecht growled.

The three Space Marines were on foot, moving towards Blight’s Edge. Helbrecht had sent a company-wide vox broadcast calling all Black Templars forces on the surface to the outpost, with the intent that they could regroup and strike back at the necrons.

The number of Black Templars capable of responding was unsettlingly small.

Vayn and Balinor held position on either side of Helbrecht, the honour-chains that bound their weapons to their armour clicking together softly in the freezing wind.

‘I see nothing, my lord,’ Balinor said in a low voice.

Helbrecht narrowed his eyes.

‘Neither do I,’ Helbrecht said. ‘But we are being watched.’

The Black Templars were moving through an area that had been abandoned when the necrons had made planetfall. Huge pieces of mining equipment stood stationary, rimed with frost and creaking in the ice planet’s unceasing wind. There were bodies, too. Frozen hands reached to the sky with blackened fingers. Blood had become mirrors of red glass. Not all of the human workers had abandoned their machines quickly enough. Helbrecht scowled.

‘We move,’ Helbrecht said, eyes on the long shadows cast by the machines. ‘But keep your eyes open.’

The three Space Marines moved as one through the graveyard of machinery. In the distance, Blight’s Edge reared up from the ice, wreathed in smoke.

‘I would dearly like to know where the bastards have disappeared to,’ Balinor voxed. ‘I grow tired of fighting shadows.’

‘Perhaps they have fallen back to Blight’s Edge,’ Vayn said.

Helbrecht didn’t look at his brothers. He kept his eyes on his surroundings.

‘They armour themselves with cowardice,’ he said. ‘It will not protect them. Wherever they hide, we will seek them out and then we will destroy them. In His name.’

‘In His na–’ Balinor’s reply was cut short. A burst of blood issued from his throat, and the Sword Brother fell to his knees. The vox channel was filled with the sound of Balinor choking to death.

‘Sniper!’ Vayn cried out. He immediately dragged Balinor into cover.

Helbrecht saw it then, in the shadow of a mining drill.

The necron sniper almost seemed a part of the shadow, save for the glow from its emerald eye. In a heartbeat, Helbrecht brought up his own bolter and fired. The darkness gathered around the creature as the bolts hit home. Helbrecht heard a machine-squeal and the necron dematerialised, leaving behind the smell of ozone and traces of smoke from the bolter fire.

Wherever the creature had conjured itself away to, it was hurting.

Helbrecht turned to Vayn, who was kneeling beside Balinor.

‘Does he live?’ the Marshal asked through gritted teeth.

Vayn said nothing. He just shook his head.

Helbrecht exhaled slowly. Another life lost.

Without an Apothecary present, Helbrecht was the one who had to retrieve Balinor’s gene-seed. It was the least he could do for him now. The gene-seed in Balinor’s throat had been destroyed, but the secondary implant in his chest had survived. It was a small mercy.

‘Emperor keep your soul, brother,’ he said. He bowed his head, making the sign of the aquila with his bloody hands.

The maintenance tunnel led further on into the outpost than they had initially thought.

On the far side of the walls it had branched into a network of underground passages, mine shafts and cramped hab units. Everywhere there were signs of conflict. In places, the tunnel had partially collapsed. Aergard stepped past scorched bones clad in the blasted remains of carapace armour. The mortals had died defending this place. There was something admirable about that.

After some time, they had started to climb, heading for the last position that Leoric had been broadcasting from, which turned out to be an unremarkable building called the Chapel of the Emperor’s Benevolence.

The three Space Marines watched from the broken window of a third-floor hab unit as Leoric and his brothers defended the chapel. Outside, fifteen necron warriors kept up a relentless hail of fire, blasting holes in the building’s crumbling facade. Leoric’s squad retaliated, firing through gaps in the hastily built barricades and broken windows. The necrons were advancing slowly.

Patiently.

‘Leoric,’ Aergard said over the vox. ‘We can see your position now.’

The vox signal was much better at close range. It crackled, and then Leoric spoke.

‘It is good to hear your voice, brother. Is the Marshal with you?’

Aergard sighed.

‘No, his path takes him elsewhere,’ Aergard said. ‘There are three of us.’

Leoric made a noise that suggested he didn’t think three would be enough.

‘It is not like you to be held up by a handful, brother,’ Thibaut said with a smile in his voice.

The tone of Leoric’s reply was not as jovial.

‘They have been attacking for hours. As soon as we put them down, more arrive to replace them.’

In the background of the transmission, Aergard could hear hymns being sung by human voices.

Aergard frowned. ‘You have mortals under your protection.’

‘The alternative did not feel very honourable,’ Leoric said.

Behind Aergard, Garel was watching the necron advance with cold detachment.

‘He should have abandoned the mortals to die,’ Garel said, softly.

Aergard ignored him.

‘We will cut the necrons down while they focus on you. Once they have turned their attention to us that should give you and your squad respite enough to join the fray. Send the mortals to shelter in the crypt, if there is one. We will not be able to protect them if the necrons manage to breach the walls.’

‘Turned their attention to us,’ Thibaut repeated. ‘That almost makes it sound amicable.’

Aergard shot Thibaut a look. The other Space Marine just shrugged, managing to look amused despite the impassive mask of his faceplate.

‘That sounds as good a plan as any,’ Leoric said. ‘My thanks, brother.’

Aergard smiled humourlessly.

‘You can thank me when all the necrons are dead.’

Leoric terminated the link. Aergard nodded to Thibaut and Garel.

‘Leave none alive.’

They saluted in reply.

All three Space Marines leapt from the window, falling to the roadway below.

Garel landed first, his leap taking him the farthest. He landed on top of one of the necrons with a clang of armour and metal, knocking it flat. Garel hacked at the creature messily, sparks flying.

Aergard was already on his feet, laying about himself with his sword. The powered blade sang as he killed, a melody of crackling power fields and rending metal.

Thibaut threw himself at one of the necrons, shoulder barging it and knocking out its aim. He jammed the muzzle of his bolter against the creature’s torso and fired. Green light flared angrily as the necron’s systems shorted out. Its ruined remains disappeared before they hit the roadway.

‘I think they have turned their attention to us now!’ Thibaut shouted over the deafening racket of bolters firing and gauss weapons discharging.

One of the remaining necrons turned and fired at Aergard. He threw himself aside, the beam glancing him just barely. It gouged a furrow in his armour that cut clean down to his bodyglove.

Straight through the ceramite.

‘Hells,’ Aergard swore, getting to his feet. He raised his bolter to fire, but the necron was engulfed in flame before he pulled the trigger.

Leoric’s squad were coming over the barricades.

‘No pity! No remorse!’ Leoric roared.

‘No fear!’ Aergard, Thibaut and Garel finished their Chapter’s battle cry as one.

Helbrecht and Vayn had found their brothers.

The outpost of Blight’s Edge was encircled on all sides by a deep ravine, like the moat of an ancient castle. Bridges of ice crossed over the ravine, linking the outpost to the mainland. Once there had been many such bridges, but now only one remained, and it was heavily defended.

There were legions of necrons inside the outpost, and yet more standing outside it like statues, frost hardening on their metal skeletons. Overhead, necron aircraft tore across the sky. Huge arachnid constructs traversed the walls of the outpost. Hundreds of soulless green eyes stared out from Blight’s Edge, waiting.

The Black Templars had rallied, just as Helbrecht had ordered, but with the bridge held by the enemy, and the necrons controlling the skies, they couldn’t get into Blight’s Edge to liberate it.

‘We will not push across the bridge this way,’ Helbrecht said. He had pulled his forces back to limit casualties and gathered a conclave of warriors to him. They needed to change their approach or none of them would make it off-world.

Helbrecht cursed himself, not for the first time, for sending Aergard away. His champion had always given him good counsel.

Now, for all the Marshal knew, Aergard was as dead as Balinor.

‘We are wearing them thin,’ Jenovar said. The Sword Brethren veteran was notoriously stubborn, and his armour bore the scars to prove it. ‘We can take the bridge.’

Beside Helbrecht, Vayn snorted disdainfully.

‘How many times have you tried to storm the bridge, Jenovar?’ Helbrecht asked.

The veteran’s hands curled into fists at his side.

‘Three,’ he said, begrudgingly.

‘You have fought valiantly.’ Helbrecht kept his voice neutral. He would not win the man to his cause by hurting his pride. ‘But we will not take the bridge this way.’

‘Can we not call in aid from the Eternal Crusader?’ Ideus was only an initiate, but he showed great promise. He had rallied the rest of his squad when their sergeant was killed, kept them fighting and bolstered their faith. ‘We could bombard the city from orbit, and renew our offensive once the necrons are weakened.’

Helbrecht shook his head.

‘It would do us no good,’ he said. ‘The complex runs deep into the ice. Short of cracking the planet, we could not flush them out with orbital strikes. Besides, the machinery and resources inside Blight’s Edge are valuable. We must save as much of the outpost as we can.’

‘For the good of the few humans who yet live, and the cryonite mines?’ Jenovar said with disdain. ‘It hardly seems a worthy prize for the lives we have lost already.’

Helbrecht stared at him. Jenovar wilted visibly under his gaze.

‘The Imperium lives and dies in the hands of all humanity,’ Helbrecht said, quietly. ‘They may not have our strength, but that does not make them worthless.’

Jenovar bowed his head, contrite.

Helbrecht looked to Blight’s Edge. The sky above the outpost was thick with choking black smoke.

‘If we cannot take the bridge, then we must find an alternative route,’ he said. ‘This world is a warren of mines and passageways. We will pass under the ice and cleanse the outpost with bolters and blades. From the foundations up.’

‘If we all disappear from the surface they will know we have gone to the mines,’ Vayn said.

Helbrecht nodded.

‘That is why I will remain here to lead a final assault on the ice bridge. I will hold their focus for as long as is necessary, until the mines are taken.’

‘My lord, surely another would be better placed to do this? You said yourself that an assault on the bridge cannot hope to succeed,’ Jenovar said. His meaning was clear. He wanted to stay on the surface and prove it could be done.

That was precisely why he couldn’t be allowed to do so.

‘I need you to lead our brothers into the mines in my stead,’ Helbrecht said.

Jenovar bowed. ‘Aye, my lord.’

Ideus dropped to his knees, laying his sword flat across the palm of his gauntlet. ‘I offer you my blade, my lord. I would stay with you on the surface.’

Helbrecht almost smiled.

‘I suspect I will need all the blades I can get,’ he said. ‘Rally your brothers, Ideus.’ He caught sight of Balinor’s dried blood on his gauntlets.

‘It is time to turn the tide of this war.’

The last of the necrons phased out with an otherworldly whine that made Aergard’s teeth ache.

‘More will come,’ Garel said quietly. ‘We should leave before we get caught up in another fire fight that we can ill afford.’

Aergard knew he was right.

It was time for Leoric to make a decision. He could not hold the chapel indefinitely and they could no longer stay to aid him. They had another task to complete.

‘I will speak with him,’ Aergard said. He picked his way through the makeshift barricades and entered the chapel. Inside, a group of humans sat around a fire. The smoke was making them cough. The sound echoed in the vaulted space. One of Leoric’s squad, a neophyte named Anguis, was sitting beside the men and women. He was leading them in prayer.

‘He cares too much.’ Leoric’s voice was hoarse from shouting in battle. ‘It will get him killed.’

Aergard chuckled humourlessly.

‘Garel said much the same about you.’

Leoric scowled.

‘I cannot say I am worried about having more heart than that bastard.’

Aergard couldn’t find it in him to disagree. Garel was pragmatic to the point of callousness. He embodied what mortals so often thought of the Adeptus Astartes, that they lost their capacity for emotion when they accepted their mantle of demigod. That wasn’t strictly true. It merely became easier and more vital for them to keep their emotions distant.

Most of the time.

‘These mortals spoke of an ancient structure, buried beneath this settlement,’ Leoric said.

‘Necron?’ Aergard asked.

Leoric nodded absently.

‘They did not say so, but it makes sense. I think they triggered some sort of beacon when it was uncovered.’

Aergard frowned. If what Leoric was saying was true, then the necrons would not abandon the planet easily. Nothing about this crusade was turning out to be as it first appeared.

‘Did you send news of this to the Marshal?’ Aergard asked.

Leoric shrugged.

‘We tried. With the vox system ailing as it is we can only pray that he heard it.’

Aergard exhaled slowly, frustrated. The light coming through the windows was dwindling. The day cycle on Schrödinger VII was short. Darkness would fall soon.

‘We need to move on,’ Aergard said, still watching Anguis with the humans. ‘I swore an oath to the Marshal, and we have tarried here too long. As have you. You cannot protect them, Leo. Winning back their world is the only way to help them now.’

Leoric nodded.

‘I know what you are going to say,’ he said.

‘Then I will not say it,’ Aergard said.

Across the chapel, Anguis finished his prayers. One of the women put her hand on his arm as he got up to leave. She took a golden chain from the folds of her cloak, and pressed it into his hand. Even at a distance, Aergard recognised the pendant. It was an aquila. Anguis thanked her with a patient smile.

‘They keep true to the faith,’ Leoric said. He looked at Aergard. ‘They call us angels.’

Aergard watched the woman. She wore a scarf covering her nose and mouth, protecting her from the cold. Only her eyes were visible.

He saw fear there… and hope.

Aergard sighed. ‘Get them back into the crypts. Leave them a light and a blade. Then get back into the fight.’

A knife would certainly not protect them should the necrons return, but the comfort of having the weapon would perhaps be worth something. It was all that could be done for them.

It would have to be enough.

Leoric nodded. ‘As you say,’ he said.

Aergard bade farewell to Leoric and turned away, crunching slivers of stained glass under his boots. The rune denoting Evrain’s location flickered. They were not far now. It originated in the network of mines beneath their feet.

Aergard watched the pallid disc of the sun slip below the buildings as he left the chapel. The sky was tainted by smoke and the intermittent flare of weapons fire. His two brothers waited at the bottom of the steps.

‘Are we done here?’ Garel said.

‘Yes,’ Aergard replied. ‘It is time to finish this.’

The necrons had taken the bait.

As Helbrecht reached the ice bridge, five of the xenos landed hard on the ice in front of them. They wore arcane jump packs that seemed to achieve propulsion without thrust. Where they landed, they caused tiny disruptions in gravity. At Helbrecht’s feet, crystals of ice began to float upwards.

As one, the necrons activated the power fields on their staves.

‘I think they are trying to stop us from reaching the bridge,’ Vayn said, drily.

The necrons began to advance.

‘Go through them,’ Helbrecht said.

The Black Templars started to move.

One of the creatures lowered its stave and braced its feet. A searing beam of energy arced from the stave’s jewelled head, hitting one of Ideus’ squad, Deytrik, in the chest. With a boom of pressure, Deytrik was unmade, reduced to a grey flurry of ashes.

Gone.

With a snarl of rage, Helbrecht charged the closest of the necron creatures. It blocked his attack with its stave, the power fields of their weapons colliding with a shriek. The creature knocked Helbrecht’s blade aside, pushing the Marshal back two paces. It swung the stave with silent malice, aiming to punch it through Helbrecht’s chest. Helbrecht deflected it with a swipe of his sword, chasing up with a deft strike at the creature’s throat.

His blow never connected.

His sword cut empty air as Helbrecht felt the point of the necron’s stave scrape along his fused ribcage. He cursed, spitting blood. It was fast, faster than he’d expected. The creature knocked him back with the haft of the stave, sending the Marshal sprawling on the ice. It swung at him. Helbrecht rolled aside and the stave crashed into the ground where he’d been moments before.

And stuck there.

Gaining his feet, Helbrecht fired his bolter, stitching the creature with firebursts as the rounds detonated. It fell, damaged and twitching, but not dead. The creature’s body started to reknit. It lurched to its knees, reaching for the Marshal with hands like claws.

Helbrecht fired his bolter again, and kept firing until the creature lay still, shattered and smoking. The Marshal was breathing hard, blood dripping onto the ice from where the creature had cut him.

He was surprised how much it hurt.

‘That was the last of them.’ Vayn limped towards him. His chest-plate was cracked, the black lacquer flaking away. He spat on the ice.

‘What I would not give for an enemy that stayed dead when I killed it.’

Helbrecht looked up. A curdled swirl of cloud was gathering above them. Lightning flashed in the sky.

‘If we survive this, then I will try and find some for you,’ he said.

The wind was picking up. It tugged at the purity seals attached to Helbrecht’s armour. Thunder boomed unceasingly.

‘That is no natural storm,’ Vayn shouted over the noise of the wind.

Suddenly, the clamour stopped.

Emerald light lit the sky. Helbrecht caught the scent of ozone.

The light flared away and a silver figure was revealed, standing in the centre of the ice-bridge. A long, segmented cape hung heavy from its shoulders. It bore a brassy crown on its brow, stained with verdigris.

An immortal king crafted from silver and steel.

With an air of ceremony, the figure extended its hand.

‘Mortal ones,’ the figure said in richly accented, halting Gothic. ‘You look upon Imotekh the Stormlord, Ruler of Mandragora, Liberator of Somonor and Overlord of the Sautekh dynasty.’

‘That is rather a lot of titles,’ Vayn muttered.

‘Helbrecht!’ the Stormlord said, impossibly loud.

Helbrecht, for a moment, felt physically stunned.

His name. It had used his name.

‘You are the one who leads,’ the Stormlord said. ‘That must make you an honourable creature. Of sorts.’

The necron’s face was a frozen rictus mask of metal, but Helbrecht couldn’t help but hear a smile in the Stormlord’s voice.

‘If that is the case, then face me in single combat. Prove that you are not the failure you have so far shown yourself to be.’

The knuckles of Helbrecht’s gauntlets creaked as he curled his hands into fists.

‘Sire,’ Vayn started, placing a warning hand on Helbrecht’s shoulder.

Helbrecht stared at him. ‘Let go,’ he said, softly.

Vayn did as he was asked, though he looked none too happy about it.

Helbrecht strode towards the Stormlord. He forced himself to walk as if unwounded. He would not show weakness to this creature, this xenos that knew his name.

The signal from Evrain’s locator had led them into the cryonite mines.

Hanging lume-globes lit the darkness. Wind howled up from the heart of the world, swinging the lanterns and casting long, twisted shadows on the walls. This far down, the ice was depthless and black. It spoke in constant tectonic creaks. A river of molten cryonite lay alongside the path they followed. The grey substance was slow flowing, the surface cracking and bubbling. The air was rank with the stench of it, like spoiled meat.

‘I can safely say that there is nothing about this planet that I find pleasant,’ Thibaut said dourly.

Garel stopped and picked something up from the floor. He turned it in his armoured hand. It was a rebreather mask. The inside of the faceplate was crusted with old blood.

‘There are no bodies,’ Garel said.

Disturbed by his handling of the mask, tiny metallic insects scuttled from inside it. Garel made a disgusted noise and threw the rebreather mask into the cryonite. The molten substance swallowed it with a lick of flame. One of the insects had managed to crawl onto his armour. He grabbed it and crushed it in his fist.

‘I am picking up traces of multiple contacts,’ Thibaut said, tapping at the auspex he carried.

‘It’s picking up more of those damned insects,’ Garel said.

Thibaut shook his head. ‘No, it is something bigger,’ he said. He tapped at the auspex again. ‘I cannot get a clear reading. There is too much interference down here.’

Aergard scowled behind his faceplate.

‘We should keep moving. If something is following us, we cannot very well stop it if we cannot see it.’

Thibaut nodded. He moved off, following the curve of the tunnel.

Aergard watched the walls. The metallic insects were everywhere, crawling in and out of holes and cracks in the ice. Their multi-jointed limbs clicked incessantly. Garel stalked beside him in silence, his helm’s red eye lenses glowing in the gloom. After a few more minutes, Thibaut stopped.

‘There it is again,’ he said.

Aergard never had the chance to reply.

The stone floor of the tunnel beneath Thibaut’s feet rippled, and a metallic creature emerged, all hooked blades and segmented metal spine.

It punched its bladed forelimbs through Thibaut’s chest.

‘Thibaut!’ Aergard yelled.

Thibaut cried out and dropped the auspex on the tunnel floor. The creature reared up, lifting the Space Marine’s body off the ground. Thibaut struggled. He managed to jam his sword into the creature’s single eye. It gave a stuttering, static cry and lashed out, striking Aergard with its tail and sending him crashing against the wall.

Thibaut had stopped struggling, his hands twitching nervelessly. His body slid from the creature’s bladed arms, and landed in a crumpled heap on the tunnel floor.

The necron creature turned wildly, blinded. Garel started to fire his bolter at it, forcing it backwards with each explosive round. He was pushing it towards the cryonite. Aergard added his own gunfire to the onslaught. The creature squealed and writhed, juddering in and out of reality like a damaged pict recording. When it hit the cryonite, it was solid enough to burn. The creature screeched, and disappeared with a burst of flame and smoke.

Aergard turned and ran to where Thibaut lay. A pool of blood was spreading beneath him on the tunnel floor.

‘Brother?’ Aergard said, kneeling beside him.

Thibaut’s breathing was ragged. Aergard’s helm display showed his life signs as an erratic, jumping line.

‘D-done something to my nerves,’ Thibaut said with some amount of effort. ‘My legs are useless.’

Aergard shook his head.

‘Come now,’ he said, quietly. ‘Do not make me carry you.’

Thibaut tried to laugh, but it turned into a choking gargle. He gripped Aergard’s arm with his gauntleted hand.

‘Like I said,’ he managed, his voice a wet rasp, ‘until we are too dead to bear them.’ His body was wracked with a massive seizure.

Thibaut’s life signs flattened out on Aergard’s helm display.

Aergard remained still, kneeling beside his brother.

‘He was a good warrior,’ Garel said.

Aergard sighed. His hands were covered with his brother’s blood. ‘Yes, he was.’

For one of the first times in recent memory, Helbrecht was losing a fight.

He felt weak. The keen edge of the Stormlord’s powered blade had cut him, carving a deep gouge in his shoulder. It had been agonising to begin with, but the pain was fading, leaving behind it a cloying numbness. The loss of sensation was much worse. Agony at least brought with it clarity. Helbrecht could barely feel his fingers, his grip on the hilt of his sword slipping.

Helbrecht would have suffered any amount of pain gladly. He was blessed with the blood of Dorn. He was a Marshal of the Black Templars, the holiest of the Emperor’s sons. He had won a thousand duels or more, bested champions and hordes alike.

And now he was losing to this creature. This ancient, dead thing, that had out-thought, out-strategised and now out-fought him. This faithless, hateful alien.

His vision tunnelled, and he coughed up blood. It spattered onto his tabard, staining the black cross of his Chapter.

His Chapter, his blood. They were all his blood. And he had led them here to die.

‘No!’ Helbrecht flung the word at the Stormlord as if it too were a weapon. He struck out at the necron with a heavy blow from his sword that made the blade ring in his hand and his wounded shoulder ache. It snapped cabling and rent the metal of the Stormlord’s body.

He had wounded it.

He could wound it.

Helbrecht followed up with another strike at the Stormlord’s weakened armour. The necron creature stepped aside deftly and Helbrecht stumbled. Blood drops scattered onto the ice from the wound in his shoulder. The Marshal turned to face his foe.

The damage he’d done to the Stormlord’s body was repairing itself.

Tiny metallic insects were crawling over the surface of the Stormlord’s metal exoskeleton, knitting it back together.

For the second time, Helbrecht had the peculiar feeling that the Stormlord would have been smiling if it were capable.

‘You grow weak,’ the Stormlord said. ‘Weak and tired. You and your kin will fail here, as humanity’s empire will fail. Because I will it.’

Helbrecht snarled. ‘You are arrogant,’ he said, through blood-flecked teeth. ‘A relic of a dead empire that has no right to exist.’

The Stormlord cocked its head. ‘That is quite amusing, coming from one such as you.’

Helbrecht darted forward, looking to plant his sword in the Stormlord’s throat.

Not even attempting to parry, the Stormlord pointed its staff at Helbrecht with a swing of its arm. Conjured bolts of lightning struck Helbrecht in the chest, stiffening his limbs and making him blind, deaf and mute all in an instant. The power field surrounding Helbrecht’s sword shorted out with a burst of light.

He stayed on his feet by virtue of stubbornness alone.

Helbrecht’s sword connected. The force of the blow split the blade from point to hilt. The Stormlord cried out. Helbrecht tried to laugh, but found he couldn’t even breathe. The lightning blast had sent his primary heart into arrest.

Aergard and Garel had found the origin of Evrain’s locator signal.

The tunnel terminated in an expansive cave. It was a perfect dome, carved out of the heart of the world. The walls shone like polished glass. Discarded mining equipment littered the ground. A huge bladed drill stood inanimate, covered with ice.

Rising from floor at the centre of the cave was the source of the signal.

The structure was undoubtedly necron in origin. There was no technology that the Imperium possessed which could create something so other. It towered above the Space Marines, a pyramid of eerily perfect obsidian.

This was the structure that the mortals had spoken of. The beacon that had called the necrons to Schrödinger VII.

‘The standard is inside this thing?’

Disdain wasn’t a strong enough term to describe Garel’s tone.

Aergard looked at the structure. The longer he looked at it, the less fixed the dimensions seemed to be. ‘At least the workers left us a way in,’ he replied, flatly.

The face of the structure had been broken open. Chunks of the strange rock were scattered around the fissure.

Garel approached the structure. He glanced up at it a final time, then shook his head. ‘Let’s get this over with, then.’

The two Space Marines stepped over the threshold. The human miners had broken through into a vast chamber built of the same strange black stone as the outside of the structure. Even more so than outside, the structure’s dimensions didn’t make sense, the scale of it seeming impossible. The walls, floor and ceiling were inlaid with curious repeating patterns. As Aergard and Garel passed by them, light coursed through the strange glyphs, as if they were reacting to the movement of the Space Marines.

Dominating the centre of the chamber was a smaller mimic of the structure in which they now stood. Even the replica was five times Aergard’s height, or more.

Aergard crossed the room to stand before it.

On the surface in front of him was a door. Aergard walked around the structure once. There were identical doors on the other sides.

He stopped again in front of the first door. Near the apex of the replica pyramid, below the capstone, there was a crack in the outer surface. For the briefest of moments, Aergard felt as if he was watching himself scrutinise the pyramid. The feeling was incredibly unpleasant.

‘We should not tarry here,’ Aergard said to Garel.

The other Space Marine was standing before another of the doors. He was absolutely still, as if he too were carved from stone.

‘These doors do not make sense,’ he said, by way of reply.

‘There is no other way. We must go on, and that means choosing one of these doors.’

Garel didn’t look at him. He kept watching the gaping maw of the doorway as if he expected it to do something.

‘They do not make sense,’ he said again. Aergard had never heard Garel sound uneasy before. It unsettled him.

‘Garel,’ Aergard said.

The other Space Marine finally looked at him.

‘Enough,’ Aergard said.

There was a silence that stretched for several heartbeats before Garel nodded.

‘Which door?’ Garel asked.

Aergard’s visor display was trying and failing to show him the distance to his marked target. The number kept changing and recalculating. He dismissed the data. It would do him no good.

His gut was telling him to choose the first door.

He decided to go with his gut.

Aergard drew his combat knife and carved a cross into the stone beside the first door.

‘That was a guess, wasn’t it?’ Garel said.

Aergard looked at him. ‘Only if I am wrong.’

‘You are a stubborn creature.’

The Stormlord’s voice was a distant rumble, like the roll of a thunderhead. Helbrecht struggled to focus. He could hear a wan, wet thumping sound. It was drowning everything else out. He realised with unpleasant clarity that the noise was his secondary heart.

‘You have tried to claim this galaxy as your own for ten thousand years,’ the Stormlord continued. ‘Yet you have little of account to show for your efforts. Such failure must be as depressing to bear as it is pathetic to behold.’

‘You dismiss us,’ Helbrecht managed, ‘but for every drop of Imperial blood you spill, for every inch of our ground that you spoil with your presence, we will hunt you.’ He smiled through bloody teeth. ‘Until the stars themselves go dark, we will hunt you.’

The Stormlord cocked his head to one side in an oddly human gesture.

‘I expect you will,’ he said. ‘But here, today, you kneel before me defeated.’ The Stormlord’s eyes flashed. ‘And I will ensure you never forget it.’

The Stormlord took hold of Helbrecht’s right arm and severed his hand with a single stroke of his blade.

Helbrecht bellowed in pain and anger. Blood jetted from the ruined stump of his arm, drawing patterns on the ice.

‘May this remind you,’ the Stormlord said, watching Helbrecht with cold curiosity, ‘of your dishonour and defeat.’

Helbrecht glared up at his enemy.

Not like this. He would not die like this.

‘I will make you pay,’ Helbrecht managed, blood frothing between his clenched teeth. He tried to get to his feet but his limbs were sluggish and weak.

He couldn’t get up from his knees.

The Stormlord laughed and closed his hand around Helbrecht’s throat. The Marshal felt his feet leave the ice, the Stormlord suspending him in the air.

‘Learn from this,’ the Stormlord said. ‘So that we may duel again.’

Then he threw Helbrecht from the ice bridge and the Marshal fell, cursing, into the fathomless dark.

‘We have passed by here before.’

Aergard stood at the edge of an unknowable abyss, a bridge of light curving downwards into the darkness. On the wall beside him was the cross he had carved into the stone as they had journeyed deeper into the structure. There had been thirteen crosses so far. It was the fifth time they had found themselves passing through locations that they had previously marked.

To say that he was becoming frustrated would be an understatement.

‘How can this be?’ Garel gestured to the cross on the wall with his sword. ‘We have not climbed once. We have done nothing but follow the path downward.’

Aergard shrugged, at a loss.

‘I do not think that we can apply “up and down” to this place.’

Garel growled.

‘What in the hells is that supposed to mean?’

Aergard shot him a look.

‘I do not know. I do not have the answers you seek. All we can do is push on. We follow Evrain’s signal until we find him. Thibaut died for this. There is no going back.’

‘Of course we go on,’ Garel snapped. ‘but it galls me that our brothers fight on the surface while we spend hours wandering these accursed halls.’

Aergard frowned.

‘Calm yourself,’ he said. ‘It has only been sixty-eight minutes.’

Garel froze. ‘Not according to my chronometer,’ he replied.

It was Aergard’s turn to curse. For a brief moment, he imagined the two of them condemned to tread the obsidian halls for eternity, while outside, time spun on without them. Wars would be lost and won, and the Chapter would continue. Worst of all, they would remain dishonoured, forced to bear their shame until time showed them unwanted mercy and allowed them to die. For the first time since his elevation above the rest of humanity, Aergard experienced true despair. It would consume him, if he allowed it to.

He chose to deny it.

Aergard focused on his sword. The sword with which he delivered justice and fury. The sword he had sworn his oath upon. ‘Emperor protect us,’ he said, softly.

‘So that we might banish the darkness,’ Garel spoke the words of the prayer without hesitation, his fist held over his hearts.

‘And have the strength to bear His light.’

‘Wherever our duty may take us.’ Aergard and Garel spoke the final words together, before following the light bridge down into the abyss.

Some time after Aergard marked his twenty-third waypoint, the two Black Templars reached the heart of the structure. It was a chamber of rust and ruin, a hoard of broken things.

Aergard and Garel moved between pieces of disused machinery that had their innards exposed, like slaughtered animals. Cables trailed and snaked between them, connecting things that were never meant to be connected. What light there was bled from cracks in the ceiling. Tiny metallic insects scuttled everywhere.

A noise echoed in the chamber. Aergard motioned to Garel and they circled around the husk of a mining drill.

‘Throne of Terra,’ Garel whispered.

Beyond the machine graveyard, the chamber stopped being a workshop and started being a surgery.

At the far end of the chamber, the two Space Marines could see the hunchbacked necron creature, the one that called itself Kheprys, bent over a stone slab. As it worked it mumbled in its xenos tongue. On the slab, beneath its clicking, blood-flecked claws, lay Evrain. Most of his armour had been removed, not to mention a good deal of the skin and muscle beneath. If he was not already dead, he was dying.

On the floor beside him lay the Marshal’s standard.

Garel snarled.

Aergard put a hand on his shoulder. ‘We need to stop it from teleporting again,’ he said. ‘At any cost.’

Garel nodded. ‘At any cost,’ he repeated.

The two Space Marines burst from behind their cover, startling Kheprys.

It retreated from its workbench, clutching butchered scraps of Evrain’s holy armour. Cables trailed, still attached to the Space Marine’s body. They pulled tight as the necron backed away, keeping it tethered.

It blurted an irritated noise. In response, a massive mechanical creature unfolded itself from the dark spaces above them and dropped to the ground between the two Space Marines and their quarry, bladed limbs striking sparks from the stone floor. It reared on segmented legs and hissed.

‘Take it down,’ Aergard said.

‘My pleasure,’ Garel replied. He started to run, scaling the discarded machines to his right.

The creature was surprisingly fast for something of such great size. It thundered through the scrap. Aergard saw one of its bladed limbs punch straight through a sheet of reinforced plasteel. He threw himself forwards as the creature charged towards him, rolling underneath its bulk.

It screamed and stamped down, trying to pin him with its pointed limbs. The noise was deafening. Aergard brought his sword up and raked it across the creature’s underbelly. Sparks flew.

The creature reared back, bleating. It kicked out with one of its forelimbs, catching Aergard in the chest and sending him flying across the chamber. He landed on the shell of a machine, crumpling the metal framework.

Aergard dragged himself free, rolling onto the floor. His bolter was gone, the honour chains binding it to his armour snapped.

He looked up, winded.

The arachnid creature was lying in a crumpled heap, legs splayed out, still twitching. Garel stood on top of it.

‘Go!’ Garel managed, before plunging his sword into the back of the creature’s metal skull. It screamed and reared up, falling backwards and taking Garel with it.

Aergard had no time to check if his brother lived. He had to stop Kheprys before it escaped.

The hunchbacked necron had ripped the cables binding Evrain’s armour to his body from their housings. It clutched the plates to its chest, stepping back with jerking limbs, and

laughed, a popping and hissing sound.

‘I bested you. You fail!’ it said, raising its staff.

The orb at the crown of the staff began to glow. The darkness began to draw close. It was going to teleport.

Aergard threw himself across the chamber. He had to reach it before it teleported. It could not be allowed to escape. He roared in frustration.

The air charged with ozone.

A hail of bolt shells struck Kheprys in the chest, stitching across its body and hitting the staff. The staff exploded with a bellow of discharging power, taking half of the necron’s face and torso with it. The displacement of air knocked Aergard backwards. He looked around, dazed.

On the slab, Evrain was propping himself upright on one arm. Smoke curled from the muzzle of his bolter. His hand shook and his face was slackened with nerve damage.

‘You took your time,’ he managed, before he collapsed.

Aergard entered the Eternal Crusader’s observation deck.

Helbrecht was kneeling before the viewport. The stars looked on, dim and distant. At his side, an artificer was attending the new augmetic graft that replaced the hand Helbrecht had lost. Aergard could smell the caustic tang of worked metal and blood.

He approached, waiting to be acknowledged. It had been weeks since he’d seen Helbrecht. The Marshal had secluded himself in prayer and penitence since the slaughter on Schrödinger VII. That was what some were calling it, now. The Slaughter.

Such a grand title, for their greatest shame.

‘It is done, my lord,’ the artificer said, stepping back. The man bore the hint of a proud smile.

Helbrecht stood. He curled the fingers of his new hand closed.

‘My thanks, Darion,’ he said.

The artificer bowed low and retreated from the observation deck.

Aergard dropped to one knee as Helbrecht finally turned to face him.

‘My lord,’ Aergard said, ‘you summoned me?’

Helbrecht’s face gave nothing away.

‘Stand,’ he said.

Aergard did as he was bade. He was relieved to see the Marshal. Helbrecht had barely survived the duel with the Stormlord. Aergard suspected that only the will of the God-Emperor had kept him going long enough for the Apothecaries to get to him.

That, and hate. It came off the Marshal in waves.

‘You recovered my standard.’ Helbrecht said.

‘Yes, sire.’

Helbrecht nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, after a long moment of silence.

Aergard bowed his head. ‘Evrain did not survive,’ he said. ‘He never awoke from the healing sleep.’

Aergard had mourned his brother. He had prayed. It still stung no less to admit that he was dead.

Helbrecht said nothing, his expression unchanged. His augmetic fingers clicked quietly as he clenched his fist. ‘What of Schrödinger VII?’

Aergard met the Marshal’s eyes. ‘The planet belongs to the necrons. It is lost to us,’ he said.

Aergard remembered the human worker in the chapel. The pendant that she had pressed into Anguis’ hands. A symbol of faith.

‘We failed,’ he said.

Helbrecht nodded. ‘Yes, we did,’ he said. ‘I did.’

Aergard said nothing, surprised by the Marshal’s candour.

‘The sword I carried was ruined in the duel with the Stormlord. The blade shattered from point to quillion,’ Helbrecht said, looking out into the void. ‘It could not be salvaged.’ His face was drawn. Tired.

‘I had Darion craft this augmetic incorporating what was left of the blade,’ Helbrecht raised his fist. ‘We must all bear the weight of our failures. We will learn from this, and repent for it, but we must never forget it.’

‘Yes, lord.’ Aergard nodded, thinking of Thibaut’s blood on his hands.

There would be no forgetting any of it.

‘I would serve at your side, still, if you would have it,’ Aergard said.

Helbrecht nodded. ‘I would,’ he said.

Aergard bowed his head, feeling relief despite himself.

‘I need my honour guard at full strength,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Garel lives?’

Aergard nodded. They had both made it out of the necron structure, bringing Evrain with them, but not before rigging up what melta charges they carried. It would not have come close to destroying it, but even petty vengeance was better than no vengeance at all.

‘Good,’ Helbrecht said. ‘Think on who you would have replace those that we have lost. I would have your counsel in this.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘That will be all for now, brother,’ Helbrecht said.

Aergard could not walk from the chamber without asking the question that plagued him most.

‘What of the Stormlord?’ he said.

Helbrecht’s face was impassive. ‘When we are whole again, we will hunt it down.’ He put his closed fist to his chest. The augmetic caught the starlight, glinting.

‘And we will kill it.’

Yarrick: The Wreckage

David Annandale

Their fire drove us to shelter. The enemy was at the top of the ridge, dug in, behind cover, invisible. We were exposed. We had nothing to target. The las hit us hard. The night screamed with lethal energy. We lost three more squads before we made it inside the shell. Just ahead of me, a shot struck a pocket of gas. I ducked back, shielding my face from the heat of the explosion. Flames washed over troopers, melting rebreathers into flesh. The barrage drove us on, and I ran through smoke thick with the stench of burning corpses.

Sixth Company of the Armageddon Steel Legion’s 252nd Regiment went to ground. Our shelter had been a freighter once. Its provenance, its identity, even its shape, were long gone. I guessed what it had been by the size of the ruin, and by the eroding remains of its former self: the length and curve of the hull. The ship had been destroyed by its crash onto the surface of the moon. The wreck had been stripped of anything worth having, then had been mined for scrap metal. Now it rusted, its bones gnawed by the corrosive rains of Aionos. It had been reduced to a cyclopean, arthritic talon.

‘Lures,’ Sergeant Otto Hanoszek said to me as I caught my breath behind a wall of pitted iron. ‘Those damned ships were lures.’ He pulled off his rebreather and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his trenchcoat. He was a thin man, much younger than he looked, with a face in perpetual flush. He was greying, looked like a veteran, and commanded his squad like one, but was only a few years older than I was, and the mantle of commissar still felt new on my shoulders.

‘They were lures,’ I agreed. ‘And they worked.’

Hanoszek waved an arm, encompassing all of Aionos. ‘Not for the first time, either.’

He was right about that, too. I ducked my head around the tear in the hull and looked uphill. I hadn’t given up hope of gauging the location and size of the enemy forces. We needed better intelligence than ‘high ground’ and ‘many.’ At least a thousand, I guessed.

Night had fallen on Aionos. Its planet, the gas giant Kylasma, took up a third of the sky, and was still only half risen. A green smear through the drizzling clouds, it silhouetted the spires of the moon. They were twisted, broken shapes. They were the accumulated wrecks of thousands of ships, the centuries-old graveyard of the victims of the heretics we had come to purge.

‘Lures,’ I repeated. ‘So the attack on Statheros was one too. Lures to catch what?’

‘Us?’ asked Hanoszek.

‘I think so. But why?’

The incursion into the nearby Statheros System had been an atrocity. Three planetoid mining colonies devastated, their resources plundered, and everywhere the eight-pointed star of Chaos daubed with the blood of slaughtered civilians. Sixth Company’s frigate, the Castellan Belasco, was dispatched. We had pursued what we had thought to be a force no larger than a squadron of lighters to Aionos. We had made moonfall and descended upon what we had thought was an encampment. It had been just another decoy.

The rain worked its way down behind my cap and down my collar. Its slight acidity burned. The troopers were used to this and worse on Armageddon, but as the precipitation broke down the metal, it released combustible pockets of gas from the wrecks.

‘I hear you were on Mistral, commissar,’ Hanoszek said.

‘That’s right.’

‘Was it as bad as they say?’

I shrugged. ‘We had wind there instead of rain. Take your pick.’

He didn’t need to know any more. The wounds were still fresh. Some were still bleeding.

Las-fire streaked past my face as I pulled back. The sergeant grunted in surprise. ‘Some good shots up there.’

‘In that position, I should hope so,’ I said. ‘There is nothing impressive about their having the upper hand in these circumstances.’

Hanoszek laughed. ‘As you say, commissar. Of course, they also created these circumstances.’

He was right, of course. I liked Hanoszek. He had a clear eye for the battlefield and the lunacies of war. What might have sounded like misplaced admiration for the enemy coming from someone else was, with him, a simple acknowledgement of how things stood.

‘Then let’s see if the captain has something to say about changing them,’ I said. I had seen him move on towards the uphill end of the wreck.

‘Yes, commissar.’ His tone was noncommittal.

We clambered over heaps of broken metal and through the ghosts of the ship. Here and there, a bulkhead still projected sideways from the hull. Doorways without walls or rooms stood like skeletal sentinels. Along the way, we passed small groups of soldiers. Clad in their iron helmets and light-tan trenchcoats, they rested. Many were wounded. I was young, still feeling my way as a commissar, but I was no novice at war. I knew the challenges of this interlude. The relative safety after the punishing, unsuccessful fight was its own form of curse. During combat, there was no time to think of anything except the act itself. Now, in the limbo of inaction, when wounds were felt and when reflection was possible, was when thoughts of what might come next surfaced, and became apparent, and morale suffered. I stopped briefly to speak to a few troopers. I let them speak to me first.

I have known commissars who declare that there is no need to understand the soldiers who are in their charge. They say that it is enough to demand obedience to creed and mission. Perhaps it should be. But to understand the troops is to be better able to direct them. I sometimes think that the coldest commissars are fearful, though they would never admit this. They are afraid that if they get to know the soldiers as human beings, they will find it more difficult to carry out the more merciless aspects of their duty.

If this is so, they are cowards and a disgrace to our uniform.

So I listened to the troopers, and I spoke to them, trying to temper my response to the needs I heard. Where there was firmness of purpose, I gave encouragement. There were only two instances where I heard faltering that required discipline. Both cases, I noticed with some concern, were soldiers who appeared to be close to the captain. I had seen them drinking with him in the Castellan Belasco’s dining hall.

Context matters. So I had been taught, and so I had already learned, through hard lessons in the field. Context was why I tried, in those early days, to memorise the names of every soldier who fell within my remit. The day would come when that was no longer possible. I am pained by the thought of the anonymous thousands who, in later years, would die because of my decisions. I am pained, but not haunted. I know that if I had not made those decisions, the numbers would be infinitely worse. Context matters.

And on that day, on Aionos, I could still know all the names. I noted the problem cases, and a doubt festered.

We found Captain Jeren Marsec near the uphill end of the hull. He stood between two pieces of bulkhead that rose twenty metres above our heads. He was well under cover, but ahead of him was a large gap in the shell, wide enough for ten men to pass through. The other sergeants were there too, and a large number of troopers had gathered to listen. Marsec stood on a heap of refuse so all could see him. He was grinning. He could grin well. Though he had the flash, pride and handsome profile, he was no aristocrat. Before conscription, he had been a foreman in a Helsreach manufactorum. His natural charisma had carried him far. He was as popular with his superiors as he was with his subordinates.

‘So, Yarrick,’ he said when he spotted me, ‘ready to spoil the enemy’s little game?’

‘What does he think he’s playing at?’ Hanoszek muttered under his breath. I almost didn’t hear him.

I frowned. I didn’t mind the sergeant’s borderline insubordination. What I disliked was Marsec’s flippancy. He should show confidence in our ultimate triumph. But the confidence he radiated seemed to be based solely on his own self-admitted brilliance. It was perhaps true that, on the tactical level, we were engaged in a game with the cultists. But it was a serious one, and the enemy was winning. There was something in Marsec’s tone of voice that suggested he did not respect our foe’s skills. We had already been given ample evidence that we should.

Cheers greeted the captain’s question. Perhaps I was wrong. Hanoszek wasn’t happy, and some of the other sergeants were looking grim, but most of the soldiers around us hooted their approval of Marsec. He had, it was true, led many successful missions. So I swallowed my doubts for the moment and said, ‘I am always ready to ruin the day of a renegade, captain.’

‘Good.’ He pointed at the gap. ‘What do you see there?’

‘A way into the field of fire.’

He wagged a finger at me. That summoned a somewhat more nervous laugh from the troops. The commissar’s uniform is not well-loved. Nor should it be. It is meant to be respected and feared. Marsec’s little show at my office’s expense was expertly calculated to endear him even more to his company, but it was a brave soul who openly enjoyed mockery of that sort. ‘You lack imagination, Yarrick. I expected better of you. Where you see a death trap, I see opportunity.’

‘Oh?’ I grew uneasy.

‘The entire company is going to charge through that opening.’

My doubts about Marsec were twofold. In the first place, his very popularity was, I thought, a problem. He loved his troops, that was clear, and they loved him back. That was all very well, but I worried that the affection he felt would get in the way of making the hard choices that befell every command sooner or later. Would he be able to issue the orders that would lead to the sacrifice of some squads for the preservation of the rest of the company?

Secondly, and paradoxically, he was reckless. I believe this was because he was aware of his popularity. He wanted to be worthy of it. He wanted to give his troops glory. It is one thing to send soldiers to their death with the full knowledge that one is doing so, and of the necessity of this action. It is another to make a grand gesture with no thought of the consequences. And because his troops loved him, they would throw themselves after his dream no matter how unsound. There was a cult of personality growing around Marsec. That was dangerous. They always are. I still believe that today as I wrestle with my own.

‘He’s mad,’ said Hanoszek.

I silenced him with a look. I approached Marsec. At the base of his makeshift podium I said, ‘I wonder if you might explain a few details to me, captain.’ I kept my voice low, hoping he would take the hint. I had no desire to undermine his authority without sufficient cause.

He understood perfectly well. He remained where he was, and announced, ‘Commissar Yarrick is worried. He thinks I’m about to order a suicidal charge. Let me reassure you, comrades, I am doing no such thing. There is a risk. Of course there is. This is war! And without risk, there is no glory!’

Shouts of affirmation from the company. A bit muted, though. Hanoszek and I weren’t the only ones to see the obvious drawback of running straight into enemy fire.

‘I am in constant touch with the Castellan Belasco,’ Marsec continued. ‘We have the means to destroy this nest of rats in one swift move. We will present such a target, and such a threat, to our foes that they will be forced to respond in kind. They will mount a counter-charge, or they will have to concentrate their fire massively. Either way, they will be giving away their precise position. At that moment, the Belasco will strike with an orbital barrage. Comrades, are you with me?’

The roar was unequivocal. They were.

Marsec stepped down with the cheers still deafening.

‘So?’ he asked me. He had to speak into my ear and raise his voice so I could hear him. ‘What do you think, Yarrick?’

‘It’s a big gamble.’

‘Worth taking, though. We have to try something to break out of this box they’ve put us in.’

‘And if you’re wrong? If it doesn’t work? We could lose this war in this single action.’

‘We won’t,’ Marsec assured me. He clapped my back. ‘The rockets are ready to fly. The ship’s augurs almost have the enemy’s position. The problem is that those vermin are a bit too spread out, and under cover. We need to draw them out.’

‘We’re likely to do that,’ I conceded. I still didn’t like the plan. It felt wrong. Wars were rarely won by glamorous schemes.

‘So we shall!’ he said, delighted. He thought he’d won me over.

I was not convinced. Even so, I took my place at the front of the line as the company prepared to charge out of the hull. I would be coming out of the left-hand side of the gap. Marsec was in the centre. Hanoszek’s squad was a few rows back and on the right. The sergeant made a point of walking past me before joining his troopers.

‘What do you think, commissar?’ he asked. ‘Is this going to be a good death?’

His question was honestly meant. He wasn’t joking.

‘If this tactic achieves what the captain expects, then yes, to fall in this effort would be a good death.’

Hanoszek gave me a lopsided grin. ‘I already knew that. Do you think it will work?’

That was his true question: were the deaths going to be worth it? Was he about to die for a good cause, or in the service of another man’s ego? And I had answered him like a politician. I was a political officer. That wasn’t the same thing at all. Not if I could help it. So I gave a direct answer to his direct question. ‘I don’t know.’

His grin became broader. ‘Fair enough.’ He moved on.

‘The Castellan Belasco stands ready for our signal,’ Marsec announced a few moments later. ‘Warriors of Armageddon, forward!’

We charged out of the shelter and emerged halfway up the slope towards the ridge. On all sides, the corpses of the renegades’ victims loomed over us. We were storming up a valley of wrecked ships. Few bore any resemblance to what they had once been. They had become massive tombstones, designed by lunatics. Metal reached for the sky with twisted desire. There were jagged angles the size of habs. Rotting husks, broken cylinders, fragments of towers and tumbled superstructures stretched away forever. We were in the land of industry’s death.

I yelled my challenge at our enemies, daring them to cut me down. I raced with pistol drawn and sword upheld. I fired blindly into the night. And though I threw myself completely into the task of killing and survival, a part of my mind looked at the wider picture of two forces clashing in an ocean of wreckage and was dismayed.

The enemy did not return fire. There was no response at all to our attack. I stopped firing. Was anyone still there? We kept up the advance. In less than a minute, those of us at the front were almost at the ridge. I looked back. The totality of Sixth Company was now on the slope.

We reached the top. Before us was a landscape of exposed corridors and gigantic heaps of slag. There was no sign of the renegades. We stopped. If we advanced further, the footing would be treacherous and slow.

‘Captain?’ I asked. I knew we had fallen into another trap, but I couldn’t see what it was. Seconds were ticking by. With each one that passed, I cursed myself for failing to see what had to be done.

Marsec was just as confused. ‘Get me the vox!’ he yelled.

Trooper Versten ran up with the communications equipment. ‘I have the ship,’ he said.

Marsec grabbed the handset. ‘Come in, Castellan Belasco,’ he said.

‘We are here, Captain Marsec,’ a voice from the frigate crackled back. I moved closer to hear the exchange. ‘Are you in position?’

I didn’t recognise the speaker.

‘We are,’ Marsec replied. ‘But there’s no one here. Abort mission.’

‘We have you,’ said the voice.

We have you. What did that mean? Marsec stared at the handset, then at me. His face was blank with confusion. I’m sure mine was too. When the realisation hit, it couldn’t have taken more than two heartbeats after Marsec had received that answer. It was still too long. When I pick at this memory, I want to grab that commissar by the lapels and shake the young fool into action. How could he not see what was coming? How did he not realise the danger the moment he stared at that empty ridge?

My anger with my younger self is not rational. I realise this. It is powered by hindsight, motivated by my wish that I could have averted what happened next, and by other, later, greater frustrations. I have become much better at foreseeing disaster. But thanks to the stupidity of powerful men, I don’t necessarily have any better luck at heading it off.

So it took me those few beats. Even then I was still confused, but the presentiment of doom was strong. I knew enough to listen to it.

‘Take cover!’ I yelled. I plunged back down the hill. ‘With me!’ I didn’t worry about the protocols of the chain of command. I was obeying dire necessity. I ran in a diagonal path, abandoning the clear route of the slope to forge into the thickets of wreckage. It was slower going, but there was cover, and I had to get us away from where the enemy wanted us to be.

I glanced back. Marsec was among those following me. Another contingent was disappearing into the ruins on the other side of the path. Then a comet pierced the night. The orbital bombardment was coming, and it was aimed at us. The barrage bombs landed on the peak of the ridge. They were little more than large masses. But then, so are meteors. Dropped from space, their impact was devastating. The hill became a volcano. Tonnes of metal were vaporised or turned molten. An angry god hammered the ground, smashing it, reshaping it. Hundreds of little insects in human form died in an instant. I was running, and then I was tumbling, and then I didn’t know if I was on my feet or not. The world had become a riot of sense impressions, all of them too much, too loud, too painful. I kept moving. I didn’t know where I was going. As the night screamed, I barely even knew who I was. But if I stopped, I would die, and so would the soldiers who had followed me down the hill. That I knew. So I struggled on, buffeted by the monster sound, pursued by the heat of metallic lava. Behind us, the world flew upward in blazing fragments. Wreckage became ash. The air was choked with rust.

It ended. The thunder faded to the sullen crackling of flame and the groans of settling metal. After the blaze of the impact, night came back down, thicker and darker than before. It was difficult to breathe. I stood for a few moments, mind and body thrumming like a struck bell, trying to clear my head and understand where I was. The scrap heap that surrounded me was even more fragmentary than the hull we had sheltered in before. It was bits of framework and shards of bulkhead, piled every which way on top of each other. I felt as if I were viewing reality through a cracked lens.

I found the direction of the slope, reoriented myself, and looked for other survivors. We came together bit by bit, moving slowly back towards the centre of the bombardment. What was left of Sixth Company on this side of the wreckage began to cohere. Our losses were great. We were down by well over half our strength. I hoped, but didn’t dare expect, that there were some survivors on the other side of where the path had been.

We approached a transformed landscape. The closer we came to the point of impact, the more the wreckage lost all semblance of form. It was just vague shapes and angles now. There were still some big fragments, but for the most part we were moving between and over hills of scrap.

I found Marsec. At first he just followed me like a servitor. Gradually, he became functional again. He was a long way from leading, but he remembered his role well enough to be the visible centre around which the company could reform. There were a few dozen of us when we neared the crater. The soldiers had donned their rebreathers to better deal with the clogged air. I kept coughing up black phlegm.

‘They took the ship,’ Marsec was saying. His voice was hoarse. His eyes were full of a horror that was greater than the tactical disaster. He seemed to be trying to focus on something concrete. But his gaze flicked and flinched over every burned, mutilated corpse we passed. ‘They took the ship. How is that possible? We saw their fleet. They couldn’t take a frigate.’

‘They’ve been taking ships for centuries,’ I pointed out.

‘Civilian vessels. I haven’t seen any Imperial Navy wreckage here, have you?’

None that was recent, true.

Marsec didn’t wait for my answer. ‘How did they do it? They couldn’t have. But they did. How–’

He stopped as we passed a wide pool of congealing metal. Its heat baked our exposed skin. Heads and limbs of men and women poked up from the surface, silvery-grey statues of agony. There must have been at least fifteen dead in this location alone. Marsec’s face twisted. I saw a man who was experiencing guilt as a physical blow. He looked at me as if he would say something, but his personal horror was beyond his ability to communicate. I had no forgiveness to offer, and he didn’t seek it. His decision had brought this fate to the troops he loved, and he knew it. I nodded that I understood, and we moved on.

I wasn’t sure where we were going. It made a kind of sense to attempt to regroup close the point where we had been scattered. Beyond that, I had no ideas. I didn’t know where the enemy was.

The entire top half of the ridge had vanished. The barrage bombs had left two gigantic craters. Our initial charge had been to the north, and we now stopped at the edge of the western crater. It was deep, wide and unnatural. Something massive poked up from the bowl. It had been untouched by the explosions, which had simply brushed away the centuries of soil. It was the tip of a pyramid. The stone was black, with a green tinge. Its designs were complex, alien and completely unfamiliar to me. They were not Chaotic, that much I could tell. They were too regular. If anything, they spoke of a deathly, soulless order. Part of the formation of a commissar at the schola progenium was necessarily instruction in the enemies of the Imperium, their nature and kind. This was something new. It looked like a tomb. And if, as seemed to be the case, this was just the peak of the structure, and its lines continued underground, it was a tomb the size of a city.

One of the survivors was Versten, and he had been trying the vox every few seconds as we reassembled what we could of the company. We were down to not much more than platoon strength, almost all regular infantry. We had lost all of our heavy weapons, and had precious few grenade launchers and flamers remaining.

Perhaps because we were on higher ground now, or perhaps because the air was beginning to clear, he finally made contact with another operator. The sliver of good news shook Marsec out of his lethargy. There were other survivors, led by Hanoszek, and they had reached the lip of the other crater.

‘What are you seeing there?’ Marsec asked the sergeant.

‘There’s a… captain, I’m not sure what it is.’

‘That’s all right. There’s one here too.’

‘What are your orders?’

‘Hook up with us here. We will hold our position until–’

The las streak missed Marsec’s head by a hair’s breadth. We dropped to the ground. The single shot was joined by dozens. They were coming from the other side of the crater, and to our left. At the same moment, Hanoszek’s voice started yelling that they were taking fire.

‘Back down the slope.’ Marsec shouted into the vox unit. ‘Full retreat!’

But as we turned to start down, that path was closed to us too. With a roar, something dropped down from the clouds, and landed at the base of the slope. It trapped us, and it revealed how the ship had been taken. It was a Thunderhawk.

‘We’re saved,’ a trooper gasped. His name was Rohm, and I made a mental note to terrorise him thoroughly, should we survive this day.

‘We are not,’ I hissed. ‘Look at the markings.’

The air was still dusty, but even from several hundred metres away, the gunship’s livery was unmistakable: two scythes the colour of magma, crossed over a background of night, between them a cluster of burning skulls. I didn’t expect the trooper to know the beings who fought under that emblem. I did expect him to know that this design belonged on no flag of the Emperor’s Adeptus Astartes.

The xenos who had built the pyramid in the crater were a mystery to me, but I knew of the Chaos Space Marines who descended from the Thunderhawk’s assault ramp. They were part of the store of dark knowledge that it had been my responsibility to learn. The need to punish ourselves with this dangerous lore had been impressed upon me and my fellow students in an address given by the Lord Commissar Simeon Rasp. ‘You are the guardians of the Guard,’ he had told us. ‘Vigilance requires knowledge. Some knowledge requires faith to be withstood. Hold fast to all three.’

I did so now. ‘Those are Harkanor’s Reavers,’ I said.

The squad of five massive figures began moving up the slope. Their armour was a deep black, broken up by lines that glowed like flame. As they drew nearer, it seemed to me that those lines were not markings. They were too irregular. And they seemed to be moving.

‘We cannot fight them,’ I said. Not so reduced in number, and under harrying fire.

‘We can’t stay here,’ Marsec said.

I waited for him to issue orders. He did not. If we paused much longer, we would be finished. I turned my head to look down into the crater. There was one route left to us. ‘Some of those doorways are open,’ I said, pointing at the pyramid.

Marsec grunted in surprise. He hesitated. I gave him a second longer, thinking that even that might be a mistake. Then he called out, ‘We go down!’

The fire from the heretics intensified as we descended the slope. We shot back, but they were still attacking us from behind strong shelter, and our only sense of where they were came from the flashes of las. We lost several more troopers on the way down. Not all of them died right away. But we could not stop.

There was an open vault at the base of the pyramid. We made for it. As its bulk loomed over us, an ancient night made of stone, my instincts cried out to stop, to run another way, to try anything other than go inside. I didn’t listen. There was no choice. I forced myself to run even faster as I hit the threshold. If I displayed reluctance, my example would be ruinous. So I plunged in, calling out as I did, so all would know that I was still alive. Marsec was right behind me, and once I was inside, he came too, bellowing something that wasn’t coherent but sounded enough like an order to get the company to follow.

Once we were all inside, we paused. Our eyes adjusted to the darkness. It wasn’t total. The green designs in the smooth stone glowed like near-dormant lumen strips. They showed that we were in a corridor that carried on in a perfectly straight line for some distance. We could see just enough to advance, if that was what we had to do. Marsec posted a watch at the door while Versten and I contacted Hanoszek’s contingent. I had to warn him about the Traitor Space Marines.

‘We saw them,’ he replied. They had taken refuge in the other pyramid. ‘What are the orders?’ he asked.

A good question. I suspected that Hanoszek knew that it was. ‘Stand by,’ I told him, and had Versten fetch Marsec. When the captain arrived, I filled him in. ‘The sergeant wants to know what action he should take,’ I said, and offered the handset.

Marsec stared at it, then took it. As he did, a call came from the entrance. ‘Enemies approaching!’

That seemed to be the additional jolt Marsec needed. His voice was sharper, more in the present moment, when he spoke to Hanoszek. ‘Any sign of hostiles, sergeant?’

‘Yes, captain. They’re coming down the slope.’

‘Go deeper into the pyramid,’ Marsec said. ‘Use the space as best you can. So will we. When we make it out again, we’ll link up with you.’

There was a pause. Then Hanoszek said, ‘Captain, there are lights in here. These structures might not be quite dead.’

‘They must have been buried for thousands of years. Whatever was in them most certainly is dead. We have no time to do anything else, sergeant. You have your orders. Go!’

‘Understood.’

Marsec passed the handset back to Versten. He looked as if he wanted something from me. I nodded. That seemed to satisfy him. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

He led the way down the corridor. He sent no scouting party ahead. He was right. We had no other options. Our best hopes at this moment were speed and luck. And yet, I felt that he would have charged into the darkness even if there had been time to feel our way more carefully through possible enemy territory. I wondered if he really had learned anything from the disaster we had suffered.

We moved down the corridor. After a hundred metres, it branched left and right, while straight ahead was a steep ramp. We went down. The ramp switchbacked a hundred and eighty degrees, and deposited us in another wide corridor. This one had many forks along its length.

We could hear voice and the tread of many boots echoing down from above. The heretics had entered the pyramid.

‘I want an ambush point,’ Marsec said as we jogged down the corridor. Either our eyes were finding it easier to see in the ghostly green half-light, or it was growing stronger.

‘Plenty of intersections here,’ I pointed out.

He shook his head. ‘Main tunnel’s too wide. After the surprise, they’ll still be able to use their numbers.’

He was right. I didn’t bother to mention that it was not just the numbers we had to worry about. I was relieved to hear him thinking like a warrior again.

We hurried down to the end of the corridor, and followed another ramp down to the next level. We were rushing to put more distance between us and our pursuers, to gain a little bit more time, but I was uneasy about venturing so far into the xenos construct. The risks behind us were bad enough. If we ran into something worse ahead, we could lose the entire company.

The third level down had even more branching corridors. We were in a maze. Though we had to take a side passage, it would be very easy to get lost once we were off the main path. The thought must have crossed Marsec’s mind, too. He took in all the choices and hesitated. We didn’t have long. I could still hear the heretics coming. Our lead had only grown by a few seconds at most. Worse, I could distinguish, above the general echoes of the pursuit, the heavy tread of something very large. The Traitor Space Marines were in the pyramid.

Trooper Lommell said, ‘With your permission, captain,’ and he barely nodded before she ran forward, ducking down one corridor, then another. The third seemed to offer what she wanted.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘We should set up an ambush down here.’

‘Why there?’ Marsec asked, but he brought the rest of the company forward.

‘It’s very tight, and it gives us a usable back exit. I ran with a gang in the underhive of Tartarus on Armageddon, sir.’ She carried the marks of her background. Her face was scarred with slashes in a cracked-glass pattern. When I had first seen her, I had assumed I was looking at an injury. It was not. It was a survival tactic in Tartarus. She had sliced her face herself, as a warning to her foes of how far she was willing to go. ‘This environment isn’t that different,’ she said. ‘It’s just cleaner.’

‘Good. Give us your expertise, trooper.’

She took us a few twists deeper into the labyrinth. The passageways were all empty, silent. They were dead. Except for the light. Why was it present? Whose purpose did it serve? The pyramid felt like a tomb, yet we had seen nothing that looked like markers, and what need did a tomb have for illumination?

I managed to keep track of our turns. Lommell set us up at a point where the narrow corridor we had taken had two intersections ten metres apart. Those branches, narrower still, fed on either side to other halls that would take us back to the main one. We had a perfect kill zone, and an easy retreat.

‘Tartarus gave you a fine education,’ I whispered to her as we waited for our foe.

‘I didn’t think so at the time.’

‘We rarely do.’

We made just enough noise to give away which branch we had taken. Marsec sent a few soldiers on to create the illusion that we were still on the move, further along this passageway. The renegades took the bait. They rushed into our trap, laughing at the sport they were having.

This was my first look at them. In the dim green light of the pyramid, I couldn’t see many details, but I had a sense of degraded human beings, wearing patchwork uniforms, no doubt stolen from their multitude of victims over the years. Their corruption had a hundred shades, yet it also had a unity. Across all the faces were runic tattoos and scarification. All the designs, however varied and however hard to make out, were an affront to the soul. They were, in the end, a single thing: the brand of Chaos.

The cultists were charging in without discipline or caution, which was madness, doubly so in a structure that must have been as alien to them as it was to us. I regarded them with contempt as they crossed the kill zone.

Just before we opened fire, I saw one of the Harkanor’s Reavers loom out of the darkness. He brought with him his own terrible light. The designs on his armour that had puzzled me stood out clearly. They were cracks in the ceramite. Sorcerous heat spread fissures in the armour as if it were an eggshell. Baleful flame shone through. Then the cracks would seal, and new ones would appear. He was a mass of cooling lava given the shape of a man. That such a monster had once been human was beyond belief.

There was little chance that our ambush would take him down. We had no choice but to try. Culling the numbers of his followers would be a meaningless gesture if he still came after us. I prayed that Marsec, positioned in the shadows opposite me, realised this truth and waited.

He did. The forward elements of the cultists moved beyond the kill zone. The Reaver entered it. Marsec waited a few seconds more, letting another dozen renegades escape, waiting until the Traitor Space Marine was close to the centre of the trap. Then he gave the signal by firing his laspistol.

We opened up. Enfilading fire filled the space of the corridor. The las was so bright, it was as if we had brought day to the tomb. The heretics caught in the web of energy beams went down in seconds. The concentrated fire was such that they didn’t have a chance to retaliate. Their comrades ahead doubled back. They tried to mount a counter-attack, but by staying out of our field of fire, they had no angle on our positions in the side passageways. We had reversed the situation that we had faced outside. Now we were the ones under cover, ripping our foes apart.

Then there was the Reaver. He stood in the middle of the barrage with no more concern than if it were a rain shower. He raised a flamer and launched a stream of burning promethium into the nearest passageway. Screams filled the corridors. A corner of our ambush failed.

Lommell trained her fire on the Reaver’s flamer as he fired into the passageway one down from ours. The weapon exploded, drenching the Chaos Space Marine in liquid flame. From the grille of his helmet came an inhuman snarl. He staggered back a step. He wiped at the promethium. It seemed to annoy him rather than harm him, but he could not see with fire engulfing his head.

From the other end of the ambush, Trooper Rohm fired his grenade launcher. The frag struck the Reaver full in the chest. It blew out the flames, but rocked the monster to the core. He roared in anger and pain even as he yanked a bolt pistol from his thigh and fired a wide barrage of shells. They didn’t need accuracy. Any that hit one of our positions killed the troopers in the front line.

Where the grenade had hit, the Reaver’s armour was a molten mass. Instead of cracks, here was a wide gap, blazing with eldritch fire. The ceramite was slow to reform. I leapt out of the passageway in a forward roll, staying low, beneath the spray of bolter shells. I came out of the roll in a crouch. I was right at the Reaver’s feet. I aimed my bolt pistol at the roiling, burning chest, and shot the Traitor Space Marine point blank. Energies from the materium and the warp collided. The explosion knocked me flat. The Reaver stood there with a great void where his chest had been. His ribcage poked out, burned and broken. Where his hearts and lungs should have been there was now nothing. The fire went out. The monster’s arms hung limp, and then he toppled backward.

The cultists faltered. We turned our attention to them. They had thought to trap us between themselves and their superhuman master. Now they were caught, exposed, in the narrow corridor. We cut them down. I moved, crouching low, back to cover, and added my fire to the assault. I was exhilarated. We all were. The ambush had worked better than we could possibly have hoped.

As the last of the heretics fell, I glanced back, and my heart sank. The enemy had been cautious after all. A second force, larger than the first, was approaching. With it came another Reaver.

We were outnumbered, we had lost the element of surprise, and our cover was useless against power armour and a flamer. If we fought, we would die.

‘Go!’ Marsec shouted.

We bolted down the side passageways, taking the route Lommell had mapped out for us. Our only advantage now was speed. We knew where we were going. We sprinted, once more putting distance and time between us and the enemy. As I took corners at high speed, I blinked away the effect of the glowing designs. It would have been easy, at this pace, to follow their lines straight into a black wall. I turned into a wider corridor, and took it back to the main hall. Our portion of the company linked up. Marsec looked towards the way back up, but there was the sound of more pursuit coming from that direction, so we plunged on deeper into the pyramid.

We went down three more levels. The heretics were close. We didn’t have time to set up another ambush. We kept moving forward, even when we reached a level that was ominously different. It still had a maze of corridors along its periphery, but the centre was a massive block. Its rectilinear designs were the most complex yet, and their light was the brightest, and most deathly. The main hall widened out before the monolith, and became a series of parallel tunnels that dropped beneath it. When we reached the tunnels, we paused. Their slope was steep, almost a fall. In their depths glowed a green mist.

And there was something moving. We could hear what sounded like the shifting of weights. Worse, we heard footsteps. The light flickered, as if something had passed between us and the source. There were other noises too. They were uncomfortably like voices. They spoke no recognisable words, and they could not come from any living throat. But down there, something walked and spoke. Whatever had built this pyramid was not done with it yet.

We couldn’t have been perched at the edge of that descent for more than a second or two. That was long enough for us to hear and see all that was necessary. Marsec looked at me. We were trapped, yes. But we had one option. Perhaps it would be enough.

‘We hide,’ I said.

Marsec nodded. He raised his arm, waved his finger in a circular motion, giving the order to scatter. There were plenty of side corridors within reach, and we took them, racing for their shadows where we crouched down, motionless, silent, waiting for the arrival of our pursuers.

Throwing the dice on the fate of Sixth Company.

The Steel Legion is a proud fighting force. It has every reason to be so. It did then, too, though its time of greatest glory and most painful sacrifice, which would also be mine, still lay over a century in the future. This, now, was not a moment relished by any of the soldiers of Sixth Company as we hid in the dark and hoped that the enemy passed by. Doing so grated against my self-worth as well. But the Steel Legion has not earned its triumphs by fighting blindly, or without sense. We had a chance of victory here, and to seize it meant swallowing pride. That requires its own form of courage.

We waited. I watched, as close to the exit of my refuge as I dared, as the cultists arrived. Even with the damage we had done, they were still three times our number. The Reaver towered over them. They advanced to the edge of the tunnels. The Reaver barely paused long enough to look ahead before he led the renegades down the central tunnel. I listened to their war cries as they descended. A minute later, the cries became screams.

The first screams were of fear. Then, as I heard what sounded like energy discharges of some kind, I heard screams of agony. The Reaver roared. Guns fired. The sounds of alien energy intensified. The green glow became brilliant, a strobing, slashing light. The screams stopped as if severed. The Reaver’s bellows filled with shock and pain. Then they too, fell silent.

Marsec stepped back out of the shadows. I joined him. We stared down into the tunnels. There was still movement down there, still the alien sounds. For the moment, at least, they weren’t moving upward.

Marsec whispered, ‘What’s down there?’

‘Something we are not equipped to fight, captain. But we can report its existence.’

‘Agreed.’

Moving quietly, limiting himself to hand gestures alone, Marsec signalled our withdrawal. We maintained silence for the first two levels. When it became clear that the pyramid’s denizens weren’t following, and that the last of our enemies had gone down to their annihilation, Versten went back to work with the vox, trying to raise the scattered elements of Sixth Company.

Marsec called him up to the front with us. ‘Anything?’ he asked.

‘No answer from Sergeant Hanoszek, sir. But I received a transmission from Sergeant Brenken on the Castellan Belasco. She and some armsmen have freed themselves and are fighting back. She says that the occupying force is small. The Traitor Space Marines were the ones who captured our ship, and they left behind only a minimal group of cultists. They’re armed, of course, but…’

‘But it wouldn’t take much to dislodge them,’ I finished.

‘That’s what she thinks, commissar, yes.’

I gave Marsec a significant look. Our Valkyries, some distance from the ridge, should still be intact. Even with our numbers reduced to not much more than two squads’ worth, we could retake the ship.

‘Good,’ Marsec said. ‘We’ll link up with Sergeant Hanoszek. With our company reunited, we shall purge the scum from our decks.’

I frowned. He was assuming that Hanoszek’s contingent still existed. Two Reavers had come after us. Unless some were mounting guard outside the pyramids, which seemed unlikely, that meant the other three were pursuing Hanoszek and his troops. Those were formidable odds. Marsec was basing his strategy on an assumption for which we had no evidence. I was uneasy, but decided to say nothing until we had reached the surface.

As we were climbing out of the crater, Versten managed to get through to Hanoszek’s vox operator for a few seconds. The other fragment of Sixth Company was being pressed hard, and driven deeper into the pyramid. There was no question of their being able to set up an ambush. The heretics and the Reavers were upon them. They could not break off.

‘Send a message that help is coming,’ Marsec said.

‘Belay that, trooper,’ I told Versten. To Marsec, I said, ‘Captain, a word.’

I expected him to be furious at my intervention. Instead, he seemed eager to talk, as if it was important to him that he bring me about to his perspective. We left the troops at the lip of the crater, and moved down the slope a short distance to speak behind a rounded heap of congealed slag.

‘We cannot rescue them,’ I said.

‘We have to try.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘we are duty-bound not to. Such an attempt would be doomed. You know that as well as I do. We would then be leaving a frigate of the Imperial Navy in enemy hands. That would be an unforgivable failure.’

‘I have already failed my troops once this day,’ Marsec said. ‘I won’t do it again.’

‘You will if you follow this course. They will all die.’

‘I have to try.’

I looked at him steadily. He did not blink. He knew exactly what he was saying. He knew the consequences. His ego had led us to this pass. He understood this, and sought redemption. But we didn’t have the luxury for redemption. We needed victory. Before me stood a good man. The Imperium needed him to be something more, though. It needed him to be a good officer. Instead, he was the ruin of one. He was, in this moment of crisis, proving himself unable to make the truly hard decision. He was throwing that responsibility onto me.

‘I cannot allow you to jeopardise this mission,’ I told him.

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘No, you can’t. But you cannot make me abandon my troops.’

I pulled my pistol from its holster.

Marsec gave me a sad smile. He got down on his knees. ‘Do what is necessary, Commissar Yarrick.’

‘Why are you forcing my hand?’

‘Stop me or let me do what I must.’

I put the muzzle of the pistol against his forehead. He closed his eyes. Peace suffused his features. I felt a grimace contort mine. I knew what I was doing was correct. I have had to use this ultimate sanction against officers more often than I care to count. Each instance is a tragedy, a necessity whose causes are so unnecessary. But never before or since have I encountered a soldier who accepted my judgement with such grace. I hope I never will again.

The hard decision was mine, as was the harder action. Silently, I cursed Marsec for this moment that I would have to live with for all my years to come. I curse him still. He was, even then, still not fully honest with either of us. He was seeking a martyr’s end as redemption for his failure. In this way, he turned away from the hard decision. He made it mine instead. Mine the choice, and mine the even harder action.

So be it.

I pulled the trigger.

I marched back to the company. A horrified silence had fallen over it. ‘We make for the landing site,’ I said. ‘We are retaking the Castellan Belasco.’ I didn’t mind the gazes, whether averted or hostile. They couldn’t add to the burden I was already carrying, or to the further weight I was about to shoulder.

‘Get Hanoszek,’ I told Versten. ‘Don’t stop trying until you do.’

We had reached the base of the slope when Versten passed me the handset. It was hard to make out what Hanoszek was saying. His words kept being cut off by what sounded like static, but I knew to be weapons fire. He was asking for help.

‘Sergeant,’ I said, ‘this is Yarrick. We cannot provide assistance. The ship is being held. That is the key to this mission’s success. Do you understand?’

More explosions and cries in the background. Then, ‘Yes.’

‘Is there any way you can bypass the enemy?’

‘No. We’ve already lost half our strength. They’re backing us down a tunnel. Commissar, there’s movement down there.’

I closed my eyes for a moment, hating what I was about to say. ‘Sergeant, go deeper. Head towards that movement.’

Another pause. I didn’t think it was only due to the fighting. ‘Commissar?’

‘What is down there will kill the enemy. Sixth Company will be victorious.’ Again, I asked, ‘Do you understand?’

There was no pause this time. ‘I do.’

‘The Imperium thanks you, Sergeant Hanoszek.’

‘This is simply our duty, sir.’

He would have made a fine officer.

‘I will remain on the vox,’ I told him. ‘All the way.’

‘Thank you.’

We had no more exchanges after that. He left the channel open. I heard the sounds of the end. I kept my promise, and stayed present, bearing what witness I could. I was there as we reached the landing site, and boarded the Valkyries. Hanoszek and his portion of the Sixth fought well and hard and as long as they could, luring the enemy inexorably to disaster. The fight was still going on as we reached the frigate, and the immoral, leaderless rabble that occupied the bridge was confronted with the anger of the Steel Legion.

I was barely aware of our victory on the ship. All of my attention was focused on the terrible victory inside that pyramid on Aionos. I was there to hear Hanoszek, in mortal fear but still fighting, cry, ‘Throne, what are they?’

He would receive no answer. None of us would for many years to come. Years of blessed ignorance.

But on that day, I still sought the pain of knowledge. I forced myself to learn the cost of my decision. I listened to the transmission until the sounds of battle ceased. I listened for almost an hour after that. I listened as the reclaimed Castellan Belasco prepared to leave the system.

I listened to the hollow, hissing remains of the hard choices.

The Eagle’s Talon

John French

///SAMPLE FROM EAGLE’S TALON VOX FRAGMENT (VII).///

///PLEASE REVIEW AND CONFIRM RECORDING CLARITY BEFORE ACCESSING FULL ARCHIVE.///

TH-144: <<Chokepoint breached. They are coming through!>>

GA-739: How long until they are past you?

AR-502: <<Commander Gammus, this is Arcad. Their auto-defences are back online. Advance on target stalled.>>

TH-144: <<This is Theophon - chokepoint one has failed. Pulling back to chokepoint two. They are going to be into prime arterial corridor in six seconds.>>

AR-502: <<They are behind us...!>>

GA-739: All units, this is Gammus. I am cutting prime arterial corridor. Charges firing in five, four, three, two... Detonate.

TH-144: <<Detonation good. Prime arterial corridor closed. That should slow them down.>>

GA-739: Theophon, how long until they bypass the wreckage?

TH-144: <<Best guess - one hundred to one hundred and fifty seconds, commander.>>

GA-739: Arcad, are you at the bridge atmosphere control?

AR-502: <<We have heavy resistance, commander... we... Brother... We are...>>

GA-739: Arcad?

TH-144: <<This is Theophon, chokepoint two reached and holding.>>

GA-739: Arcad, what is your strength and status?

AR-502: <<Commander, we...>> ///TRANSMISSION TERMINATED.///

TH-144: <<They are on us. By Dorn, there are too many of them! We cannot hold this position!>>

GA-739: Arcad, what is your strength and objective status?

TH-144: <<Commander, this is Theophon. Chokepoint will be overrun in thirty seconds.>>

GA-739: Arcad?

TH-144: <<He is gone, Gammus! What are your orders?>>

GA-739: Arcad!

TH-144: <<We are losing this, brother! There is no other choice. If we do this, then it must be now.>>

///RECORDING CLARITY CONFIRMED. PROCEEDING.///

///ACCESSING FULL RECORDS DESIGNATED “EAGLE’S TALON”.///

///AUTHORISATION ACCEPTED.///

///RETRIEVING INITIAL FILE COMMAND NOTATION…///

///FILE ACCESSED.///

///PRAISE BE TO THE MACHINE. PRAISE BE TO THE SEEKER OF SECRETS.///

One hundred and ninety-seven days, ten hours, seventeen minutes and thirty-one seconds from the first strike of the Battle of Tallarn, the macro-transporter Eagle’s Talon impacted onto the surface of the planet. The effect on immediate ground operations on the southern continent was profound, and has been recorded extensively elsewhere. However, the incident’s role in the course of the wider engagement is difficult to judge, the Battle of Tallarn still a recent event in the ongoing civil war.

At the time, the fall of the Eagle’s Talon was thought to be the result of action by an element – or elements – from the loyalist Imperial Army warships within the Tallarn System, or a catastrophic failure of the ship’s own protocols.

Both of these presumptions are false.

The vox file attached to this record constitutes signals captured from a Seventh Legion strike force onboard the Eagle’s Talon prior to its atmospheric re-entry. Signal capture was accidental, and the result of passive operations in place throughout Perturabo’s forces. This record, like the means by which it was obtained, remains unknown to all outside of our Legion.

The strength of the Imperial Fists strike force is estimated to have been three squads, designated as Gammus, Theophon, and Arcad. All three squads were of recon configuration, with light armaments only. Infiltration onto the vessel is believed to have been by gunship and micro hull-breach. Mission command was embedded within the strike force as part of Squad Gammus.

///ACCESSING EAGLE’S TALON INCIDENT, VOX FRAGMENT (I).///

///RECORD PROCEEDS. PRAISE THE MACHINE.///

TH-144: <<Squad Theophon at waypoint one. Zero resistance, no signs of detection.>>

GA-739: Confirmed, Theophon.

TH-144: <<Proceeding to arterial corridor beta.>>

GA-739: Theophon, hold position.

TH-144: <<We are exposed here, commander. The plans were not accurate. There are four spurs off this junction, and the marked gantries have been removed. There are cutting torch marks on the walls and floor. We have no cover, and this ship is waking up to drop a lot of armour onto the surface. If anything comes through, we will be compromised.>>

GA-739: Understood, Theophon. The order stands. Hold your position.

AR-502: <<This is Arcad. Conveyor shaft breached. Grav-chutes active. We are ready to ascend.>>

GA-739: Ascend, Arcad. Hold at the second waypoint.

AR-502: <<For Dorn, and the Emperor. Squad Arcad at waypoint two. High levels of crew and servitor activity. Zero resistance, no signs of detection.>>

GA-739: Confirmed, Arcad. Theophon, you may proceed.

TH-144: <<By your word, commander.>>

AR-502: <<This ship is vast.>>

GA-739: You should have familiarised yourself with the layout, Arcad. I hope you will not be surprised by other details.

AR-502: <<“Awe is the gift of the eye and the ear, not the mind or the cold numeral.”>>

GA-739: Heh, I suppose I can hardly dispute the words of the primarch. This ship is in the top displacement class for a vessel of its type, but it is not unique.

AR-502: <<It is impressive though. Even to the likes of you, commander.>>

GA-739: The likes of me, Arcad?

TH-144: <<I think Sergeant Arcad is meaning to respectfully use this tactical communication channel to imply that you are... long in the tooth, commander.>>

GA-739: I do not take compliments from my subordinates, Arcad. Even if our units have a reputation to maintain.

TH-144: <<Squad Theophon entering arterial corridor beta now. It is in use, commander. Floor vibrations. There is a tracked unit moving nearby, but out of visual.>>

GA-739: Closing or moving away?

TH-144: <<Moving away. Vibration is reducing.>>

GA-739: Can you reach the hatch to the power conduit?

TH-144: <<Yes. If we move now.>>

GA-739: Proceed, Theophon.

TH-144: <<Do we need to do this? We can discard this objective and advance on the primary->>

GA-739: Proceed to the power conduit and set the charges, Theophon.

TH-144: <<Aye, commander. Squad Theophon proceeding to secondary objective gamma.>>

GA-739: Confirmed, Theophon. Arcad, hold your position. One step at a time, brothers.

AR-502: <<By your word, commander.>>

///RECORD ACCESS PROCEEDING.///

The Imperial Fists’ infiltration onto the Eagle’s Talon occurred simultaneously with a major but unnamed engagement in the centre of Tallarn’s southern continent. This engagement was dominated by Titan and Knight-class war machines and, at the time, it was the largest since loyalist reinforcements had arrived in-system. Given the weight and power of the forces involved, it was possible that if either side achieved a decisive victory then they might be able to drive an overall tactical advantage, and then claim victory on Tallarn as a whole.

The Eagle’s Talon was the largest of a number of transports positioning to drop forces onto the southern continent. Had it succeeded, it could well have tipped the battle in favour of the traitor forces.

///ACCESSING EAGLE’S TALON INCIDENT, VOX FRAGMENT (II).///

///RECORD PROCEEDS. THE MACHINE DREAMS. THE MACHINE KNOWS ALL.///

TH-144: ///VOX ENCRYPTION ACTIVATED./// <<Squad Theophon at port-side power conduit, designated secondary objective gamma. Zero resistance, no signs of detection.>>

GA-739: You are using a direct link, Theophon. Is there a problem with your vox equipment?

TH-144: <<The vox is clear, brother.>>

GA-739: Then proceed to complete the objective, and return to the approved mission frequencies.

TH-144: <<I wanted to speak without Arcad hearing...>>

GA-739: The time for that has passed, Theophon. You have made your misgivings known. I have heard and understood your concerns, and deemed them of less weight than the needs of this operation. Proceed with the secondary objective. That is my will.

TH-144: <<If the primary mission fails... will you do it? You will detonate the charges?>>

GA-739: If this ship completes a full tactical deployment onto the surface, the battle below will be lost.

TH-144: <<And if that battle is lost?>>

GA-739: Theophon, this is not the time.

TH-144: <<If it is lost, then what will happen? Will the war for Tallarn end? Will the Imperium be lost? Or will everything simply continue as it was before?>>

GA-739: Victory is made by every detail, every battle great and small. Never forget that, brother. No fight is insignificant, and we cannot know what deeds the fate of all might rest upon. All we can do is fight, when we can, with everything we have.

TH-144: <<And if we detonate a charge on this power conduit it will cut the ship’s engines and push it into the planet’s grasp. It will hit the surface. The immediate blast will flatten everything across half the southern continent. What of our allies down there? What of the battles they fight? Fire from the sky does not care who it burns.>>

GA-739: Most forces loyal to the Emperor are already in shelters beneath the surface.

TH-144: <<One crack, just one, and the poisoned air of Tallarn will get in, and then... And then there will be a shelter for nothing but corpses.>>

GA-739: There are always prices to be paid in war, brother.

TH-144: <<I know, Gammus. I remember. Phall is far away, but I have not forgotten what survival costs. But it is for us to bear that cost, not mortals. This is our war, a legionary war. Our kind began it, and we should pay the price for our own victories.>>

GA-739: It is not what I intend, brother. If the primary objective is met, then none of this will be necessary.

TH-144: <<And if that fails?>>

GA-739: Then this ship falls.

TH-144: <<And those below?>>

GA-739: No one lives on Tallarn, brother. Only the dead who have yet to go to their graves. Place the charges as planned, Theophon, detonation vox-keyed to my control.

TH-144: <<By your word, commander.>>

///RECORD ACCESS PROCEEDING.///

The taking of a large spacecraft is not simple task. The number of troops involved to successfully control or purge a population of thousands – even tens of thousands – of human crew are similar to those needed to conquer a conurbated city. Combined with the issues of fighting in a confined and profoundly hostile environment, boarding missions are well named in the Imperial military doctrine as zone mortalis. The ground of death.

The most common method of taking a ship is the targeting of either the primary or secondary bridge. Without effective command elements, even a warship is just a lump of metal drifting in the void. Because of this vulnerability, most command points are the most heavily defended locations on a ship. To take or destroy a bridge by boarding action is normally a matter of slow attrition by specially equipped troops, or a lightning fast strike by an elite force with overwhelming strength.

To try and take a ship by infiltration is… unusual. The actions of the Imperial Fists on the Eagle’s Talon indicate a lack of suitable forces, but also a degree of imagination that we have not previously credited to the sons of Dorn.

As in all things, assumption is the seed of ruin.

///ACCESSING EAGLE’S TALON INCIDENT, VOX FRAGMENT (III).///

///RECORD PROCEEDS. THE MACHINE IS ALL. ALL IS THE MACHINE.///

AR-502: <<Commander Gammus, this is Arcad.>>

GA-739: What is your situation, brother?

AR-502: <<We have a problem. We are moving through the rear spinal levels, but the plans were not accurate, commander. The layout is totally different. We have had to divert, and the only option was to use the vents in the upper crew decks. We are right on top of the enemy.>>

GA-739: What is the enemy strength?

AR-502: <<Uncertain, but substantial, and they are at battle readiness. They may be human, but a lot of them are naval armsmen, plus there are hundreds of mustering tank crew. We came close to compromise three times. We are holding position in a cavity above the companionway marked as six-seven-gamma-two on the original plans. As far as I can tell.>>

GA-739: There is... a sub-arterial passage leading to the primary target, not... ten metres from your current location. Can you shuttle your squad across the passage to it?

AR-502: <<Enemy activity is constant. They move without pattern, and the longest gap has been six seconds.>>

GA-739: Can you work your way back and take a different route?

AR-502: <<We can’t go back. A crew muster moved into the last location we came through, and... And there is another problem.>>

GA-739: Tell me.

AR-502: <<There is a Mechanicum presence in this area, at least cohort strength. Thallaxii and Myrmidon troops, and Legio Cybernetica maniples. They are on full alert, sensors primed.>>

GA-739: Your suggestion, sergeant? Speak plainly.

AR-502: <<First we need a diversion, commander. Something to get their attention, but not jeopardise the mission. Something that could just be a severe accident.>>

TH-144: <<We could blow the hoist on the main port conveyor. Drop it down fifty decks. Potentially a lot of damage, but they should not realise it was deliberate for at least fifty to seventy minutes.>>

GA-739: My squad can reach the conveyor shaft from our current location. Go on, Arcad. What is the next step?

AR-502: <<Even with the diversion, we are going to need to eliminate two of the crew before we can proceed.>>

GA-739: That is a substantial risk. Why?

AR-502: <<Because there are armsmen posted within five metres of the vent we would have to drop through.>>

GA-739: You have planned both kills?

AR-502: <<Yes. Sniper shot for the first, through the grate. We drop through at the same time. Take the second, pick up both corpses, take them with us.>>

TH-144: <<The guards’ absence will be noted, even if the kills are clean.>>

AR-502: <<Correct. I estimate that we will have no more than seven minutes until their absence is discovered.>>

GA-739: You will have to reach the primary objective inside that time, and destroy it. You can do that?

AR-502: <<Yes.>>

GA-739: Very well, Arcad. We will proceed as you suggest.

AR-502: <<Thank you, commander. You honour me.>>

///RECORD ACCESS PROCEEDING.///

The preoccupation with honour amongst many of the Legions is a factor which can only be seen as a weakness in the current climate. In the time of the Great Crusade, it had merit in bonding warriors together to a single purpose, and maintaining the ideals for which the Crusade was supposedly being waged. Now it can be seen only as a flaw in those that still carry it and, more importantly, an advantage ripe for greater exploitation.

What function does honour serve, other than to create hesitation when there should be swift action, and to create doubt when there should be none?

The following is a pointed illustration of this flaw.

///ACCESSING EAGLE’S TALON INCIDENT, VOX FRAGMENT (IV).///

///RECORD PROCEEDS. THE MACHINE SEES ALL. EVERY DEED IS ILLUMINATED IN THE EYE OF THE MACHINE.///

TH-144: ///VOX ENCRYPTION ACTIVATED/// <<You are worried, brother. I could hear it in your silence after Arcad spoke of honour.>>

GA-739: We are in the middle of a mission, and you think this is the best use of a personal vox-channel?

TH-144: <<I am your brother in blood and bond, Gammus. Need I list the battlefields that we shared, to earn the right to question if my commander harbours unspoken doubts? I do not think I need request that right. It is mine already.>>

GA-739: Yes. Perhaps it is.

TH-144: <<You need not doubt Arcad, brother. He is young, that is all.>>

GA-739: He is not. No one remains young in this war.

TH-144: <<He never knew the Great Crusade. He is one of the first of us who have only ever known war with ourselves. In time all Space Marines will be like Arcad. That he still thinks of honour in such times should give you hope.>>

GA-739: There is no honour in what we are doing. Only necessity.

TH-144: <<I know some amongst the Legion who would say that our kind have no place claiming honour. Shadow-dwellers and assassins, some call us.>>

GA-739: We fight our battles in silence, not dishonour. If the primarch believed otherwise then the recon squads would never have been adopted.

TH-144: <<You seem to make an argument against your own worries, brother.>>

GA-739: We are old, my friend, and we were old when we went into the shadows to make war...

TH-144: <<But Arcad is no aspirant, brother. He was blooded at Phall. I have seen few better as a squad leader, even among those with decades more experience.>>

GA-739: But from that battle he came to us - to a war against our enemies, fought without ever looking them in the eye. This should not be the cradle in which the young learn to fight. It should be where the old come to die. [beat] Where we come to die.

TH-144: <<A more melancholy way of seeing ourselves, I cannot imagine.>>

GA-739: The chances of success are slim, brother. The chances of survival even lower. If we die here, who will carry our names back to the Temple of Oaths? Will there even be a Legion to remember us? And if there is, what type of warriors will they be?

TH-144: <<I cannot help wondering brother, if it is not Arcad’s honour that worries you, but your own.>>

///RECORD ACCESS PROCEEDING.///

We can deduce that the Seventh Legion operation on board the Eagle’s Talon had as its focus one of the crucial command and control systems of the ship, most likely the communications trunk that linked the bridge to the stations which enacted its orders. If the communications on a ship of such size can be cut, then it leaves the whole vessel frozen in action – the bridge unable to give commands, and the crew and systems without commands to enact. In a living creature we might liken it to severing the nerves connecting brain and body, leaving both alive but paralysed, the mind locked within its skull.

Such a plan requires a high degree of precision and nerve, but these qualities have never been in doubt when it comes to the Imperial Fists. There is, though, the self-evident truth that the more precise and delicate an operation, the more it is prone to error.

And once disrupted, the chances of mission collapse expand at an ever-accelerating rate. As we know well, the boundary between disaster and triumph is a razor-cut line.

///ACCESSING EAGLE’S TALON INCIDENT, VOX FRAGMENT (V).///

///RECORD PROCEEDS. THE MACHINE IS ETERNAL. THE ETERNAL IS AN EXPRESSION OF THE MACHINE.///

GA-739: Squad Gammus in position. All units confirm readiness and location.

TH-144: <<Theophon in place. Holding at chokepoint on prime arterial corridor.>>

AR-502: <<Squad Arcad. We are ready.>>

GA-739: On your word, Arcad.

AR-502: <<Confirmed, commander. Detonate conveyor shaft charges on my mark. Standby. Detonate.>>

TH-144: <<Alert sounding on port decks.>>

AR-502: <<Corridor beneath our position cleared. Squad standby to engage. Execute. Targets down, moving to->>

GA-739: Arcad?

AR-502: <<Thallaxii and automata engaging us. Returning fire.>>

TH-144: <<Full alert active. Blast doors sealing on our level!>>

AR-502: <<We are pinned down on a gantry complex at... junction five-one-zero-seven.>>

TH-144: <<Commander, permission to close chokepoint?>>

GA-739: Permission denied.

TH-144: <<The ship’s auto-weapons are activating. Commander->>

GA-739: Arcad, advance on the primary objective.

AR-502: <<Receiving fire from two arcs. Correction, three arcs. Effective squad strength at four.>>

GA-739: Move for the objective. You must reach it.

AR-502: <<We will not reach it. The auto-turrets will rip us in half.>>

GA-739: No, you will reach it. I will give you an opening.

AR-502: <<How is that possible? Half the ship is trying to kill us.>>

GA-739: Because my squad is about to hit the servitor controls for your sector.

///RECORD ACCESS PROCEEDING.///

The advantages of a force operating covertly against a more powerful enemy are few, but chief amongst them are the twin elements of surprise and confusion. If one individual can visit destruction across a large area in a short space of time, then that individual is not merely one in the minds of their foes – they are many. With planning and aggression they can seem to be everywhere.

Though the attached records are only auditory, it can be simply deduced that the three squads of the strike force were spread at different locations through the decks of the Eagle’s Talon. Squad Arcad, having taken casualties and under fire, had been attempting to reach the mission’s primary objective. Squad Gammus, the command squad for the mission, is located in the machine spaces of higher decks. Squad Theophon is standing ready to cut the primary route by which enemy reinforcements can move into Arcad’s location.

///ACCESSING EAGLE’S TALON INCIDENT, VOX FRAGMENT (VI).///

///RECORD PROCEEDS. KNOWLEDGE AND THE MACHINE ARE ONE. THE MACHINE IS THE CHILD OF KNOWLEDGE.///

AR-502: <<Fire intensifying, commander!>>

GA-739: Detonating!

TH-144: <<Auto-defence weapons are reported as down.>>

GA-739: Arcad, move now!

AR-502: <<Squad Arcad mov- Argh!>>

GA-739: Arcad! Arcad, what is your status?

AR-502: <<Squad strength now two.>>

GA-739: You are wounded.

AR-502: <<I don’t need my left arm to run. Enemy forces are at our heels.>>

GA-739: Estimate time to target.

AR-502: <<Two minutes. But we will not make it if they keep coming.>>

GA-739: Theophon, close the chokepoint.

TH-144: <<By your word. Squad Theophon engaging now. Full fire. Cut them down!>>

AR-502: <<Target in sight. Forces are pursuing us. Turning to engage.>>

GA-739: Keep moving!

TH-144: <<This is Theophon - we have enemy forces closing through our fire.>>

GA-739: Strength, and direction?

TH-144: <<All of them, and every direction!>>

///RECORD ACCESS PROCEEDING.///

At this point, the probability of the mission succeeding without the loss of all forces was zero-point-zero. This fact would have been known to the Imperial Fists, but it would not have inhibited their ability to function. They, like all of us raised by the gene-seed of our sires, are not bound by the weaknesses of lesser beings.

They would have known that they would not survive. The only question would have been whether or not they could still succeed.

///TIME ELAPSED FROM PREVIOUS RECORD: 00.00.24.///

///ACCESSING EAGLE’S TALON INCIDENT, VOX FRAGMENT (VII).///

///RECORD PROCEEDS. THE MACHINE IS ALPHA. THE MACHINE IS OMEGA.///

TH-144: <<Chokepoint breached. They are coming through!>>

GA-739: How long until they are past you?

AR-502: <<Commander Gammus, this is Arcad. Their auto-defences are back online. Advance on target stalled.>>

TH-144: <<This is Theophon - chokepoint one has failed. Pulling back to chokepoint two. They are going to be into prime arterial corridor in six seconds.>>

AR-502: <<They are behind us!>>

GA-739: All units, this is Gammus. I am cutting prime arterial corridor. Charges firing in five, four, three, two... Detonate.

TH-144: <<Detonation good. Prime arterial corridor closed. That should slow them down.>>

GA-739: Theophon, how long until they bypass the wreckage?

TH-144: <<Best guess - one hundred to one hundred and fifty seconds, commander.>>

GA-739: Arcad, are you at the bridge atmosphere control?

AR-502: <<We have heavy resistance, commander... we... Brother... We are...>>

GA-739: Arcad?

TH-144: <<This is Theophon, chokepoint two reached and holding.>>

GA-739: Arcad, what is your strength and status?

AR-502: <<Commander, we...>> ///TRANSMISSION TERMINATED.///

TH-144: <<They are on us. By Dorn, there are too many of them! We cannot hold this position!>>

GA-739: Arcad, what is your strength and objective status?

TH-144: <<Commander, this is Theophon. Chokepoint will be overrun in thirty seconds.>>

GA-739: Arcad?

TH-144: <<He is gone, Gammus! What are your orders?>>

GA-739: Arcad!

TH-144: <<We are losing this, brother! There is no other choice. If we do this, then it must be now.>>

GA-739: Arcad, can you hear me? Arcad, you have to reach the target.

TH-144: <<Chokepoint two breached. Falling back into ventilation system. It is now, Gammus. The primary target is lost.>>

GA-739: If Arcad can reach the target-

TH-144: <<Arcad is gone! If you don’t blow the power conduit now, then we will have failed.>>

GA-739: I will not do it, Theophon. You were right. We do not slaughter our own allies for victory. I am a son of Rogal Dorn. I will not be the bringer of such annihilation.

TH-144: <<Then we die here, in failure.>>

GA-739: We all die as we were meant to.

TH-144: <<No. We were made for a different age, brother. It was not me that was right. It was you. If we fail even for an instant, even in the smallest of things, then there will be no future.>>

GA-739: Better to be no more, than to betray what we once were.

TH-144: <<The choice is not yours, Gammus. The charges are not keyed to your command. I thought I would stay your hand if we reached this point. But now the hand that will fell this ship will be mine.>>

GA-739: Brother, no!

TH-144: <<And this is not victory, or betrayal. It is sacrifice.>>

TH-144: ///TRANSMISSION TERMINATED.///

GA-739: ///TRANSMISSION TERMINATED.///

///FILE ERROR.///

///VOX CAPTURE RECORD ENDS.///

The Eagle’s Talon fell from Tallarn’s sky. The blast wave from the initial impact travelled over three hundred kilometres. Winds of over a thousand kilometres an hour spun debris from the ground, and scattered into the burning air. The engagement on the southern continent was ended in an instant. Earthquakes split the ground, and tidal waves surged across the sludge-clogged seas. Nucleonic fallout from the reactor failure rose up and spread across the atmosphere.

On any other planet this one event would have doomed all life to a slow death, smothered beneath a blanket of ashes. But this was Tallarn, and the dead planet could not die twice.

The consequences of this one incident are difficult to judge. Would events have unfolded differently if these few scraps of valour and foolishness had taken a different shape?

Perhaps.

For our purposes, it is enough to know that it happened. Will this split in character repeat within the Imperial Fists? Can advantage be taken from it? The questions remain open, but one thing can be certain – for this intelligence to be useful to our Legion it must remain unknown.

I tender my advice to you, my lord father, that once you have reviewed this record you consign it to oblivion.

///INITIATING RECORD PURGE.///

///ENTER THE WORD OF OBLITERATION TO PROCEED.///

///PURGE PROCESS COMPLETE.///

///SEEKING ALL ARCHIVE RECORDS DESIGNATED “EAGLE’S TALON”…///

///NO RECORDS FOUND.///

///THE MACHINE KNOWS ALL. ALL IS KNOWN IN THE MACHINE.///

The Shadow of the Beast

L J Goulding

It had become habit, Hornindal realised, to stand before the great lancet ports of the observation deck and measure his breathing against the urgent thrum of the ship’s engines. The adamantium null screens were locked firmly in place, so he could see nothing of the void beyond. Moreover, his eyes were closed.

He gripped the forward rail with both hands, his boots planted squarely on the deck beneath him. Tension gritted his teeth and made a taut rod of his spine.

Habit. Nothing more. It served no purpose.

Even had he been able to see beyond the crystalflex ports, it was unlikely that the sight would have satisfied his desire – nay, his demand – for haste. Warp space was tricky and dangerous stuff, and rarely gave any sense of real forward momentum; depending on the prevailing currents, it might seem to him as though the Xenophon were utterly becalmed. Or worse still; travelling sideways, or in reverse.

Immortal and beneficent Emperor, grant us speed enough to answer this call.

Hornindal wanted to feel the wind upon his scalp, the crush of inertia pulling him back as they hurtled onwards. He wanted the reassurance that they were making the best possible speed. He wanted to see it with his own eyes.

And since he could not, he stood alone on the shielded observation deck and imagined all of these things. He needed that distraction. He had not slept in a long time.

He knew that it was only right and proper that he be burdened so; Hornindal stood apart, both philosophically and oft-times literally. He was the bedrock of his brethren; the presence of the Emperor’s guiding light made flesh. He was the example to which they all might aspire. He would not, therefore, demonstrate feelings of doubt or uncertainty, nor give voice to any such concerns. They would arrive in time. Of course they would arrive in time, by His grace.

We are His sword, we are His shield. His benevolence. His wrath.

The vox-bead hung loosely from Hornindal’s ear – though he knew that the Chapter serfs of the small crew were among the best in the fleet, he could no longer listen to the comm-traffic. They worked diligently, burning the ship’s reactor white hot in their attempts to coax more speed from the engines, yet to his transhuman ears their mortal prattling made them sound… inefficient. Amateur. Unworthy of the duty that might soon fall to them, if his most dire projections were proven to be accurate.

It had been almost a year since Captain Theodosios had taken the Fifth Company out onto the periphery – astropathic reports of unrest and civil disobedience to the galactic south-east had prompted their noble Chapter Master Thorcyra to make a show of force, hoping to restore order before it could grow into any real rebellion. But as the weeks turned into months and more desperate calls began to come from across the sector, Thorcyra himself had taken his honour guard and the First and Second Companies into the north, towards the stricken worlds of the Saphir Cluster.

It was as though the Eastern Fringe was erupting into madness, and to those who had witnessed such things before, it was a grim portent indeed. When the final, garbled communication was received from Theodosios and the Fifth, a general recall was issued to the entire Chapter spread throughout the Ultima Segmentum.

‘Sons of Sotha, return home with all haste.’

The entire Chapter. Every last battle-brother, every last serf and retainer.

Not lightly would they be summoned back. Not lightly would Chapter Master Thorcyra have his warriors abandon the myriad crusades and conflicts to which they had been set. As Reclusiarch, Hornindal had been engaged in the liberation of the reliquary world of Egottha, and in his fiery rhetoric he had sworn that this was the gravest duty to which the Scythes of the Emperor could be called. Would Thorcyra now make a liar of him?

It was true that the enemies of the Imperium were many, and strong, and while he and his brothers had nev–

A tremor ran the length of the Xenophon’s hull, and Hornindal’s eyes snapped open. He felt a slight rise in the note of the engines.

The lumen strips on the observation deck flickered and went out, followed by another tremor. With a series of creaking judders, the ship began to list to starboard – the drunken roll of a rudderless wetland skiff.

Without thinking, he replaced the vox-bead in his ear.

‘Shipmaster Kaeron, report immediately.’

No response. Only a cacophony of frantic exchanges. Warning chimes. Tinny, distorted screams.

The Navigator. The Navigator was dead.

An almighty bass rumble shook the deck, echoing through the tortured superstructure, and klaxons blared. The heavy doors ground shut, sealing the chamber and the various other compartments of the ship, and Hornindal felt a familiar electric pressure in the base of his skull as the crew made an emergency jump back into realspace.

He gasped, sensing the unclean touch of the warp as it slithered away from his mind and off into the ether, before being almost pitched from his feet by the ship’s sudden deceleration. Natural laws reasserted themselves, though it took him only a moment to recover, and he threw back the deep hood of his robe.

His vox-bead crackled.

‘Lord Reclusiarch, to the bridge!’ came the shipmaster’s voice. ‘We’re moving to evade hostile… objects.’

The twin slaved servitors at the helm chattered wordlessly as they made correction after correction, binaric cant tumbling from their withered lips and only occasionally slurred by ropes of drool. Since they were almost completely immobile in their wired thrones, their increased vocalisation was the only way to gauge the speed of their actions and reactions. For all their vacant, slack-jawed appearances, their internal systems were processing the manoeuvres at incredible rates.

The howl of proximity alarms was deafening in the enclosed space. As the null screens slowly retracted, Kaeron bellowed his orders to a crew that were trying hard not to be transfixed by the horror blooming in the darkness before them.

‘Take us between them! Hard to port, hard to port!’

Behind the command dais, Sub-lieutenant Goss stood bathed in the ruddy glow of the bridge’s emergency lighting, a data-slate gripped tightly under his arm and his mouth agape.

‘Holy Terra,’ he muttered. ‘What are they?’

The shipmaster whirled around to face him.

‘Deck officer. Return to your post immediately,’ he barked over the din.

Another minor impact reverberated through the lower decks, and Goss snapped back to attention. He thrust the data-slate at Kaeron and reached for the edge of his tactical console, hauling himself through the ship’s weakened gravity.

‘Someone call up the system charts. I need local cartography, right now.’

The main bulkhead to the bridge opened with a swirl of equalising pressure, and Goss saw the robed giant Demetrios stride through. The Chaplain made straight for the central dais, but stared all the while out through the armoured viewports before the helm. His eyes were wide and unblinking.

Not in alarm, but in pure, unbridled hatred.

Where Goss and the rest of the bridge crew might be gripped by fear, this mighty hero of the Chapter was filled with a righteous indignation. It was clear enough in his fiery glare and the grim set of his jaw – what right did these monstrosities have to exist in the Emperor’s own universe, let alone to present a direct threat to a ship of the Adeptus Astartes?

As the stars wheeled beyond the frontal ports, the things hung in the void – great organic medusae, each the size of a large hab-block and trailing sickly tendrils hundreds of metres long that grasped at the frozen nothingness. Their livid bodies were bloated and bulbous, ridged with what looked like horned chitin, and yet they each pulsated with an obscene internal rhythm. Even as Goss and the other crewmen looked on, the closest of the things convulsed spastically and swept its tendrils out in a flailing arc, which only narrowly missed the Xenophon’s bladed prow as she banked away.

The helm servitors were running at the limits of their programming merely to avoid each new collision as the things drifted closer. There were thousands of them, and precious little clear space between.

‘Void-born filth!’ Demetrios spat, gripping his rosarius tightly in one hand and pointing defiantly through the main viewport. ‘Shipmaster, ready all weapons.’

Kaeron did not take his attention from the data-slate.

‘My lord, we are too close to obtain a firing solution. I’m working on–’

‘Too close?’ the Chaplain interrupted him. He stalked around the shipmaster’s command throne, gesturing out with a broad sweep of his fist. ‘With all respect, Kaeron, we’re right on top of them! Open the voidlock and I could smite them myself.’

Kaeron held up the data-slate, though Demetrios regarded it coldly. ‘With all due respect, my lord, that is precisely why we must not open fire.’

‘Explain yourself. The Emperor’s will demands that we end these abominations.’

‘Our auspex is still clouded, but short-range scans would suggest that these constructs contain a highly volatile atmosphere within their bodies. Explosive even. If we launch torpedoes or fire the main batteries then I am confident that we could easily destroy them, but the resulting blast would tear this ship apart. Each one of them is almost as wide around as the Xenophon is amidships.’

As if to illustrate his point, the ship soared beneath another raft of tendrils which slithered and twitched over her starboard flank. The contact rang dully through the superstructure, a slew of sensor vanes breaking free of their mountings and clattering against the Xenophon’s armoured skin before they tumbled away into the darkness.

‘And so you allow these unspeakable things to caress our hull, shipmaster?’ Demetrios growled. ‘I will not tolerate this sacrilege.’

Goss glanced over the data scrolling down his console screen. His heart was pounding in his chest.

‘Master Kaeron, the objects are beginning to close in on us. It’s like they’re trying to block our–’

‘Power down the engines.’

All three of them turned to the open bulkhead portal, and Goss saw Reclusiarch Hornindal hunched down beneath the reinforced lintel. He was staring out at the bloated constructs, a look of grim acceptance on his face, almost as though he had been expecting to find just such a nightmare waiting for them.

‘Do it now. They are drawn to the heat and motion.’

Kaeron nodded, and brought the vox-hailer to his lips. ‘This is the shipmaster. Cut main thrust immediately.’ He called out to the enthroned servitors. ‘Helm, set a final escape vector. Short correctional bursts only.’

The pair halted their burbled cant and spoke in eerie mechanical unison.

‘Compliance.’

The vibration of the engines through the deck fell away to almost nothing, and Kaeron silenced the alert klaxons. The Xenophon careened onwards, seeking any gap through which they might make their escape.

Seemingly in response, one of the constructs pulsated one last time before detonating like a gigantic fleshy mine in the void. The blast hurled out cartilaginous shrapnel and slathers of bio-acid in all directions, in a kilometre-wide burst of green flame that licked hungrily at their void shields and rocked the ship from side to side.

Hornindal stepped in behind the shipmaster’s throne. Even as the Xenophon dropped in a slow spiral through the encroaching swarm, he did not let his eyes fall from the grasping, heaving things that reached out towards them as they passed.

‘Shipmaster Kaeron, bring us clear. We must send word to Sotha.’

Kaeron turned to him. ‘Of course, Lord Reclusiarch. It is…’ He paused, appearing unsure whether to speak the words aloud. ‘It is the Great Devourer, is it not?’

Demetrios rankled at the mention of the name. Hornindal merely nodded.

‘Aye. The xenos have returned. Of this alone, I am certain.’

Goss started at the sudden chime of his vox-link, and he realised that he had been holding his breath for several long moments. He listened for a moment. ‘Master Kaeron, I have a report from the sergeant-at-arms. His team cannot gain entry to the Navigator’s chambers. Her killer has likely barricaded himself inside.’

Hornindal shook his head.

‘There is no killer. None but the Navigator herself.’

Another of the giant mines detonated off to their port side, taking out three more in a rapid chain of linked explosions, but the Xenophon had slipped beyond their reach.

‘My lord? Do you mean to say that the Navigator took her own life?’

Ignoring Kaeron’s query, Hornindal placed his immense hand on Goss’s shoulder.

‘Sub-lieutenant,’ he said, grimly. ‘Have the sergeant’s team secure the choir chambers. The astropaths will also be at risk.’

‘At risk from what?’ Kaeron demanded, rising from his seat.

‘See for yourself,’ growled Demetrios, gesturing to the frontal ports.

Cries of dismay and horror spread across the bridge. Goss envied those crewmen who laboured below decks, those who would be spared the sight.

As the Xenophon approached the edge of the vast, living minefield, the kilometre-long Hunter-class destroyer was cast into the shadow of a monster – a true terror of the deep, like the leviathans of legend. It clawed at the void fore and aft with great tentacular limbs many thousands of metres in length, spines running the length of its segmented body and trailing clouds of unwholesome vapour.

‘A hive ship,’ said Hornindal. ‘I had hoped never to see another in my lifetime.’

Lesser vessels clung remora-like around the beast’s great fanged maw, clearly visible even at such immense distance. As the Xenophon’s auspex pulled clear of the minefield, thousands of smaller sensor returns chimed across the board. The space around the hive ship was alive with xenos activity.

Kaeron sank back into the command throne. ‘The void…’ he murmured. ‘It crawls.’

Straightening, Hornindal looked to Demetrios.

‘Brother-Chaplain, call the squads to arms.’

Deep within the belly of the Xenophon, more than thirty Scythes of the Emperor had been billeted for the return journey to Sotha. The Chapter dormitories were sparse and functional, as befit the ethos of the Adeptus Astartes. Each warrior was assigned only a sleeping pallet and an arming post. Their empty suits of power armour would stand silent vigil over them on the rare occasion that they entered a full sleep-state, their weapons lying clean and freshly oiled beside them. The scent of incense and lapping powder hung in the air, though it failed to mask the heady aroma of transhuman hormones and acrid sweat that followed them no matter how often they bathed.

Where the human crew filled their own bunk spaces with personal effects and Imperial devotionals, the Space Marines knelt in silent prayer upon the bare floors. Where the Chapter serfs might seek distraction, recreation or sleep during the long hours of the night watch, their masters sparred relentlessly and ate only sparingly, like the ascetics and penitents of monastic tradition.

Many months ago, they had been dispatched across the sector to Egottha, where the bones of Segas, the Chapter’s first honoured Chaplain, had lain in state for centuries. Reclusiarch Hornindal had ignited their faith and led them down to the surface of the contested planet, only to receive word from Sotha of the general recall on the very eve of battle. Like a bolt pistol primed and ready to fire, the Scythes had been holstered once more without unleashing their righteous fury upon the foe.

So it was, that when Chaplain Demetrios summoned his warriors for combat, they were only too ready to respond.

Three full squads now stood assembled in the marshalling hall, in an interlocking sickle formation with armourer serfs scurrying between them. Thirty of the Chapter’s finest, their yellow-and-black battle-plate gleaming in the chamber’s flickering light; casting giant shadows upon the deck.

It was in the shadow of these giants that Milus Ogden felt that he had lived his whole life.

As the Xenophon’s sergeant-at-arms, he and his team had been summoned to the hall along with their Space Marine masters, though it had felt almost like a courtesy. An afterthought. As if they would not also be required to fight and to die, when the time came.

They had abandoned their efforts to break into the Navigator’s chambers, though he had left a pair of his men to watch over the quaking, bleating astropaths in the chantry. At Shipmaster Kaeron’s command, the psykers had attempted to establish communion with noble Sotha, but as they had opened their minds to the warp they began shrieking and wailing, prostrating themselves upon the deck and begging for deliverance from the insidious alien presence that overwhelmed their thoughts.

Even as Ogden stood in the shadow of the Chapter, so now did the shadow of the beast hang over them all. It had blinded them, and silenced their cries in the darkness. Most chillingly, it was possessed of an undying, insatiable hunger, the haggard chief astropath had assured him in no uncertain terms.

It meant to devour every last one of them.

The arched bulkhead doors at the head of the marshalling hall slid open on heavy motors, and Reclusiarch Hornindal entered with Demetrios and a handful of robed Reclusiam serfs. Though their faces were bare, the two Chaplains were decked out in their ebon plate, Hornindal also framed with a great ceremonial cloak of ochre velvet embroidered with the Chapter’s twin-scythe emblem. The thud of their armoured boots upon the deck rang throughout the chamber; every one of the assembled Space Marines stared ahead with impassive ruby helmet optics as they passed, though Ogden could feel the sense of expectation in the air.

Hornindal wasted no time on ceremony or introductions.

‘Brothers. We exited the warp just over twenty-seven minutes ago, approximately six and a half days short of our destination, somewhere between systems in the vicinity of Artaxis. It is my belief that in answering the Chapter’s recall we have encountered the vanguard of a new tyranid hive fleet within Ultima Segmentum, and that their malign psychic presence is responsible for the sudden death of our Navigator.’

Though the Scythes of the Emperor remained characteristically stoic, a few murmurs ran through Ogden’s security officers. He glared sidelong at them, a terse reminder that they stood under the gaze of their masters – Chaplain Demetrios in particular was known to have little patience for ill-disciplined serfs.

‘Though I no longer have any doubt that the xenos’ arrival is in some way linked to the recent troubles along the Eastern Fringe,’ the Reclusiarch continued, ‘this craven, scattered deployment of their forces does not fit with previous models of tyranid fleet activity. The alien is cunning. It learns from its defeats. It already knows that it could not conquer the glorious Imperium with a singular frontal assault, and so now it seeks an alternative.

‘The shipmaster and his officers assure me that no logical trajectory could bring this hive ship and the accompanying swarm so far into the subsector, either from Saphir or the Eastern Fringe regions, without encountering at least some Imperial resistance along the way. Therefore we must assume that the wretched xenos have divided their forces, seeking to harry us along many different fronts and spread their foul influence as widely as possible. They have spawned a vast spore-minefield to blockade the system. Their psychic shadow is growing.’

Ogden felt a curious mix of horror and anger at those words. Though the tyranid menace of Hive Fleet Behemoth was already long vanquished before even his great grandfather had entered the indentured service of the Scythes, whispered tales had spread from battlefronts throughout Ultima Segmentum and gone on to become the stuff of legend. As a child, his cruel siblings had terrified him with stories of the unseen, multi-limbed xenos creatures that they insisted lived in the tunnels beneath the hab-centre and would gladly feast upon the flesh of soldiers and little boys alike. On many a cold Sothan night, the young Milus had cowered beneath his blanket and started at every imagined noise in the darkness – a far cry from the stern officer who now wore the heraldry of the Chapter with pride.

There was something else, though. Perhaps a more primal fear.

It was akin to the revulsion he felt when even a harmless domestic arachnid would scuttle across the floor of his quarters – the irreconcilable hatred that humanity had nurtured for non-mammalian life since the dawn of time. If that arachnid could master interstellar travel and demand an empire of its own, where then might its predatory gaze fall? What ‘foul influence’ might it exert over the worlds of man?

Ogden steadied himself. He forced his attention back to the grim-faced Reclusiarch, who seemed to tower above even his Space Marine brethren as he spoke.

‘In issuing the general recall, Chapter Master Thorcyra likely summons us to defend the Chapter’s territories to the galactic east from the xenos incursion. However, his eye may have been diverted away from the far greater threat that we have uncovered, here and now – based upon our current position, Shipmaster Kaeron has calculated that our noble homeworld of Sotha already lies within the projected engagement zone.’

Only now did the assembled Space Marines visibly react, with stifled curses and cries of defiance as their tight ranks faltered.

‘Stoke your hatred, brothers!’ cried Demetrios, his gauntleted fist raised high. ‘Save it for the bastard Devourer!’

Many of the mortal serfs were far less restrained in their outcry, and Ogden found himself joining them. Among other less coherent threats that echoed in the chamber, he hefted his lascarbine above his head and vowed the death of the entire tyranid race.

It was unthinkable. Sotha could not fall.

The world was the ancestral home of the Chapter, true, but for many of those present – human and posthuman alike – it was also their birthplace, and for the rest it was at the very least the home of their blood-kin.

In spite of the uproar, Hornindal calmly took up his crozius arcanum from the robed armourer standing ready beside him. With a simple gesture, he ignited the weapon’s crackling power field and held it defiantly aloft, bringing the hall to silence once more. When he spoke again, Ogden noted the old, familiar flicker of restrained zeal in the Reclusiarch’s voice.

‘Brothers, praise be to Him-on-Terra – you and I are of the same mind. We will not allow the hated xenos to lay even a single claw upon our home world! Forewarned, the Scythes of the Emperor will repel any foe, and Chapter Master Thorcyra will lead us in driving the damnable hive fleets from the face of the galaxy forever!’

Cheers, and cries of ‘For Sotha! For the Emperor!’ erupted from the assembly. Chaplain Demetrios bared his teeth in something like a grin, and donned his skull-faced helm before approaching the squads to begin his battle ministrations; first Brother-Sergeant Certes, and then Edios, readily knelt before him to take their solemn oaths.

Turning to marshal his team, Ogden was surprised to see Hornindal approaching him directly. Though he still bore the active crozius, the Reclusiarch did not carry in his manner the same ever-present threat of violence as Demetrios.

‘This duty weighs heavily upon us all, serf-sergeant,’ he said. ‘Without a Navigator, we cannot risk any warp jump to relay our warning to Sotha ourselves. We must, therefore, move through the swarm and beyond the psychic shadow of the hive ship. We must re-establish astropathic communications as soon as possible.’

Ogden nodded. ‘Indeed, my lord… Though that may be just as dangerous as heading back into the xenos minefield…’

He waited for some kind of response, but Hornindal only stared impassively back at him.

‘Where would you have my men deployed, then?’

‘You should prepare for boarding actions.’

‘Board a tyranid vessel, my lord?’ Ogden asked, incredulous. ‘Is such a thing even possible?’

‘No. You misunderstand.’ The Reclusiarch watched absently as the third squad leader, Hekaton, took the knee before Demetrios. ‘If we are not vaporised by bio-plasma or torn apart in the vacuum, then the xenos will try to board us.’

Ogden considered this for a long moment. He could not decide which fate sounded worse.

Like a blade aimed at the heart of the swarm, the Xenophon soared onwards. Her weapons batteries fired until the barrels glowed hot, dashing smaller xenos vessels against the blackness with las-fire and bursts of ordnance; driving the hideous things back in waves.

To Goss’s eyes, they were not even ships in any sense of the word that he could justify. The way they skipped and swam put him in mind of shoals of aquatic hunters, twisting and pirouetting between the Xenophon’s streaking missiles, before wheeling around to strafe her shields with their return fire. They hounded the ship relentlessly, probing the limits of her defences even as they died upon them.

The gunnery officers could not hope to target the vessels with the same fire-patterns they would use to engage traditional craft. The damned things were too fast, too unpredictable; it was like using a boltgun to swat flies. Instead, Shipmaster Kaeron had ordered them to create a kill zone three hundred metres out beyond the ship’s prow – a wall of random fire and timed detonations that would defy whatever morphic intelligence guided the abominations, and either force them aside or tear them to pieces. It was now just a question of whether there was physically enough ordnance on board to see them through to the far side of the swarm. It was far more likely, Goss knew, that the guns would run dry long before that.

As if in confirmation, a warning symbol flashed on the oculus’s hololithic overlay and lent another insistent chiming to the myriad combat alarums that filled the bridge space.

‘The starboard missile racks are empty, sir. We’re down to the reserve magazines.’ He hesitated for a moment, before muttering under his breath. ‘She’s only a destroyer. She’s not built to repel this kind of sustained attack. We’re not going to make it through.’

Kaeron stood in front of his throne, staring up at the tactical display. He replied without shifting his gaze.

‘You don’t know the Xenophon, then. The old girl’s fast, and she’s still got teeth.’

As the hololith refreshed on its three-second combat cycle, flocks of fresh contacts entered the display at the boundaries of auspex range – hosts of new organisms spawned by the larger carriers, or maybe even by the gargantuan hive ship itself? With so many returns it was difficult to tell. Some seemed only to circle at a distance, never even committing to an attack run.

At the centre of the tableau hung the flashing scythe icon representing the beleaguered destroyer, a lone speck of green in an ever-growing ocean of red.

The shipmaster gritted his teeth. ‘Order the starboard crews to reload. I don’t want both racks down at the same time.’

‘Aye, sir.’

A succession of strafing impacts rang through the hull, and one of the foul vessel-creatures swooped in through the void shields to buzz the forecastle before disappearing overhead. Reflexively, several of the bridge crew ducked, but in the instant that it passed the frontal viewports Goss saw a flash of twisted chitin, fused carapace and ice-rimed, horned flesh.

Throne, the horrid thing had even had little leathery fins…

Though the swarm engulfed them, beyond it all lay the lolling bulk of the hive ship; a grossly distended, living horizon. Its great tentacle arms moved languidly in comparison to the rest of the fleet, highlighting the unimaginable difference in scale between them as the Xenophon sped closer. Like some bloated, coddled kraken, the hive ship seemed to watch the unfolding battle with a casual disinterest, the way a fattened Radnarian courtesan might regard a scurrying colony of ants.

Choking back his disgust, Goss reviewed the course that he and his fellow officers had plotted to bring them out of the thing’s shadow. By pulling in close to the gravity well of the planetoid Sigma-Tumbus IV – which was now almost completely eclipsed in their view by the hive ship – they aimed to accelerate beyond the capabilities of the smaller, organic vessels and race for the deep-range shipping lanes beyond. There, Kaeron had reasoned, the astropaths would be free of the alien horror that clouded their minds and could send word to another ship.

Assuming that any ship would hear them.

A renewed proximity alarm sounded, and the Master of Signal called out from his console. ‘Large xenos craft, on direct intercept!’

Coming about from beneath them, a huge, bladed monstrosity turned with surprising agility to bear down into the Xenophon’s kill zone. Seeming to manoeuvre using the largest of its curved appendages, the vessel opened its blunted bow to the void in a silent roar, revealing a fleshy gullet lined with thousands of razored spines. Goss’s stomach lurched as he realised that the thing could likely swallow the ship’s prow and the main batteries along with it.

Kaeron turned and threw himself into the command throne. ‘Finally, something we can target.’ He brought the vox-hailer to his lips with obvious relish. ‘Helm, maintain ahead full. Weapons, make ready for torpedo launch, on my mark.’

Adrenaline surged in Goss’s veins. The razored fiend grew ever larger in the oculus view, scattering the smaller vessels as it came, and the Xenophon was racing to meet it head-on.

‘Enemy vessel at three-fifty metres,’ he said, managing to keep his voice steady.

As the huge creature broke through the edge of the kill zone, las-fire stitching its flanks with deep burns and blasting chunks from the ridged carapace, Kaeron slammed his fist down and shrieked into the vox.

‘Fire! All tubes, fire now!’

The ship lurched as four mighty torpedoes burst from her prow and raced towards the target, though they barely altered her forward velocity.

A seemingly prescient smaller tyranid vessel dived in front of the first projectile, sacrificing itself to save its larger cousin in a burst of ruined flesh and bony shrapnel, but the second, third and fourth found their mark easily. Huge warheads, designed to bring down renegade capital ships, detonated in the monster’s gullet, blasting the foul thing apart in a flaring bloom of catastrophic, organic ruin. Slathers of flesh and ropes of bloody fluid dozens of metres in length crackled through the Xenophon’s void shields and splattered over her pockmarked hull, to the cheers of the bridge crew.

Kaeron turned to Goss, the thrill of battle written all over his face. ‘She’s got a taste for their blood now, eh?’ he yelled over the furore.

Goss barely heard him, his eyes wide in horror.

One of the dead creature’s wing-like blades, easily two hundred metres long on its own, had spun loose from the bio-wreckage and whirled towards them.

He had meant to call out to the helm for ‘evasive manoeuvres’, but before he could even utter the words the thundering jolt of the impact threw him from his feet. The bone spur sheared through the turrets at the Xenophon’s prow, and cleaved a great gash in the hull-skin down her port flank, before skipping up on the crenellated ridge at her crown and spiralling off into the darkness. Secondary explosions tore through the batteries as their magazines ignited, and warning klaxons howled with renewed vigour throughout the ship.

Ogden was sprinting the length of the ventral transit corridor when the shockwave hit. He felt a ripple of jarred air pressure on his bare face, and just a millisecond later the floor was yanked away from his feet.

He and one of his men – now wearing ship’s issue flak vests and their yellow-striped helmets – had been managing to keep pace with one of the armoured battle-brothers from Sergeant Hekaton’s squad as he ran another pair of boarding shields back from the armoury.

All thought of their task vanished as the deck lurched and the two men were catapulted into the ceiling. Ogden’s head skimmed past a ribbed support beam, but poor old Tyek wasn’t so fortunate – he struck it awkwardly, and the force of the collision snapped his neck and sent him sprawling.

In that same instant, Ogden was wrenched from the air by a rough, vice-like grip around his shoulder; the Space Marine caught him mid-flight and hauled him back down onto the rumbling deck before he could injure himself. Officer Tyek’s body crashed down on top of them both.

The hulking warrior crouched over Ogden for a long moment, shielding his comparatively frail mortal form with his own armoured bulk. His pauldron bore the name Mascios.

‘Are you damaged, honoured serf-sergeant?’ he asked bluntly, the words filtered and distorted by his helmet’s vox-emitters.

Winded, and with his heartbeat hammering loud in his ears, Ogden tried to shake his head. The thunder and crash of distant explosions, somewhere topside, reverberated through the walls and deck plates. Decompression alarms were already sounding.

He felt his ears pop. On board a ship in the deep void, that was a bad sign.

From further up the ventral space – possibly one or two levels above – there came another impact on the Xenophon’s outer hull, but it was the grinding shriek of torn metal that followed it which seized their attention: a localised hull breach, without any doubt.

Where, then, was the roar of venting atmosphere?

Mascios rose, his internal vox clicking audibly as he opened a channel, and Ogden realised that he had lost his own vox-bead in the fall. Finally finding his breath, he weakly pushed Tyek’s body aside and raised his hand, pleading for a moment to recover, but Mascios was already retrieving the two boarding shields.

‘No time,’ he said. ‘We’ve been hit. This entire section is–’

A crash of debris from further down the corridor silenced him, and he whipped around with his boltgun drawn. Ogden was beside him in a splintering second.

A bestial, guttural roar echoed in the gloom, followed by the dull creak of twisted plasteel as something huge and organic heaved its way into the ship.

Smoke filled the bridge, and a burst of sparks fell from somewhere in its vaulted reaches. The helm servitors babbled incoherently to one another.

Rising shakily from the floor, Goss became aware of blood soaking the front of his uniform tunic; he had broken his nose on the deck plates as he fell. He pawed at the fabric in a daze. The rest of the bridge crew, including Shipmaster Kaeron, were moving and talking far too quickly for him to follow. He heard screams and cries for aid over the vox as the forward compartments burned.

His gaze settled on the stuttering tactical display, and he saw that the smaller craft that had been circling the Xenophon were no longer hanging back.

They were moving in, at ramming speeds.

He shook his head, trying to clear his senses. Kaeron was shouting his name.

Off to port, he spotted a handful of them. They were barbed and elongated; fleshy, winged harpoons, each the size of a Thunderhawk. Larger, maybe. They swam through the vacuum like coral rays, rippling their fanned membranes against the nothingness and propelling themselves at frightening velocities.

Goss fumbled with his console, imploring the remaining gunnery officers to bring them down. Warning symbols flashed all across the hololith.

Hull breach. Hull breach. Decompression. Hull breach.

The closest harpoon-vessel entered a killing dive, folding its wings behind it and rocketing down hard towards the destroyer’s unguarded aft sections. It disappeared from view just as another twirled down into the forecastle and stuck fast, in plain sight of the frontal port – it was like a feathered dart piercing the hide of a lumbering grox, standing proud from the hull and swaying from side to side in the vacuum.

Tech-adepts and their crews were already moving to seal the damaged compartments or to effect what repairs they could. Where the fires still burned, it would perhaps be simpler to lock off the bulkheads and vent the residual atmosphere into the void…

A single voice cut through the chaos of the vox. It was Reclusiarch Hornindal.

‘Security teams to the engineering decks – we are breached. Scythes, to me. Let us show these xenos which of us is the dominant species.’

Coughing in the lingering smoke of some unseen electrical fire, Kaeron appeared at Goss’s side, his left arm clutched limply across his chest.

‘Deck officer!’

Wiping blood on the back of his sleeve, Goss frowned. ‘Sir?’

‘Our course, man,’ Kaeron growled. ‘Can we still reach the gravity well?’

‘With these… things piercing our hull? It’s possible…’ He ran a hand over the console. ‘We’re restoring atmospheric pressure, at least.’

The shipmaster nodded. ‘All power to the engines. Forget the fight. Proceed with our primary objective – we drop our shields and run.’

Following in the footsteps of the armoured battle-brothers, Ogden’s security officers filed quickly down through the access passage to the aft engineering bays. The stench of smoke and hot bile assaulted their nostrils. A strangled scream echoed down from the upper gantries before being ominously cut short.

Ogden checked and rechecked his weapon’s charge.

In the stuttering light from the lumen strips down here, just above the Xenophon’s bilges, it was all too easy to imagine alien horrors lurking at every gloomy intersection they passed.

The five Space Marines – Brother Mascios and the rest of his combat squad – had taken point as soon as the team had entered the narrow passage; Sergeant Hekaton had taken the rest of his men back to the upper levels, where a fourth tyranid vessel had breached the hull-skin. Though the Scythes, equipped with their hefty boarding shields, sought to place themselves between their loyal serfs and whatever alien threat lay in wait, they would only be able to go so far to protect them. Frantic reports from the other teams spoke of entire crew compartments that had either been flooded with xenos toxins or opened up to the vacuum.

Chaplain Demetrios was leading Squad Certes in a desperate counter-offensive on the observation deck, now overrun by chittering, bladed creatures whose inhuman cries could clearly be heard over the combat channels. Edios had fallen, defending tech-crews in the devastated forward sections, though three of his warriors had survived long enough to drag their dying brethren from the inferno.

On the verge of escape through the Sigma-Tumbus gravity well, the Xenophon was being torn apart from the inside. Now Ogden led his combined team in what would be the final attempt to repel the invaders.

Fourteen of them, standing together as one in the face of an unknowable, alien foe.

‘For Sotha,’ he quietly reminded himself.

A staccato burst of gunfire lit up the junction ahead, and the Space Marines heaved their shields into a defensive phoulkon formation. Ogden brought his lascarbine up reflexively and motioned for his men to hold position.

The heavy thrashing of a large body shook the walls of the passage, followed by a low growl that rapidly turned into a gagging, fluid eruption.

Two crew-serfs in tattered overalls were hurled out into the main passageway by a great gout of bio-acid which scored deep burns into the metal wall. They tumbled to the deck, screaming and clawing at their eyes and mouths even as their flesh came away in sticky handfuls, convulsing their last moments away with rapidly wasting muscles.

Curses and cries of horror among the team were muted as the foul stench washed over them. It smelled like vomit and rotten, burned meat.

Advancing quickly, two of the Scythes turned the corner to block the open junction with their shields while another hurried three of Ogden’s men over to the other side. They picked their way through the growing pool of acidic spoil, hardly daring to steal a glance into the engineering bay as they passed.

Now flanking either side of the tunnel, the two shieldbearers pulled back and hunkered in close to the plasteel uprights as more agitated, titanic thrashing heralded another gout of bio-acid. This time it sluiced over the left-hand wall and corroded the metal plating, and the passageway began to fill with acrid, choking steam.

A series of vox-clicks between the giants betrayed the fact that they were again communicating with one another over closed channels. Frustrated, Ogden used the Chapter’s non-verbal battle language to demand an appraisal from them, his bare hand casting the gesture twice for emphasis.

Brother Mascios stole another glance into the bay, before signing out to the rest of the team.

Single large target. Twenty-five metres, straight ahead.

He leaned towards Ogden, with a gesture of almost paternal concern.

Immobile. Extreme hazard.

Ogden nodded, and divided his men into three fire-groups – one to each flank and one to cover the centre. The Space Marines edged into the groups without instruction, moving instinctively into the perfect tactical deployment.

Frag grenades were suddenly passing between their gauntleted hands. It was to be a frontal assault, then.

At Ogden’s command, the three groups burst from the tunnel by sections, emerging through the shattered remains of the bay’s main hatchway. The fire-groups clustered behind the shieldbearers, keeping their heads down and advancing quickly as the first grenades detonated in the enclosed compartment.

In spite of what they had already heard from the Xenophon’s other security teams and the Space Marine squads engaged throughout the ship, Ogden was still not prepared for the sight that greeted him in that chamber. His pace faltered as his mind tried to process it.

The outer wall, triple-skinned away from the hull with reinforced plasteel and adamantium alloys, had burst inwards where the tyranid ram-vessel had breached the Xenophon, spearing through the inner bulkheads as though they were made from nothing more than wax. Around the breach, amidst the twisted iron debris and jutting rebar, the deck plates were scorched and buckled by the mass of the alien vessel’s living proboscis as it had forced its way in.

And there it lay. A thrashing, mewling thing, easily the size of a great Sothan phantine; recoiling from the frag blasts and bolter fire that peppered its fleshier parts with stinging shrapnel as they began their assault.

Though the majority of its hide was horned and armoured in thick chitin, it had blossomed open to feed upon the soft bodies of the ship’s crew – half-digested human remains and smears of bloody juices fizzed and hissed on the deck before it. Ogden knew that those Chapter serfs who laboured down in the engineering decks under the watchful eye of the tech-adepts would have little access to small arms, and certainly no projectile weapons powerful enough to prevail against a monster such as this. When the main bulkhead portals between sections had sealed in response to the hull breach, they would have been trapped down here with it.

The thing heaved up and roared, its tusked mouthparts snapping wide and lashing at the nearest fire-group as they drew around to the right. It plucked one of them from his feet, to the horror of his comrades, and the man disappeared into the gaping maw with a single ragged scream.

In a panic, the two remaining security officers bolted for the cover of an upended machine cart, their shots flashing harmlessly off the thing’s horned crest as they ran. Their Space Marine shieldbearer bellowed at them to hold position, and in that moment of inattention the beast struck; it splintered the ceramite of his boarding shield and cleaved deep into his armoured torso. The warrior was flung to the deck, choking blood inside his helmet and clutching at his spilled innards.

Horrified, Ogden saw bloated, venous sacs behind the first crest of the proboscis swelling as they filled with liquid. It was preparing to vomit up another gout of digestive acids.

But Mascios had already seen the danger. The armoured giant crossed the wreckage-strewn bay in the space of two heartbeats, avoiding the whipcord feeder tendrils that writhed at the thing’s flanks, and leapt in with his combat blade drawn. With a wordless battle-cry he stabbed down into the lowermost sac again and again, spilling gallons of steaming fluid over his armour and onto the deck, robbing the beast of the fuel for its attack.

The horrid mouth clammed shut, the whole proboscis shaking from side to side in an agonised frenzy, batting the Space Marine away with its sheer bulk.

But it was enough. Between the three groups, they poured bolter and las-fire into the gaps between its segmented chitin plates and stitched the weaker membranous flesh with shots every time it opened its mouthparts to roar. Mascios himself ended it, stuffing a clutch of grenades into the torn flesh behind the armoured crest before diving clear.

The muffled blast almost severed the proboscis entirely. It showered the walls and ceiling with bloody alien filth and sent the slack, ruined mouth crashing to the deck.

They cheered. Between them all, they had brought the mighty beast low.

Brother Mascios rose, his battle-plate pitted and scored where the powerful acid had worked upon it. The bare metal and ceramite rendered him as a ghost, a pale reflection of his glorious Chapter colours and with wisps of steam rising from the more delicate joint seals. He released the catches on his helmet and pulled it off to reveal reddened, sore features and bloodshot eyes.

Another of the Scythes stood tall and honoured him with the old Sothan salute – right fist closed over the primary heart, then swept out before him. The salute of the reaper, the inevitable victor. Mascios returned the gesture with a thin smile, though he appeared pained by his exertions and the loss of his fallen battle-brother.

Behind him, Ogden saw the flesh of the tyranid vessel twitch. Just once – most likely the post-mortem constrictions of its alien physiology.

Then a second time.

And again.

He tried to speak, to yell out a warning, but no sound left his lips.

The dead flesh was writhing. Churning.

The xenos erupted from the body of their vessel like maggots from a sun-warmed carcass. Ogden froze at the sight. Brother Mascios turned, and in that moment they were upon him. Many-limbed horrors of teeth, claws and glittering, savage eyes, they rose up from Ogden’s childhood nightmares and spilled into reality – so grotesque, so inhuman, and yet… so familiar. They moved and killed with a hunched, insectoid gait, and Mascios’s hot blood splattered across the serf-sergeant’s face.

Gunfire erupted, along with cries of terror and alarm as dozens more of the creatures swarmed into the chamber.

Ogden sank to his knees on the deck, his lascarbine clattering from numbed fingers. He simply could not will himself to rise against them; some primitive, animal part of his brain would not allow it. He was utterly entranced as they lunged and shrieked and tore into his comrades and masters.

It was almost a blessed relief when their scything xenos talons pierced his own flesh and carved him to pieces. Yet in that final moment, he nonetheless felt a strange, cold reassurance that he had done his part.

Hornindal was lost once more in the holy fury of combat.

Without conscious thought he struck left, the powered discharge of his crozius shattering a leaping tyranid’s skull into sticky fragments. He raised his bolt pistol to the right and put two rounds into the central mass of another, before whirling on his heel to strike at a third.

Suffer not the alien to live.

Those words might well have been one of the principal tenets of his faith – nay, the word of the almighty Emperor of Mankind himself! – such was the fervour with which Hornindal now fought.

It seemed, though, that this was to be his end. No glorious death alongside his Chapter brothers on the field of war, no last stand worthy of a small monument in the Reclusiam for his successors to revere. Not that he had pursued such things; he had lived modestly, as a Scythes of the Emperor should, always ready to defend humanity and willing to give his life for that noble cause.

He had made peace with it, as he always did, before he had even drawn his weapons and taken his battle-oaths. But he was going to die here, unknown and unremembered, and for that he would make the xenos pay a hefty price in blood. Another wave of the vile creatures – during the Tyrannic War, they had called them ‘gaunts’ – spilled from the ruptured bulkhead portals at the far end of the corridor. He loosed five shots from his pistol with a steady hand, and five more fell dead.

‘Hold, abominations!’ he cried out through his helmet’s enhanced vox-projectors. ‘You will not cross this threshold. Not while I still draw breath, nor after.’

Even without the gruff burr of the dying klaxons that were sounding in every chamber and compartment throughout the ship, he doubted that the things could have heard or understood him.

The Reclusiarch fought with his back to the sealed portal that led to the astropaths’ chambers. He had made the tech-crews weld it shut, before casting off his cloak to await the skittering, living tide.

Beyond all else, the chantry could not be overrun.

They had to send the warning.

He had left a single armed security officer in with them, to ensure that they did not turn upon one another in some alien madness – a stern man who looked like he would do his duty without remorse. The psykers had gone on howling in terror even as the bulkhead had been sealed. ‘Walled in’, they had called it. Walled in with their shadowy nightmares.

His bolt pistol ran dry. He calmly reloaded it, taking the last clip from his belt, and watching the gaunts scramble over the mounds of their dead that clogged the corridor before he opened fire once more.

When he felt the Xenophon’s engines gutter and die for the last time through the deck beneath his feet, Hornindal gritted his teeth and let out a long, slow breath. He turned to the cowering serf, who fired sporadic and wildly inaccurate laspistol shots from his hiding place in the open wall panel beside the sealed portal.

‘Sub-lieutenant Goss, contact the shipmaster.’

When the ship-wide vox channels had gone down, Kaeron had sent the young officer with a portable wired unit to stand by the Reclusiarch until the very end. To ensure that the lines of communication were not broken, no matter what happened.

The terrified serf patched the link through to Hornindal’s internal vox, gripping the channel monitor close to his ear but unable to tear his eyes away from the encroaching xenos creatures.

‘Shipmaster Kaeron,’ Hornindal said, with a degree of finality in his voice.

There was a burst of static, and it was some moments before any response came.

‘Lord Reclusiarch. We have lost the main engines. The aft decks have fallen.’

Hornindal fired another shot, decapitating a tyranid as it crested the mound.

‘Have we reached the planetoid?’ he asked. ‘Can you complete the escape manoeuvre using auxiliary thrusters?’

There was a long pause. Goss stared up at the Space Marine, a plaintive look on his face. The pandemonium of the bridge was still audible before Kaeron replied.

‘No, my lord. We have entered the Sigma-Tumbus gravity well, but we were already off course and underpowered. We won’t be able to pull away on the far side of the elliptic. Our orbit has begun to decay.’

Hornindal sagged. ‘That’s it, then,’ he said without emotion. ‘It’s over. Launch the beacon.’

‘Of course, Lord Reclusiarch. Will you record a message?’

‘I will.’

Goss screamed in frustration, and snapped off a flurry of shots with his pistol.

‘I should have known, my lord!’ he cried. ‘Tumbus. It means tomb…’

Ignoring the serf’s hysteria, Hornindal checked his own magazine. He could feel a deep rumble building in the walls around them; not the rhythmic hum of the Xenophon’s systems, but the inexorable pull of conflicting gravities and the rush of atmosphere over her hull.

Sixty-five seconds to impact.

‘This is Brother-Chaplain Hornindal, Reclusiarch of the Scythes of the Emperor, Adeptus Astartes. Chapter vessel Xenophon has encountered a tyranid vanguard fleet deep in the Artaxian subsector. The local Mandeville point is mined. Do not attempt to recover this beacon, I repeat: do not attempt to recover this beacon. Advise our home world of Sotha it lies in the path of the xenos invaders. Look to our–’

A screeching burst of static cut the channel, followed only a moment later by a reverberating explosion that rocked the ship. The remaining lumen strips went dark.

‘Kaeron! Confirm beacon launch!’ he bellowed. This time there was no response.

Like rats, the gaunts scattered, disappearing into the gloom.

Thirty-two seconds.

The frantic Goss cried out in alarm as the corridor began to tilt down towards them, and even Hornindal stumbled as the mounds of xenos corpses shifted. The two of them would be buried alive, crushed against the bulkhead by the weight of their kills in the enclosed space.

Another blast tore up from the decks below and sheared metal panels from the corridor’s ceiling, hurling the Reclusiarch bodily into the sealed portal. Debris and foul alien carcasses tumbled down onto the two of them as the Xenophon’s angle of descent increased.

Sotha. Oh, noble Sotha… heed our warning.

Hornindal recalled the horrors he had seen unleashed upon conquered worlds during the Tyrannic War. Seas drained, populations consumed. The horizon blighted by vast xenos towers that pierced the heavens.

He imagined this doom for his home world, and he wept.

Seventeen seconds. Sixteen.

The mighty warrior swatted aside the corpses that slipped and skidded down the slope of the ruined corridor, gripping young Goss by his uniform tunic and dragging him up from the crush.

Protect them always. And when you cannot, simply aid their passing.

The far reaches of the corridor buckled with a deafening groan of tortured metal – the Xenophon’s back was broken. It would not be long now. Deck plates popped free in an undulating wave away from the dorsal ridge, firing rivets and corroded debris into the darkness.

The whole ship lurched as something broke away from the outer hull, and roaring flames swept the length of the corridor; they were ablaze with the heat of atmospheric re-entry.

Hornindal clutched Goss tightly against his broad, armoured chest. The bloodied young officer screamed into the white noise of the inferno, his epaulettes and wrinkled collar smouldering in the heat, his bare face blistering.

Hornindal closed his eyes. He imagined the planet’s surface racing up to meet them as they burned. Something in the ship’s superstructure cracked beneath him.

Holy Emperor, I have failed you. I have failed them all.

He braced both feet against the bulkhead.

Four. Three. Two.

Tower of Blood

Tony Ballantyne

The ceiling was dripping blood.

It dripped on the bald head of Goedendag Morningstar, Adeptus Astartes of the Iron Knights Chapter, and the Space Marine made no move to wipe it away.

‘How many floors lie above us?’ he asked.

Though the Imperial Guard trooper was a big woman, she would still have been dwarfed by Goedendag even had he not been wearing his power armour.

‘One hundred and forty-three floors,’ she managed to say, awestruck by this post-human demigod. She straightened up, despite her exhaustion. ‘Eight hundred and sixty-five lie below us. We met the horde in battle at the nine hundredth floor. They pushed us back to here. Many lives were lost in action, many more civilians were evacuated.’

‘But not all,’ said Ortrud. The Iron Knights had completed their survey of the eight hundred and fifty-sixth floor; now they clustered around their commander.

‘Not all,’ agreed the Guard, looking around the seven men now towering over her in their gunmetal and black armour, streaked red with dripping blood. Their unhelmed heads seemed so small, lost in the heart of the powerful machinery of their suits. ‘By no means all. There are thousands still trapped above us, all at the mercy of the warp fiends.’

‘The warp fiends do not understand the meaning of mercy,’ said Fastlinger. ‘Commander, may we now don our helmets?’ He drew his hand across his face.

‘No,’ said Goedendag. ‘We fight unhelmed. We do not want to lead civilians into areas where we are safe and they are not. What if we led them into a vacuum?’ He noticed the way the Imperial Guardswoman was looking at him. ‘Do you have a question?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was just wondering, why do you wear two morning stars on your back?’

Goedendag smiled.

‘For weapons.’

‘You seem different to other Space Marines.’

‘Have you met many?’ asked Fastlinger.

Goedendag flashed him a warning look. The Imperial Guard were an honoured force; they did not deserve to be ridiculed.

‘The Iron Knights are siege specialists,’ said Goedendag. ‘The warp fiends have sealed off the top floors and surrounded this tower with a warp instability that is spreading across the sky, threatening the neighbouring hives. This siege needs to be broken now.’

The Guardswoman was torn between exhaustion and awe. Still, something caused her to speak.

‘Are you going to wait for the Ordo Malleus?’

‘The inquisition’s daemonhunters are not here,’ interrupted Telramund. ‘Goedendag, I grow weary. Let us join the fight!’

‘Peace, Telramund! This soldier stands alone in a room with seven Iron Knights in full armour–’

‘Save for their helms,’ muttered Fastlinger.

‘If things had been otherwise, we would have found nought here but corpses. She is brave indeed.’ Goedendag looked down at her.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Kelra.’

‘Then listen to me, Kelra. You and your troops have done well to hold back the daemons, but now it is our turn.’

He waved a hand around the floor. It was empty save for the four lift shafts that ran to the top of the hive building. All the internal walls, all the possessions of those who had once lived here were vaporised, smashed, shattered, destroyed by the weapons of the Imperial Guard as they had fought to hold their ground. The wide, low space was filled with darkness, the stench of battle, the drip of blood. Even the stairs had broken away. The stairs; the last route of escape for those lucky civilians who had not taken the lifts. The shafts still creaked with the agony of those caught within.

‘Kelra, before we leave, you mentioned something about the origin of the warp rift?’

Kelra nodded, pleased to help.

‘I have heard something. Escaping civilians have spoken about a Gutor Invareln who lived on the nine hundred and ninety-second floor. He was a bitter man, an outcast. He claimed he was a latent psyker, that he had been ignored by the Imperium. His neighbours laughed, they thought he was seeking attention. The children mocked him, asked him why he had not been taken to Terra, but Invareln would scowl in answer that he was deliberately forgotten.’

‘He was a psyker,’ said Franosch, concentrating. ‘His mind is now possessed by a daemon. A greater daemon. He is the portal by which the lesser daemons are entering this world.’

Kelra’s eyes widened as she looked to Franosch.

‘He’s a psyker too?’ she asked.

‘Gamma level at best,’ answered Franosch. He turned to Goedendag. ‘Commander, there are daemonettes above us. Many, many daemonettes.’

‘Enough talk,’ said Telramund. ‘The instability is spreading.’

Goedendag looked up at the ceiling, watched the clotting drops forming stalactites.

‘So much blood,’ he said. ‘Telramund is right. We move out. Draw your chainswords.’

Telramund was already holding his meltagun. ‘This weapon will suit me fine, commander.’

‘And what of the civilians who stand above us? No meltaguns, no flamers, no frag grenades…’

‘How about missile launchers?’ said Fastlinger, innocently.

‘How about you take point, Fastlinger?’ replied Goedendag. He noted the look of disappointment on Telramund’s face. ‘Telramund, you accompany him.’

Telramund smiled as he holstered his meltagun and drew his chainsword. An angry buzzing noise sounded as he set it in motion, a buzz that was immediately answered by Fastlinger’s weapon.

The Iron Knights began to move apart, assuming combat positions.

‘Gottfried. The battle cry.’

Gottfried looked down at the floor and clasped his hands together. In a low voice, he intoned the words: ‘Strike, death, as silent as the swan.’

The rest of the group repeated the words.

Now the other chainswords powered up, the angry screeching made all the louder as it echoed from the low ceiling. Low ceilings, the better to cram in more humans, ready to work on this manufactory world.

The time for joking had passed, and Fastlinger looked to his comrades and saw they were all ready. He looked to Goedendag last. The commander nodded and Fastlinger raised his sword to the ceiling, the angry buzz rising to a scream as it cut through the thin metal. Immediately, there was a convulsive eruption of blood, dark blood rupturing through the widening crack. It spilled down over Fastlinger’s cutting arm and shoulder, running down the blue gunmetal and black of his powered armour. He shifted his position and his feet slipped on the pools that congealed around his feet. Retractable spikes sprang forth from the soles of his power armour, holding him in place.

Kelra, the Imperial Guard trooper, backed away, dodging a second burst of blood as Telramund too began to cut into the ceiling. The tide of blood widened with the hole, and now smooth yellow shapes slipped through amongst the liquid. Rounded and polished, they splashed and knocked on the floor.

‘That’s a skull,’ said Kelra. Still, she stood her ground, noted Goedendag. Not for nothing had the Imperial Guard gained the respect of humanity.

Goedendag gestured Franosch forward, and the psyker stood at the edge of the widening waterfall of blood.

‘They know we’re here,’ he said. ‘They are eager to meet us.’

‘Who? The daemonettes?’

‘Oh yes. They are filled with the bitter joy of battle, and yet… something is holding them back.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. Something at the top of the tower.’

‘Will this tide never end?’ called Telramund impatiently. He was itching to fight.

‘Surely this is more blood than all the humans of the hive would hold?’ said Kelra.

‘Some of it spills from the portal,’ said Franosch.

‘Enough of this,’ said Goedendag. ‘The gap is wide enough! Through it! Go!’

Fastlinger crouched and then jumped upwards on leg muscles massively expanded by the biscopea implanted in his chest. He soared through the gap above him in a spray of ruby, followed closely by Telramund.

Now Goedendag stepped forward. Despite the fact that he heard the buzzing of chainswords above him, the innate courtesy of the Iron Knights caused him to pause for a moment and turn to Kelra.

‘Thank you for your help,’ he said.

‘I’ll be waiting here for your return.’

Drips of blood bouncing from his bald head and matting his long white beard, Goedendag Morningstar jumped up into the space above.

He landed on the eight hundred and fifty-seventh floor, his balance thrown by the tide of blood swirling into the hole. Something white came flashing in at his side; something sharp was pricking towards his eye. He swung his chainsword, shearing through the crab claw of the daemonette who bore down upon him. The white skinned woman hissed at him, her rusty hair plastered by blood to her bare shoulders.

‘Goolvar h’nurrgh!’ she spat, and made to draw something from behind her back. It was a feint! As Goedendag brought his chainsword up to parry the attack, she kicked out at him, a three-toed foot tipped in razor-sharp claws scratching across the armour on his sword arm. Goedendag made to chop at her leg, but she gripped him with her foot and held on, twisting the chainsword upwards.

Now the daemonette smiled at him, her sweet, seductive body undulating as she brought the snake-fiend from behind her back. She hissed, and lashed the fiend forwards like a whip. Its eyes blazed, its mouth, surrounded by a ring of venom pierced needles, snapping towards Goedendag’s face. His chainsword-wielding hand was trapped by the daemonette’s foot.

The betcher’s glands in Goedendag’s mouth had been working overtime, and he spat corrosive acid into the eyes of the lashing snake-fiend. The creature screamed and drew back in pain. Goedendag flicked the chainsword to his left hand, then brought the weapon up as if to parry quinte, slicing through the snake-fiend’s body. He carried on with the movement, circling down to cut through the daemonette’s leg. She screamed and jumped forward, needle teeth moving within her mouth, but Goedendag’s right hand now reached to his shoulder and took hold of one of the morning stars there. He brought the weapon forward in a circle, cracking it down on the daemonette’s skull as, simultaneously, his sword thrust into her body.

She thrashed as she died, her bitter scream rippling the pools of blood gathered on the floor.

‘You took your time on that one,’ said Fastlinger, standing coolly nearby over the bodies of two more dead daemonettes. ‘And we saved her especially for you, too.’

‘You talk too much,’ said Telramund, three daemonettes to his credit.

The other members of the squad were now entering the room, jumping up from below.

‘One hundred and forty-two floors to go,’ announced Ortrud, looking at the dead daemonettes.

‘There are many more above us,’ said Franosch, looking to the dripping ceiling, ‘yet still they hold back.’ He looked at Goedendag. ‘Do you think they know it is us? Are they waiting for us?’

‘Who cares?’ said Telramund. ‘We shall meet them soon enough.’

The daemonettes had been fought to a standstill here as they descended the tower from the warp portal. As they had fought, they had ripped apart the thin walls that partitioned the human apartments crowded into the hive block. The ceiling above had been punctured in many places, and Goedendag and the other Iron Knights could now look up through several floors.

Ortrud waded through ankle-deep blood, kicking aside yellow skulls, the flesh recently ripped from the bone.

‘They sealed this floor to keep the blood in,’ he said.

‘There is blood still dripping down upon us,’ said Telramund, ever impatient.

Franosch was frowning, straining to understand.

‘They carry some of the living through the warp portal,’ he says. ‘I hear their screams. But the daemonettes grow bored. They torture and kill those who remain.’

‘Then let us make speed to meet them,’ said Telramund.

‘Telramund speaks well,’ said Goedendag. ‘Franosch, I see the stairs resume undamaged on the next floor. Is it meet that we should take them?’

‘For the moment.’

They advanced in turns, running in pairs up flights of stairs whilst those behind covered them. As they climbed through the floors, the damage inflicted by the holding action lessened. The internal walls of the hive tower reasserted themselves, and Goedendag and the rest began to make out the tiny apartment spaces in which the civilians had lived.

‘What do they make here?’ asked Gottfried.

‘On Minea? Phosgene gas, mainly. They also export Banedox ore.’

‘Look,’ said Gottfried.

Goedendag looked to the floor. A child’s toy lay there, a model Space Marine.

‘There were children here,’ said Fastlinger. He looked sick. Sometimes the jokes were not quite enough to shut out reality. ‘What did they do with them?’

‘Next floor up,’ said Ortrud. ‘You’ll see.’

They climbed the stairs to the next level.

‘Nine hundredth floor,’ said Gottfried.

‘They sealed the stairwell above,’ said Telramund, looking up.

‘Then we cut through with chainswords,’ said Goedendag.

‘We won’t need chainswords,’ replied Telramund bitterly.

Goedendag moved forward to get a better look. A patchwork had been stitched over the stairwell. Shapes of brown, pink and yellow. Blood seeped through the stitches.

‘That’s children’s skin,’ said Goedendag.

‘That’s daemonettes amusing themselves, killing time,’ said Telramund.

‘It’s a warning line,’ said Franosch. ‘It will summon trouble.’

‘Then I will invite trouble to join me,’ said Goedendag, cutting through the patchwork of flesh with a knife. Blood spurted through, and amongst the curling currents and eddies slipped the writhing bodies of snake-fiends, pouring through the gaps, wriggling as they sought out their human prey. Chainswords buzzed into life once more, and the warriors began to swing at the prickling creatures.

‘They cannot penetrate our armour!’ shouted Fastlinger, cutting a snake-fiend in two in a spray of green ichor that steamed and sizzled on contact with the clotting blood.

‘They’re not trying to penetrate,’ called Ortrud. ‘They seek to entangle us.’

As he spoke, a bundle of snake-fiends whipped their way out of the bloody stream and corkscrewed their way towards Goedendag’s sword arm, seeking to wrap it to his body. Goedendag feinted to the side and then brought his chainsword down on the mass of bodies, their scales dark and shining. The scream of the sword joined the splashing of blood and the hiss of ichor. Through the mass of moist movement he saw the white bodies of the daemonettes of Slaanesh dropping down to join the melee.

‘Too much blood,’ gasped Franosch, launching a coulé attack on a snake-fiend, grazing the chainsword down the side of its body before neatly flicking back to sever the head.

‘Less technique, Franosch,’ called Ortrud, ‘More slashing!’

‘There is too much blood,’ repeated Franosch, stamping down on a bundle of snake-fiends with his spiked boots. ‘Still it pours from the warp.’

‘‘Ware the daemonettes!’ called Gottfried, launching a fleche attack at the closest enemy. A white female staggered towards him, seemingly drunk on blood. Goedendag brought his chainsword up beneath Gottfried’s strike, parrying it.

‘Hold,’ called Goedendag, seeing the look of betrayal in his comrade’s eyes. ‘She’s human.’

The Space Marines halted as one, the mocking laughter of daemonettes filling their ears. They took a moment to discern the situation: the followers of Slaanesh stood at the far side of the wide room, bending, taunting, snapping their crab-like claws at the Space Marines. Now Goedendag’s men realised just what the daemonettes had pushed towards them: human women, stripped naked and daubed with white paint, their hair tied up and stained with blood. Prisoners, sent forward to die on the Space Marine’s blades, for was it not a fact that the followers of Slaanesh delighted in killing their opponents in the most vile and tormenting ways?

‘More snake-fiends!’ called Goedendag, as the writhing creatures rose out of the rising tide of blood, circlets of needle teeth glistening with poison, redoubling their attack, this time on the human women as well as the Space Marines themselves.

It was left to Gottfried and Hellstedt to dispatch the snake-fiends. Ortrud and Fastlinger launched themselves at the daemonettes screaming with insane laughter at the other side of the room. They waited a moment as the Space Marines advanced and then retreated at a sedate pace back up the stairs to the next level, wriggling their bodies in an alluring fashion as they did so, taunting their pursuers.

‘Leave them,’ called Goedendag. ‘Look to the women first.’ Reluctantly, Ortrud and Fastlinger returned to his side.

The unceasing flow of blood continued from above, though the tide was diminishing. It swirled in whirlpools around the stairwells leading further down the tower. Seven human women stood weakly, buffeted by the dying tide. And now Goedendag saw why they had remained silent throughout their torment: their mouths had been sewn shut with thick, red thread. He took a knife from his combat armour and cut through the thread sealing the first woman’s mouth.

‘There are more of them above,’ she shouted, red thread piercing her lips in a grotesque moustache. ‘Hundreds, thousands. They’re waiting for you.’

‘Peace,’ said Goedendag Morningstar. ‘We have the advantage.’

The woman’s eyes widened.

‘No! There are only seven of you. You have no advantage. They make ambushes, deadfalls.’

‘Yes,’ said Goedendag. ‘But they must fight us one floor at a time.’

The other women now had their mouths cut free. Goedendag was impressed to see how they held themselves. Frightened, hurt, it was true, but they had not broken down. He remembered Kelra, the Imperial Guardswoman, and he realised that they bred them tough on Minea.

Franosch stepped forward.

‘There is a warp portal near the top floor,’ he said. ‘Have you seen it?’

‘No,’ said the women in unison, but one of them stepped forward. She was rubbing white ichor from her body as she did so, exposing the dark skin underneath.

‘I have not seen the warp portal, but I have heard from one who has. One who fled down the stairs while the lift shafts filled with fire. He told me there is a daemon up there, a greater daemon.’

‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Franosch.

‘Yet why does it not attack?’ said Ortrud. ‘Why does its horde remain at the top of the tower?’

‘They’re waiting for something. It’s part of the deal.’

‘What deal?’

‘Gutor Invareln,’ said the woman. ‘There was a phosgene leak, his body was badly scarred. He was a bitter enough man before his injuries, afterwards he blamed the world for his troubles. He turned upon all his fellow humans; he claimed he was a latent psyker and that he would have his revenge on us all.’

‘Surely this would have brought the Inquisition down upon him,’ called Franosch. ‘Most latents try to avoid their attention.’

‘None of us thought anything of his words. Gutor had always sought any attention to make himself seem more important. To him, even the inquisition would have been welcome.’

‘You believe that Gutor made a deal with a daemon?’ said Goedendag.

‘Yes. He wanted to live to see the destruction of all those who lived around him. Only after that would he surrender to death and allow the portal to fully open! And after that…’

‘After the portal is fully open there will be daemons enough for all of Minea,’ said Franosch.

‘Then we must hurry to make the greater daemon’s acquaintance,’ said Goedendag.

‘Meltaguns?’ said Fastlinger.

‘What about the humans?’ said Ortrud.

‘Use them,’ said one of the women. ‘Better a quick death than what they plan.’

‘Chainswords,’ said Goedendag. ‘Telramund. Less than one hundred floors to go. Move out!’

They splashed up the stairs of the tower. Globs of blood gathered in clumps on their boot spikes. They had to pause to shake them free.

The corridors they passed through were empty; they looked into empty rooms where humans had once lived and saw signs of fighting – overturned chairs, broken tables, even food scattered across the pooled blood on the floor – but of bodies, living or dead, there was no sign.

‘Carried away,’ said Franosch. ‘Sport for now or later.’

They passed floor nine hundred and ten, then nine hundred and twenty.

‘What’s that?’ asked Ortrud. The noise came again, a shrieking sound as of many voices crying in agony.

‘It’s coming from the elevator shaft,’ said Goedendag.

The black metal wall of the elevator shafts was their only constant as they climbed, that and the never ending flow of blood. Each set of doors had buckled and melted shut. Once more, the metal of the shafts seemed to hum with an unearthly music.

‘Like a trumpet call, blown from the warp,’ said Ortrud, darkly.

‘The bodies of those who fled,’ said Franosch. ‘Trapped, still living, in the shafts. Boiled in blood and feasted on by snake-fiends.’

On they climbed. On the nine hundred and twenty-seventh floor, the rooms were filled with human feet. On floor nine hundred and twenty-nine, glistening hearts lay in pools, still beating. They pumped blood from pool to pool, from room to room.

‘This is sick even by Slaaneshi standards,’ said Fastlinger. Goedendag said nothing.

Still they climbed.

Franosch concentrated.

‘Next floor,’ he said. ‘Daemonettes. Hundreds of them. The humans lie beyond them. And then…’

He paused, pushing his meagre psychic ability to its limit.

‘…and then nothing again. Nothing until the top of the building, and whatever awaits us there.’

‘It’s an invitation,’ said Goedendag, calmly. ‘Whatever is at the top is waiting for us. Waiting for me.’

The Space Marines looked at each other. Each felt the guilt of their Chapter, each felt the determination to atone for the sins of their fellow Iron Knights.

‘Tell us what to do, Goedendag.’

Goedendag looked at his chainsword. His lyman’s ear was attuned to the noises from above now, the pitiful cries of the tortured.

‘We’ve climbed nine hundred and forty floors in search of a fight,’ said Goedendag. ‘Now we’ll have one. I have a plan.’ He smiled slowly. ‘And Fastlinger, it’s time for you to sheathe your chainsword for a while…’

They fixed melta bombs to the ceiling, retreated to the floor below and waited for the explosion.

Ortrud was an expert at demolition. The bombs broke the ceiling and nothing more. Or rather, he broke more than the ceiling, for the ceiling was a floor as well, and as the ground beneath their birdlike feet gave way, the daemonettes of Slaanesh found themselves falling, falling down in a rain of blood, of thrashing limbs, of dust and screams and noise, falling towards floor nine hundred and forty, falling in a tangled mass. And erupting from the centre of this confusion came Goedendag and his Iron Knights.

Chainswords buzzed as they chopped at limbs and clove heads in two.

The daemonettes recovered quickly, righting themselves and lunging towards the Space Marines, slashing their crab-like claws and kicking with taloned feet. The Iron Knights formed a circle; seven chainswords thrust, cut and parried with elegant precision. More daemonettes dropped down from the floors above and Goedendag withdrew to the centre of the circle, the better to take on this new attack. One daemonette dropped headfirst towards him, one clawed arm stretched out, pointing at his face. He sidestepped, took her arm and rammed the claw straight down into the floor, piercing the metal there. He pushed her forward, breaking her arm, but at that moment a second daemonette fell on his back and he felt the eldritch power of her claw pierce the shell of his armour, the shrieking pain transmitted to his body through his black carapace. He reached for one of the two morning stars strapped to his back and pulled it free, the spiked head of the ball scraping across the face of the daemonette. Now he swung the ball around, as if to hit his own back. He heard the sickening crunch as her body was crushed between the ball of the morning star and the ceramite of his suit.

Still more daemonettes dropped into the room. The space was filled with white flesh, the slash of claws and the buzz and shriek of chainswords. Above him, Goedendag saw a space leading to the nine hundred and forty-second floor, two floors up.

‘Telramund, you’re in charge,’ he called. Summoning all of his enhanced strength, he leapt upwards, catching hold of the bottom-most step.

A claw slashed down and he caught it, pulling the daemonette down to join her sisters below. Quickly, he scrambled up to the next floor.

Daemonettes crowded towards him. Goedendag took a last look at his fellows fighting below, and then he raised his chainsword and charged forward, cutting his way through to the stairs.

He fought his way upwards against the tide of daemonettes, against the tide of blood. All the while, he had the impression that they were playing with him, that they were allowing him to pass, allowing him to climb higher. The waves of daemonettes diminished, though one or two of them still launched themselves at his chainsword.

Now he passed through the floors where the humans lay prisoner. Some were bound, some crawled on their knees, lacking feet, some lay half eviscerated, their shouts of pain weak in their throats, their tormentors called away to fight the Iron Knights.

The humans called out to him for succour. Goedendag ignored them. He could better aid them by confronting whatever lay at the top of this tower.

He pounded on up the flights of stairs, his anger acting as a buffer, pushing away all those that came before him. Now the daemonettes hung back as he passed; now they stood and watched as he climbed, or they turned and headed downwards to the fray with the remaining Iron Knights.

Now he was certain something was waiting for him at the top of the tower. As he climbed higher, a feeling of anxiety prickled at his heels, and he began to understand the nature of what lay ahead.

The sound of fighting faded to leave an eerie emptiness, a weariness that weighed down on his very soul.

He reached the nine hundred and ninetieth floor, and glimpsed an open space above him.

On floor nine hundred and ninety-two, he stepped out into a vast cavern. The last eight floors had been removed to leave a huge space at the very top of the hive tower. A nascent warp portal hung in the middle of the space, silver and black roiling in a halo on the boundary between this reality and the dreadful void of the otherworld. Blood flowed through the warp portal in a thin stream, splashing onto the mound of dead bodies below that lay folded up to look like pebbles. A mound of pink and brown and yellow pebbles, bound in red cord. And there, standing at the summit, surrounded by the dark halo of the nascent warp, bathed in the blood that ran from it, a shape within a shape.

Goedendag climbed the pile of the dead, and finally he came face to face with Gutor Invareln, latent psyker, the cause of all the horror.

Around the human, Goedendag could see the outline of the creature that had possessed him. Huge and powerful, with a bovine face, one female breast and four arms. Two of them ended in human-like hands, two of them in crab-like claws.

A greater daemon of Slaanesh. A Keeper of Secrets.

The daemon had not achieved full corporeality; it seemed to be still existing in some halfway state as it entered this universe. The psyker was completely possessed, looking out from the translucent form of the demon that surrounded him, eyes vacant, an idiot grin on his face.

The daemon giggled at the sight of Goedendag.

‘How appropriate,’ said the daemon. ‘For the Iron Knights have their secrets, do they not?’

‘And you are a Keeper of Secrets,’ replied Goedendag.

‘What is your name?’

‘Goedendag Morningstar.’

There was silence, broken only by the ever present dripping of blood.

‘Don’t you wish to know my name?’ asked the daemon.

‘No.’

A look of petulance crossed the daemon’s face, like that of a small child denied a toy. It quickly passed.

‘And yet I believe I do hold a secret you wish to know. Do you wish to know the location of your brethren?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

The daemon laughed.

‘I know that you are lying. Everyone knows of the penitence of the Iron Knights. Few outside the order know the reason. I am one of them. I am a Keeper of Secrets, and I know the location of your traitor brethren. It lies beyond the portal, Goedendag Morningstar, but I think you know that already. Why else would you have come here?’

‘To kill you, of course.’

The daemon looked beyond Goedendag’s shoulder. Goedendag did not turn. He could hear the skittering, giggling sound made by the daemonettes who filed into the room behind him.

‘My daughters are here. It would appear the comrades you left behind on the floor below have fallen, Goedendag Morningstar.’

‘It is no disgrace to die in battle.’

‘The traitors you seek thought otherwise, Goedendag Morningstar. They chose Chaos, Goedendag Morningstar. And you nearly chose the same!’

Goedendag said nothing, for to speak with a daemon was to be drawn into an argument with a daemon.

‘I will take your silence as agreement.’ The half seen features of the daemon looked down. Within its form, the psyker beamed with happy idiocy. ‘There is no need for you to lie, Goedendag Morningstar. I can sense the shame within you. It is the only thing that you have that outshines the temptation you feel, for you are full of lust for the pleasures of life. The pleasures denied to a Space Marine.’

Still Goedendag was silent.

‘And I should know. Isn’t that what I am about? The Keeper of Secrets? What secrets could be greater than those we do not want to know about ourselves?’

‘What secrets, indeed?’ said Goedendag tightly.

‘See? You speak! You should not be ashamed, Goedendag Morningstar. Your behaviour does not surprise me. Who is more zealous in following a path than one who has almost fallen from it? A man who was never tempted would not have half your ferocity. Look, it brought you to the top of this tower!’

‘I came to destroy you.’

‘So you say. Come, Goedendag Morningstar. Soon the portal will open fully. Why not pass beyond it? Join your dark brethren. Join the Iron Knights that you call traitors.’

‘Enough talk, daemon. It is time to fight.’

The daemon laughed.

‘Fight? It is all that you can do to stand, Goedendag Morningstar. Look at you. My very presence induces anguish and ecstasy within you.’

Goedendag looked down at the floor, focused on the corporeal feet of the psyker that stood within the outline of the daemon, and he tried to concentrate on the reality of the situation. In truth, he felt a savage joy within him that he usually knew best from battle, but this time it was mixed with something more innocent, something that rang with the purity of childhood, but a tainted purity, something polluted by blood and perverted in daemonic fashion. He felt the excitement that he had known when, as an aspirant, he had first begun the transition to Space Marine, when the gene-seed had been implanted and he had begun the long process of modification. Except now he felt something that he hadn’t known at the time. A deep anguish, a total certainty that the procedure would fail, that his body would reject the process and he would be branded a failure, that he would let down those who had come to depend upon him.

‘You’re strong, daemon’ admitted Goedendag. ‘You are affecting even me.’

‘This human is strong,’ said the daemon, indicating the psyker within himself. ‘Strong enough to offer himself in sacrifice in order to open the portal.’

‘He was a weak man!’ shouted Goedendag.

‘He was a bitter man. Bitter that his powers were overlooked by the Imperium.’

‘He should have been executed as a danger to all.’ Goedendag felt his willpower draining away.

‘Lucky for us that he was not. You know what price he asked in order to sacrifice himself to the portal? Only that he lived long enough to see us succeed. That was one bargain that we were happy to keep.’

Goedendag felt the chainsword getting heavier in his hands.

‘You’re getting weaker,’ said the daemon, as the chainsword slipped though Goedendag’s fingers and clattered to the floor.

‘I can still fight.’

‘I don’t think so. And so, Goedendag, before you die, I have one final question to ask you. Goedendag means Morningstar, does it not?’

‘It does. This is the last question you wish to ask me?’

‘No, you interrupt me. Your name, therefore, is Morningstar Morningstar. Why is that?’

‘Because of this,’ said Goedendag. And he crossed his hands over his chest and, gripping the two morning star handles that were fastened on his back, he swung them up and around, through the translucent outline of the daemon and brought them together, crushing the psyker’s head. There was a crunch of bone, grey matter exploding in a disk between the spikes of the two balls.

The daemon shrieked, and immediately Goedendag felt the sense of anguish and ecstasy decrease.

‘The portal is closing,’ said the daemon. ‘But I will make my mark in this world first!’

Goedendag stooped and scooped the chainsword from the floor. The daemon saw what he was doing and laughed.

‘That will not harm me in this form!’

‘I am not aiming for you,’ replied Goedendag coolly as he triggered the chainsword and used it to cut through the dead psyker’s neck. ‘Removing the head will speed the closing of the rift.’ He straightened up and moved around so that his back was to the shrinking portal.

‘And now,’ he said. ‘What will your daemonettes do? Will they attempt to pass me as they flee for the closing warp?’

The daemon laughed.

‘One man against the force of the daemonettes? I only wish I could sustain corporeality enough to watch you die under their onslaught! As it is, I will take comfort in the fact the location of your Iron Brethren will remain my secret!’

‘Daemon, when I have disposed of your daughters, I will come looking for you. You have my word on that.’

The daemon laughed louder.

‘You say that when you fight only with a chainsword? And listen! My sisters approach now!’

It was true. Goedendag heard the skittering of claws on blood and iron.

‘Only a chainsword, you say,’ said Goedendag, smiling grimly. ‘You forget my morning stars.’

‘And will that be enough?’ laughed the daemon.

‘Let us see,’ said Goedendag, and he triggered the chainsword. The angry buzzing was an invitation to the approaching daemons. He stepped forward and raised his sword.

Simultaneously, eight white-bodied daemons leapt at him, screaming in unison. They raised their crab-like claws and plunged towards Goedendag, teeth bared. Eight more leapt up behind them.

‘Goodbye,’ said the daemon, and Goedendag stepped forward to meet the lithe attackers. The first lunged forward with one snapping claw. Goedendag swung his chainsword in a tight circle that sliced through the claw and into the side of the daemonette that followed. A clawed foot lashed out and took hold of his armoured boot. Goedendag ignored it and slashed at another attacker.

‘Come on!’ he called. ‘Come on, all of you!’

White bodies advanced on all sides. Claws, screaming, blood, ichor. Goedendag stood at the top of a mound of naked, bound bodies, bathed in blood, and he fought like a daemon himself. But there were too many of them. The sheer weight of numbers began to overwhelm him.

And then he heard a shout. There, in the distance, he saw Telramund, armour half broken, bathed in blood and ichor. And behind him, Fastlinger, and then Franosch.

The shout came again.

‘The humans are clear.’

Tired though he was, Goedendag smiled.

‘Now,’ he said, holstering his chainsword. ‘Now it is time for meltaguns!’

The Iron Knights looked at the bodies of the fallen. Goedendag and Franosch watched the shrinking remnants of the closing portal.

‘Anything?’ asked Goedendag.

Franosch shook his head.

‘Sorry. Nothing.’ He wiped his forehead, removing a splash of blood. ‘Did it occur to you that the daemon could be lying?’

Goedendag looked thoughtful.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘It knew too much.’

‘Then the Iron Brethren exist somewhere in the warp. The story is true.’

‘Perhaps…’ He place a warning hand on Franosch’s arm. Kelra, the Imperial Guardswoman, had entered the room.

‘So, Goedendag,’ she said, ‘you succeeded. The tower is secure. The civilians are safe. Thank you.’

‘We don’t do this for gratitude,’ said Goedendag. ‘Don your helmets, brothers. It’s time to leave.’

‘But–’ called Kelra.

‘Thank you, sister,’ said Goedendag. ‘We’ll see ourselves out.’

Shadow Knight

Aaron Dembski-Bowden

The sins of the father, they say.

Maybe. Maybe not. But we were always different. My brothers and I, we were never truly kin with the others – the Angels, the Wolves, the Ravens…

Perhaps our difference was our father’s sin, and perhaps it was his triumph. I am not empowered by anyone to cast a critical eye over the history of the VIII Legion.

These words stick with me, though. The sins of the father. These words have shaped my life.

The sins of my father echo throughout eternity as heresy. Yet the sins of my father’s father are worshipped as the first acts of godhood. I do not ask myself if this is fair. Nothing is fair. The word is a myth. I do not care what is fair, and what is right, and what’s unfair and wrong. These concepts do not exist outside the skulls of those who waste their life in contemplation.

I ask myself, night after night, if I deserve vengeance.

I devote each beat of my heart to tearing down everything I once raised. Remember this, remember it always: my blade and bolter helped forge the Imperium. I and those like me – we hold greater rights than any to destroy mankind’s sickened empire, for it was our blood, our bones, and our sweat that built it.

Look to your shining champions now. The Adeptus Astartes that scour the dark places of your galaxy. The hordes of fragile mortals enslaved to the Imperial Guard and shackled in service to the Throne of Lies. Not a soul among them was even born when my brothers and I built this empire.

Do I deserve vengeance? Let me tell you something about vengeance, little scion of the Imperium. My brothers and I swore to our dying father that we would atone for the great sins of the past. We would bleed the unworthy empire that we had built, and cleanse the stars of the False Emperor’s taint.

This is not mere vengeance. This is redemption.

My right to destroy is greater than your right to live.

Remember that, when we come for you.

He is a child standing over a dying man.

The boy is more surprised than scared. His friend, who has not yet taken a life, pulls him away. He will not move. Not yet. He cannot escape the look in the bleeding man’s eyes.

The shopkeeper dies.

The boy runs.

He is a child being cut open by machines.

Although he sleeps, his body twitches, betraying painful dreams and sleepless nerves firing as they register pain from the surgery. Two hearts, fleshy and glistening, beat in his cracked-open chest. A second new organ, smaller than the new heart, will alter the growth of his bones, encouraging his skeleton to absorb unnatural minerals over the course of his lifetime.

Untrembling hands, some human, some augmetic, work over the child’s body, slicing and sealing, implanting and flesh-bonding. The boy trembles again, his eyes opening for a moment.

A god with a white mask shakes his head at the boy.

‘Sleep.’

The boy tries to resist, but slumber grips him with comforting claws. He feels, just for a moment, as though he is sinking into the black seas of his home world.

Sleep, the god had said.

He obeys, because the chemicals within his blood force him to obey.

A third organ is placed within his chest, not far from the new heart. As the ossmodula warps his bones to grow on new minerals, the biscopea generates a flood of hormones to feed his muscles.

Surgeons seal the boy’s medical wounds.

Already, the child is no longer human. Tonight’s work has seen to that. Time will reveal just how different the boy will become.

He is a teenage boy, standing over another dead body.

This corpse is not like the first. This corpse is the same age as the boy, and in its last moments of life it had struggled with all its strength, desperate not to die.

The boy drops his weapon. The serrated knife falls to the ground.

Legion masters come to him. Their eyes are red, their dark armour immense. Skulls hang from their pauldrons and plastrons on chains of blackened bronze.

He draws breath to speak, to tell them it was an accident. They silence him.

‘Well done,’ they say.

And they call him brother.

He is a teenage boy, and the rifle is heavy in his hands.

He watches for a long, long time. He has trained for this. He knows how to slow his hearts, how to regulate his breathing and the biological beats of his body until his entire form remains as still as a statue.

Predator. Prey. His mind goes cold, his focus absolute. The mantra chanted internally becomes the only way to see the world. Predator. Prey. Hunter. Hunted. Nothing else matters.

He squeezes the trigger. One thousand metres away, a man dies.

‘Target eliminated,’ he says.

He is a young man, sleeping on the same surgery table as before.

In a slumber demanded by the chemicals flowing through his veins, he dreams once again of his first murder. In the waking world, needles and medical probes bore into the flesh of his back, injecting fluids directly into his spinal column.

His slumbering body reacts to the invasion, coughing once. Acidic spit leaves his lips, hissing on the ground where it lands, eating into the tiled floor.

When he wakes, hours later, he feels the sockets running down his spine. The scars, the metallic nodules…

In a universe where no gods exist, he knows this is the closest mortality can come to divinity.

He is a young man, staring into his own eyes.

He stands naked in a dark chamber, in a lined rank with a dozen other souls. Other initiates standing with him, also stripped of clothing, the marks of their surgeries fresh upon their pale skin. He barely notices them. Sexuality is a forgotten concept, alien to his mind, merely one of ten thousand humanities his consciousness has discarded. He no longer recalls the face of his mother and father. He only recalls his own name because his Legion masters never changed it.

He looks into the eyes that are now his. They stare back, slanted and murder-red, set in a helmet with its facial plate painted white. The blood-eyed, bone-pale skull watches him as he watches it.

This is his face now. Through these eyes, he will see the galaxy. Through this skulled helm he will cry his wrath at those who dare defy the Emperor’s vision for mankind.

‘You are Talos,’ a Legion master says, ‘of First Claw, Tenth Company.’

He is a young man, utterly inhuman, immortal and undying.

He sees the surface of this world through crimson vision, with data streaming in sharp, clear white runic language across his retinas. He sees the life forces of his brothers in the numbers displayed. He feels the temperature outside his sealed war armour. He sees targeting sights flicker as they follow the movements of his eyes, and feels his hand, the hand clutching his bolter, tense as it tries to follow each target lock. Ammunition counters display how many have died this day.

Around him, aliens die. Ten, a hundred, a thousand. His brothers butcher their way through a city of violet crystal, bolters roaring and chainswords howling. Here and there in the opera of battle-noise, a brother screams his rage through helm-amplifiers.

The sound is always the same. Bolters always roar. Chainblades always howl. Space Marines always cry their fury. When the VIII Legion wages war, the sound is that of lions and wolves slaying each other while vultures shriek above.

He cries words that he will one day never shout again – words that will soon become ash on his tongue. Already he cries the words without thinking about them, without feeling them.

For the Emperor.

He is a young man, awash in the blood of humans.

He shouts words without the heart to feel them, declaring concepts of Imperial justice and deserved vengeance. A man claws at his armour, begging and pleading.

‘We are loyal! We have surrendered!’

The young man breaks the human’s face with the butt of his bolter. Surrendering so late was a meaningless gesture. Their blood must run as an example, and the rest of the system’s worlds would fall into line.

Around him, the riot continues unabated. Soon, his bolter is silenced, voiceless with no shells to fire. Soon after that, his chainsword dies, clogged with meat.

The Night Lords resort to killing the humans with their bare hands, dark gauntlets punching and strangling and crushing.

At a timeless point in the melee, the voice of an ally comes over the vox. It is an Imperial Fist. Their Legion watches from the bored security of their landing site.

‘What are you doing?’ the Imperial Fist demands. ‘Brothers, are you insane?’

Talos does not answer. They do not deserve an answer. If the Fists had brought this world into compliance themselves, the Night Lords would never have needed to come here.

He is a young man, watching his home world burn.

He is a young man, mourning a father soon to die.

He is a traitor to everything he once held sacred.

Stabbing lights lanced through the gloom.

The salvage team moved slowly, neither patient nor impatient, but with the confident care of men with an arduous job to do and no deadline to meet. The team spread out across the chamber, overturning debris, examining the markings of weapons fire on the walls, their internal vox clicking as they spoke to one another.

With the ship open to the void, each of the salvage team wore atmosphere suits against the airless cold. They communicated as often by sign language as they did by words.

This interested the hunter that watched them, because he too was fluent in Adeptus Astartes battle sign. Curious, to see his enemies betray themselves so easily.

The hunter watched in silence as the spears of illumination cut this way and that, revealing the wreckage of the battles that had taken place on this deck of the abandoned vessel. The salvage team – who were clearly genhanced, but too small and unarmoured to be full Space Marines – were crippled by the atmosphere suits they wore. Such confinement limited their senses, while the hunter’s ancient Mark IV war plate only enhanced his. They could not hear as he heard, nor see as he saw. That reduced their chances of survival from incredibly unlikely to absolutely none.

Smiling at the thought, the hunter whispered to the machine-spirit of his armour, a single word that enticed the war plate’s soul with the knowledge that the hunt was beginning in earnest.

‘Preysight.’

His vision blurred to the blue of the deepest oceans, decorated by supernova heat smears of moving, living beings. The hunter watched the team move on, separating into two teams, each of two men.

This was going to be entertaining.

Talos followed the first team, shadowing them through the corridors, knowing the grating purr of his power armour and the snarling of its servo-joints were unheard by the sense-dimmed salvagers.

Salvagers was perhaps the wrong word, of course. Disrespectful to the foe.

While they were not full Space Marines, their gene-enhancement was obvious in the bulk of their bodies and the lethal grace of their motions. They, too, were hunters – just weaker examples of the breed.

Initiates.

Their icon, mounted on each shoulder plate, displayed a drop of ruby blood framed by proud angelic wings.

The hunter’s pale lips curled into another crooked smile. This was unexpected. The Blood Angels had sent in a team of Scouts…

The Night Lord had little time for notions of coincidence. If the Angels were here, then they were here on the hunt. Perhaps the Covenant of Blood had been detected on the long-range sensors of a Blood Angel battlefleet. Such a discovery would certainly have been enough to bring them here.

Hunting for their precious sword, no doubt. And not for the first time.

Perhaps this was their initiation ceremony? A test of prowess? Bring back the blade and earn passage into the Chapter…

Oh, how unfortunate.

The stolen blade hung at the hunter’s hip, as it had for years now. Tonight would not be the night it found its way back into the desperate reach of the Angels. But, as always, they were welcome to sell their lives in the attempt at reclamation.

Talos monitored the readout of his retinal displays. The temptation to blink-click certain runes was strong, but he resisted the urge. This hunt would be easy enough without combat narcotics flooding his blood. Purity lay in abstaining from such things until they became necessary.

The location runes of his brothers in First Claw flickered on his visor display. Taking note of their positions elsewhere in the ship, the hunter moved forward to shed the blood of those enslaved to the Throne of Lies.

A true hunter did not avoid being seen by his prey. Such stalking was the act of cowards and carrion-eaters, revealing themselves only when the prey was slain. Where was the skill in that? Where was the thrill?

A Night Lord was raised to hunt by other, truer principles.

Talos ghosted through the shadows, judging the strength of the Scouts’ suits’ audio-receptors. Just how much could they hear…

He followed them down a corridor, his gauntleted knuckles scraping along the metal walls.

The Blood Angels turned instantly, stabbing his face with their beam-lighting.

That almost worked, the hunter had to give it to them. These lesser hunters knew their prey – they knew they hunted Night Lords. For half a heartbeat, sunfire would have blazed across his vision, blinding him.

Talos ignored the beams completely. He tracked by preysight. Their tactics were meaningless.

He was already gone when they opened fire, melting into the shadows of a side corridor.

He caught them again nine minutes later.

This time, he lay in wait after baiting a beautiful trap. The sword they came for was right in their path.

It was called Aurum. Words barely did its craftsmanship justice. Forged when the Emperor’s Great Crusade took its first steps into the stars, the blade was forged for one of the Blood Angel Legion’s first heroes. It had come into Talos’s possession centuries later, when he’d murdered Aurum’s heir.

It was almost amusing, how often the sons of Sanguinius tried to reclaim the sword from him. It was much less amusing how often he had to kill his own brothers when they sought to take the blade from his dead hands. Avarice shattered all unity, even among Legion brothers.

The Scouts saw their Chapter relic now, so long denied their grasp. The golden blade was embedded into the dark metal decking, its angel-winged crosspiece turned to ivory under the harsh glare of their stabbing lights.

An invitation to simply advance into the chamber and take it, but it was so obviously a trap. Yet… how could they resist?

They did not resist.

The initiates were alert, bolters high and panning fast, senses keen. The hunter saw their mouths moving as they voxed continuous updates to each other.

Talos let go of the ceiling.

He thudded to the deck behind one of the initiates, gauntlets snapping forward to clutch the Scout.

The other Angel turned and fired. Talos laughed at the zeal in his eyes, at the tightness of his clenched teeth, as the initiate fired three bolts into the body of his brother.

The Night Lord gripped the convulsing human shield against him, seeing the temperature gauge on his retinal display flicker as the dying initiate’s blood hit sections of his war plate. In his grip, the shuddering Angel was little more than a burst sack of freezing meat. The bolt shells had detonated, coming close to killing him and opening the suit to the void.

‘Good shooting, Angel,’ Talos spoke through his helm’s crackling vox-speakers. He threw his bleeding shield aside and leapt for the other initiate, fingers splayed like talons.

The fight was mercilessly brief. The Night Lord’s full gene-enhancements coupled with the heightened strength of his armour’s engineered muscle fibre-cables meant there was only one possible outcome. Talos backhanded the bolter from the Angel’s grip and clawed at the initiate.

As the weaker warrior writhed, Talos stroked his gauntleted fingertips across the clear face-visor of the initiate’s atmosphere suit.

‘This looks fragile,’ he said.

The Scout shouted something unheard. Hate burned in his eyes. Talos wasted several seconds just enjoying that expression. That passion.

He crashed his fist against the visor, smashing it to shards.

As one corpse froze and another swelled and ruptured on its way to asphyxiation, the Night Lord retrieved his blade, the sword he claimed by right of conquest, and moved back into the darkest parts of the ship.

‘Talos,’ the voice came over the vox in a sibilant hiss.

‘Speak, Uzas.’

‘They have sent initiates to hunt us, brother. I had to cancel my preysight to make sure my eyes were seeing clearly. Initiates. Against us.’

‘Spare me your indignation. What do you want?’

Uzas’s reply was a low growl and a crackle of dead vox. Talos put it from his mind. He had long grown bored of Uzas forever lamenting each time they met with insignificant prey.

‘Cyrion,’ he voxed.

‘Aye. Talos?’

‘Of course.’

‘Forgive me. I thought it would be Uzas with another rant. I hear your decks are crawling with Angels. Epic glories to be earned in slaughtering their infants, eh?’

Talos didn’t quite sigh. ‘Are you almost done?’

‘This hulk is as hollow as Uzas’s head, brother. Negative on anything of worth. Not even a servitor to steal. I’m returning to the boarding pod now. Unless you need help shooting the Angels’ children?’

Talos killed the vox-link as he stalked through the black corridor. This was fruitless. Time to leave – empty-handed and still desperately short on supplies. This… this piracy offended him now, as it always did, and as it always had since they’d been cut off from the Legion decades ago. A plague upon the long-dead Warmaster and his failures which still echoed today. A curse upon the night the VIII Legion was shattered and scattered across the stars.

Diminished. Reduced. Surviving as disparate warbands – broken echoes of the unity within loyalist Chapters.

Sins of the father.

This curious ambush by the Angels who had tracked them here was nothing more than a minor diversion. Talos was about to vox a general withdrawal after the last initiates were hunted down and slain, when his vox went live again.

‘Brother,’ said Xarl. ‘I’ve found the Angels.’

‘As have Uzas and I. Kill them quickly and let’s get back to the Covenant.’

‘No, Talos.’ Xarl’s voice was edged with anger. ‘Not initiates. The real Angels.’

The Night Lords of First Claw, Tenth Company, came together like wolves in the wild. Stalking through the darkened chambers of the ship, the four hunters met in the shadows, speaking over their vox-link, crouching with their weapons at the ready.

In Talos’s hands, the relic blade Aurum caught what little light remained, glinting as he moved.

‘Five of them,’ Xarl spoke low, his voice edged with his suppressed eagerness. ‘We can take five. They stand bright and proud in a control chamber not far from our boarding pod.’ He racked his bolter. ‘We can take five,’ he repeated.

‘They’re just waiting?’ Cyrion said. ‘They must be expecting an honest fight.’

Uzas snorted at that.

‘This is your fault, you know,’ Cyrion said with a chuckle, nodding at Talos. ‘You and that damn sword.’

‘It keeps things interesting,’ Talos replied. ‘And I cherish every curse that their Chapter screams at me.’

He stopped speaking, narrowing his eyes for a moment. Cyrion’s skulled helm blurred before him. As did Xarl’s. The sound of distant bolter fire echoed in his ears, not distorted by the faint crackle of helm-filtered noise. Not a true sound. Not a real memory. Something akin to both.

‘I… have a…’ Talos blinked to clear his fading vision. Shadows of vast things darkened his sight. ‘…have a plan…’

‘Brother?’ Cyrion asked.

Talos shivered once, his servo-joints snarling at the shaking movement. Magnetically clasped to his thigh, his bolter didn’t fall to the decking, but the golden blade did. It clattered to the steel floor with a clang.

‘Talos?’ Xarl asked.

‘No,’ Uzas growled, ‘not now.’

Talos’s head jerked once, as if his armour had sent an electrical pulse through his spine, and he crashed to the ground in a clash of war plate on metal.

‘The god-machines of Crythe…’ he murmured. ‘They have killed the sun.’

A moment later, he started screaming.

The others had to cut Talos out of the squad’s internal vox-link. His screams drowned out all other speech.

‘We can take five of them,’ Xarl said. ‘Three of us remain. We can take five Angels.’

‘Almost certainly,’ Cyrion agreed. ‘And if they summon squads of their initiates?’

‘Then we slaughter five of them and their initiates.’

Uzas cut in. ‘We were slaying our way across the stars ten thousand years before they were even born.’

‘Yes, while that’s a wonderful parable, I don’t need rousing rhetoric,’ Cyrion said. ‘I need a plan.’

‘We hunt,’ Uzas and Xarl said at once.

‘We kill them,’ Xarl added.

‘We feast on their gene-seed,’ Uzas finished.

‘If this was an award ceremony for fervency and zeal, once again, you’d both be collapsing under the weight of medals. But you want to launch an assault on their position while we drag Talos with us? I think the scraping of his armour over the floor will rather kill the element of stealth, brothers.’

‘Guard him, Cyrion,’ Xarl said. ‘Uzas and I will take the Angels.’

‘Two against five.’ Cyrion’s red eye lenses didn’t quite fix upon his brother’s. ‘Those are poor odds, Xarl.’

‘Then we will finally be rid of each other,’ Xarl grunted. ‘Besides, we’ve had worse.’

That was true, at least.

‘Ave Dominus Nox,’ Cyrion said. ‘Hunt well and hunt fast.’

‘Ave Dominus Nox,’ the other two replied.

Cyrion listened for a while to his brother’s screams. It was difficult to make any sense from the stream of shouted words.

This came as no surprise. Cyrion had heard Talos suffering in the grip of this affliction many times before. As gene-gifts went, it was barely a blessing.

Sins of the father, he thought, watching Talos’s inert armour, listening to the cries of death to come. How they are reflected within the son.

According to Cyrion’s retinal chrono display, one hour and sixteen minutes had passed when he heard the explosion.

The decking shuddered under his boots.

‘Xarl? Uzas?’

Static was the only answer.

Great.

When Uzas’s voice finally broke over the vox after two hours, it was weak and coloured by his characteristic bitterness.

‘Hnngh. Cyrion. It’s done. Drag the prophet.’

‘You sound like you got shot,’ Cyrion resisted the urge to smile in case they heard it in his words.

‘He did,’ Xarl said. ‘We’re on our way back.’

‘What was that detonation?’

‘Plasma cannon.’

‘You’re… you’re joking.’

‘Not even for a second. I have no idea why they brought one of those to a fight in a ship’s innards, but the coolant feeds made for a ripe target.’

Cyrion blink-clicked a rune by Xarl’s identification symbol. It opened a private channel between the two of them.

‘Who hit Uzas?’

‘An initiate. From behind, with a sniper rifle.’

Cyrion immediately closed the link so no one would hear him laughing.

The Covenant of Blood was a blade of cobalt darkness, bronze-edged and scarred by centuries of battle. It drifted through the void, sailing close to its prey like a shark gliding through black waters.

The Encarmine Soul was a Gladius-class frigate with a long and proud history of victories in the name of the Blood Angels Chapter – and before it, the IX Legion. It opened fire on the Covenant of Blood with an admirable array of weapons batteries.

Briefly, beautifully, the void shields around the Night Lords strike cruiser shimmered in a display reminiscent of oil on water.

The Covenant of Blood returned fire. Within a minute, the blade-like ship was sailing through void debris, its lances cooling from their momentary fury. The Encarmine Soul, what little chunks were left of it, clanked and sparked off the larger cruiser’s void shields as it passed through the expanding cloud of wreckage.

Another ship, this one stricken and dead in space, soon fell under the Covenant’s shadow. The strike cruiser obscured the sun, pulling in close, ready to receive its boarding pod once again.

First Claw had been away for seven hours investigating the hulk. Their mothership had come hunting for them.

Bulkhead seals hissed as the reinforced doors opened on loud, grinding hinges.

Xarl and Cyrion carried Talos into the Covenant’s deployment bay. Uzas walked behind them, a staggering limp marring his gait. His spine was on fire from the sniper’s solid slug that still lodged there. Worse, his genhanced healing had sealed and clotted the wound. He’d need surgery – or more likely a knife and a mirror – to tear the damn thing out.

One of the Atramentar, elite guard of the Exalted, stood in its hulking Terminator war plate. His skull-painted, tusked helm stared impassively. Trophy racks adorned his back, each one impaled with several helms from a number of loyalist Chapters: a history of bloodshed and betrayal, proudly displayed for his brothers to see.

It nodded to Talos’s prone form.

‘The Soul Hunter is wounded?’ the Terminator asked, its voice a deep, rumbling growl.

‘No,’ Cyrion said. ‘Inform the Exalted at once. His prophet is suffering another vision.’

In Hrondir’s Tomb

Mark Clapham

It was the smell he registered first, before the sight or the sound. It was a hot scent, hotter than the sparks coming off his chainblade as it cut through armour, or the warmth of the Tau commander’s blood as the blade dug through the battlesuit and into his flesh.

It was a static smell of air being agitated, of a very heavy weapon powering up, somewhere nearby. A mortal human, or even a Space Marine of a different Chapter, might not have picked the scent out from the many smells of battle.

Anvindr Godrichsson was a wolf brother, and his senses were more finely attuned. His nostrils twitched at the tang of it, catching the scent over the foul aroma of alien gore before him.

He glanced up, for little more than half a second. The sky was a grey blur of falling rain and rising smoke, but Anvindr could see a great, dark shape moving between buildings, a solid ring of light glowing through the mist.

A Tau gunship, its railgun powering up.

‘To shelter,’ Anvindr called to his squad, his voice ringing out through the ruins. He extracted his blood-slicked chainblade from the chest plate of the fallen commander, and dropped to the ground from his position astride the chest of the alien’s battlesuit.

A Space Wolf feared nothing; the Adeptus Astartes fled from no enemy, but there was no glory or honour in meekly allowing a weapon like that to reduce you to a paste. The Tau were notorious for their desire to kill from a distance rather than engage in close combat, and Anvindr would be damned if they would succeed with his pack.

Anvindr’s pack responded to his call without question, although Tormodr approached with bad grace as usual, a scowl across his face and a desultory huff of fire spurting from his flamer. Tormodr moved as fast as any of them, the heavy boots of his armour barely glancing off the rubble as he sprung over an incline into Anvindr’s field of vision, yet he still managed to seem like he was dragging his feet.

Then the rest, all Grey Hunters of the Fourth Company of the Vlka Fenryka, known commonly as Space Wolves: Sindri, eyes gleaming with youth in spite of all his decades, his hair a shock of blond curls, unusual for a Fenrisian; Liulfr, heavy even for a Space Marine, as much immovable object as unstoppable force; and finally Gulbrandr, his skin pale but his hair and beard raven black. They all wore the colours of their Chapter, blue-grey power armour edged with gold, augmented with honour markings and the fur of significant kills.

Although all of them had their eyes out for a safe place of cover, it was Gulbrandr, sharp-eyed as ever, who let out a high whistle, pointing ahead.

They ran as the railgun fired its first shots, the blasts tearing into a city that had already been devastated by ground-level warfare. As the large railgun fired upon the retreating Wolves, buildings already gutted by fire and ordnance were shook to their foundations, and began to crumble altogether.

The Wolves ran through a city that threatened to bury them alive.

Then, following Gulbrandr’s lead, they were on a steep, gravel-strewn slope at an angle to the city streets, sliding down towards a weathered stone archway some distance below ground level. Anvindr dug in his heels, controlling his descent as the weight of his armoured body dragged him downwards, throwing up scree in his wake.

Surrounding the archway were a few squat industrial vehicles and stacks of crates, as well as a series of crude arc lights, dull in the afternoon haze.

As the Wolves reached level ground, moving from a controlled slide to a run without a stumble or pause, a blast from the railgun impacted nearby, throwing Anvindr forward. Without his power armour he would have fallen. He wore no helmet, and so closed his eyes against the blazing light and heat that scorched his skin.

Still running, he opened his eyes, ears ringing, just in time to see another blast consume the archway they were running under. As they ran under the archway they did so through a rain of rubble; the arch itself collapsed over them, shaken to pieces by the hammering detonations.

The falling wall of shattered rock consumed them in darkness.

His ears still filled with the roar of the explosion, his field of vision obscured by rock dust, Anvindr found himself falling forward, struck in the right pauldron by some unseen chunk of rock. He controlled his fall enough to drop to one knee, steadying himself. He braced himself for further blows, but none came, just a gentle rain of fragments.

Then there was silence, or something like it. The rock fall had totally blocked the way they had come in, cutting off any noise from the surface, although Anvindr could still feel the periodic vibration from explosions above ground.

Anvindr checked himself. One pauldron dented, but otherwise just scrapes to his power armour, and light burns and scratches over his exposed face. He pulled himself to his feet, dust and small pieces of rock falling from his armour as he did so.

As the dust settled, he could make out a large chamber lit by a string of arc lights. The walls were polished stone, but featureless. Around Anvindr, his brothers were recovering themselves. Gulbrandr stood in front, entirely unscathed, and was looking ahead to the chamber’s one exit, a corridor leading downwards. Anvindr ignored him, and turned to see Tormodr rising from the ground, shaking chunks of rock from his pelts while brushing aside a mocking hand of assistance from Sindri. Both seemed battered but intact, although Tormodr’s arm hung limp at his side.

Of Liulfr, there was initially no sign. Where once the chamber led out to the daylight, a sloped wall of broken rock now blocked the way. There was no trace of Liulfr at all, just that wall of rock.

Anvindr approached the rockslide, ears and nose pricked, searching for the slightest sign. Within seconds he was on his knees, rolling away a stone as tall as himself. Sindri and Tormodr aided him in the work, while Gulbrandr hung back, keeping watch.

All this, they did wordlessly, united in a common objective. They uncovered a gloved hand, the fingers twitching at the air as the rocks holding it down were removed, then the rest of an armoured arm, and Liulfr’s head and shoulders. Liulfr’s helmet had buckled and split down one side of his face, and he blinked away dust and took a ragged breath as his face was exposed. His cheek was broken and his face bloodied, but he was alive.

‘Real darkness,’ said Liulfr with a cough of blood. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like. Shame to have it broken by faces such as yours.’ He laughed to himself, coughing blood again, then grunted.

‘We’d have left you in peace if those furs didn’t smell so much,’ said Anvindr, nodding at the torn strips of pelt around the shoulders of Liulfr’s battered armour. ‘A noseless hive dweller could catch the scent of those, rockslide or not.’

During this exchange, Anvindr had been looking at his fellow Wolf closely, and this last insult was delivered with relief. Liulfr was pinned, a giant slab of rock having crushed his lower body. Anvindr knew the look of a brother whose thread was at its end, and Liulfr did not have that look. He would live.

He would not, however, be moving anywhere, as the Wolves discovered when they cleared a space around Liulfr. The rock slab that held him down was huge, taller than the chamber they were in and half as wide. Even the collective strength of the four other Wolves would not be enough to shift it.

Anvindr’s mind was just teasing towards what exactly they might need to aid Liulfr when he heard the sound of someone approaching. The others had heard it too: Anvindr turned to see Gulbrandr already taking a firing position, his boltgun aimed down the tunnel. As footsteps drew closer, Anvindr saw Gulbrandr relax his grip and give a barely perceptible nod: friend, not foe.

The man who emerged up the incline of the tunnel was an Imperial Guardsman, wearing the uniform of the Lacusian Guard, dark green with silver trim. As he approached he looked first at Gulbrandr, towering over him, then at the rest of the Wolves, then at the collapsed archway.

‘My lords,’ said the Lacusian formally. He looked past the Wolves to see the extent of the rockslide that had sealed the entrance.

‘Who are you?’ asked Anvindr.

‘Could you come with me, lords?’ asked the Lacusian, having finished his inspection.

Anvindr bristled at the evasion. He had expected a straight answer. In his experience most Guardsmen, even the sternest veterans, were intimidated by the presence of the Adeptus Astartes, as well they should. Was this man not afraid to defy a Space Marine?

No, Anvindr thought, looking at the Guardsman before him. It wasn’t that the man wasn’t intimidated by Anvindr. It was that there was someone or something else that intimidated him more.

‘Very well,’ grunted Anvindr, nodding for the Lacusian to lead the way.

Leaving Liulfr, the Wolves followed their mortal guide further down the tunnel, which remained broad enough for two Space Marines to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. The Lacusian walked with a slight limp, the sound of grinding gears as his right foot touched the ground indicating an augmetic leg.

Curved corridors broke off from the tunnel as it levelled out, but the Guardsman led them straight ahead. As they passed these corridors, Anvindr could see hollows in the curved stone walls, facing inwards towards their destination. Some of the alcoves were lit with lamps or small fires, and he could hear and smell human life nearby. People were living down here. The war on Beltrasse had raged for months before the Wolves arrived to drive back the Tau, and these were the refugees.

They were led into a wide octagonal chamber, the ceiling of which rose to a high dome. Lights strung around the chamber all pointed to the centre, where a huge stone cube sat on a raised dais. Machinery of a kind Anvindr did not recognise was scattered around the chamber, connected by bundles of cable.

The Lacusian who led them there stepped aside as they entered, and Anvindr climbed the steps of the dais. Carved into one side of the cube was a representation, crude but instantly recognisable, of a Space Marine in Terminator armour, seated with his hands resting on his knees.

The rest of the chamber was as unadorned as the tunnel that had led them there, the polished stone unmarked by any text. However, one word was carved beneath the engraving of the Space Marine:

HRONDIR

Anvindr looked back at the carving. The markings on one shoulder could have been part of a horned skull motif, seen from the side.

‘His name was Hrondir, of the Exorcists Chapter of loyal Adeptus Astartes,’ pronounced a smooth, clipped voice, as a newcomer entered the chamber. It was a supremely confident voice and the appearance matched: the man who entered was tall, taller than virtually any mortal, but shorter than a Space Marine. He was dark-skinned with chiselled, sharp cheeked features and piercing eyes, beneath one of which was a tattoo of a stylised letter ‘I’ that glowed slightly in the firelight. He wore a plain black robe thrown back over the shoulders of heavy gold armour, the plates of which were inscribed with curved lettering and ornate patterns. A long-handled hammer hung from his belt.

Anvindr recognised the man for what he was: an inquisitor. To Anvindr, it was obvious from his armour, but knowledge of the Inquisition’s existence was privileged information, and few would recognise an inquisitor by sight.

The inquisitor was accompanied by another man, wearing black robes trimmed with silver. The second mortal was shorter, paler and seemed to almost disappear when stood beside his grandiosely clothed companion. He didn’t speak, but instead carried a data-slate which he periodically glanced at.

‘I am Montiyf, and this is Hrondir’s tomb,’ said the inquisitor, making a sweeping gesture. ‘He fell here some three centuries ago, in a battle to save Beltrasse, and the people built this tomb in his honour. As the decades wore on, the catacombs of the tomb were expanded to house the other dead from that battle, so that they might be closer to where Hrondir sits within his sarcophagus, as is the local tradition.’

‘Three centuries,’ repeated Anvindr, still examining the carving on the great cube, Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Had it been that long?

‘Yes,’ said the inquisitor redundantly, scrutinising Anvindr for a few seconds. He then turned to the Guardsman who had led the Wolves into Hrondir’s tomb. ‘Galvern, what is your report?’

‘My lord,’ the Lacusian nodded crisply, and Anvindr could see the hold that the inquisitor had over him. ‘The entrance has been completely sealed by a rockslide, but otherwise the integrity of the tomb is intact.’

‘Heavy fire from a Tau gunship brought down the archway,’ added Anvindr. ‘My brothers and I sought temporary shelter here. We will return to the surface once the threat has passed.’

‘If the entrance is blocked then that will not be possible,’ said the inquisitor. ‘This is a tomb; there is only one entrance, captain. Fortunately it is a very well built and deep tomb, and is unlikely to suffer any further damage from the Tau.’

Anvindr shrugged off the inquisitor’s acknowledgement of his rank, as it wasn’t difficult to read his shoulder markings.

‘If this is a tomb, why are you down here, inquisitor…?’ asked Anvindr.

‘Inquisitor Montiyf of the Ordo Malleus,’ finished the man, gesturing to his companion. ‘This is Interrogator Pranix, and we are here to learn what we can from Hrondir’s victory, to study the enemies he defeated here. As battle-brothers of the honoured Sixth Chapter, you will of course understand the need to learn from a defeated enemy.’

Anvindr did not understand how Montiyf expected to discover anything about a long-dead enemy by skulking around a featureless tomb, but presumably the banks of equipment served some purpose in this respect. It was none of Anvindr’s concern, regardless.

‘We are here to fight the Tau,’ said Anvindr. ‘Is there no way back to the surface?’

It would, he thought, be intolerable to rot away down in such a hole, immortal life steadily slipping away in the dark. A perilously dull end to a long life of glorious battle.

‘You will get to fight the xenos again soon enough,’ said Montiyf. ‘My retinue are following another lead, but they know our position and are due to liaise with me in nine days. Once they find the entrance has collapsed they will requisition whatever is needed to dig us out. Until then, the labyrinth of tunnels surrounding the main tomb is large, and there have been over a hundred civilians sheltering down here. They have water, air and food supplies, it should not be difficult to requisition whatever you need.’

Anvindr grunted again. He turned his attention back to the carving of Hrondir.

‘I knew him,’ said Anvindr.

‘You knew Captain Hrondir?’ asked Montiyf. The inquisitor, for all his pomp and threat, could not help but appear surprised.

Anvindr nodded. Although he was no skjald, he could tell what was expected of him, and cleared his throat to tell the tale.

They had fought side by side in the sinking city of Majohah, slaughtering heretic after heretic through flooded streets. Anvindr was a Blood Claw then, he and his young brothers meeting the fanatical savagery of the cultists with a youthful bloodlust of their own.

As the rising waters broke through crumbling walls in polluted torrents, so wave after wave of men and women, their souls bargained away to unspeakable forces, would burst out of buildings or from beneath the waters to assault the Wolves.

The Wolves cut their threads by the hundreds, and Anvindr was at the heart of it, slashing his chainblade back and forth through hordes of fanatics, slicing through corrupted flesh and chopping away at mutated limbs.

For Anvindr and the Wolves, Majohah was a slow, bloody matter of week after week of slaughtering a blighted population. Whether the Wolves hunted down their enemy, or the enemy attacked them, made no difference.

The Exorcists arrived with a different mission. While the Wolves were spread across the city, killing heretics wherever they were found, the red-armoured Exorcists cut through it in a straight line, moving in on the Great Cathedra at the heart of Majohah.

Anvindr was one of the Wolves drawn into the Exorcists’ assault on the Cathedra. They besieged the desecrated temple for three days, and it was there that Anvindr met Hrondir and the other Terminators of his squad.

The Exorcists were secretive and, compared to the hot-tempered Blood Claws, reserved in their mood, but Anvindr had found them to be determined and relentless warriors. Between his slow, incomprehensible chants and other rituals, Hrondir, looming over Anvindr in his Terminator armour, had spoken a little of his home world of Banish.

When one wall of the Cathedra fell, and the defences scattered, the Exorcists insisted on going in alone, leaving the Wolves to return to their primary mission. Anvindr watched Hrondir and the others cross the flooded square and charge through the breach, but within minutes Anvindr had an enemy by the throat and was preoccupied.

However, in the hours that followed the Exorcists entering the Cathedra, the air above that part of the city was disturbed, storm clouds turning in on themselves unnaturally. The Wolves, out in the streets, sniffed the air and knew something pivotal was going on at the city’s heart.

Then it was done. The sky settled. Their mission complete, the Exorcists departed.

The Wolves fought on, but without the presence of whatever the Exorcists had confronted in the Cathedra, the enemy’s will to fight was gone. The Wolves showed them no mercy, and the heretics fought for their lives as best they could, but within days they were all dead.

The city’s descent halted, the floodwaters left to grow stagnant without further replenishment. The Wolves left Majohah in peace of a sort, a part-flooded ruin devoid of life, its streets clogged with the bloated, tainted bodies of its former residents.

Anvindr left out some details: the chants, the lights in the sky. The mortal, Galvern, was still in earshot, and Anvindr had no desire to see him purged for hearing of matters the Inquisition would rather he did not know. But he kept much of the story intact, the valour of Hrondir and that the battle turned the tide.

As Anvindr had told his story, more mortals had entered the chamber, cautiously keeping their distance from both the inquisitor and the Wolves. By the time the retelling was complete, he had an audience; a few more Guardsmen, standing respectfully to attention in his presence, but mainly civilians, hovering nervously at the edge of the room, rapt to his speech.

‘To these people, Hrondir is a myth,’ explained Montiyf. ‘No official account was ever written down, and even this tomb was lost for over a hundred years. Hrondir’s name has been passed down by word of mouth, little more than a folk tale, and now you are here, talking of meeting Hrondir in your own lifetime. To them, you have stepped out of a legend.’

In the tomb, time passed painfully slowly for the Wolves. Unable to hunt or fight, without even space to properly train, they instead searched every inch of the catacombs to find something that might aid their escape, or help free Liulfr. The web of tunnels sprawling out from the central chamber where Hrondir lay at rest led to dozens of small chambers, and the Wolves searched every one.

Many were occupied by civilians who had descended into the tomb to shelter from the war above. Others had been turned into makeshift supply rooms, or housed water recycling equipment or generators. Some had been left as they had been found, containing nothing but funerary relics. The Beltrassens did not entomb their dead lying down, instead burying them seated, so that they might face the afterlife with dignity, and many of the rooms had square stone sarcophagi set into alcoves.

The Wolves found little of use. They found cracks or pores in the stone that allowed air or a trickle of water into the tomb, but no hidden tunnels, nor any heavy equipment that could help free Liulfr. In spite of this, they continued to prowl the corridors, searching for an advantage.

Even this endless pacing was impeded by the presence of so many mortals. The Wolves could see perfectly well in the low light of the darker tunnels, so carried no light source with them.

When a mortal came walking from the opposite direction, that mortal would walk straight into the towering Space Marines, if not given due warning. Most of the Wolves adopted a terse ‘make way’ to scatter any mortals in their path, with the exception of Sindri, who found it amusing to stay silent and watch the coming mortal bounce off his heavy armour.

For all his sport, even Sindri was not cruel, and he would catch any mortal who fell before they hurt themselves, his reflexes responding before the mortal had any real idea of what had happened.

While the Guardsmen at least had some military training and physical aptitude, the fragility and clumsiness of the civilian mortals retained a fascination for Anvindr. Even in the distant days of his childhood, before the Sky Warriors had made him one of their own, Anvindr had been made of stronger stuff than these city dwellers. Fenrisian young learned survival fast, and Anvindr had been a hunter from virtually the moment he took his first steps.

As a Grey Hunter, so far removed from those beginnings, these mortals with their fast breaths and heartbeats, so involved in the transient concerns of their short lives, were a mystery to him. They fluttered around him like moths, and he tried not to break them.

Blood and scraps of bone.

The chamber was one of many similar rooms, featureless except for three small podiums, each of which held a smooth-surfaced reliquary box. Two were in place, while one had been knocked to the floor. It remained intact, whatever bones or other remains it contained kept safely inside.

The mortals who had rested in this chamber were not so lucky. Blood splattered the walls and floor, and within the streaks of dried blood were scraps of bone, cloth and other, thicker, matter, the shredded remains of skin and organs.

The room was small, at least to Anvindr, and while the mortals walked in and out with ease, he had to duck to enter. Montiyf was standing, arms folded so that Anvindr could see the ruby-eyed skulls engraved on his gauntlets, while Pranix squatted closer to the floor, examining a streak of gore and tapping his data-slate.

‘I am not yours to summon,’ Anvindr growled to Montiyf. It had been three days since the Wolves had entered the tomb, and Montiyf had sent one of the Lacusians to request Anvindr’s presence.

Anvindr didn’t expect any response to this from the inquisitor, any acknowledgement that the Wolves were not a resource at the inquisitor’s disposal, and he didn’t get any beyond an impassive glare.

‘What happened here?’ Anvindr asked.

‘We do not know,’ said Montiyf. ‘Five people were in this room. This is all that is left of them.’

‘You are sure all five?’ asked Anvindr. ‘One didn’t turn on the others?’ Mortal men killed each other for foolish reasons, Anvindr knew this.

‘We have checked the entire tomb, lord,’ said Pranix, with soft formality. He had attached a brass rod to his data-slate with a line of copper wire, and embedded one end in a smear of gore on the ground. ‘This is all that remains of any of them.’

‘Then someone else?’ asked Anvindr, frustrated. ‘Grief, these petty crimes are no concern of mine, and I don’t see why the Inquisition cares either.’

‘If this were a normal crime,’ said Montiyf, running one gloved finger down the tattoo beneath his eye. ‘But look at the remains. Does this strike you as something a normal human could do? Fast enough that no one even heard a scream?’

Anvindr gave a non-committal grunt. There were plenty of things that could kill this fast, beasts and xenos that could rend flesh in a flurry of claws or weapons. Anvindr had seen it happen.

In the heat of battle, he had been that killer himself.

‘There are fears that some savage beast did this, although there is nowhere for such an animal to hide,’ said Montiyf. Anvindr could feel the inquisitor’s gaze on him. ‘Unless that beast lurked beneath a human skin, a hidden animal rage.’

‘You can reassure the mortals, this was not one of us,’ said Anvindr, not rising to the inquisitor’s coy insinuations. ‘We are not animals.’

Anvindr crossed the room, looked more closely at a streak of blood on the wall and opened up his senses. He could smell human blood and a touch of bile, but those fluids didn’t smell fresh, nor did they have the dead scent of stale, dried blood. He rubbed at one of the blood stains with his fingers. His fingers came away stained with powder, the dust leaving a hint of something in the air.

‘This blood was hot as it spilled,’ Anvindr said. ‘Very hot; these stains are burnt.’

‘We must be alert,’ said Inquisitor Montiyf, and with that he left the room. Pranix remained, and Anvindr lingered, thinking of the ways to kill a man, and what might cause such damage, shredding flesh and leaving blood stains burnt into the walls.

A weapon? Someone would have heard.

A psyker? Anvindr had seen mental powers tear an enemy to pieces, or burn them from the inside out. The Inquisition were known for their psychic powers.

Deep in thought, Anvindr picked up the fallen reliquary from the floor. It rattled slightly, the sound of bone fragments moving within. The box seemed tiny in Anvindr’s giant hand, the remains of a mortal life in his palm. He placed the featureless box back on its featureless podium.

‘No names,’ he said, largely to himself.

Pranix looked up from his data-slate. ‘Lord?’

‘There are no names, apart from Hrondir’s,’ said Anvindr. ‘The people who built this tomb made all this effort to lay their dead here, all these boxes and chambers, yet they didn’t mark down the names of the dead?’

Pranix didn’t say anything, but continued to watch Anvindr as he walked away.

‘He insults us!’ complained Gulbrandr, after Anvindr reported the deaths, and his conversation with the inquisitor. ‘As if we were beasts who needed to chew down on these tiny mortals.’

The four Wolves had taken one of the larger chambers in the tomb for themselves, a long room with a long stone altar in the centre. Gulbrandr prowled the room, whilst Tormodr sat in one corner and Sindri leaned nonchalantly against a wall.

‘He did not say he believed this,’ said Anvindr. ‘But I am sure some of the mortals do.’

‘Let them run scared of us,’ said Sindri. ‘Weak little things. Why should we care if a few of them die? This whole world is in ruins.’

‘That depends what killed them,’ said Anvindr. ‘And how we can kill it.’

‘If there is something worth hunting down here after all, then that changes everything,’ said Sindri, grinning widely.

A day later, another mortal died. This time, screams were heard, but by the time any witness arrived, the room from which the scream came was empty.

It was rapidly established that a young woman had gone missing, and a search was organised.

It was Gulbrandr who found the body, collapsed in an alcove at the opposite end of the catacombs. Skinned and gutted, an unnatural heat rose from the corpse.

Of the killer, they could find no sign.

‘He’s gone,’ said Sindri.

It was now four days since they had entered the tomb.

Liulfr would not be able to heal fully until his legs were freed, but his condition was stable, and he certainly didn’t need monitoring, his own remarkable physiology keeping him healthy and in minimal pain even while pinned.

Nonetheless, the Wolves chose to visit Liulfr regularly, recounting old war stories while making futile attempts to discover a way of freeing Liulfr without causing a larger rockslide.

It had been Sindri’s turn to visit Liulfr, but he returned within minutes of departing.

‘If this is one of your jests…’ Anvindr began, but he could see from Sindri’s expression that he wasn’t joking.

‘I must see this for myself,’ said Anvindr.

Liulfr was indeed gone, almost without a trace. Scree had rolled down to fill the gap where Liulfr had been pinned under the stone column, and in spite of digging through the gravel Anvindr couldn’t find even a fragment of ceramite. If Liulfr had somehow been dragged away, there would at least be some part of him left behind.

Instead, there was nothing to mark where Liulfr had been, except a scattering of blackened stones, scarred from exposure to a great and sudden heat.

‘Perhaps he freed himself,’ said Montiyf, when told the news of Liulfr’s disappearance. ‘The explosions above may have shaken the rock above him, allowing your brother to manoeuvre himself free.’

‘And walk away on broken legs?’ scoffed Anvindr. ‘Why even try to drag himself away, when Liulfr knew we would come to him in good time? No, if Liulfr had dragged himself loose, he would have waited for one of his pack to find him.’

‘Then what would you suggest happened?’ asked Montiyf.

The inquisitor and the Wolf circled each other slowly, stood before Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Montiyf’s hammer and Anvindr’s chainblade stayed hanging from their respective belts, but each had a hand free, ready to defend themselves.

‘There are ways to move flesh through walls, to pull that which is solid through matter,’ said Anvindr.

‘A sorcerer?’ asked Montiyf, an eyebrow raised. Matters of daemonic heresy were the business of the Ordo Malleus, and Anvindr was pushing into Montiyf’s territory by even discussing them.

‘Or a psyker,’ said Anvindr. ‘Such power can leave a tang in the air, and create a great excess of heat.’

Anvindr raised one hand in a closed fist, and then opened it to reveal blackened stones in his palm.

It was an accusation, albeit an indirect one. Many inquisitors were psykers, and those abilities could stretch from the reading of mortal minds to the manipulation of objects, and even greater distortions of reality. And the greater those powers, the more likely the psyker would succumb to the dark forces drawn to his unnatural talents.

Tension hung in the air between the two. They were not alone – while the chamber had been cleared so that Anvindr could speak about matters that the inquisitor would execute most subjects of the Imperium for even knowing about, the rest of Anvindr’s pack were present, as was Pranix. While the Wolves outnumbered the representatives of the Inquisition, and their Chapter was known for its defiance, to attack an inquisitor was nonetheless almost unthinkable, treasonous.

Unless that inquisitor had been corrupted by the very forces he was sworn to destroy.

Montiyf was about to speak when a mortal cry echoed from a nearby corridor. There was a momentary exchange of glances between Anvindr and Montiyf, then a nodding agreement to temporarily postpone their conversation.

As the Wolves ran from the chamber, the inquisitor and his interrogator close behind, there was no one to see an icy film develop on the surface of Hrondir’s sarcophagus, then evaporate into the air as quickly as it had formed.

The man whose cry they had heard stood, back pressed into the stone wall, shuddering in horror, his eyes locked on the smouldering mass on the floor before him.

‘It just appeared,’ the man said, then proceeded to repeat those three words again and again, staring at the bloody, burning mass. Steam filled the air, and in the dimly lit corridor it was hard to see what was actually there.

Anvindr had his bolter drawn as he approached the twitching shape on the ground, ready to confront whatever horror had materialised, but rapidly lowered his weapon.

‘Liulfr,’ he said. ‘It’s Liulfr.’

The Wolves gathered around their fallen comrade. His armour had been battered and burnt, and was still hot to the touch, dented all over and even cracked in places. The livery of his ceramite plate was blackened beyond recognition, and the pelts he wore around his shoulders were little more than crisped wisps of ashen matter.

From the waist down Liulfr’s legs were indeed crushed, mangled within flattened armour, and where the armour was most cracked burnt flesh was visible beneath.

Liulfr’s head was a scorched-red mass of bruised and burnt flesh, the hair entirely gone and the eyes and mouth reduced to crumpled slits.

As Anvindr leaned over to check Liulfr’s breathing, his mouth and eyes snapped open. His eyes were bloodshot but intact, and a bruised tongue wet burnt-dry lips.

‘Fought it,’ he said, with considerable effort. ‘It dragged me into the dark, but I fought it every step. I wouldn’t let it take me, tried to free him.’

This message delivered, Liulfr slumped back, eyes staring blankly.

Liulfr was dead.

The Wolves carried Liulfr to their chamber, and laid him out on the altar.

‘Tried to free who?’ asked Sindri, breaking the mournful silence that had fallen across them all. ‘He makes no sense.’

‘He was taken somewhere,’ said Anvindr. ‘Pulled away by magic to somewhere dark, then returned.’

‘This is work for a rune priest, not for us,’ rumbled Tormodr.

‘Well, there are no priests here,’ said Anvindr. ‘So it falls to us whether it pleases us or not.’

Anvindr was no inquisitor, nor one of the Adeptus Arbites: he did not sift for truth or search out secrets.

He was a Sky Warrior, a hunter, one of the Vlka Fenryka. His earliest memories were of the hunt, of the endless icy wastes of Fenris, tracking the distant shape of an animal as the cold winds tore through layers of furs. He knew how to seek out prey, to kill, to be aware of a predator’s eyes on you, and strike at them first.

As a young man he had become aware of being observed, and when he sought out his observers they took him away to the Aett, where he was elevated to the ranks of the Sky Warriors.

He had hunted and fought and killed ever since, it was his nature from birth and it would be with him until his death; an endless cycle.

The enemy he faced now seemed to break that simple cycle of his existence, to defy face-to-face confrontation, to leave no trail to follow. It was a riddle, and Anvindr had no use for riddles. It was for Montiyf to unpick such things, and Montiyf showed no sign of understanding any more than Anvindr.

Unless Anvindr was wrong to consider this different to any other threat. There was an enemy, one which ventured from its lair. If it could not be caught while it hunted, then it would need to be found in its den and struck at there.

Perhaps it was all that simple, and there was no mystery, just the hunt.

And if there was no mystery, perhaps there were no riddles to be resolved, and the one person who should have known what was happening, who had been strangely idle, had the knowledge that was expected of them. Perhaps everything was exactly as it should be, and all Anvindr needed to do was resolve the problem in the best way he knew.

‘Hrondir is at the heart of this,’ Anvindr called out to Montiyf as he entered the central chamber of the tomb. The inquisitor and his interrogator were alone, poring over readings on their equipment. ‘We have been looking for enemies in the shadows, but this place is no mystery, it is devoted to the memory of one man alone. Whatever is attacking us, it relates to Hrondir. I don’t know how, but I think you do.’

‘I do?’ asked Montiyf.

‘Why else would you be here?’ said Anvindr. ‘Research on a dead enemy, in the middle of a Tau invasion? No, the Exorcists have always been close to the Inquisition. If your Ordo didn’t send Hrondir here then they at least knew what he faced, and knew enough to come here the moment this tomb was uncovered.’

‘These are matters for the Inqui–’ Montiyf began.

‘Enough,’ Anvindr barked. ‘Keep your secrets from these mortals, but whatever stalks these halls cut the thread of Liulfr, a brother of the Vlka Fenryka. I will not waste time on protocol while a threat like that exists. So speak, so that we may kill this thing and be done with it.’

There was a long silence. Anvindr’s pack had followed him into the chamber, and stood quietly nearby.

Then Montiyf spoke, evenly and surely, as if Anvindr hadn’t needed to wring the truth out of him.

‘Hrondir came here alone,’ said Montiyf. ‘The forces of Chaos sought to break into this sector, and the Exorcists and my ordo were spread thin striking at the gravest heresies wherever they erupted. Hrondir was the last of his squad. By what accounts we have left from that time, he responded to reports of some daemonic emergence here on Beltrasse.’

Montiyf circled the dais at the centre of the room, and the great stone sarcophagus that dominated the chamber.

‘It took three decades to purify this sector, but we were thorough,’ Montiyf continued. ‘No report was left unchecked, no matter how long it took, so decades after Hrondir was sent to Beltrasse the planet was revisited, to see what became of him. This world was clean of heresy, and all that could be gleaned were stories of a single Space Marine destroying a great evil.’

Montiyf gestured to the chamber they were in. ‘This tomb was already buried and forgotten by then, so there was little to be done to follow up the stories. But concerns lingered still, that Beltrasse had too neatly forgotten what occurred here. So when the tomb was uncovered in a Tau attack, we returned. And the events of recent days show that we were right to do so.’

‘Hrondir’s mission remains incomplete,’ said Anvindr. ‘The daemon still lives.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Montiyf. ‘Hrondir may have dealt with the enemy as best he could. If the evil could not be killed, there are other ways to win such battles.’

‘Witchcraft,’ Anvindr said.

‘There are rituals,’ said Montiyf. ‘But these are many, and we do not know which one. But I am certain that whatever lives here in the tomb, it is not fully manifest. It is restrained, or else it would have killed us all days ago and unleashed itself upon the world above.’

Restrained. Something about the word itched at Anvindr’s brain. What had Liulfr said, about being trapped in the darkness? As if the daemon had been drawn back to some cell, and took its victims there with it before reaching out once more to deposit the remains back where it found them. Only Liulfr had fought, and been released with a last breath left in him.

‘There are no hidden rooms or spaces here?’ asked Anvindr, already knowing the answer.

It was Interrogator Pranix who answered, rather than his master.

‘None,’ said Pranix. ‘We have scanned every bit of wall, floor and ceiling. This tomb is buried deep in stony ground.’

‘Then where could this beast be hiding… except in there?’ Anvindr pointed to the sarcophagus. ‘Why else would you be watching that box so closely if the daemon were not in there? The Beltrassens must have known the daemon lay with Hrondir, that’s why this tomb bears not a single word or image or name apart from his, so that the daemon could take no hold of them. So why haven’t you opened the sarcophagus yet?’

‘Because we do not know enough. We have not gathered enough information on this creature,’ said Montiyf. ‘To act prematurely would be foolhardy.’

‘Is that why you have been scouring the scene after every attack, so that you can gather more data while this thing wreaks havoc?’ said Anvindr, turning to Pranix.

‘An unfortunate necessity,’ said Pranix. He barely raised his voice but there was steel behind his words, an absolute self-possession. ‘We could not afford to act prematurely, until we knew exactly–’

‘So you kept your silence while one of us died?’ snarled Anvindr in exasperation, his rage barely contained.

Pranix didn’t respond, but neither did he flinch in the face of Anvindr’s anger.

Anvindr looked between inquisitor and interrogator, both absolutely certain in their authority. He ground his teeth, fangs digging into the inside of his mouth. Then, with a snarl of released anger, he turned to his pack.

‘Well, if caution is the word of the day,’ said Anvindr. ‘We know what we must do, brothers?’

Montiyf and Pranix made no move to stop the Wolves as they surrounded the stone sarcophagus and searched for a way to open it, instead stepping back and preparing themselves for whatever came next. In his peripheral vision Anvindr could see Montiyf detaching the gold hammer from where it hung from his belt, adjusting his grip on its ornate handle.

It was Sindri who found that the front panel of the sarcophagus, the one bearing Hrondir’s likeness and name, could be slowly eased out. Tormodr and Gulbrandr did the heavy lifting, while Anvindr and Sindri stepped back, weapons raised.

Tormodr and Gulbrandr moved the slab aside, resting it against the side of the sarcophagus. Dead air seeped out of the interior, a musty smell but with something else, a more recent stink of burnt flesh and hot blood.

There was a moment of absolute stillness, as the Wolves waited for something to emerge. But nothing did.

Anvindr approached the sarcophagus, bolter raised.

As opposed to the spartan stone of the rest of the tomb, the interior of the sarcophagus was covered with writing, some in languages Anvindr didn’t understand, scratched on every surface. The text was accompanied by arcane signs and symbols, many of which Anvindr did recognise, as marks of warding to hold back evil.

Hold back, or hold in?

The stone interior was blackened by scorch marks, but the set of Terminator armour that occupied the sarcophagus still bore its fierce red livery, the horned skull still displayed on one shoulder.

Matching the engraving on the front of the sarcophagus, Hrondir had been laid to rest seated, his fully armoured body sat on a stone throne strong enough to hold the armour’s vast weight. The helmet was down over Hrondir’s face, and his hands rested, palms down, in his lap.

‘Stay back,’ said Anvindr, stepping towards Hrondir. He reached around the armour’s helmet, finding the release clasps. There was a hiss of released air as the helmet lifted away.

The exposed head was well-preserved. Pallid, dried skin had shrunk over the skull, the eyelids sunken. The emaciated features were recognisably Hrondir’s, and even in death his wide jaw was set in a caricature of stoic determination.

Anvindr’s eyes narrowed, his ears pricked, checking for any sign of life. There was not the murmur of even the slowest heartbeat or breath, no movement at all, but there was still something there. Hrondir was not alive, but neither was he quite dead, in a way that Anvindr could not understand.

‘He is dead… but not dead?’ said Anvindr, realising how absurd this was while standing in Hrondir’s tomb.

‘A tiny spark of his life essence still holds on,’ said Montiyf. ‘His body is long dead, but some part of his soul lingers.’

As Anvindr stepped away from Hrondir’s body, determined to ask Montiyf to explain himself, his heavy boot knocked something aside, a chip of hard material that bounced off the interior wall of the sarcophagus and spun at Anvindr’s feet.

He looked down to see it was a chip of ceramite spinning to a halt. A curved piece of armour plate, painted in the colour of his own Chapter.

A piece of Liulfr’s armour.

And then Anvindr was hit by an incredible rush of force, a surge of heat and violence in the air strong enough to throw even a fully armoured Space Marine off his feet and across the chamber.

Anvindr hit the wall hard, falling to the floor in a shower of stone fragments. He landed on his feet, bolter already raised.

He could see it now, a blur in the air coalescing before the body of Hrondir. It made his eyes itch to look at it, an amorphous blob of fiery, semi-transparent matter, straining to pull itself into existence, the shadows of teeth and claws slashing the air around it.

‘For Russ!’ shouted Anvindr, squeezing the trigger of his bolter to unleash a storm of explosive bolts. Sindri and Gulbrandr fired too, and the daemonic presence squirmed under fire.

Then, it was gone.

‘Too easy?’ asked Sindri, keeping his bolter raised.

‘Far too easy,’ agreed Anvindr. ‘Inquisitor?’

‘Agreed,’ said Montiyf. ‘It will return.’

‘It’s anchored,’ said Pranix.

‘Speak sense,’ snapped Anvindr.

‘The inquisitor said some of Hrondir’s soul remained,’ said Pranix. ‘Hrondir must have been unable to kill the daemon outright, so instead he bound it to his own soul. Even in death that bond still holds, Hrondir’s soul is bound to his body, pulling the daemon back to its cell.’

The inquisitor pointed to Hrondir’s body. ‘You can see it, the force holding it here.’

Anvindr looked. Hrondir’s armour seemed lit with a light blue, flickering glow, traces of psychic energy rippling across the surfaces of the ancient armour. The light crackled, as if responding to some opposing force.

‘Pranix is right,’ said Montiyf. ‘That’s the daemon’s anchor.’

The blue light burst forth with a wave of cold air, a brief frost forming around the edges of the sarcophagus, and the daemonic presence reappeared. It was not alone: Anvindr could see Galvern, the first Guardsman they had encountered in the tomb, twisting in the air before Hrondir’s seated figure. Galvern was in agony, his body covered in flames, cuts appearing on his skin as the very air around him attacked with daemonic force.

Anvindr felt rising anger. This must have been what happened to Liulfr and the others, warped to the inside of Hrondir’s sarcophagus to be mauled by this daemon, the remains then returned to where they had come from once its foul work was done.

Anvindr had had enough.

‘Gulbrandr,’ he called to the best shot in the pack. ‘Mercy kill.’

Gulbrandr nodded, fired his bolter once and Galvern’s head exploded. Galvern’s body went limp, and there was a high screech as the daemon tore the body limb from limb, frustrated at having its game cut short.

The daemon itself seemed unaffected by the bolt having penetrated its body to reach Galvern. Instead it dropped to the floor, and disappeared once again, only to emerge at Gulbrandr’s feet, consuming him in a wave of heat.

Gulbrandr struggled against the semi-visible creature that clawed at him with burning, translucent limbs, but it was like wrestling a liquid. Tormodr and Sindri rushed to help, the latter revving his chainblade, which he brought down on to the creature.

Sindri swore as the creature flowed around the blade and it bounced off the chest plate of Gulbrandr’s armour.

‘Great Russ,’ said Sindri. ‘We’re more likely to kill him than it.’

‘Stand back,’ shouted Montiyf, stepping forward. His eyes were faintly glowing with energy, which crackled around the hammer in his grip. He swung the hammer just short of Gulbrandr so that it swept through the creature’s mass without hitting the Space Marine, and the creature recoiled from the psychic charge, disappearing into the floor once again.

It reappeared back in Hrondir’s sarcophagus. Gulbrandr dropped to one knee, his flesh steaming from contact with the thing, his face a mass of bloody cuts.

‘It doesn’t seem scratched,’ said Anvindr bitterly. ‘How do we even hurt this thing?’

‘We need to cut it loose,’ said Pranix. Anvindr registered that he, too, had a flicker of psychic energy running through him. ‘Destroy the anchor, release Hrondir’s spirit and the daemon will manifest fully in our world. The body is untouched, so the daemon must have been unable to set itself free, but that rite won’t prevent anyone else from doing it. Once unleashed, the creature will be far more dangerous than it is now, but it will be vulnerable to attack. Together, we may be able to defeat it.’

It was Anvindr’s turn to swear, uttering under his breath a very old, very obscure Fenrisian curse from his youth about bearing the children from a rival tribe. Montiyf and Pranix had let Liulfr die while they kept their secrets, but the Ordo Malleus knew more about fighting daemons than anyone. The Wolves would need them to destroy the monster that killed Liulfr.

‘Very well,’ said Anvindr. ‘Tormodr, I want you to give my old friend Hrondir a long overdue cremation. The rest of you, draw that thing out.’

Anvindr, Gulbrandr and Sindri opened fire on the creature, which flowed away from the sarcophagus to avoid their shots, slipping in and out of existence as it rolled around the chamber. The Wolves maintained fire, driving it back.

With the creature distracted, Tormodr ran up the steps into the sarcophagus. Hrondir’s helmet sat loosely on his shoulders, as Anvindr hadn’t locked it back into place, so it came off easily as Tormodr pulled it away, revealing the Exorcist’s withered head.

‘Apologies, brother,’ said Tormodr, aiming his flamer and letting loose a gout of flame that consumed Hrondir’s head. The ancient flesh was dry as paper, and the fire not only burned away the skin from his head, but descended down the collar into the armour, burning away the rest of his body.

The Terminator armour fell forward, thick black smoke pouring out of the neck. It crashed to the ground spilling dark cindered fragments across the floor. Anvindr thought he saw a mist of blue energy rise from the ashes, and then dissipate altogether.

The daemon roared, and what had been a ghostly shape in the air began to coalesce into something solid but unstable, a rippling mass of horribly real, pustulant flesh. Pores expanded on the repellent flesh, exhaling foetid air as tubular masses became limbs, razor-edged tips scratching the stone floor as it found purpose. Other limbs expanded and thrashed, while a mass of glassy eyes burst from the centre of the daemon’s body like pustules.

The daemon’s eyes held Anvindr’s gaze and he felt a hot sensation behind his eyes, the touch of Chaos trying to find purchase on his mind.

It would take no hold of him.

‘Now!’ bellowed Anvindr, opening fire on the thing, the cacophony of gunfire rising as the rest of the pack opened fire too.

Anvindr concentrated his fire on that mass of eyes, and boiling ichor sprayed from the wounds as the foul eyeballs were destroyed. However the creature was still in flux, still expanding, and other eyes opened up over its body just as extra limbs flailed around the chamber. Each limb rippled with spines and teeth, the flesh flowing like liquid, so it was hard to tell where the flesh ended and the slime that dripped from it began.

One such limb slashed at Gulbrandr, and a razor-edged claw scythed through the ceramite of his chest plate as if it were old vellum, drawing blood and throwing him backwards. Where the daemon’s claw had cut flesh, the edge of the wound began to blacken with decay.

The creature shifted forward, its flailing limbs dragging it across the chamber at terrifying speed in spite of its bulk, raising a mass of claws to deliver a killing blow to Gulbrandr. The daemon seemed unperturbed by the bolts still exploding all over its body, but was driven back as Montiyf and Pranix stepped into the fray, unleashing a blast of psychic energy that drove back the monster.

The daemon swerved to find another victim to satiate its bloodlust, but found Tormodr and his flamer instead. While previously the creature had coursed with the unnatural heat of its incursion upon reality, now it was a thing of vulnerable flesh, and it howled as Tormodr set it alight.

Anvindr seized Gulbrandr’s arm to prevent him from falling. Steam was rising from his infected wound, and there was a lost, unfocussed look in his eyes.

‘Look at me, brother,’ Anvindr said, and Gulbrandr’s eyes locked on to his. ‘Do not let it take a hold of you, fight it.’

Gulbrandr nodded, focus returning to his eyes, and shook off Anvindr’s supporting arm, raising his bolter to open fire once more.

The daemon was still trying to expand its mass, but the hail of bolter fire was tearing its flesh apart as it did so. The Wolves, along with the inquisitor, attacked the daemon while evading its thrashing limbs, but they were merely holding it in check, not destroying it.

‘We must take it apart,’ said Montiyf, raising his hammer. Anvindr nodded, raising his own chainblade in reply, and they moved in on the creature.

The creature lashed out at them as they closed, but Anvindr jumped over a low-swiping limb to land close to the creature’s torso, while Montiyf smacked aside a claw with his hammer. Anvindr drove his chainblade into the creature’s eyes while Montiyf brought his hammer down on the creature’s head, each blow accompanied by a release of psychic power.

Pranix moved in with a psychic blast of his own, while Tormodr had his own chainblade free, and even Gulbrandr staggered over with a long knife drawn, his other arm held across his bleeding chest.

As Sindri approached a flailing claw caught him behind the knee, a claw that shifted into a tendril and dragged him to the floor, pulling him towards a mouth that opened up in the daemon’s side. As he was dragged towards the daemon, Sindri kept his bolter level, firing ahead as the tendril crushed the power armour and began to dig into his flesh.

Anvindr could feel the malign presence as his chainsword rose and fell, hacking and smashing at vile flesh. Doubts and heresies began to sprout in his mind, bursting forth like an infection. That Hrondir had sold his soul to this daemon to sustain it, that it was a god, the only true god, that it was life, that it could not die.

Lies and heresies from a desperate entity. Anvindr drove his chainsword deeper into the amorphous flesh, and a howl rang out. Beside him, Montiyf brought his hammer down again with another psychic flash. The vile flesh of the thing began to bubble and disintegrate, mouths forming to let out a piteous, monstrous whine.

The creature’s screams rang out through the catacombs. In the sub-chambers of the tomb, mortals sat in the darkness, trickles of blood dripping from their ears at the sound of a daemon being dispatched back to hell.

Anvindr and his pack barely spoke to Montiyf and Pranix in the days that followed, nor when the blockade of the tomb entrance was cleared and they stepped out into the light. While they had come together to destroy the daemon, Anvindr knew that Pranix could have done more to confront the creature earlier, rather than allowing Liulfr to die as part of his strategy.

Anvindr and Tormodr would rejoin the battle against the Tau immediately, but Gulbrandr and Sindri would be out of action for a while. It left a bad taste in Anvindr’s mouth, but he held his tongue. The Inquisition was a dangerous enemy to make, and Anvindr had a war of his own to fight. He decided to redirect his anger at the Tau.

Before they left the tomb, Anvindr removed the pieces of Hrondir’s armour from his sarcophagus. He did not know how, but he would find a way to return them to Banish, so that they might be worn once more by a brother of the Exorcists Chapter.

‘They resent us,’ said Pranix, watching the Wolves walk away. ‘They believe we could have acted sooner, and that our reticence let their brother die.’

Montiyf raised an eyebrow.

‘You were right to counsel caution,’ he said. ‘An excellent strategy, Pranix, and your suggestion to destroy the anchor turned the course of battle. I fear you will be leaving my retinue soon.’

‘Leaving?’ asked Interrogator Pranix.

‘Of course,’ replied Montiyf. ‘I will be recommending your raising to the role of inquisitor, Pranix. You have demonstrated the correct qualities.’

‘Thank you,’ said Pranix. He didn’t meet Montiyf’s eye.

Inquisitor Montiyf felt a slight sense of disquiet at the coolness of his interrogator’s thanks, the slight suspicion that he expected no less than to be raised to the Inquisition. That this was Pranix’s decision, not Montiyf’s.

Then he dismissed the thought. He could hear Tau heavy ordnance not far away. The daemon was dead and it was time for them to withdraw.

Soon, they would depart the planet altogether, and leave Beltrasse to the Wolves.

Necessary Evil

Rob Sanders

The wraithgate sat in damnation’s darkness, lit only by the dread twilight of the Eye. Dusted in brimstone, its curves and arches cut a skeletal silhouette into the puce yonder. Here, among the perversity of a daemon world – where reality was twisted and the impossible ruled – the portal waited in the gloom. It waited for a visitor: one with reason to leave the interdimensional labyrinth of the webway beyond and step through a gateway to hell. Not many would accept such an invitation, but in a place where time had little meaning, the xenos artefact did not have long to wait.

From the archway’s agitated nothingness proceeded the sizzle of warp static. Immaterial energies arced between the slants and barbs of the wraithgate’s alien architecture, shattering the space between. Drawing on unimaginable power, the portal scorched a hole through the fabric of time and space. Piece by piece, the reality beyond was assembled like the fragments of a stained glass window.

Bronislaw Czevak stepped forth from this new reality and out onto the surface of the daemon world. His eyes were unmistakably ancient, yet his features were those of a much younger man. His coat was an abomination of eldritch design and alien fabric: ankle-length, incorporating a nauseating clash of colour with the insanity of interlocking patterns. As its harlequin tails flapped in the light breeze, the fabric’s surface rippled with a form of alien field technology that played with the eye. Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak of the Emperor’s holy Inquisition, interdimensional refugee. Hunted by the Ruinous Powers for what he could do; by the Imperium for what he had done; by the alien eldar for what he might do. Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak – known himself to hunt, on occasion.

Taking in his surroundings, Czevak raised one furrowed brow. His shoulders sagged at the indication of a destination reached, before snapping the gilded covers of the Atlas Infernal shut and burying the antique tome in the depths of his alien coat. Still bathed in the protective purity of the book’s power and with the webway portal dying to inactivity behind him, the inquisitor jumped down from the gate and strode out across the hellish surface of an accursed world.

Nereus had once been covered with fertile oceans and even now no sand or soil graced its surface, just rust and sulphur-dust. Stamping, the inquisitor found that beneath the powder was solid metal. Wrinkling his nose at the rotten stench, he climbed an escarpment of reinforced scrap and corroded plating, reaching the irregularity of an apex ridge. From this vantage point, the inquisitor took in the daemonscape. The rusted archipelago extended for some distance and height, reminding Czevak of a volcanic island reaching out of the waters. The blood-red of a brimstone ocean boiled beyond, the sulphurous surf lapping up against the metal shore, encrusting the coast with yellow crystals. The waters thrashed with larval daemons, swarming and snapping like carnivorous fish in an evaporating pool. In the thin skies above, flocks of furies soared on the hunt for soul-prey.

Beyond the predators, Czevak was treated to an unnatural celestial phenomenon. In the night sky, he could see the gaping mouth of the warp rift known to Imperial Navigators as the Craw. While Nereus bathed in the warplight of the rift’s exit point, its twin raged to the galactic south, erupting without warning to snatch vessels on the Imperial trade routes that skirted the Eye. Reports of Imperial ships lost to the Craw had been circulating for nearly a thousand years, with lost vessels forming the mountain of scrap that now reached up from the depths to create the rusted peninsula. Far out to sea, Czevak could hear the mournful drone of daemonsong: monsters of the deep, rumbling below the waves. Above, furies had started to circle, drawn down by the scent of fresh flesh.

The daemons scattered unexpectedly.

Czevak squinted, then shook his head slowly. Against the backdrop of the Craw’s swirling vortex, a silhouette grew. The horror of a doomed vessel, freshly tossed from the mouth of the rift. A freighter. Wreathed in spectral flame, the ship streaked down through the daemon world’s atmosphere, on a crash course for the archipelago.

Czevak dropped down onto an expanse of rust-riddled hull plating and began to run. He felt the impact of the crash through the superstructure of the derelict below. As he sprinted, hurdling twisted scrap, he felt the ship grind its way up behind, cleaving through the hullscape. Time seemed to slow as Czevak became enveloped in the enormity of the catastrophe unfolding around him.

The metal quaked beneath him as the vessel’s prow struck the escarpment. The freighter flipped, its colossal aft section thrown up towards the sky. It balanced for an incredible moment, like a great ferruswood about to topple, before rolling over and crashing awkwardly down on its side. The freighter – already wracked with explosions – erupted, sending a shrapnel-storm rocketing in all directions.

Czevak threw himself to the ground, but a blast wave of debris struck him from behind. Metal bars shot past and sheets of hull plating pranged and rattled off the ground before the inquisitor. A section of decking flew overhead, smacking Czevak on the back.

With nothing but the hiss of the crash in his ears, Czevak lay there. Blood ran down the side of his face. There was also something wrong with his leg. Turning his head he saw that his was not the only body out on the sulphur-dusted expanse. Czevak’s eyes met those of an ejected crew member who was trapped nearby, under a flaming girder. There was little the inquisitor could do to help, but instinct prompted him to go to the man’s aid. He tried to get up but agony shot through his leg and letting loose an involuntary howl, Czevak allowed his throbbing head to sink back to the metal floor.

Something hit the metal beside him. At first, the inquisitor assumed it was more debris but, as he blinked the blood from his eyes, he saw that it was a snaggle-fanged fury that had thunderbolted down from the wretched heavens. Tossing the huge girder aside with ease, the daemon sank its brazen talons into the victim’s flesh. With a swoosh of ragged wings, the thing shot back up into the sky, taking the screaming survivor with it.

As the static of the crash faded and became replaced with screams, Czevak fancied he could hear, of all things, a bell; the clear ringing of a solitary bell coming from beneath the ground. Again, the flock of furies scattered. Beside him, a rust-encrusted pressure wheel began to turn, and a maintenance hatch opened in the floor. From the opening surfaced a young woman dressed in scavenged rags. Her face was gaunt and sulphur-smeared, yet full of determination. As she climbed out beside him, Czevak could make out the bump of a swollen belly beneath her rags. A filthy sling held an infant to her breast and several sallow children followed in her wake, clinging to the ragged edges of her cloak. About them, hatches, airlocks and bulkheads opened in the archipelago floor. Tattered figures poured out: scrawny men, women and children emerged and spread out across the crash site. All looked thin and unhealthy; some were hunched, while others bore the affliction of extra limbs and cancerous growths. The underdwellers were clearly not daemons but had suffered in the toxic environs of a daemon world. On Nereus they could not hope to escape the warping influence of the Eye of Terror. If it hadn’t been for the nullifying influence of the Atlas Infernal, Czevak would long since have suffered the same fate during his travels. The horde began checking for survivors, scavenging from bodies and stripping salvage from the wreckage.

Turning, Czevak found the woman over him, checking his leg. She pulled back her hood to reveal a tumble of copper curls. She directed the children to gather around and the inquisitor felt their bony little fingers dig into his flesh. The red-headed woman inspected a wound on his scalp and then came in close to his face. She attempted a weak smile but her features fell out of focus. Czevak’s head hurt and he felt the irresistible pull of unconsciousness.

‘Your vessel crashed. We’re going to take you somewhere safe…’ he heard her say, but his eyelids fluttered closed. As the darkness claimed him, Czevak was left with doubt that any such place existed on the daemon world.

The inquisitor awoke on the grubby mattress of a medicae cot. Reaching for the dull ache in his temple, Czevak found a bandage around his head and a filthy intravenous line drooping from his arm. He was alone in a small, roofless cubicle of stacked crates. Above, he could see flickering lumen-strips in the ceiling of a much larger chamber. Tensing, he thrust a hand into the folds of his harlequin coat. He found the Atlas Infernal where he had hidden it, and fell back on the cot in relief. He allowed himself the luxury of a moment’s further respite before tearing the morphia line from his arm in disgust and swinging his legs over the side of the cot. His right thigh burned, again with a morphia-dulled delay, and upon inspection Czevak found that it too had been tightly bandaged.

‘Going somewhere?’

Czevak looked up to find the woman he’d seen out on the archipelago in the cubicle doorway. She took her hands from where they rested on the bump of her belly and set to rearranging the infant at her breast within the ragged sling.

‘Where am I?’ Czevak asked, with little indication that he was about to engage in pleasantries.

‘Perdition’s Landing,’ she said, watching the inquisitor struggle to get to his feet before his thigh’s refusal to support him put him back down on the cot. ‘Careful, you’ll tear your stitches.’ She presented him with a shattered length of pipe. ‘We took this out of your leg.’

‘How long was I out?’ Czevak said, an expression of gratitude once again failing to fall from his lips.

‘About ten hours.’

‘Ten hours!’

‘About,’ the woman confirmed. ‘I’m Myra.’

‘I’m getting out of this cot,’ Czevak assured her.

Myra hovered for a moment before taking a makeshift metal cane from where it leant near the cubicle door and tossing it to the inquisitor. Snatching it out of the air, Czevak got to his feet. ‘Who’s in charge here?’

‘The Curator minds the colony’s interests,’ Myra replied.

Stabbing his cane into the metal floor, Czevak hobbled towards the cubicle entrance. ‘Well, I need to see this Curator. I needed to see him ten hours ago.’

‘The Curator is extremely busy with colony matters. He doesn’t usually meet initiates.’

‘Initiates?’

‘Newcomers,’ Myra explained. ‘The colony is the only hope for those left at the mercy of this world – and there is precious little of that. All who arrive at Perdition’s Landing join the colony, enjoying its protection and the fruits of collaboration. We are as one against the evil of this place.’

‘You say that the colony is the only hope for survival.’

Myra nodded.

‘I am the colony’s only hope,’ Czevak told her. ‘You think that the darkness of this place is the only thing to fear? As we speak, there is an evil that makes its way here, as I have. It is no casual malevolence, no indiscriminate daemonic dread. It is driven by unfathomable desire and its mindless servants will stop at nothing to satisfy its insatiable craving.’

‘Why would it come here?’ Myra asked.

‘Simple,’ Czevak told her. ‘You have something it wants.’

Myra took Czevak through the crooked quads and thoroughfares of the castaway colony. Perdition’s Landing had been constructed in the cargo bay of some ancient vessel, long buried below the surface of the crash-site archipelago. The settlement was a labyrinth of crates and salvage recovered from the vessels that had come to their end on the rusted surface above. Myra took the inquisitor through habitation quarters and small markets of salvaged wares, as well as sparse devotional spaces housing silent multitudes at prayer.

The colonists themselves were a motley collection. There were refugees of a hundred Imperial creeds and cultures, with a sprinkling of xenos unfortunates adding some exotic colour, but all uniform in their wretchedness. Their dirty faces poked out of ragged hoods, while tattered cloaks and shawls seemed the order of the day, presumably so that the men, women and children of Perdition’s Landing might hide the shame of their deformities.

With the morphia wearing off and the demand of the walk searing through his injured thigh, Czevak found himself rubbing his wound. About him, the surroundings began to change. Instead of the haphazard structure of crates, objects seemed to have been placed deliberately, exhibited almost. Myra led the inquisitor through shattered murals and frescos, cracked busts and dusty urns. Singed tapestries sat alongside faded paintings and ancient treasures. Hooded colonists looked to the antiquities with the care of reliquary custodians. Thousands of precious artefacts, from huge sections of gargoyle-encrusted architecture to torn tracts and verdigris-covered coins were hung, arranged and displayed about them. Above Czevak’s head a mighty bell was suspended, dull with age.

‘What is this place?’ Czevak asked.

‘This is the Archive,’ Myra replied. ‘The colony forefathers thought it important to keep a little of the Imperium alive in this benighted place. The Archive reminds us of where we came from. A haven of normality in the most abnormal of places.’

‘I heard a bell,’ the inquisitor said, peering up at the large instrument.

Myra reached out for the improvised bell cord that hung down and snaked about them on the floor.

‘It sounds the arrival of fresh wreckages and mobilises the colony for the reclamation.’

‘The reclamation?’

‘The warp rift might have marooned us here but it is also the source of uncorrupted supplies. Each wreck brings us food and fresh water, much needed equipment and, most importantly, arrivals like yourself. New blood, with knowledge and skills essential to the colony’s growth and security. The bell sounds and we all climb topside to recover salvage and survivors.’

Czevak shook his head.

‘What?’

‘I’m just… astounded,’ the inquisitor admitted. ‘How you have survived in this place, amongst its corruptive influence, amongst its threats?’

‘There is little we can do about those,’ Myra said. ‘The colony survives because it stands together. A collective. We stand as one, against all threats.’

A hooded colonist attending to the decorative detail on an aquila carved from dark wood looked up and approached them.

‘Admiring our collection?’ the colonist enquired. Czevak nodded up at the bell above.

‘Neutran. Early M37,’ Czevak told him. ‘Before the Abyssal Crusade but definitely post-Drachmere and the Volk Abstentions. Looks like a Gorshac or Vanderghash. Some form of Adamantique alloy with angelic depictions of the Adeptus Astartes. The Fire Claws, I believe. Probably a Gorshac, then. Vanderghash favoured ferrum.’

‘I’m impressed,’ the colonist told him. His smile was a warm greeting but his eyes were cold and piercing. ‘Few come to the Archive so qualified to be here.’

‘You’re the Curator?’

‘I am,’ he replied. ‘I look to the preservation of the colony’s treasures, both those alive and long dead.’

‘Then, Curator, this will concern you,’ Czevak announced. ‘A danger approaches that far exceeds the peril of your present circumstances. A war host intent on your destruction.’

The Curator raised a bald brow. ‘A day does not go by without one of our number falling foul of the predations of this world, but what would a war host want with us? How would they even know of our existence?’

‘That’s not important right now and I don’t have the time to explain it to you. Know only this: I found you – and they won’t be far behind. They never are.’

‘Who is this war host?’ the Curator demanded. ‘What do they want with us?’

‘They are witchbreeds and faith-traitors. Servants to the Dark Gods. They come looking for an ancient artefact. A gift for their distant master. A relic of ruinous power.’

‘You believe this artefact to be here, in the Archive?’ Myra asked.

‘They search for the Bacillum Formidonis,’ Czevak told them. ‘The Dreadsceptre. An accursed crozius arcanum carried by the infamous Word Bearer Dark Apostle, Rhadamanthys – the dread Herald of Sicarus.’

‘I fear you talk of the Traitor Legions,’ the Curator spat. He shook his head. ‘You or any that follow will find none of their warped artefacts amongst our collection.’

‘Listen to me,’ Czevak implored. ‘Rhadamanthys is long dead, but the Fire Claws recovered the damned weapon from the ice world of Perboreas IX, where the Chaplain froze to death with dark prayers on his lips. It was said that no army marching with the Dreadsceptre before it could ever suffer defeat. With the Bacillum Formidonis, a fighting force would become unstoppable. This is what interests Ahzek Ahriman and the Thousand Sons–’

‘The Thousand Sons!’ Myra exclaimed.

‘You insult us with your accusations. We do not harbour artefacts of the damned here,’ the Curator seethed.

‘Curator,’ Czevak said. ‘Help me find the Dreadsceptre and destroy it. In return, I will take you and your people offworld, to safety. Perhaps not back to the Imperium, but certainly somewhere safer than this.’

The Curator turned angrily on Myra. ‘You bring me this false prophet?’

‘All of this,’ Czevak gestured with his cane, ‘is Neutran. Antiquities from the Fire Claws’ homeworld, no doubt loaded on the reliquary vessel that came to crash land here. The Adeptus Astartes masters of Neutra failed to tell your forefathers why such treasures were being evacuated. The Fire Claws were declared heretics by the Imperium and branded Excommunicate Traitoris for dealing in damned artefacts. The Dreadsceptre is here, hidden among Neutra’s holy relics, and your masters – now known as the Relictors – would have recovered the ruinous weapon, had your ship not fallen foul of the Craw. I’m here for that artefact.’

‘Spread not his lies,’ the Curator commanded, looking at Myra. ‘He is no saviour. There is no artefact and no threat. It is foretold. Our people will come for us. We shall be patient and await our deliverance. It will be our reward for preserving these great treasures so that they, like we, might join a greater collective. Only then will evil be wiped not only from this world but from the galaxy itself. It is foretold.’

With that, the Curator hurried off into the depths of the Archive.

Czevak looked to Myra.

‘Enough,’ she said softly. She lowered her eyes. ‘You’re bleeding,’ Myra observed, looking at the dressing on the inquisitor’s thigh.

Czevak said nothing, his mind elsewhere.

‘Stay here. I’ll get my kit,’ she said.

With Myra gone and blood running down his leg from his ruptured stitches, Czevak limped off after the Curator.

Turning the corner, the inquisitor was surprised to find himself at a dead end. A stone sarcophagus decorated the space, the carved detail of its lid slightly ajar.

Czevak hobbled across to the relic. Slipping his metal cane between the lid and the sarcophagus rim, the inquisitor prised the cover open and it slid across. Allowing the light of the chamber into the sarcophagus, Czevak found that the coffin lacked its stone bottom. Instead, a hole had been cut through the metal decking beneath and a flight of steps descended into the darkness. Czevak followed them down.

Several decks below the cargo bay, Czevak began to question the rashness of his pursuit. He could have been in the same vessel or another derelict entirely; there was little in the way of illumination. Several times he had halted, massaging the savage burn in his bleeding thigh, and squinting into the murk. He was sure he’d seen the faint glimmer of movement and his imagination began filling in the blanks, painting a picture of daemon world monsters stalking the darkness of the colony underworld.

On a small landing, Czevak found he had to rest. The wound on his leg was streaming with blood now and the inquisitor felt it prudent to take off his belt and tie it off above the dressing. Leading off from the landing was a bulkhead. The metal door had been lowered but still cleared the landing slightly, allowing a little of the sickly light of the chamber beyond to filter through. Bringing his face down to the stairwell mesh, Czevak peered beneath the bulkhead.

As his eyes adjusted further, the inquisitor could make out the cloak-tails and sandals of various colonists standing about the chamber. They were gathered around a grotesque throne, two fat cloven-claws scraping the deck at its base. A shiver of horror ran through the inquisitor at the prospect of the daemonic monstrosity to which they belonged. One of the colonists came to his knees and with hood retracted, kissed the hideous feet. The Curator. It shouldn’t have surprised Czevak. The colony of Perdition’s Landing could realistically stand little chance of survival on Nereus without daemonic sponsorship.

The mesh began to quake beneath Czevak’s cheek. The boom of a bell rang through the derelict superstructure. With his movements masked by the pealing, Czevak hurried back up the steps. A fresh vessel-victim was tumbling out of the dark heavens and the colony mobilising for reclamation meant the Curator would be returning. As he staggered up the stairwell, Czevak couldn’t help feeling that it wasn’t the ascending Curator he had to worry about. In the back of his mind, the blackness below was giving birth to the obscene monsters of dark fancy. He heard a hiss right next to his ear. Unmistakable. Not the fleeting notion of an overactive imagination. With the shiver down his spine trumping the bloody blaze of his thigh, the inquisitor hurried, stumbling up the steps to safety.

Czevak found Myra below the bell, alongside a particularly unfortunate colonist. The ragged bell-ringer not only had a small mountain for a back but heaved on the cord with three muscular limbs.

‘Help me find this damned artefact!’ Czevak called as he approached. Time was running out for all of them. Myra couldn’t hear him above the boom of the bell and set to work immediately inspecting his thigh. ‘Leave it,’ Czevak snapped. ‘We have to find that sceptre.’

‘What?’ Myra said, angling her ear up at him.

‘Could you not do that?’ Czevak shouted at the bell-ringer, but the mutant’s brute features just creased with confusion.

‘Reuban,’ Myra called, putting her hand on his hulking shoulder. He released the rope and the bell slowed to silence above them.

‘What?’ Myra repeated but Czevak didn’t reply. He was staring up into the darkness of the bell. He gave a perverse chuckle before hobbling over to the wall and wrapping the cord around a section of recovered cathedral architecture. ‘What are you doing?’ Myra asked again. Czevak braced his cane between the gargoyle-encrusted stone and the Archive wall. Toppling the stone dead-weight of the relic, the irresistible tug on the cord tore the bell from the chamber ceiling. The great Neutran bell bounced, cracked and clanged to the metal floor.

‘What are you doing?’ Myra screamed.

Czevak limped over to the shattered dome of the bell. He stabbed at the darkness inside with the tip of his cane. The clapper within lay still. It appeared strangely at odds with the Neutran design of the bell itself. The clapper rod was adorned with raised glyphs and symbols of dark origin and the clapper head was a brazen, horned skull. The skull was encircled with metal bands, creating a globular cage shot through with spikes and giving the object the unmistakable appearance of a weapon.

‘The Bacillum Formidonis,’ Czevak said. ‘Dreadsceptre of the Dark Apostle Rhadamanthys.’

Myra went to say something.

‘Listen!’ Czevak hissed.

With the boom of the bell gone, the three of them could clearly hear the roar of engines.

‘What is it?’ Myra asked fearfully.

‘They’re here,’ Czevak replied. ‘Help me get this bloody thing topside. We have to destroy it.’

The archipelago rang with the sound of screams.

Czevak hobbled across the mangled landscape, assisted by Myra at his side. Behind them, the hunchbacked Reuban humped the further handicap of the Dreadsceptre across one shoulder. About them, a massacre unfolded. Haunting the sky like a sacrilegious ornament was a spacecraft, a warship. It had clearly reached Nereus by means other than doomed passage through the Craw and hung pristine and deadly in low orbit.

‘They have come, as the Curator predicted,’ Myra mumbled. Czevak recognised the vessel as a Traitor Astartes frigate and its markings as belonging to the Thousand Sons. He didn’t need to correct Myra, however, the teleporter flashes on the scrapscape below did that. Crowds of colonists emerged from the archipelago and fell to their knees at the sight of seeming salvation. As they did, Traitor Space Marines in ancient cerulean plate marched out of the light with the cold certainty of executioners. They opened fire with their bolters almost immediately, hammering the approaching colonists with precision fire in silent impunity.

‘You can’t help them,’ Czevak insisted as Myra came to an astonished stop.

‘We are as one…’

‘It’s over. Help me and help yourself,’ the inquisitor told her.

The Dreadsceptre clattered to the floor as Reuban dropped his burden and began an afflicted bound back towards the carnage.

‘Reuban!’ Myra called, tears rolling down her sulphur-smeared cheeks.

‘Think of your child!’ Czevak implored, his hand on her shoulder.

Reuban didn’t get far. The Thousand Sons were making short work of the colonists and, even at long range, their disciplined gunfire riddled Reuban’s unfortunate body with ragged holes. That was enough for Myra. She clutched the sling containing her infant closer to her chest with one hand and took up the unholy Dreadsceptre with the other. Together, the pair heaved the accursed crozius up the hull of a crashed alien vessel. They reached the precipice of an unnatural cliff face, where the crash-site peninsula met the bloody waves of the brimstone ocean below.

‘One.’

‘Two.’

‘Three!’

As Myra and the inquisitor released the ends of the ruinous object, the Dreadsceptre flew off the cliff-top and tumbled down into the surf. There the relic would be lost forever in the raging, daemonic depths.

Bolt-fire sang off the wraithbone nearby, announcing the approach of Rubric Marines. Abandoning his cane and snatching Myra by the hand the inquisitor ran for the warp gate. Czevak’s leg was sodden with blood and his thigh seared with pain but the thunder of armoured boots and bolter rounds drove the pair on.

‘Come on!’ Czevak roared, putting one arm around Myra’s shoulders and the other around her swollen belly. The two of them slid onto their backsides and skimmed down the sulphur-dusted wraithbone of the alien hull. Leaving a cloud of brimstone behind them, Czevak and Myra reached the bottom, a short distance from the warp gate. ‘This way,’ the inquisitor called, climbing up towards the portal.

On the summit of the wraithbone rise, the silhouettes of Traitor Marines punched through the cloud in indomitable pursuit. Czevak reached the gate first and began the rune sequence required to activate the ancient artefact. As the portal crackled to interdimensional life and began assembling an alternate reality behind him, the inquisitor reached down to help Myra.

‘Give me the child,’ he ordered. Myra was having difficulty climbing with the bulge of her pregnant belly, and the infant held to her breast in the sling presented a further burden. Slipping the babe out of the ragged material, she thrust the child up to him.

Czevak took the swaddling and parted the rags.

Within was no human child. Where there should have been innocent vulnerability, there was carapace and the horror of claws and jaws. A xenos abomination: a genestealer hybrid. Four arms. Bulbous head. An ovipositor slipping out from between needle-like teeth.

‘What’s wrong?’ Myra called from below. The revulsion on his face had frozen her to the spot.

Czevak looked at Myra. For the inquisitor it all began to fall into place: the colonists’ survival in such a hellish environment; their deformities; the collective. Perdition’s Landing did not benefit from daemonic sponsorship. The colony could protect itself. Czevak shuddered at the enthroned monster he’d discovered below the Archive. The Curator: the face of the cult. A genestealer cult, a brood, marooned here on a daemon world.

Czevak considered the Curator’s words to him, his insistence on their deliverance. On their joining a greater collective and how then the evil of the Eye would be wiped clean of the galaxy. Czevak nodded to himself. Should the xenos plague ever come for its lost brood, it might well assimilate the darkness of the Eye and leave this terrible place a barren empire of forgotten evil.

On the rise, still enveloped in the dust cloud, a shadow puppet show played out. Monstrous genestealers were climbing out of the floor, while silhouettes of the Thousand Sons marched on towards the new threat of alien abominations with impassive discipline.

With a heavy heart, Czevak handed back the infant to its confused mother. Looking down into her pretty eyes, he realised that Myra couldn’t see the monster in her arms, only the one before her, about to leave her and her child to their deaths on the surface of a damned world.

‘What are you doing?’ she said in disbelief as Czevak backed towards the portal. ‘Take us with you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her and, with grim determination, limped back through the interdimensional static of the webway portal. With a flash, she was gone – and the daemon world of Nereus with her.

Sealing the wraithgate, Czevak was left with possibilities. Perhaps the Thousand Sons would exterminate the genestealer brood in their futile search for the Dreadsceptre. Perhaps the xenos abominations would end Ahriman’s Rubric Marines and their armoured husks would join the Craw-spawned scrap of Perdition’s Landing. Turning his back on the portal, Czevak limped away – undecided which of the two hosts, the Chaos Marines or the xenos filth, were the more necessary of evils.

Action and Consequence

S P Cawkwell

Vincit Qui Patitur.

The words of the company motto were bold and confident, standing out in silver lettering on the midnight-black of the Eighth Company’s war banner. He conquers who endures.

On board the strike cruiser Silver Arrow, the chapel was the same as many thousands of other such chapels scattered throughout the Space Marine ships of the Imperium. A quiet place of reflection, prayer and preparation, the battle-brothers of the Eighth Company all found their way here eventually prior to deployment. Some came, gave due deference to the statue of the God-Emperor and retreated.

Others lingered.

Within this cradle of ultimate faith, a warrior could assert his place in the universe. Within this sacred place, a warrior of the Imperium could come as close to knowing peace as he was ever likely to.

Gileas Ur’ten, a man rarely at peace, knelt at the front of the chapel. His dark hair fell forwards, framing his face as his head bowed in reverence. Softly, he recanted his own personal litanies of battle, paying particular care to those that honoured his forebears. Above his head, the company’s war banner was displayed proudly, pinned wide to display all the names written on it in tiny, delicate filigree script. Battle-brothers would gladly sit for hours to add a name to the banner. It was always considered to be an honour, never a duty.

Hundreds, even thousands of names were represented on the banner: brothers-in-arms he had fought alongside in his one hundred and twenty years of service, and still more names there of those he had never met, but whose deeds were legendary. His eyes lifted briefly and rested on the name of Captain Andreas Kulle, his own mentor and the only man who had initially believed the savage little boy from the south had possessed the potential to succeed. Kulle had long passed to the arms of the Emperor. But his name lived on, and as long as the banner remained, that would never change.

Whoever was chosen to bear the standard into battle was greatly honoured. Gileas had carried the relic many times over the campaigns of the last five years. He had held on to it with grim tenacity against seemingly overwhelming odds, and had always returned it. He was a valiant, fearless warrior whose own deeds on the battlefield were earning him a reputation that many envied and others watched with cautious uncertainty.

Gileas Ur’ten’s career had gone from strength to strength. The first recruit from the tribal people of Varsavia’s southern continent to achieve a sergeant’s rank, Gileas was stalwart and confident. He had led his squad for several years, and it was grudgingly acknowledged that they were amongst the best in the entire company. He was a charismatic man whose brothers followed him willingly and without question. Even the majority of his greatest antagonists had reluctantly accepted that his promotion to the rank of sergeant had been well earned.

And yet this was not a universal opinion. To others, Gileas was still considered a loose cannon, a Space Marine whose tempestuous nature and fiery spirit could not truly be trusted. A savage southerner whose instincts overruled his head on far too many occasions.

If Gileas was aware of the opinions of his brother Space Marines, he rarely – if ever – commented on them. He was, he had reasoned many years ago, who he was. He lived only to serve the Imperium and he would die in the line of duty. It was a reward he anticipated with the inherent pragmatism of all the Adeptus Astartes. He was loyal, honest and, as far as his superior officer was concerned, completely trustworthy. It was these qualities that had marked him out for the honour that had become his.

The death of Brother-Sergeant Oniker during the last campaign had left a void in the Eighth Company that many of the other company sergeants were eager to fill. The captain would need to nominate his chosen second-in-command, a role that Oniker had filled until his untimely death at the hands of the ork warboss Skullrencha. Each one of the sergeants had brought unique qualities to the table. The final decision, however, had gone to the company Prognosticator.

Shae Bast, Captain Meyoran’s advisor, had cast the runes. For long hours he had communed with and channelled the Emperor’s will. He had finally brought forth the Emperor’s decision, knowing that there would be unrest in the wake of the announcement. The captain had been completely satisfied with the choice of Gileas Ur’ten, but there were plenty amongst the Eighth Company with whom the decision did not sit comfortably. Indeed, there were rumblings about what was considered an ill-omened choice from other companies throughout the Chapter.

Gileas knew it well. Despite his own misgivings and barely understood concerns, he bore it all without comment, other than to take up the mantle of his new role with the same enthusiasm with which he approached everything. He looked now at the statue of the Emperor which stared impassively ahead, its gaze as cool as the stone from which it was carved. The solidity and permanence of the Emperor’s presence was a soothing balm to Gileas’s troubled heart, and he took quiet strength from it.

‘I am not disturbing you, I hope, brother-sergeant?’ The voice came from behind him, low and rumbling. Gileas raised his head and turned to take in the sight of his captain filling the chapel’s doorway.

‘Not at all, brother-captain.’ Gileas rocked back onto his bare heels. Whilst aboard the Silver Arrow and not in the training cages, most of the battle-brothers of the Eighth Company wore simple surplices and either soft leather sandals or chose to go barefoot. Gileas settled into a cross-legged sitting position and looked up expectantly.

With the quiet confidence that marked his every action, the captain strode into the chapel, crossing the short distance between the doors and the altar swiftly. Like most of the men under his command, Keile Meyoran was exceptionally huge – even for a genetically altered Space Marine. He kept his head and face shaved completely smooth, barring a long, thin-plaited black beard that served only to make him look even more aggressive. The years of honour tattoos that were painstakingly designed and worked into his face made him look at one and the same time both barbaric and mystical to those who did not understand the Silver Skulls’ tradition of marking themselves in such a way. They recruited from worlds other than Varsavia, but all were introduced to the planet’s tradition of tattooing on their induction into the Chapter.

Meyoran joined Gileas at the altar and looked up wordlessly at the statue of the Emperor. His lips moved in a silent prayer and he placed his right hand on the figure. Gileas watched his captain without comment until the older warrior turned to study him thoughtfully.

‘Are your preparations complete, brother?’

‘Aye, sir.’ Gileas made a move to get to his feet, but Meyoran held up a hand, forestalling him.

‘There is no need for me to interrupt you for long, Gileas. I merely wanted to bring you a message. Your presence is greatly desired in the strategium. We will translate in-system in less than four hours – and your experience in urban warfare will prove invaluable to us.’ His lips curled upwards into a smile at the look on Gileas’s face. ‘Is this invitation such a surprise to you, brother?’

‘Surprised? No, sir.’ As the youngest sergeant in the company, he had rarely been invited to attend a war meeting in the strategium – and never a direct invitation from the company captain. ‘Not surprised, merely… honoured.’

Gileas had never been a good liar, and given the way the tips of his ears turned slightly pink where they were visible beneath his unruly dark curls, it seemed that he was unlikely to start grasping the concept now. Meyoran’s smile broadened and he reached down and clasped the younger warrior’s shoulder.

‘You will be fine, Gileas,’ he said, quietly. ‘I have every faith in your ability to put your personal stamp on this position. I know that you have misgivings. I know also that some have questioned your own suitability for this role. You have commanded – what is it? Twenty missions as sergeant?’

‘Twenty-five, sir.’ Such pride in his voice. Only twenty-five missions. Practically a novice.

Meyoran nodded. ‘Twenty-five missions. Successful missions.’ The flicker of a smile tweaked the captain’s lips, then he resumed his serious expression. ‘But Gileas, whatever your misgivings may be… when we deploy, there will be no opportunity to dwell on them. I need to know that your head is in the right place. I need to know that your heart and mind are focussed on the mission.’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Gileas, a faint tone of indignation coming into his voice. ‘I am fully prepared and I will not let you down.’ This time, he was not lying.

‘No,’ mused Meyoran, touching his hand to the statue of the Emperor once again. ‘No, I don’t believe you will, lad.’

It will be the actions of the rest of my company that worry me, he added silently.

Less than four hours later, Gileas found himself in an environment as far removed from the peace of the chapel as could possibly be imagined. The familiar, almost comforting roar of the retro-jets filled his aural senses as the drop-pod punched through the haze of cloud lying in a perpetual gloom over the planet. Pressed down hard in his seat by the harness, the sergeant put a hand to the hilt of his chainsword and cast a glance around the pod’s interior.

His companions were all murmuring pre-battle litanies, apart from Theoderyk the Techmarine, whose voice soared loudly above the others. His litanies were fervently directed at the machine-spirits that guided them to their destination. Gileas allowed his own thoughts to stray to that particular outcome. There was a great battle to be had at the end of this drop and the thought of it filled his veins with fire.

He blink-clicked through final system checks, absorbing the vast quantities of scrolling information and runes that flashed before his eyes. His jump pack was functioning well and he had lovingly stripped and cleaned his weapons in the hours before they had deployed. He was as ready as he was likely to be.

The potential pressures of additional responsibility had not really bothered him. Like all the Silver Skulls, he was an enormously pragmatic man. He knew that he had the competence and the training to handle whatever these enemies could throw at him and he also knew that on the field of battle, the men under his command would obey his orders unquestioningly. Whatever his battle-brothers might have thought of him off the field of war was inconsequential.

Such confidence came easily. Certainty in those thoughts did not.

‘Prepare for impact.’ Theoderyk’s voice crackled across the vox and Gileas, along with the others on board, murmured their acquiescence. The sergeant’s hand closed still more tightly around the hilt of the chainsword and he offered up an impassioned prayer to the God-Emperor that this matter would be dealt with swiftly and without heavy losses. The Eighth Company was already low in numbers. It could not afford further deaths.

With enough force to completely flatten the remaining structures in this part of the already-devastated city, three drop-pods smashed into the landscape with deadly accuracy. Scant seconds later, the echo of release charges detonating resounded across the crater-pocked landscape, heralding the deployment of two dozen Silver Skulls. Each warrior was filled with righteous fury, ready to be unleashed against the xenos invaders who had made the fatal mistake of daring to set foot on Imperial soil, daring to commit the most heinous of transgressions.

Thumping the release button on his grav harness, Gileas was on his feet in seconds, sword in hand, ready for action. He gathered the others together and scanned the landing zone.

Gileas turned to the horizon, his auto-senses feeding critical information that might affect the performance of an Assault Marine’s jump pack. Wind speed. Humidity. All of these details and more were fed directly into his neural sensors. The auspex in Theoderyk’s hand picked up no life signs other than those of his fellow Space Marines – which was not what their intelligence had led them to believe.

‘Sergeant Ur’ten, report.’

Captain Meyoran’s voice came across the vox, announcing itself in Gileas’s ear as he led his men clear of the landing site. Three Thunderhawk gunships screamed overhead, heading towards the smouldering hive ruins to the east. A fledgling world under the protection of the Silver Skulls, Cartan was still in the earliest stages of colonisation. And the planet was already under threat.

‘Three pods down here, sir.’ Gileas scanned them swiftly. All had opened, releasing their passengers, including Brother Diomedes, one of the Chapter’s deeply venerated Dreadnoughts. The sight of the ancient lumbering towards him filled Gileas with even more fire than before. It would be a deep honour to serve alongside him.

‘Diomedes?’ Meyoran addressed the ancient directly.

‘Deployed and at your command,’ the Dreadnought responded, his voice mechanically altered by the body that housed one of the brightest and greatest warriors the Chapter had ever known.

‘No enemy contact,’ Gileas reported. ‘Intelligence suggested that the xenos had a temporary base here. If they did…’ He looked around him at the destruction caused by the arrival of three drop-pods. ‘…it was destroyed on our arrival.’

‘They move swiftly, sergeant. Be on your guard. Rendezvous as soon as possible at the coordinates I’m transmitting.’

Gileas turned to Theoderyk, designated the squad’s coordinator for the mission. The taciturn Techmarine, a silent yet dependable member of the company, gave an abrupt nod as he assimilated the stream of information. He pointed to the east. The servo-harness on his back hissed into life and the servo-arm ending in a plasma cutter came to the fore. With the harness, Theoderyk was easily half as big again as the giant Gileas. A huge, shaggy bear of a man, even without his Adeptus Astartes implants, Gileas would have been enormous.

Gileas surveyed the demolished remains of the outlying habs. Those who had worked here were undoubtedly long dead, or captured by the enemy. The burned-out husks of silos stood to one side of what had been a storage facility. The air, even filtered by their helmets, was rank with the scent of burning promethium and the chemical reek of weapons discharge. There had been fighting here recently.

Thoughtfully tapping the fingers of his free hand against the thigh of his power armour, Gileas turned to the Dreadnought standing motionless beside him.

‘Ancient one,’ he said, his voice filled with reverence.

‘Brother-Sergeant Ur’ten,’ the Dreadnought responded, the low rumble of his voice resonating deep in Gileas’s chest. ‘Your command?’

‘The last communication from Sergeant Kyaerus was less than fifteen hours ago and this was his given location,’ Gileas mused aloud. ‘I find it hard to believe that he has strayed too far from this position. I know him too well.’ The sergeant grinned. ‘I suspect he will already have met up with the captain. Nonetheless, we will scout this immediate area for any signs of activity. You take the east side. Report back with anything that you find.’

‘As you command,’ the Dreadnought acknowledged. ‘Thoroughness is essential. Wise words, Brother-Sergeant Ur’ten.’ With his seal of approval thus stamped, Diomedes left with a growl of machinery, the ground shaking under his tread.

Gileas watched the Dreadnought leave, its armoured form testament to the highest honour any of them could hope for. To serve, even in death… that was the ideal.

‘We missed whatever happened here, Gileas.’ One of the Reckoners, Gileas’s assault squad, marked by the red skull on his right pauldron, moved to stand beside him.

‘Maybe. But there are xenos involved. They are therefore not to be trusted.’ Gileas frowned beneath his helmet. ‘Keep your wits about you and your thumb on that activation stud, Reuben.’

Gileas signalled to the group to move out, scanning the horizon as he did so. As of yet, Theoderyk had reported no activity on the auspex. But the speed and cunning of the enemy was about to be proven. Bare moments later, the whine of engines filled the air.

Half a dozen vehicles came tearing into view and recognition was instant. Eldar reaver jetbikes. Fast-moving and deadly, they were swift and sure in their attack. Wickedly edged blades caught the light of the weak sun and glinted the briefest warning, but not soon enough to prevent Brother Lemuel losing an arm. A razor-sharp blade tore through his armour with ease.

For the next few seconds, all that mattered to the Silver Skulls were sounds. The bizarre, alien whine of the jetbikes, the rotating scream of Diomedes’s assault cannon as the Dreadnought pounded back to the scene and levelled the weapon at the enemy. There was the unified roar of chainswords thumbed into deadly life and the battle cries of the Silver Skulls as they launched themselves at their assailants.

‘It’s good to see you, Captain Meyoran.’

The voice belonged to Sergeant Kyaerus of the Tenth Company. Slender for a Space Marine, seeming more so against the oversized warriors of the Eighth Company, the Scout-sergeant’s face, prematurely aged by the mass of burn scars that covered the whole left side, showed signs of early fatigue as he emerged from the cover of a half-destroyed building.

The captain considered the other warrior. ‘It’s good to be seen, sergeant.’ A mirthless smile flickered across his face. ‘Make your report.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Meyoran quietly approved of the sergeant’s stoicism, even in the face of his current situation. He gestured to his men to maintain a perimeter and to keep a watchful eye out for anything that moved.

Kyaerus reattached his bolt pistol to the mag-clamp on his thigh, taking advantage of the arrival of backup in order to afford himself a little less vigilance. His augmetic left eye whirred softly as he spoke, constantly adjusting to every nuance on the face of the captain.

‘In accordance with the Chapter Master’s instructions, I travelled to the Cartan Hive to gather the first batch of aspirants and to receive reports from the Governor regarding the state of the mining operations.’

Cartan V was rich in mineral deposits, and it had been this more than anything else that had made it a desirable place for settlement. The Silver Skulls themselves had overseen the relocation of the beleaguered citizens of a largely destroyed hive world – on the agreement that they could return at any point in the future to acquire new recruits.

Kyaerus continued. ‘During my conversations with the governor, we received a report. A group of engineers were planning a detonation in order to construct a new minehead. They uncovered something else.’ Kyaerus’s mutilated face contorted in barely concealed rage. It was a look that Meyoran had come to know all too well in recent years. ‘And less than an hour after it was uncovered, the first attack was upon them.’

Meyoran scowled. ‘Eldar.’ A blunt statement of fact, not a question. The sheer depth of hatred in Kyaerus’s face engendered by the captain’s words spoke more than his reply did.

‘Aye, sir. Obviously my squad and I took a stand with the local military force out at the blast site. We found out very quickly what it was that they had uncovered.’ His hand clenched into a fist. ‘Only uncovering it wasn’t where they stopped. In their curiosity, they had raised it. The local militia were quickly depleted. They just weren’t prepared to deal with an incursion of this scale. And the eldar sent through a massed force. They have made several raids on the garrison, as you see.’ Kyaerus gestured around the ruined barracks before continuing.

‘They hit hard and fast. They’ve practically destroyed the hive. A large percentage of the population have made their way to the sub-levels and are seeking sanctuary there. Those people the raiders have found…’ He hesitated, made both angry and deeply regretful by the next bit of information.

‘Prisoners.’ The Adeptus Astartes standing just beside Meyoran, dressed in armour of cobalt-blue that marked him apart from most of the others, stepped forwards and spoke, filling in the pause. Prognosticator Bast’s voice was whisper-soft, and whenever his eyes passed over anybody, they got the feeling that they were being scrutinised very closely. ‘The xenos have rounded up living souls and have imprisoned them. Including our aspirants, yes, sergeant?’

Kyaerus nodded, his face darkening with anger. Meyoran felt a hollow form in the base of his stomach. For the Silver Skulls, recruits were a precious commodity. To lose a batch to the hands of the eldar…

‘Your thoughts, Prognosticator?’ Meyoran finally shifted his gaze from the sergeant to the psyker. The two men had served side by side for decades and he deferred without question to the other’s judgement.

‘The artefact was presumably a webway portal?’ Bast directed the question at Kyaerus, who nodded. ‘It would be a reasonable hypothesis to presume that raiders probably attacked this planet at some point in its past. Uncovering the portal may have alerted them to an opportunity to do so again.’ The psyker shrugged his giant shoulders. ‘None of us truly understand the heathen technology of the webway.’

The Prognosticator reached up to remove his own helmet. The face that emerged was so lost in tattoos and tribal markings that it was hard to make out any specific features. Dark hair worn in tight braids was shot through with silver, but beyond that, it was impossible to approximate the Prognosticator’s age.

Cold eyes, so pale a shade of blue that they were almost entirely colourless, fixed on the sergeant, who held the gaze with cool confidence for a few moments before he wavered and looked away. A flicker of a smile played around the Prognosticator’s face and he enjoyed the moment of startled uncertainty that he lifted from the sergeant’s mind.

‘Whereabouts is the portal?’ Meyoran asked, snapping his helmet back on. ‘If that is the heart of the enemy, then that is where we will strike.’

‘To the south-west.’

The words came from the Prognosticator rather than the sergeant as Bast almost lazily took the answer from his mind. He was not a particularly cruel man, but he had always taken a cynical delight in reminding others of his psychic capabilities. He treated the sergeant to a slow smile before he hid his face once again behind the helmet. In the legends of Old Terra, Bast was the name the great people of Gypta had associated with cats – and Meyoran had always felt there was something faintly feline in Bast’s methods. He liked to play with his enemies before killing them, too.

‘The south-west,’ Kyaerus acknowledged. He tapped a data-slate. ‘All the coordinates and information I’ve gathered are there.’

‘Good work. Then we move out.’ Meyoran waved a hand and the Silver Skulls fell into practiced formation. Kyaerus also gestured, making signs with his fingers, and four hitherto unnoticed Scouts, young neophytes in carapace armour and armed with sniper rifles, appeared from various locations around the compound. Meyoran grinned his approval.

‘You’re training them well, sergeant. You will make a superb captain some day soon.’ Next to him, Bast turned slightly, considering Meyoran’s words.

Kyaerus inclined his head, accepting the compliment with a slight twist of his lips.

‘Let’s go and get our boys back.’

The thunderous report of the Dreadnought’s assault cannon filled the air as Brother Diomedes fired on the attacking reavers. The long, lean armoured bikes moved utilising the anti-grav technology that belonged to their race. Each one was piloted by a single rider armed with pistols that they fired with unerring accuracy at the Silver Skulls. Viciously sharp blades lined the vehicles and it was one of these that had taken Brother Lemuel’s arm from his body.

It took far more than losing a limb to stop a Space Marine though. His body was already working to close over the neat amputation. Lemuel had borne the worst of the pain with little more than a brief yell. He had lost his chainsword when the limb had been severed, but he merely levelled his bolt pistol and fired at the enemy instead.

Gileas blink-clicked through the runes scrolling in front of his eyes until it brought up Lemuel’s data. His systems were coping with the injury well, but he was far from optimal. There were so many combat narcotics and analgesics now coursing round his veins that his reaction time was gravely compromised.

‘Lemuel,’ he voxed. ‘Take a step back, brother. Leave this to us.’

‘I can still fight, brother-sergeant.’ Lemuel continued to fire on the bikes. which were presently turning for another attack. Diomedes paused briefly, scanning the half-dozen or so vehicles and determining vulnerable points. The massive assault cannon tracked the leading bike. Then the Dreadnought acted, concentrating his fire.

In a burst of blue flame, the bike detonated, throwing its eldar rider free and sending pieces of armour plate and blades in all directions. The burning xenos was thrown to the ground with an audible crump, the body twisted at an unnatural angle. The other bikes veered erratically, thrown off from their planned attack run by the sudden loss of the leader.

‘Squad Ur’ten, on me.’ Lemuel and his obstinate behaviour was not an issue. Lemuel was an Adeptus Astartes. He was bred and trained to purge the galaxy of all that was wrong, and to the Silver Skulls there was little that met the criteria so much as the eldar – particularly these pirates. Lemuel would either survive to fight another day with an augmetic limb, or he would die fighting in the Emperor’s service. Either outcome was ultimately satisfactory.

With a single burst of his assault cannon, Diomedes had already countered the surprise attack and Gileas would lead his squad as he led every mission he had commanded so far in his career. From the front.

The venerable ancient pounded forwards, his massive Dreadnought body shaking the ground under the Space Marines’ feet and cracking the ferrocrete. At one time, this blistered area would have seen the comings and goings of Imperial vessels, bringing supplies to the planet for the building of the hive, delivering people and resources and shipping out whatever had been mined. Now it was a ruin, a place that seemed far older and scarred than something so new had any right to be.

‘For the Emperor and Argentius!’ the war machine bellowed in his thunderous voice. ‘Do not suffer these abominations to live, brothers. We are Silver Skulls. We will prevail!’

‘We will prevail,’ the squad chorused, eager to engage the enemy.

For the tiniest fraction of time, a pause so brief that even Theoderyk could not have captured it on his exquisitely forged chronometer, there was silence. Anticipation. The calm before the storm.

And then the storm broke.

Complete pandemonium descended for several minutes. To the unfortunate xenos attackers, the rapid discipline and fearsome strength that their prey demonstrated meant that those few minutes seemed to stretch out beyond reason. Any advantage they may have had in altitude was reduced by the fact that they had underestimated the fighting prowess of nearly half an Assault company. Even as Gileas fired his jump pack into life, all around him other Silver Skulls were rising to meet their enemies in mid-air.

With Diomedes present, the cleansing of this filth was a matter of course for the Silver Skulls. They entered the fray with customary enthusiasm. Their reputation as a barbaric fighting force was not without reason. They were brutal, efficient warriors who were not adverse to using whatever tactics were necessary to win a fight. This was said of the entire Chapter, but bore particular relevance to the Eighth Company.

Three more eldar riders were unseated by the sudden momentum of fully armoured Silver Skulls launching past them and grabbing them from the bikes. Without riders, the machines careened haphazardly. One struck the ground and exploded in a burst of whickering shrapnel. The others collided in mid-air and similarly detonated. More heat and smoke billowed out in plumes. The remaining two riders turned their bikes into the smog, leaving nothing but contrails in their wake. The warriors who had felled the eldar plummeted downwards with their victims, driving them to the floor with a satisfying crack of vertebrae.

Gileas cast a brief glance at the rune on the bottom left of his display, blinking rapidly to cycle the lenses in his helmet, enabling him to see more effectively through the smoke. The fires from the destroyed jetbikes raged on, continuing to spew ash and cinders into the air.

The cacophony of the past few minutes ebbed back to the soft thrum of chainswords on low power. There were still two reavers out there and the destruction of their compatriots meant that they were temporarily masked in the resultant smoke.

‘Sergeant Ur’ten, report,’ Meyoran voxed. Gileas glanced around. Of the twenty-four warriors who had exited the drop-pods, there were still twenty-two standing. One was dead, the other injured.

‘Eldar raiders, sir,’ he responded. ‘On jetbikes. They struck without warning.’

‘Dead?’

‘Job almost complete, sir. Two left out there. I’m almost certain that–’

With a sudden, screaming whine, one of the remaining jetbikes burst out of the smoke, heading straight for Gileas’s broad-shouldered back. Without so much as turning around, the Assault Marine thumbed his chainsword back into life, sidestepped lazily and brought his weapon around in a murderous arc. The serrated, whirring blade chewed through the pilot from just below its right ear, down through the thorax and severed the body diagonally. The head and left arm fell away in a shower of gore, leaving an out-of-control jetbike, a still-twitching eldar gripping the controls with a lifeless hand.

With a single burst from his cannon, Brother Diomedes finished it.

‘Correction. One left, sir.’

Gileas’s tone had not changed at all.

‘Good work, sergeant. Transmitting coordinates. Sergeant Kyaerus has found us.’ Gileas smiled. Not, he noted, the other way around. ‘Meet us as soon as you can. Stay alert for that rogue rider. Try to get here in one piece.’

‘Aye, captain.’ Gileas grinned beneath his helmet. ‘On our way.’

They encountered nothing as they traversed the largely obliterated compound. All the Silver Skulls remained alert, aware that there was a reaver close by. The intelligence that had been broadcast with the emergency transmission had suggested a reasonably sized force in-situ on this planet. It was the reason the decision had been taken to deploy a large proportion of the company.

During the meeting in the strategium, Gileas had queried the necessity for Captain Meyoran to come down to the surface at all. The captain had laughed dismissively, clasping Gileas’s shoulder.

‘Brother-Sergeant Ur’ten, I hope that you don’t plan to let this promotion turn you into my keeper,’ he had said. ‘Prognosticator Bast has communed with the Emperor. It is His will that I lead this expedition. Besides, why should I let you have all the glory? You will take command in my place soon enough.’ The words had sounded ominous; prophetic, even.

Gileas had begun to protest, which had earned an indulgent grin from the captain. ‘I jest, brother,’ he had said with a gruff laugh. ‘By the Throne, Gileas, learn to be less literal.’

Bast, assigned directly from the psyker-led prognosticatum, had nodded solemnly. ‘The omens are most auspicious for the battle to come, Brother-Sergeant Ur’ten,’ he had pronounced in his soft whisper. ‘It is vital that the captain is present.’

Unsettled by the Prognosticator’s words without quite knowing why, Gileas had put his worries to the back of his mind and they had instead concentrated on the importance of eliminating the eldar forces.

Over the centuries the Silver Skulls had repeatedly encountered the eldar in their many and varied forms. Whilst the justifiable detestation of all alien races was the right of the Adeptus Astartes, the Silver Skulls reserved an especial hatred for the eldar. Many good battle-brothers had been lost at the Battle of Oram Pass. Many good battle-brothers who had yet to be replaced. The Chapter was dipping well below its normal numbers and the recruitment process was slow for many reasons.

As a result, the prospect of visiting righteous retribution on the eldar was one that Eighth Company relished with grim enthusiasm. Fifty warriors had been deployed, more than half the company’s current complement.

By the time they reached the rendezvous point, Meyoran and his warriors were already gathered. Prognosticator Bast and the only other psychic battle-brother present stood to one side, conspicuous by the colour of their armour. The prognosticatum had suffered more losses at the hands of the eldar at Oram Pass than any other. For a Chapter whose home world was sparsely populated with psykers, it had been a harsh toll. The prognosticatum had more reason than most to hate the foul eldar pirates.

‘You took your time,’ greeted Meyoran, his tone light, but his voice slightly strained with the tension of what he had established of the situation thus far.

‘Apologies, sir.’ Gileas joined his captain and removed his helmet. ‘Undisciplined xenos taking an attack of opportunity. We made short work of them thanks to Brother Diomedes.’ The sergeant nodded reverently in the Dreadnought’s direction.

‘You know what it is that we face here, then?’

‘Aye, sir.’ Gileas’s hand closed into a fist. ‘Eldar raiders.’

‘Mostly correct. Eldar raiders, yes. Eldar raiders with access to a webway portal.’

Gileas faltered only slightly. That changed things. With access to a portal, he knew well from experience that it would be impossible to plan any sort of attack based on numbers. More could arrive at any given moment. Their priority was clear. He nodded his understanding and Meyoran continued.

‘I will lead the attack on the portal with the majority of our fighting force – and Diomedes,’ he said. ‘You will take the Reckoners and command the rescue mission.’ He indicated a young Scout Gileas recognised. One of Kyaerus’s squad, the callow youth was looking eager to get the battle under way. ‘Tyr took the liberty of going ahead to assess the situation as best he could under the circumstances. The eldar have a considerable number of human captives, including our aspirants. As of a few minutes ago, they were in holding pens, presumably awaiting loading into one of their ships. Time is of the essence.’

Meyoran tweaked his long plaited beard. ‘Priorities are to destroy the portal, eliminate the xenos threat and ensure as many citizens as possible survive the ordeal. This may present difficulties given that the raiders have arranged the cages around their central position. Those are our objectives. In that order.’

‘Slaves?’ Gileas was aware on an unconscious level that Meyoran was assessing his reaction to being denied the honour of leading the attack, and kept his face as neutral as he could. Despite his best efforts, disappointment stirred in the pit of his belly.

‘Possibly.’ Meyoran’s tattooed face twisted into a scowl, the black ink contorting grotesquely. ‘Or worse. Either way, expediency is critical.’

Gileas set his jaw angrily. ‘So they are utilising human shields?’

‘Aye. There may well be Imperial casualties during this operation, Gileas, but do what you can to minimise risk.’ Meyoran waited a moment as though expecting an argument. Gileas was far more suited to the task of taking the portal than he was of search and rescue, and they both knew it.

The serpent of rebellion that had woken at Meyoran’s orders writhed in Gileas’s stomach again, threatening to rise its hooded head and strike. But Gileas quelled it. He would question the captain’s orders when they were back on the Silver Arrow, not whilst they were in the field. He knew he was being tested and he would be damned before he failed.

‘As my captain orders,’ he replied, snapping his helmet back on again. ‘Reckoners, on me.’

Meyoran glanced at Bast as Gileas turned to walk away. The Prognosticator inclined his head almost graciously.

‘Sergeant.’ Meyoran called after Gileas’s retreating back.

‘Brother-captain?’ Gileas turned slightly.

‘Endure, brother.’ There was a passion in Meyoran’s voice that poked the seed of uncertainty that had been planted in Gileas’s mind during the meeting in the strategium. His doubts and misgivings burst into bloom, and he almost turned to consider the captain fully. But there was no time to dwell on thoughts and feelings. He had promised Meyoran back in the chapel that he would maintain his focus. He had his orders and he would carry them out to the best of his ability.

The alien portal rose up from the ground, a slim, tapering arc casting a faint rippling visual distortion in its curve. It looked frail, a thing that could be easily broken under the onslaught of the Silver Skulls, and yet they had fought enough eldar raiders to know that they were disasters just waiting to happen. At any given moment, more troops and vehicles could arrive without warning. Then their troubles would be multiplied exponentially.

A Raider, one of the transport ships that the pirates so favoured, hovered silently next to the portal. It was a massive thing, painted with incomprehensible symbols. An eldar pilot was seated at the rear of the vehicle, his long, thin alien face with delicately pointed ears clearly visible. He was looking out at the makeshift arena in the compound.

From the vantage point below the rising ridge that led to the blast site, Meyoran had already assessed the battleground. He had noted potential risk points and possible cover. The cages were pulled into a rough circle, a curtain of human flesh drawn between them and their prey.

Meyoran and his force would lead the battle inwards, away from the civilians. Diomedes had been charged with the destruction of the webway portal. By creating such a chaotic distraction, they might buy Gileas and his squad enough time to liberate the prisoners. Perhaps.

Turning his attention to the Raider, Meyoran reviewed the data the Chapter had assimilated over the years on eldar tech. He knew where the weak points were and exactly how he could destroy the vessel. It looked customised; an ornate throne had been pushed forwards to the front of the main deck, where what was presumably the leader of the mission sat, watching with undisguised delight over the chaos he had wrought.

The humans in the cages were sobbing pitifully, calling out for the Emperor’s aid, or in the case of several burly young men, screaming promises of revenge. The recruits.

Occasionally, one of the warriors mingling around the makeshift arena would jab into the cages with cruel blades, or fire a shot from the weapons they carried. Elsewhere, the xenos were fighting one another. High-pitched cackles of delight filled the air.

The overseer shouted something in his harsh tongue and several of the raiders raced to a cage, pulling one of their captives into the middle of the circle. Even as Meyoran watched, the aliens began to torture their victim, slicing strips of skin from his face with wickedly curved knives. The man screamed in pain, but for every scream that bubbled from his lips, the more his captors screamed back – only their screams were of joy.

Closing his ears to the sound, Meyoran completed his scan of the area. A rough ring of scrap metal framed the entire scene, bedecked with spikes and broken plexglass. Some of the spikes were further decorated by the grisly addition of human heads. Some still wore their Cartan Militia helmets.

‘Prognosticator?’ The captain turned to the blue-clad battle-brother at his side. He and Shae Bast had worked together for so long that they knew one another’s methods inside out. Alone, Bast was a dangerous opponent. Teamed with the brute force of a Space Marine Assault company, he was nigh-on unstoppable.

The Prognosticator’s head snapped up and the sparks of psychic energy flowing steadily through the crystal mesh rising from his gorget began to pulse. He was gathering his powers. As soon as he gave the word, they would attack.

Meyoran’s eyes flickered once again to the Raider. He had already established his own personal objective. The power fist at the end of his arm hummed softly. Beside him, Bast was motionless.

The hunger for action was like a living, breathing thing.

Finally, Bast’s whispering voice transmitted across the vox to all the Silver Skulls who were coiled like springs ready for the attack.

‘Commence,’ was all he said and the steel-grey force washed over the ridge like a tide of doom, weapons at the ready, raging litanies of war and hatred.

Within seconds, the Silver Skulls were met by a forest of dancing xenos whose voices raised in harsh, ear-searing counterpoint to the Space Marines’ battle roar. The eldar were all flashing blades, cruel edges and needle points. The howls and whoops of half-crazed joy accompanied their attack as their narcotic-soaked minds engaged instantly with the fight.

Even as he raised his crackling fist to smite them where they stood, Meyoran could not help but assess them. They were the complete antithesis of their Space Marine counterparts: a chaotic rabble with no style or structure to their methods. They would fall under the onslaught of the Adeptus Astartes, of that there was little doubt. It remained to be seen what the toll would be on the company.

Perched like grotesque gargoyles on broken spars, a number of bat-winged warriors unleashed bizarre alien weaponry. With brays of uncontrollable delight, they fired their weapons. Toxic crystalline shards scattered over the Space Marines, a glittering rain that broke over battle plate with the discordant sound of crashing chimes. The sound of sniper rifles joined in the jarring noises that echoed around the natural basin as Kyaerus’s young Scouts took aim and fired on them.

Aboard the Raider, the overseer had got to his feet. Long, lean and with cruelty etched into his features, he pointed at the Prognosticator and shouted something to his warriors. Some of them broke away and concentrated their efforts on the encroaching psyker, the sound of laughter intensified to near-hysteria. Through it all, Bast continued to walk towards the centre of the compound, determination implicit in every step. His psychic hood crackled with barely contained power.

Meyoran fought with grim determination, pouring silent scorn on an enemy who were so keen to die. They practically threw themselves into the path of his fist, dying with gurgling ecstasy. Everything about these xenos offended and sickened him to the core. That fury channelled itself into every swing, and he broke bones and shattered skulls wherever he walked.

A group of eldar had turned their weapons on the prisoners in the pens and were preparing to open fire. The unfortunates within huddled into a corner of the cage, sobbing pitifully and waiting for the death that was sure to come. The lead eldar gestured with his rifle and barked an order.

Bare seconds later he was pulverised into the ground when Gileas Ur’ten dropped onto him from the sky. Meyoran felt a surge of something that may have been exhilaration, but could just as easily have been relief.

‘Excellent timing, sergeant.’

Meyoran received little more than a grunt in response. Around the compound, the Reckoners were descending from the heavens, having used their jump packs to lend momentum to their attack.

In the heart of the battle, Bast stopped walking and stood, raising his helmeted head to meet the gaze of the overseer on the Raider. The eldar lifted his right hand and bellowed a command. Meyoran could hear the urgency in the tone, but it was too late. Far too late.

Dropping to a stoop, Bast laid his gauntleted hand on the ground and brought forth his power. At first nothing seemed to happen, but then there was the very faintest rumble. Bast’s powers had always been elemental in nature and the seismic shock he brought forth from the willing earth was enough to knock many of his would-be attackers off their feet.

‘Get those prisoners clear, sergeant,’ Meyoran voxed urgently, his voice strangely distorted by the earth tremor. ‘Use whatever means necessary.’

‘Acknowledged, sir.’

The Reckoners had secured the area around the cages easily enough. The problem now would be holding them long enough for an evacuation. It didn’t remain a problem for long, however, as Diomedes ploughed through the rocky ridge, effectively creating the perfect escape corridor. The Dreadnought continued towards the portal, scattering the foe before him.

‘They’re activating the portal, Gileas,’ Meyoran advised. ‘Get these people to safety. Diomedes, level that device now before they can retreat, or worse, reinforce their position.’

The massive war machine fired at the alien device without hesitation. The first stream of shells seemed to do little more than inflict surface damage. Delicate and fragile it may have looked – but it was a sturdy structure.

Everywhere was noise and carnage as the Reckoners fought for the liberation of the human prisoners. The eldar did everything they could to prevent their delicious prize being stolen from them, lashing themselves into a frenzy with archaic – but, as several battle-brothers discovered, deadly – gladiatorial weapons. Toxic shards rained on the humans as they fled. Many died, but the Reckoners did what they could to prevent too many losses. Even in the midst of battle, Meyoran quietly approved of the calm efficiency with which Gileas carried out his orders. Not for the first time, he felt pride in the younger warrior.

As the shimmering haze within the portal rippled unnaturally, a handful of eldar troops ran into it and vanished. The overseer called out something to his pilot in an urgent tone.

‘They’re retreating, Diomedes!’ Meyoran bellowed in fury. He wasn’t going to let the architect of this destruction get away if he could help it. The Dreadnought rumbled a reply and began another assault on the portal.

With a sudden scream of engines, the jetbike that had escaped from the earlier attack ripped into view, its mounted splinter rifle firing on prisoners and Silver Skulls alike. Distracted by the unexpected arrival, Meyoran turned his attention away from the overseer, just for a moment.

It was to prove to be the most costly moment of his life.

‘Captain Meyoran!’

Several voices came across the vox almost simultaneously, cutting into and over each other urgently. Behind him, the leader had raised a weapon that looked for all the world like a barbed whip. With expert ease, the eldar flicked back his wrist almost lazily. A thin, snakelike tendril writhed towards Meyoran with preternatural speed, wrapping itself around his gorget. The eldar jerked the whip tightly, pulling the captain to the ground.

Searing pain came and went as Meyoran realised that the whip had sliced through his power armour at the neck seal. Felled by the blow, the warrior struggled to stand as the jetbike turned towards him, firing unceasingly, weapon mounts chattering. His power armour sparked, buckled and finally gave way under the onslaught. He fell back to the ground and almost immediately a ravening pack of eldar swarmed over him. Meyoran fought for all he was worth, but he was losing.

‘Sergeant Ur’ten, get the prisoners clear. You have two minutes by my estimate.’

His voice felt strained and unnatural. Perhaps there had been some sort of xenos toxin contained in the weapons strike. Perhaps it was simply the fact that there were presently eldar warriors clinging to him like limpets. Death was imminent and he felt no regret. The omens had spoken of this. He would not defy fate.

That was not his destiny.

‘Captain Meyoran, I’m heading your way. I will–’

‘No, Gileas. There isn’t time. We need to finish this. You need to finish this. You have to get the aspirants back.’

‘I can stop them–’

‘Follow your orders, Gileas Ur’ten.’ Shae Bast’s cold, impassive voice cut across the conversation.

‘But–’

‘Look to your duty, brother-sergeant!’ It was Meyoran this time who snapped the order. ‘I’m not finished yet. You must endure, brother.’

There was no reply.

Engines fired into life and the Raider began to move, heading towards the damaged portal into which the remaining eldar were racing headlong.

You must endure, Gileas Ur’ten, Meyoran willed silently.

With a roar that started deep down in his stomach, the mortally wounded captain rose to his feet, the eldar still clinging to him, hacking, slashing, firing. Several fell from his body as he stood, and they scuttled frantically into the portal.

He powered his jump pack into life and soared skywards, landing unsteadily on the Raider beside the overseer. The last of his strength was bolstered by the ceaseless flow of combat stimms around his system. Were he to remove his helmet, he suspected his eyes would be as wild and staring as those of the creature he now faced.

Having not anticipated this move, the alien screamed its defiance. The noise was curtailed as Meyoran reached out and crushed the fragile skull in one hand. He tossed the corpse over the side with casual contempt.

He raised his power fist and cast a glance around the compound. Gileas and the Reckoners were ensuring that the humans were clear. The other Silver Skulls were finishing off the remaining eldar and Diomedes was pouring fire onto the portal.

All was as it should be. The Silver Skulls were doing more than prevailing. They were winning. If this was to be the last thing he ever saw, then he would die with pride and honour.

Meyoran’s helmeted gaze met that of the Prognosticator, who raised a hand in silent salute.

With every last ounce of strength left in his body, the captain thrust his armoured fist into the heart of the vehicle. The fragile engine housing splintered under the force of the impact, crushing power circuits and couplings just beneath the surface. The pilot lost all control as the fist’s energy field flared, igniting the vessel from within. Simultaneously, Diomedes’s persistence was rewarded as the ship reached the webway’s active field.

Both the portal and the half of the Raider that had failed to translate to the webway detonated in a expanding ball of fire and debris. Gileas and the Reckoners had done their job; the civilian survivors, whilst thrown to the ground by the shockwave of the blast, were far enough away that the explosion itself did little more than singe an eyebrow or two.

The remaining threat was dealt with swiftly. The jetbike was ripped apart by Diomedes. The other aliens, who had descended into even more chaos at the loss of their leader, were dead in moments.

Dead.

Gileas reached up and snatched off his helmet, flinging it to one side. He would not accept the blinking rune that told him of Meyoran’s demise. He could not.

‘Prognosticator!’ His voice bellowed across the smouldering battlefield. ‘Prognosticator, I need to speak to you right now!’

‘Gileas…’ Reuben, Gileas’s oldest friend and his brother-in-arms since the days they had been novitiates, laid a gauntlet on his sergeant’s arm. He could feel Gileas’s fury and grief. ‘Now is not the time.’

The sergeant shook his arm free from Reuben’s grip and turned furious hazel eyes on him. ‘You are wrong, Reuben. Now is the time. There are rituals to observe. And, damn it, I will observe them. Prognosticator!’

‘Sergeant Ur’ten.’

The Prognosticator’s whispering voice came from behind him, channelled through the vox-bead in his ear.

‘Confirm Meyoran’s death.’

‘You saw the explosion yourself, sergeant. Surely–’

‘I said confirm his death.’ Gileas took a step towards the psyker, who held his ground serenely.

‘As you command, brother-sergeant.’ The Prognosticator drew his concentration in once again. Gileas felt the brief touch of the psyker’s mind on his own as Bast allowed his attention to drift around the battlefield.

‘Nothing, brother-sergeant.’ Bast’s helmeted head lowered in respect and Gileas was temporarily thrown off his raging stride by the genuine sorrow he heard in the other’s voice. ‘The captain is gone.’

Gileas ran a hand across his stubble-shadowed jawline and stared at the Prognosticator. The words were there, but the meaning would not connect with his synapses. Bast took a step closer, leaning in to whisper so that only the stunned sergeant could hear him.

‘Meyoran is gone, Gileas,’ he said, quietly. ‘Control your inner beast for once in your life and do your duty.’

Duty. There it was again. That word.

Born into a nomadic tribe which had struggled just to survive, reborn into a tribe of warriors upon whom the very fate of the Imperium depended, the word had always had a profound effect on Gileas. He was a Space Marine. He was a Silver Skull.

‘Yes,’ he said, his shoulders automatically straightening. ‘Yes, of course.’ Bast inclined his head and stepped back.

The battle was over. There was nothing more they could do here other than to recover the legacies of their fallen brothers and take back however many of the aspirants remained. The recovery of the hive would fall to the local troops and emergency aid would be sent in due course.

Gileas cast a glance at the smouldering portal. The eldar might return, but it would undoubtedly take time for them to assimilate any galactic coordinates they might have been able to glean from their brief time on Cartan.

‘Silver Skulls,’ Gileas said, over the vox, bending to retrieve his helmet. ‘Withdraw.’

The chapel aboard the Silver Arrow once more wrapped Gileas in its cocoon of calm. This time, however, he was not hardening his core, grounding himself in battle doctrine and preparing for a fight. This time he was there for a different reason.

Keile Meyoran.

The captain’s name had been painstakingly written letter by agonising letter onto the company’s war banner, along with the names of other brothers who had fallen. As his position dictated, the job of adding Meyoran’s name had been his right.

It was an honour, but one that he had not wanted ever to fulfil.

‘He should not have died,’ Gileas said softly to the Prognosticator who stood by his side, staring up at the banner. Out of his battle plate, the Prognosticator’s years were more evident in the slight stoop of his shoulders, as though he held the weight of his centuries on them.

‘It was his destiny. It was predetermined before we even left the ship. For every action, Gileas Ur’ten, there has to be a consequence. By leaving the ship to come down to the surface with the company, Meyoran set an irreversible chain of events in motion.’ The psyker’s colourless eyes skimmed over the banner with cool detachment. ‘It was the Emperor’s will that he was lost today. He knew that and he accepted the omen gladly.’

Gileas angled his head abruptly in Bast’s direction. The Prognosticator held a silver rune in the palm of his leathery-skinned hand. He turned it over and over almost idly, such a complacent gesture that Gileas felt his blood start to boil.

‘He should not have died.’ The sergeant spun on his heel and turned to face Bast fully. ‘He could have been spared to fight another day. He should not have listened to you.’

Taller than the psyker by a considerable amount, the Space Marine towered threateningly. In any other circumstances, it would have been no question as to who would have the upper hand should things come to blows. But the power of the prognosticatum over the whole Chapter meant that nothing was ever so certain.

Gileas was well aware of the extent of Bast’s powers. He had seen the Prognosticator crush dozens of warriors with a word. He had been indoctrinated over the decades to revere the Prognosticators of the Silver Skulls and to defer to their ultimate judgement. And yet right now, all he felt was anger. Anger at the power the Prognosticator wielded. Anger at the fact that Meyoran, a good warrior and a good soul, had been taken from them. Anger at something he could not put a name to.

An amused, almost indulgent smile twisted Bast’s features. Involuntarily, Gileas’s hands clenched into fists as he allowed his anger to be quenched in the physical face of his duty. He could not, in all good conscience however, allow the words to pass unsaid.

‘Auspicious, you said. You said that the omens were auspicious for the battle down there. You knew, didn’t you? You knew he would die if he went down there, and still you let him go?’

Bast nodded. ‘Our lives are about adapting to circumstances. Change is a fundamental part of the life of a Space Marine, Gileas. This had to happen in order for future events to occur to the fullest benefit of the Chapter.’

‘What events?’

Bast paused, and for a heartbeat Gileas sensed the psyker’s touch on his mind. Then Bast’s eyes left him and the older Space Marine pocketed the rune. ‘It remains to be seen. For now, though, do not mourn Keile Meyoran too much. Remember him as we all will, but give thanks to the Emperor that his death was a glorious one. Put your energies into your own life instead. You endure, Gileas Ur’ten. Remember that.’

The Prognosticator bowed deeply and took his leave, his bare feet padding almost silently on the cold metal floor of the chapel. Gileas watched him go, pondering his words. His eyes lifted once again to the banner and were caught by the motto.

Vincit Qui Patitur.

He conquers who endures.

Cause and Effect

S P Cawkwell

The whisper of the Emperor’s voice was his constant companion. But Vashiro, Chief Prognosticator of the Silver Skulls Chapter of Space Marines, could only properly discern His glorious truth by channelling the psychic connection into something more tactile.

Whenever he cast the sacred runes, or turned over the fading cards of his centuries-old Imperial Tarot deck, he reached through the immaterium and sought the Emperor’s guidance as an infant reaches out to a parent. The use of the objects was a means to channel and focus that guidance. There was also an element of mystery attached which induced respect from all who witnessed a Prognostication.

When a metaphysical link was finally forged, when any of the psykers of the Chapter connected with their ultimate father, the shrouded futures of the Silver Skulls were unveiled and their paths paved with solid decision. The Emperor’s psychic children simply took His words and will and divined their purpose.

At times, the obscurity of the visions meant that their meanings were difficult to extrapolate. When this happened, a great burden fell on the shoulders of the divining Prognosticator who frequently had to make a call to arms that could see squads, or even entire companies, devastated on the field of battle.

No matter how contrary or controversial, the decision of a Prognosticator was never questioned – except by another, more senior member of the Prognosticatum. Their word was never disputed. Their orders were obeyed without hesitation. They were revered above all other battle-brothers. They were few in number yet their power, both on the field of battle and politically, was immense.

A former Lord Commander Argentius had once refused to deploy when his psychic adviser had expressed doubt. It had proved a shrewd move when the presumed-dormant volcano on the planet burst into terrible life. As the violent eruption incinerated all in its path, it became obvious that it would have swept the Space Marines away in its pyroclastic flow as well. Prognostication was a great gift that, despite the risk, had the potential to save many lives.

But amongst these gifts, all these glimpses of what the future held, the psykers of the Silver Skulls Chapter all fervently hoped they would avoid one thing.

The Deep Dark afflicted all the psychic battle-brothers at least once in their service. An anxious time when the Emperor turned His face away from a beloved child. To each Prognosticator, this was translated as something different – but most agreed that it signalled the Emperor’s great displeasure. It was a terrible, mentally devastating experience for a psyker; somewhere between crushing disappointment at being denied guidance and a selfish, desperate desire for approval from their master.

And from time to time there were visions like the one Vashiro had now. One that repeated itself over and over. Easy enough to understand, harder to truly translate into an appropriate course of action.

A shattered silver skull.

The Fortress Monastery of the Silver Skulls
Argent Mons, Varsavia

For countless centuries, the Silver Skulls had recruited from a number of worlds but all their warriors had been trained here on the far-flung world of Varsavia. A visiting dignitary from Terra many centuries ago had acknowledged that the monastery’s design would have impressed the Primarch Rogal Dorn himself. It was highly defensible and nigh on impenetrable to the outside world.

The home of the Chapter was carved out of the rock of the Argent Mons, the highest peak of a vast mountain range in the far north of the planet. The veins of unmined silver that threaded through the rock had birthed not only the mountain’s name, but also the name of the Chapter who called it home.

Apart from the serf quarters, only the chapel and the docking bays were above ground level. The chapel was a vast, cavernous chamber, large enough to contain several companies at the same time with room to spare. The rays of the weak sun bled through the beautifully worked stained glass and at the right time of day dappled the stone floor in a myriad of glorious colours where it filtered through the stylised image of the first Lord Argentius. It was a place of considerable peace and reflection, a contrast to the ever-bustling embarkation decks and docking bays. Everything else within the monastery was to be found deep in the bowels of the mountain range.

Argent Mons was difficult to reach and this was as much by design as coincidental geography. Novitiates were brought to the monastery largely by incoming vessels that approached from the west side of the mountain range, directly into the spaceport. Some youths, more tenacious and stubborn than many others, had been known to scale the mountain range itself in adolescent determination to follow a dream. This was rare, of course, for such a journey was fraught with perils. But there were battle-brothers serving the Chapter even now who had taken that very path.

Vashiro knew that they would have to discuss one such individual today and it made him uneasy for many reasons.

As was the case with Argentius, ‘Vashiro’ was a hereditary name and in old Varsavian translated literally as ‘The One Who Sees’. It had passed down from the first Chief Prognosticator to each successor since the founding of the Chapter. The current incumbent had answered to the name for nigh on five hundred years.

He considered the Chapter Master, head bowed over the massive ledger before him. Vashiro’s early confidence in him had been well founded. It had been the Chief Prognosticator’s careful manipulation of the Chapter’s various personalities – like pieces in a great game – that had ensured the former First Captain had risen to the position without contest.

Argentius’s skill for strategy and planning had been second to none. As a leader, he was inspiring, intelligent, honest, even charming. As Chapter Master, he commanded unswerving loyalty and dedication from those who served him. He was an Emperor’s Angel to the core, as fierce as he was valiant.

But then, the Silver Skulls were a loyal breed. Brutal, valiant warriors with a propensity for intense close-quarters combat, the Chapter was relentless in battle. Since the time of the Second Founding, the Silver Skulls had been an active force in the galaxy. Yet in more recent years the light of their star had begun to fade.

Increasing losses at the hands of the enemies of the Imperium meant that their numbers were gradually dwindling. Recently, there had been an unexpected surge in the intake of new warriors and it seemed that things were finally regaining some sort of equilibrium. Vashiro had once again dared to believe that all hope was not lost.

And yet…

The recalled memory of the vision clung to his thoughts with grim determination. A shattered silver skull. There was very little that could be clearer to interpret.

‘Is the tithe set for despatch?’

Pulled from his reverie, Vashiro looked up at the Chapter Master’s words and nodded sombrely. Argentius sat opposite him, a golden goblet of fine Varsavian wine in his hand. Even like this, out of his battle plate and dressed in a simple white robe, he was like a young golden-haired god. Swooping coils of spiral-inspired honour tattoos followed the lines of his face and accentuated the fierce set of his jaw and glint of danger in his deeply set hazel eyes. A prime example of the Adeptus Astartes, Argentius could have walked from the legends of old straight into their fortress-monastery.

‘Yes, my Lord. The gene-seed tithe has been tallied and is now readied for its journey to Terra. We are also sending four new promising Techmarines to Mars.’ This was news in itself; battle-brothers who displayed an affinity with the machine-spirits were almost as rare as Prognosticators.

‘Was it as bad as we anticipated?’ There was a brief heartbeat before Vashiro responded.

‘The gene-seed tithe is, as we predicted, significantly reduced in number.’

The Chapter Master pursed his lips briefly and continued, consulting the vast ledger before him. ‘The powers that be on Terra will hopefully remain content that our Chapter thrives. And the God-Emperor willing, it will be so.’ He swirled the wine around in the goblet, considering its crimson depths thoughtfully.

‘We are the Silver Skulls,’ said Vashiro, watching the Chapter Master’s obvious consternation. ‘We will prevail.’ The words were automatic, but heartfelt nonetheless.

‘Aye.’ Argentius lifted the goblet to his lips and downed the contents in a single pull, setting the vessel to one side. A silent serf stepped forward from the shadows and took the goblet away. He received no thanks. He did not expect them.

‘And what of…’ Vashiro moved to the next item, consulting his own data-slate. A ghost of a smile drifted across his face. ‘Eighth Company?’

‘Ah, yes. That matter.’ Argentius mirrored Vashiro’s smile with one of his own. ‘Captain Meyoran, may the ancestors protect his soul, certainly recommended him highly enough in the past. Gileas’s combat record speaks for itself. He is the most appropriate choice to take command. Young perhaps, but our best option.’

News of Keile Meyoran’s recent death at the hands of eldar raiders had made its way back via astropathic telecommunication to Varsavia. Another unfortunate loss, but the story of his sacrifice had joined the annals of legend and was already being recited in the training halls. Keile Meyoran’s legacy would live on.

‘Gileas Ur’ten. Andreas Kulle’s prodigy. Ah, now. Would that Kulle were still here to see how Gileas has risen above and beyond the foolish prejudices of his youth.’ The Chapter Master paused and reached up to stroke his jaw thoughtfully.

‘But?’ Vashiro had no difficulty sensing the hesitation and gently teased it from his commander. Even one of the younger Prognosticators, without the years of practice, without the personal familiarity with the mighty warrior, could have sensed the inner turmoil. Not so many could have extracted the heart of the Lord Commander’s worries so easily.

Another smile, this time slightly abashed and rueful. ‘You know me too well, Aerus.’

‘Of course.’ Entirely comfortable with Argentius’s use of his birth name, Vashiro inclined his head respectfully. ‘It is, without wishing to offend, my job.’ Argentius laughed warmly and slapped his hand on the vast desk in approval. Eventually the laughter died away. Watching the serious mien return was like seeing a cloud pass over the face of the sun.

‘Gileas is a fine warrior,’ he said, considering the data-slate carefully. ‘That is without question. He is a good, honest man and such a promotion would lead Eighth Company to great things.’ Argentius took a deep breath.

‘Unfortunately, it seems that there are those amongst us who do not think a man of his…’ The Chapter Master hesitated to use the word that had been bandied around, disliking its connotations immensely.

‘Heritage, my Lord?’ Vashiro offered the word softly.

Not much better, Argentius thought, but certainly something of an improvement on ‘breeding’. The word had smacked too much of animal husbandry, a very carefully contrived and almost certainly intentional insult to Gileas Ur’ten’s birth amongst the more savage and poorly educated tribes of Varsavia’s far southern continent.

‘Heritage. Background. Whatever it is, there has never been a south-born in the position of company Captain,’ said Argentius. ‘It would be an unprecedented move. Some say it would be dangerous to allow – how was it Brother Djul phrased the problem? “It would be dangerous to allow a borderline savage to wield that much control over a company of Adeptus Astartes.”’ Argentius’s lip curled slightly. ‘I do not truly understand these comments. Such old, petty distrusts. Are we not yet ready to move beyond, Vashiro?’

‘Old wounds run the deepest, my Lord. Brother Djul is set in his ways, perhaps more so than others.’ Djul was a Chapter champion, one of the Talriktug, First Company. Without psychic power, he was not one of the most elite, the Prognosticars.

Djul was well known for his piety, his zealous nature and his complete and utter dislike of change.

‘Objectively,’ Vashiro continued, ‘the reason that none born in the south have ascended the ranks is well-known.’

‘They burn brightly and they die fast.’ Argentius sighed and got to his feet, moving to the stone terrace that overlooked the training quadrant. He felt surest when he stood here, when the cages rang out with the sounds of sparring and training or when companies drilled there. The clash of sword on sword, the ordered shouts and noisy, easy banter that drifted up to his chamber were somehow soothing; a reassurance that despite their continued hardships and challenges, the Silver Skulls would prevail.

‘Gileas’s temper is almost as famous as his prowess in battle,’ the Lord Commander acknowledged reluctantly. ‘I have received assurances however that he has gained much mastery of it in recent years. The fact that he is still living is testament to that truth.’

‘I understand your dilemma, my Lord,’ said Vashiro, coming to stand behind him. ‘Promotion would surely inflame those who do not approve. And yet there are those who may resent the decision not to promote him.’ The Prognosticator spread his hands wide. ‘Your choice will upset one group or the other.’

‘The future of our Chapter hinges on many things, Vashiro. The decision to promote a stalwart, honest warrior should not be one of them. And yet even I, not blessed with the Emperor’s sight, can feel the importance of this choice. I fear that if I make the wrong decision, our Chapter will feel the consequences.’

At Argentius’s words, Vashiro’s vision swam back into sharp focus and all too clearly, he understood the full scope of the Emperor’s subtlety.

A shattered silver skull.

Vashiro’s head reeled. Steadying himself against the wall of Argentius’s chamber, he employed his many years of training and calmed his churning psyche. Gradually, he got the flashing parade of images under his control and brought his considerable ability to bear.

Fumbling at the pouch he wore at his waist, he withdrew a handful of runes. Stumbling just ever so slightly, he moved back to the Chapter Master’s massive desk.

‘Aerus?’ The Chapter Master turned away from the training quadrant and fixed his companion with a concerned look. Vashiro held up a hand for silence and scattered the runes on the desk, closing his eyes and murmuring the litany of guidance.

‘The people of the south are barbaric, my Lord,’ he mumbled. ‘Gileas Ur’ten epitomises that barbarism every time he enters battle. He is a tame savage, yes. But he is a savage nonetheless. There are those who cannot see past that to the warrior beneath.’ He drew in his psychic strength and prepared to receive the Emperor’s will.

The runes tumbled from his hand with a clatter, their lovingly polished silver surfaces falling where they would. Each silver-coated rune was hand-carved from a splinter of skull bone, which had once nestled within the cranium of the first Lord Commander Argentius. The first Chapter Master’s skull had been bequeathed to the Prognosticatum thousands of years ago. The runes were one of the Chapter’s most valued treasures and only Vashiro, or his elected lieutenant, had the right to cast with them.

Unleashing his psychic potential, he opened his mind to the Emperor’s will and opened his eyes to the future.

Genara
Orbiting Virilian Tertius

It had been a long, hard campaign and it wasn’t over yet.

Since the death of Captain Meyoran, Eighth Company had been engaged in hunting down and battling eldar forces. Following the loss of their leader, the Assault Company had followed the trail the insane raiders had left, systematically cleansing neighbouring systems of their presence.

Eighth Company had paid a heavy price to reach this point, but they had finally found the main base of operations. This battle would see an end to xenos activity in this sector for the foreseeable future.

Barely large enough to even be considered a moon, let alone a planet, the misshapen lump of rock that passed for a satellite orbited the larger, densely populated hive-world of Virilian Tertius. The eldar had been planning from this vantage point, plotting attacks against the human populace on the various inhabited worlds in the Virilian system. They planned to strike, to abduct humans for slaves and torture – and to take the mineral spoils of the worlds for themselves.

During the course of the campaign, the eldar had snuffed out a good number of Silver Skulls lives, not least of which had been their own Captain. But sheer, bloody determination and well-coordinated strikes had seen the balance start to tip. The enemy forces they faced had been increasingly unprepared for such an intense counter-strike from the Adeptus Astartes. Unlike the Emperor’s finest, the xenos had not been equipped for a lengthy campaign. Their weapons and ammunition supplies were running short – and the systematic destruction of their webway portals had limited their access to extra supplies. Their time now was counted in hours.

The Space Marines had only needed to wait for the right moment to take the enemy by their exposed jugular and tear out their throat. And now that the eldar had been weakened exponentially, that moment had arrived.

‘Deployment in ten minutes, sergeant.’

There was a barely responsive grunt from Gileas Ur’ten, who was presently absorbed in battle preparations, his eyes intent on the physical rituals necessary to arrange his equipment. His dark face wore an almost pained expression that barely concealed the battle lust pounding through his veins.

This was it. This was the moment he would carry out his promise to avenge Keile Meyoran’s death.

He slammed a fresh magazine into his bolt pistol, then attached it to the magnetic holster on his thigh. He straightened up and looked around the interior of the Thunderhawk. Filled with almost all the remaining Space Marines of Eighth Company, every single one of them was looking to him for instruction. Just as they had done since Meyoran’s death.

Gileas had meditated for long periods on his personal concerns regarding the fact that he had ended up in unofficial command of the Eighth. They were concerns that he did not share with anybody else and if it fazed him right now, he certainly did not let it show. He let his eyes roam over each of the assembled warriors – his warriors – in turn, assessing, judging, unconsciously encouraging.

‘As planned, the Reckoners – led by myself – will form the core of the initial strike unit.’ His voice was thickly accented in comparison to the majority of the fighting force, but his tone was calm and measured. ‘We will occupy their remaining ground forces in close combat. That way, we can draw them out into the open. At that point, we strike.’

He grinned wickedly, his sharpened canines glinting dangerously. ‘I cannot stress this point enough, my brothers. This is our last chance. This will be a vital strike. The xenos have gotten used to us advancing as a unit. Skirmish attacks such as we are throwing at them today will catch them unawares. Techmarine Kuruk will coordinate from above and feed reconnaissance data to us on the ground.’

He cast dark eyes around the interior of the gunship once again. Its occupants were all locked into their restraint thrones – bar himself and the other four warriors who were preparing to drop. ‘We will end this today. We will quell the xenos threat and we will ensure the continued safety and compliance of the Virilian system. The Imperial citizens on that world down there will continue their contented, safe existence without ever once knowing what their fate may have been. We are the Emperor’s own. We will execute His will. We will prevail!’

A roar of approval sounded from the Silver Skulls at this pronouncement, the acoustics of the ship’s interior boosting and distorting their deep voices unnaturally as they echoed the sergeant’s sentiment. The sound was a vocal call to arms and sent a thrill of impending battle fury coursing through them. The eagerness to fight was fierce and infectious.

Now fully prepared for the battle ahead, Gileas pulled on his helmet. The armour locked into the helmet’s catches with the familiar, calming hiss of servos. The locks snapped closed, and he twisted his head this way and that to ensure the seals were secure. The systems check flickered in front of his eyes. His internal life support systems interfaced with the helmet and made a number of subtle, but vital adjustments. The familiar scent of recycled air and his own blood fired him still further. Runes flickered into being one after the other.

Data scrolled in front of his eyes and he bypassed his own readings until he located the runes that represented the status of his four squad members. All were presently displaying full health and their armour was at optimal functionality. The jump packs, while less satisfying, were as good as they could expect them to be after months of battle. Since Theoderyk’s death during the last battle, they had only one remaining Techmarine. Kuruk had done what he could to appease the increasingly erratic temper of the machine spirits. It would have to be enough.

They were ready. They were Space Marines. They were always ready.

Space Marines in assault squads had always led with the simple promise of ‘death from the skies’. To drop five of them into the depths of the enemy from a passing Thunderhawk was merely adding literal weight to that concept. The idea amused Gileas and inside his helmet, he grinned slightly manically.

His chainsword, lovingly maintained, was already held tightly in his gauntleted fist. Too many of his battle-brothers had fallen to the weapons of the eldar. Today, Eclipse would help him even that score. He brought the hilt of the blade up to his helmet and rested his head against it, murmuring a battle litany under his breath.

Eclipse had served the Silver Skulls even before it had become Gileas’s. It had belonged to his former commanding officer, Andreas Kulle, who had bequeathed it to his protégé with his dying breath. Before Kulle, it had belonged, so it was said, to a former Lord Argentius. It was a jealously coveted weapon and Gileas knew well the honour of being its bearer.

No other blade in the company’s armoury was as carefully cleaned and treated as Eclipse. Its owner was fiercely protective and proud of it and when he was not exercising it in war or in the training cages, he would maintain it; oiling, greasing and polishing it until it gleamed as brightly as the skull runes cast by Vashiro. In Gileas’s hands it ceased to be a deadly inanimate object, still and silent, something as feral as its wielder, threatening teeth and death. Once it was in the Space Marine’s hand, it became a living extension of Gileas; a shining silver serpent of whining doom. He connected, so he claimed, with the weapon’s machine spirit the moment he thumbed it into life. The machine-spirit responded to his litanies every time and the two certainly seemed to share a harmonious co-existence.

It was thirsty. Eclipse was desperate to drink the blood of the eldar – and he would grant it that need imminently.

Absently, he allowed his hand to rest against the flat of the blade as though he were appeasing the spirit within. Inactive, the chainsword did not move beneath his touch, but he fancied that he felt the thrill of its quiescent power nonetheless.

‘Soon,’ he promised. ‘Soon.’ He resumed his quiet battle prayers.

The Thunderhawk banked slightly with a grating whine of its port engines and Gileas steadied himself, distantly irked at the interruption. The gunship steadied itself once again and levelled out for its approach to target.

‘One minute to deployment.’ Kuruk’s voice sounded in his ear and the sergeant nodded his understanding. He concluded his prayer and put a hand to the newest purity seal affixed to the pauldron of his battle plate.

The oath, written in flowing script, had been witnessed earlier that day and the ink was hardly dry on the parchment. He had spoken the words with dedicated conviction. On the witness of Eclipse, in the eyes of my brothers, this ends today. Death to the eldar. Vengeance for Keile Meyoran.

‘Four… three… two… one… Reckoners, deploy.’

Gileas’s squad launched themselves without a second’s further hesitation from the rear ramp of the Thunderhawk, plummeting like deadly silver meteorites to the ground below. The gunship continued on its way, presenting a useful temporary distraction to the assembled pocket of eldar raiders who stared up at it, firing heavy weapons in an effort to bring it down.

Unfortunately for them, all that came down were five argent-clad angels of retribution.

There was no wind on this virtually airless rock, but the gentlest of breezes nonetheless seemed to pre-empt the murderous descent of the Silver Skulls. They streaked into view, the roar of the jump packs heralding their enemy’s doom.

As one, the closely packed knot of xenos turned, the movements synchronising perfectly with the five bodies thudding to the rock’s surface. A vast cloud of amethyst-coloured dust billowed up, obscuring them from sight. The dust blossomed quickly from the point of impact, swirling wildly like a harbinger of doom. Eventually, however, the purple curtain began to dissipate and the scene resolved.

Having landed slightly to the fore of his squad, in a shallow crater formed by the solid blow of his own ceramite and plasteel body striking down, Gileas raised his head slowly and stared with unemotional detachment at the hated enemy. His huge Adeptus Astartes body was stooped in a deadly crouch and his fist was planted down before him on the ground. He was like some kind of primal animal, coiled and ready to spring at his prey. The eldar weapons temporarily ceased firing as they rapidly assessed this new, unexpected threat. Swift orders were barked. But not swift enough.

This time there was no humour in the smile that quirked Gileas’s lips beneath the mask of his helmet. The glowing red lenses met the direct gaze of one of the eldar and the accumulated centuries of hatred for that race of xenos and all their foul kind fuelled him. The lenses stained his vision as red as the blood he planned to exact from the enemy. The desperate hunger that had burgeoned on board the Thunderhawk, the desire to purge the enemy, bloomed fully in his body. Responding almost instantly, his power armour channelled a fresh infusion of combat stimms into his system.

I am the arm of retribution, he thought. In my hand, the weapon of the Emperor’s divine justice. In my heart, the Emperor’s light. Through me, may the Emperor’s wrath know no bounds until the enemy are annihilated. Through me, may these filthy creatures know what it means to cross the Silver Skulls.

Almost lazily, he thumbed the activation stud on Eclipse. It growled menacingly into life, responding to his touch on the throttle as efficiently as it had done the day it had first left the armoury.

I am Gileas Ur’ten of the Silver Skulls.

The chainsword’s throaty roar ebbed down to a belligerent purr.

I am your doom.

‘Reckoners,’ he broadcast on the squad vox, as calmly as though he were taking a head count. ‘Attack.’

Gunning their jump packs back into life, the squad leapt with deadly accuracy into the midst of the enemy, the orchestrated sound signalling that the end was more than nigh for the eldar.

Eclipse sang its song of visceral fury as it tore into the alien warriors and Gileas felt his heart soar alongside its melody. The foul xenos helmets wavered and blurred in his sight and become nothing more than targets. He roared his defiance and anger at their pathetic resistance and drew on the strength of his unshakable beliefs to deliver them to their end.

The Fortress Monastery of the Silver Skulls
Argent Mons, Varsavia

‘There has to be a decision, Vashiro!’

Argentius slammed his bunched fist into the formerly flawless marble surface of his desk. It cracked beneath the power of his rage with a loud noise that sent the many chapter serfs scattering in terrified alarm at their master’s rage.

‘I understand your anger at this, my lord, but the Emperor’s will remains unclear.’ Vashiro kept his tone calm and his expression neutral. In a deep state of meditation, he had cast the runes over and over and every time they had given him the same response.

Uncertainty. Doubt.

And more. Something far, far worse. Something that many of the Silver Skulls were ill-equipped to deal with. It was a harshly honest realisation, but Vashiro knew it was truth.

Change.

‘Cast the runes again.’

‘I have already communed with the Emperor no less than a dozen times, my lord. There is no easy answer to this conundrum.’

‘Why must it be a conundrum?’

Abrupt, almost shocked silence followed Argentius’s moment of fury and the bellowed words. For a heartbeat, even the noise in the training quadrant stilled. Argentius sat down heavily on his seat, which creaked alarmingly under the Chapter Master’s considerable weight.

‘My apologies, my friend.’

‘Not needed, my lord.’ Vashiro remained standing. ‘You must understand my position on this. I have been granted a vision. Should I interpret the Emperor’s will incorrectly, then any damage done to the Chapter may be irreversible. I need to take my time. I beg leave to arrange a meeting of the Prognosticatum.’

Argentius considered Vashiro’s weathered, nut-brown face for a long while. How the man could remain so calm in the face of what – to him at least – was the most tiresome of situations defied all logic.

‘We are outdated,’ he observed, bitterness in his voice as he looked at his adviser. ‘I have felt it for a long time, but this is… beyond all I have ever known. I ask merely for the Emperor’s blessing in rewarding a good, loyal warrior. In return, all I get is procrastination and endless requests for old men to sit around in a darkened, incense-filled room and talk about “the conundrum”.’

Argentius hesitated. He knew he was bordering on insulting the psyker with his words, but Vashiro’s face remained impassively neutral.

‘You are angry, my lord, so I will let the insult go this time.’ Vashiro gave Argentius a look that he recognised all too well. The Chapter Master shifted uncomfortably, feeling like a chastised child. ‘The Prognosticatum will discuss the matter and we will find your solution. Trust to us.’

Argentius did not reply. As a former First Captain, he had once sat as a member of the Prognosticatum. He knew exactly what it entailed. Vashiro continued.

‘Were it any warrior but Gileas Ur’ten, I believe the decision would be much easier. But he is volatile. He is unpredictable.’

‘Does that not describe our Chapter’s very core ethic?’ There was unmistakable pride in Argentius’s tone.

‘The Silver Skulls pride themselves on their ferocity, of course. And Gileas is a sword of the Chapter, most certainly. But a sword that is not tempered, is not controlled… that, my Lord, is a sword that can cut both ways.’

‘He is a superlative warrior. His eye for detail is outstanding. He is brave, noble, honourable and fearless. Damn it, Aerus, he has the potential to be a Chapter hero.’

‘If notoriety equates to heroism, then he has that honour already.’

Argentius fell silent once again.

‘Then by your leave…?’ Vashiro had already turned to walk out of the Chapter Master’s chambers and Argentius let him go, too angry to continue the argument. He would have to apologise for his words later.

Formed at the time of the Second Founding, the Silver Skulls earliest history was shrouded in mystery. The Chapter’s records were amongst those lost long ago. The identity of their founding Chapter was unknown, but they had never let their lost parentage deter them in their steadfast loyalty.

Electing to settle on Varsavia, the Silver Skulls had initially adhered carefully to the Codex Astartes. Over time, however, they had begun to adopt aspects of native traditions. Their numbers were largely made up of the planet’s tribal warriors, all of whom had brought something different with them. The one thing, however, that each tribe had had in common had been the shamanistic ‘wise men’ who led them. Apart from a few charlatans, most of these men had been psykers who latterly formed the core of the Prognosticatum. Few in number, but remarkably powerful, they were highly revered both by the humans of Varsavia and by the Adeptus Astartes of the Silver Skulls.

Inspired and guided by such spiritual leaders, the Chapter rarely – if ever – questioned what they were told. Only those with the strongest personalities dared to insult a Prognosticator. They had more power than the Chapter Master himself.

Far more power, Argentius thought as he rose from his seat. Too much power.

The time was ripe for a review of their practises. He knew that it had to be so and yet the genes and indoctrination of thousands of years dammed the flow of desire for that change.

Argentius knew that there would be questions soon, when the Administratum received a gene-seed tithe that was markedly smaller than it had been. Questions regarding their practises would be raised, practices which Argentius well knew that others in the Imperium of Man would consider barbaric. Questions that raised issues previous Chapter Masters had never had to address. It had been many years since the last tithe request, a generation at least. Much had changed.

If he could not answer these questions satisfactorily, he knew what the outcome would be. The great fighting force of the Silver Skulls would be disbanded, broken apart and the warriors incorporated into other Chapters to make up their numbers.

Perhaps this was the root of the vision the Vashiro had seen. Perhaps it was this that represented the shattering of the Chapter.

Argentius could not bring himself to believe it would come to a sundering. They were the Silver Skulls. For many thousands of years they had shone as a bright star in the blackness of space.

They would prevail.

They must prevail.

Genara
Orbiting Virilian Tertius

The initial strike was swift and brutal. The five warriors of Gileas’s Reckoners squad barrelled into their enemy with furious passion. Chainswords and bolt pistols met with little resistance from the beleaguered enemy and they were mown down in the onslaught. The Reckoners destroyed the eldar warriors in a matter of minutes.

‘Talk to me, Kuruk,’ Gileas voxed to the Techmarine who was coordinating the data their scout passes had received. Three Thunderhawks, including the one they had recently dropped from, were in low orbit ready for the final attack run. ‘Tell me where we need to be.’

‘Due east, sir.’

Gileas still couldn’t get used to the respect that had come with his unofficial command. He had known Kuruk for many years and considered him one of his closest friends. Hearing the word ‘sir’ from him felt strange.

He signalled to his squad to move to the east and they obeyed immediately, stepping on the bodies of the dead and dying eldar as they left. One reached up with a long-fingered hand as though it was trying to reach out to those who had just felled it, but the Silver Skulls ignored the grasping, dying xenos.

‘For too long these bastards have raided our recruiting worlds,’ Gileas said across the company vox channel. ‘For too long they have stolen our most precious of commodities. They have stolen our future, brothers. Young men of this system who might otherwise one day have received the honour of ascension. They are the cause of much of our Chapter’s hardship – and today we draw the line.’

They marched relentlessly on towards the final conflict.

‘You all know the problems we face. Our numbers are low. Our resources begin to deplete. And yet, we are the Silver Skulls. We continue, against all the odds, to prevail. And the Emperor is with us today. He watches over us as we make this stand against our ancient enemy. Their effect on us will lessen eventually. I say the time has come to tip those odds in our favour. What say you, Eighth Company? Are you with me, brothers?’

Scattered cheers and roars of solidarity came across the vox, filling Gileas’s heart with the pride of his brotherhood and great strength of purpose. There was also a certain element of relief that his motivational words had been so well received.

Reuben, by his side as he had been for so many years now, caught his elbow and nodded to a rising hill. Gileas switched back to his squad vox channel.

‘Our quarry lies beyond that ridge,’ he said to his squad, looking from face to face. They all wore the same helmets, but even if they hadn’t been identifiable by the markings on their armour, he could tell each one apart with the practise of years. The way Jalonis stood with his head cocked slightly to one side. The way Tikaye held his chainsword over his shoulder. Each one had unique mannerisms that made them who they were, that marked them as individuals in a world where conformity was the norm.

‘We will lead the final assault. We strike – the rest of the company deploys and the Thunderhawks support us from above.’

He put his hand out. Reuben was first to lay his own gauntlet over his sergeant’s.

‘Brothers all,’ he said.

‘Brothers all,’ the others chorused.

‘Incoming recon data, Sergeant Ur’ten.’ Kuruk’s voice cut across the moment and Gileas nodded, blink-clicking his acceptance of the incoming intelligence. New runes streamed across his vision and his enhanced senses took everything in with barely a glance. The battle ahead would be prolonged, but the eldar they had fought during this campaign so far had demonstrated little martial prowess and even less intelligence. They had once had superior numbers, but Eighth Company’s diligence in picking them off gradually had levelled the playing field exponentially. Had they the wits, they would already have fled back to the darkness from whence they had spawned.

‘Then we end this.’

With a roar of fury, the Reckoners fired their jump packs into life and bounded skywards. They were over the ridge in seconds, beginning their descent into the midst of the remaining enemy.

There was no webway portal here. There had been, about two days ago, but a successful bombing raid had put paid to any thoughts the eldar may have had about leaving the planet that way. They were isolated from their people and the webway and were at the Silver Skulls mercy.

Not that the Silver Skulls planned to show any.

‘For Argentius and the Emperor!’

The battle cry was sounded and the Reckoners dived towards the foe, ready to obliterate them from the face of this rock.

‘Kuruk, deploy the company!’

‘On the way, sir.’

Gileas gave no further orders. He was engaged almost instantly by two splinter-rifle wielding eldar who opened fire on him. The weapon discharges barely had strength enough for him to even feel any sort of kinetic force against his armour and he turned to the two warriors, Eclipse screaming its hunger once again.

He tore through them with ease, blood splattering the weapon and his battle plate, dismembered body parts flying. For good measure, he removed their heads. There would be many skulls to collect later; trophies that would mark Eighth Company’s prowess. Eclipse sang its approval as it ground through their spinal cords.

The five-man squad was soon surrounded by a veritable sea of xenos, but they did not concern themselves with the fact they were presently outnumbered. Indeed, within minutes, the thunderous roar of the deploying Thunderhawk’s engines was heard. All around the small, natural crater where the eldar had begun their operations, Silver Skulls dropped from the skies to deliver the Emperor’s judgement.

Gileas watched the sight, a swell of pride causing a brief halt in his ceaseless attack. These were his brothers. This was what he had been reborn to. This, he thought with a soaring sense of righteousness, was who he was.

Bhehan, a young Prognosticator who had only recently formally been recognised by the Prognosticatum, was fighting alongside a different squad. He had fought with the Reckoners out on Ancerios III, when they had encountered the horror of psychic kroot. He had fought many more battles since then and as his blue-clad form strode through the enemy, scything them down with powerful swings of his crackling force axe, his confidence was almost palpable. His hand came up and swept outwards, unleashing his psychic attacks with disconcerting ease. Even in the short time since he had fought alongside the Reckoners, Bhehan’s power had grown.

Everywhere Gileas looked, he could see signs of their impending victory. Brother Diomedes was on standby, the venerable Dreadnought brought to wakeful readiness and ready to deploy at a single word – but for now at least, the assault squads were holding their ground. The ancient could rest a while longer.

The brief interlude over, the sergeant subtly adjusted the grip on his chainsword and ploughed back into the fray. He swung the weapon with casual ease, its teeth chewing into any obstacles it met.

To his right, he became aware of Tikaye facing down an onslaught of no less than six eldar. He had no doubts at all that his squad brother would have any difficulty in dealing with the threat but fired his jump pack into life. He bounded skyward and made the leap that closed the distance between himself and Tikaye.

‘I am more than capable of handling this situation, Gileas.’ Tikaye’s voice over the vox sounded faintly irked. ‘There are more than enough of the enemy to keep you busy.’

‘Surely the Emperor smiles upon he who shares, brother?’

Although he could not see Tikaye’s face behind the steel-grey helm, he knew the other man shared the same grin he was wearing right now. Fighting side by side, the two warriors ripped the eldar apart in moments.

The last one standing flung himself wildly onto the point of his chainsword, inching his way towards Gileas, its pointed helm leering. Drawing back his fist, the Space Marine punched the xenos in the face. The thing’s helmet shattered under the impact and it was knocked to the ground. Within moments, the alien asphyxiated; its physiology unable to survive in the thin air.

With a roar, the two Space Marines took to the skies once again, ready to complete their mission.

Chamber of Elucidation
Argent Mons
Varsavia

‘You are sure?’

The question was directed to Vashiro by First Captain Kerelan. A veteran of many battles, Kerelan’s face was marked by only a single tattoo. Worked in molten silver that had been mixed with the tattooist’s ink, the insignia of the chapter – the stylised skull – was etched onto his face in a full skeletal mask. It had been an unusual choice of design. Its effect was nonetheless quite considerable and achieved its goal of marking him as a Silver Skull and, perhaps more importantly, it instilled fear in his enemies. Many a foe had seen that grinning, shimmering death mask encroach on their vision right before he despatched them.

‘I am sure, captain. The Emperor’s will in this matter is unclear.’ Vashiro looked around the assemblage. Formed of nine senior Prognosticators and the First Captain, the Prognosticatum’s Council of Elucidation was one of many such councils formed within the Silver Skulls to deal with issues of varying triviality. It was a place of wisdom and knowledge.

Right now, it was also a place of great anger and tension.

‘The Chapter Master cannot possibly see this as anything other than an omen against recruiting Ur’ten to the position.’ Kerelan stood forward from his designated spot and took a place at the table. Formed from black granite, the world map of Varsavia was reproduced below him, picked out in glittering crystalline shards. Kerelan’s hands rested over the Sea of Sorrows, the land-locked ocean that separated the north continent from the south.

He leaned forward and spoke earnestly, the archaic words coming with difficulty to lips that were far more used to dealing with battle orders than they were with politics. He detested this part of his role. It was only because tradition dictated that the Chapter Master must not be allowed to sit on an advisory council that he had to attend these things at all. The burning incense filled the air with its sickly, cloying scent and made him feel more uncomfortable than he was already.

‘The First Captain decrees that due to the lack of an apparent outcome, the Prognosticatum should refrain from taking this matter any further. The First Captain therefore moves that the matter should go to a vote.’

‘The First Captain’s comment is noted,’ returned Vashiro gravely. Then he sighed a little and relaxed the formality. ‘You know our creed, Kerelan. In matters of promotion, the Emperor’s will is the deciding factor.’

‘And yet you tell me that the Emperor’s will is unclear.’ Kerelan’s tone was challenging, but not hostile.

Vashiro inclined his head. ‘This is true. It is impossible for me to fully explain the methods we employ in these divinations, but there is a certain… obfuscation surrounding our young sergeant. It is as though the empyrean itself holds its breath waiting for him to make a decision, or a choice that will affect the outcome of this communication with the Emperor.’

‘Gileas Ur’ten is not that important.’ Kerelan sneered slightly, the skull mask taking on a ferocious aspect.

‘With all due respect, First Captain, you are wrong. All denizens of the Imperium are important. Their decisions, no matter how small, cause ripples in the patterns of fate.’

Chastised, but not allowing it to show, Kerelan stepped back.

Vashiro shifted his gaze to one of the other psykers, who stepped forward to the table. Kerelan recognised Brother Andus.

His voice, when he spoke, was filled with reverential respect. ‘Vashiro, of all of us, you are the most gifted with the ability to feel the shape of times yet to come. If your sight is unclear, the First Captain is right.’ Andus bowed to Kerelan and continued. ‘Yet I cannot, in good faith, agree to let this go to a vote. Not yet.’

Kerelan opened his mouth to comment, but Andus continued. ‘I put to the First Captain that the decision is still in the hands of Vashiro. He must divine the Emperor’s word here, in the presence of his peers and equals. I do this not out of disrespect, you understand, Vashiro?’

Vashiro nodded again. ‘I see nothing but sense in your words, Andus. I know what you are thinking. If indeed the matter will not be settled by Gileas’s actions, then it is likely that the Deep Dark is upon me. Perhaps I have displeased the Emperor in some way and he will not show me the answer until I have atoned.’ Vashiro sighed, suddenly looking to Kerelan every bit as old as he was rumoured to be.

‘My strength is yours, brother.’ Andus laid his hand on the table, palm down. ‘My strength is yours. Draw on my abilities to strengthen your own.’

One by one, the other Prognosticators stepped forward and rested their hands alongside his. Kerelan stepped back, sensing that his presence at this point was some kind of intrusion.

Vashiro, who seemed to have forgotten the First Captain’s presence entirely, allowed his eyes to roam over his brother Prognosticators.

‘So be it,’ he said and brought forth the soft, black velvet pouch that contained his divining runes. ‘I am the instrument of the Emperor’s will. Through me, may He show us the way forward in this matter.’

Kerelan watched impassively as Vashiro cast the runes across the map of Varsavia. As one, the Prognosticators leaned forward. The ghost of a smile flickered across Vashiro’s face.

‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘Something has changed. A decision has been reached.’

Genara
Orbiting Virilian Tertius

‘We are victorious.’

The scene was a charnel house. Dead and dying eldar lay where they had fallen in the wake of Eighth Company’s passage. Sightless eyes stared up at the amethyst skies.

‘We are victorious.’ Gileas repeated the words. Yes, they were victorious, but there had been a cost. The death of more of his men was an inevitability that they had all faced when they had deployed. But the losses weighed heavily on his broad shoulders.

Amethyst dust, thrown up from the violent skirmish, was still settling and the glittering motes shone as they settled on the sergeant’s armour, subtly altering the hue from silver to mauve. Absently, he brushed the dust away. Around him, his brother Space Marines were collecting the bodies of the fallen, taking heads for skull trophies and piling them up in one place. They would be incinerated on the sergeant’s say-so.

Despite the thin atmosphere, Gileas reached up and removed his helmet, shaking out his hair and inhaling the coppery tang of death. He had fulfilled the oath he had taken that morning. Keile Meyoran’s death was avenged and the eldar were scrubbed from this system. The future recruitment of Silver Skulls from this system was, for now at least, secured.

As Eighth Company worked, so did Gileas. Without the company Apothecary present, the job of recovering the gene-seed from the five fallen battle-brothers fell to the commanding officer. It was an unpleasant job, not from a clinically detached viewpoint, but more from the fact he had to transcend the grief he felt for each of his dead brothers in order to carry out the procedure.

He recovered four of the five pairs of progenoids. Silas was appallingly injured, his body burned and destroyed in the wake of the explosion that had destroyed his jump pack, him, and four of the enemy simultaneously. His death touched Gileas the most. Silas, like him, was an Adeptus Astartes whose life had begun in the far south. He had shown great promise. Now his star was no longer in the ascendant, but was forever snuffed out.

‘You fought well, my brother,’ Gileas said softly, getting slowly to his feet. ‘The Emperor protects your soul now.’ He felt a particular sting at the loss of Silas. Whilst there was solidarity and deep friendship amongst the Eighth Company as a whole, Gileas found natural affinity with those who had grown up, like him, in the lethal surrounds of the Ka’hun Mao, what he now knew as the Southern Wastes; those who had fought from childhood just for the right to survive in the face of threats from neighbouring cannibalistic tribes or the countless predators and who prowled across the great plains.

A flash of recollection flickered and died. His childhood memories were mostly lost to the indoctrination and reprogramming he had received on his initiation into the Silver Skulls, but they were there, somewhere.

Shaking himself back to awareness, he gave the precious containers holding the progenoids to one of the other Space Marines and stretched out an ache in his shoulders. His gauntlets were smeared with the blood of the fallen Silver Skulls. But through the pervading mist of grief that he would save for later, something else crept from the shadows. A sense of certainty. The knowledge that he had made the right decisions here today. A sense that he was more than capable of assuming the mantle of leadership.

A change in attitude that would radiate unconsciously across the starry blackness that separated Gileas Ur’ten from Varsavia.

He moved to stand with his brothers and stared impassively at the pile of xenos. He spat on the ground, then turned.

‘Burn them,’ he said.

Promethium snaked out from the flamers in the hands of his battle-brothers onto the pile of dead aliens. From the weak cries that could be heard, it was evident that not all of them were quite dead. No matter, Gileas thought. Their existence would be ended swiftly enough.

The fire burned brightly and swiftly, eating up the meagre oxygen that fed it. The stench of charred flesh was stronger even than that of the spilled blood, but Gileas did not replace his helmet. He could survive in this weak atmosphere for a considerable length of time. He would watch this near-ritualistic burning of their fallen enemy with his own eyes.

The moment was only slightly marred by Kuruk’s voice intruding across the vox.

‘Sergeant Ur’ten?’

‘What is it, Kuruk?’

‘I have been contacted by the Astropath Primaris on board the Silver Arrow. There has been a communication from Varsavia. From the Lord Commander himself.’ Kuruk’s voice was filled with the reverence due the Chapter Master. Gileas nodded. He had been expecting this, but now that the moment had arrived, words failed him.

Sensing his brother’s moment of discomfort, Reuben spoke up for him in order to fill the silence.

‘What is the message, Kuruk?’

‘Come home.’

There was a pause as Gileas assimilated this. He waited patiently for the rest of the message. When Kuruk said nothing else, he finally found his voice.

‘Is that it?’

‘That’s the essence of it, sir. Brother-Sergeant Gileas Ur’ten; Greetings from Lord Commander Argentius. My apologies, brother, but I must ask you to end your campaign and bring Eighth Company back to Varsavia. Come home, Gileas.’

Gileas and Reuben exchanged glances. The Chapter Master was recalling Eighth Company to their home world, a place that Gileas had not seen for countless decades. A thrill of anticipation ran through him; an eagerness to see the fortress-monastery once more, the chance to look out over the peaks of the highest mountain ranges at the snowy landscape of his birth.

Gileas took several deep breaths and stooped to retrieve the head of the eldar leader he had taken as his trophy. He cast a final glance at the funeral pyre and began to walk way.

‘Then let us not keep the Lord Commander waiting,’ he said to his men. ‘We are going home.’

A Mug of Recaff

Sandy Mitchell

If anyone had asked Jurgen, which they never did, he would have said the operation had been a great success. As usual, Commissar Cain had outwitted the heretics they were hunting with ease, leading the squad of Guardsmen assigned to escort him straight to the heart of the coven, while the bulk of the raiding force provided a diversion by attacking the heavily-fortified stronghold of the renegades. After a short, intense firefight, most of the cabal lay dead, the few panicked survivors too intent on fleeing for their lives through the corridors of their leader’s mansion to put up any further resistance.

‘Went rather well, sir,’ he ventured as the commissar sheathed his chainsword while making the odd little twitch of the nose he so often did. As always, Cain had made sure he was in the thick of the action, and must be in dire need of a pick-me-up by now.

Fortunately, Jurgen had noticed a kitchen during their initial assault through the servants’ quarters, and was sure he could find his way back there. As soon as the commissar was engrossed in discussing how best to sweep the building for stray cultists with the sergeant in charge of the escort detail, he slipped quietly away in search of it.

The layout of the rambling house was a little confusing, but he found the object of his quest easily enough by the simple expedient of following the trail of combat damage; the path back to their entry point was marked by las-bolt pocks on the walls, many of which had charred the hanging tapestries or scored the intricate marquetry surfaces of the occasional tables scattered about the place. Most of these had once held ceramics, few of which remained intact, particularly around the scorch marks on the carpet and the widespread cratering of walls and furniture where frag grenades had gone off.

Before long, the opulent furnishings gave way to the starker, more utilitarian environs of the servants’ quarters, although Jurgen didn’t expect to meet any of the staff; most of them had fled screaming as soon as the armed Guardsmen appeared, the ones that hadn’t being cut down in short order alongside the masters whose corruption they’d shared.

Too seasoned a campaigner to take anything for granted, Jurgen remained alert, his lasgun held at the ready. The cultists who’d escaped retribution upstairs were almost certainly long gone, but it was always possible that a few had gone to ground, hoping to slip away quietly once the noise had stopped.

So musing, he caught sight of his objective at last, the light gleaming from neatly-shelved pots and pans visible through a half-open doorway.

He was about to walk through it when he hesitated, listening intently. Someone inside was speaking, the voice rising and falling in the unmistakable cadences of a chant.

‘Heyla, heyla sheyla, heyla sheyla, heyla hoh…’

Jurgen had no idea what it meant, but he didn’t really need to. It sounded like warpcraft to him, which boded badly for the Emperor’s loyal servants still in the building. It might even inconvenience the commissar, redoubtable warrior though he was. Better put a stop to it now, he supposed. Besides, he needed the kitchen; too bad for the heretic currently occupying it.

Readying his lasgun, Jurgen dashed through the door, his eyes flicking left and right in search of a target. He’d been right, someone was practicing warpcraft: a tall, elegant man in expensive-looking robes, and far too much jewellery, was waving his arms about in time to the stream of gibberish gushing from his lips. His eyes seemed to flicker with balefire as he glanced up at the unexpected intrusion, and his mouth twisted into a grimace of distaste, as though Jurgen was something he’d just found on the sole of his shoe.

The guardsman’s finger tightened on the lasgun’s trigger, but before he could squeeze it the air between them ripped, sounding, he thought, like the galaxy’s biggest fart. Smelled like it too. Something consisting mainly of eyes, mouths and teeth stepped through the rent in reality and lashed out at him with half a dozen whip-like tentacles.

‘Finish the scum,’ the sorcerer said, disdain dripping from his words like protomatter from the flesh of the newly-incarnate warp-thing.

‘Works for me,’ Jurgen said, holding down the trigger of his lasgun. The daemonspawn reeled back, keening its distress, as the hail of las-bolts chewed its midsection to pieces. It was far from the first such thing Jurgen had encountered in his years of fighting at the commissar’s side, and in his experience they were never as tough as they were made out to be. Apparently that was something the Emperor had gifted him with; Inquisitor Vail had tried to explain it a couple of times, but she used a lot of long words that made his head hurt, and he didn’t really care anyway. The fact that it worked was enough for him.

After a couple more bursts from the lasgun, the warpspawn suddenly vanished, with a pop of imploding air, driven back to the eldritch realm from which the psyker had torn it, just as Jurgen had known it would be. He turned, taking in the rest of the kitchen in a single, rapid glance.

The psyker was still standing in front of the stove, an expression of stupefied astonishment on his face, muttering another string of arcane syllables. Livid green wychfire flared around his upraised fist, then flickered and died as Jurgen took a step towards him.

‘You can frak off and all,’ Jurgen said, and shot him, wiping the stunned expression off the man’s face with a single las-bolt. He slung the weapon as he stepped over the sorcerer’s spasming corpse, freeing his hands to pick up the kettle, which gurgled as he shook it.

Already full. That was a bit of luck. The commissar would definitely be needing a mug of recaff by now, and Jurgen meant to see that he got it.

VERMILION

Ben Counter

It had the humanoid shape common to many intelligent xenos, but its four limbs and head made up the totality of its resemblance to a human being. The inner layers of its skin were bioluminescent, while the outer layers formed black flaps and ridges running along the front of its head and body. From the back of its torso and limbs hung thousands of half-metre-long cilia, quivering tendrils that, it was surmised, propelled it through the oceans of its home world much like the flagellae of single-celled Terran organisms. Its strange gnarled skin created hundreds of gills all over it, and gaseous respiration was achieved through twin pulsing air sacs in its throat.

It had no eyes. Its sensory input came from the pits along its arms and legs, which absorbed scents from its surroundings. It therefore knew exactly what was going on around it. It knew it was a prisoner.

The Imperial Fists had shackled the xenos in a drop-pod. The drop-pod stood in the centre of a shattered plain of crystal that reflected the rose-pink sun through a million broken facets. Bullet scars scattered multicoloured sprays of light, refracted further through the translucent pools of blood that had yet to dry.

Several other drop-pods, in the red and yellow livery of the Imperial Fists, stood, still smouldering. The twenty Space Marines of the strike force were grouped up around the landing site, keeping a watch in all directions.

And a short distance away was the Ordo Xenos Field Research Outpost, draped in bodies both human and xenos. The metal and flakboard watchtower made up the head of an installation that punched deep into the crystalline surface. Its doors had been blasted open and most of the bodies were heaped up around the scorched entrance. Jumpsuited tech-orderlies had been dragged out and butchered on the crystal plain. Gun-servitors had shot down dozens of xenos – one servitor was still trundling back and forth, training its autoguns across the battlefield.

‘We were too late,’ said Sergeant Ctesiphon. Two of his battle-brothers were hauling bodies out of the outpost and laying them out. Two more were heaping up the dead aliens, ready for immolation. ‘Scout Nemeidos reports that none living remain inside.’

‘Did Carmillas keep any live specimens?’ asked Librarian Deiphobus, the force’s commanding officer.

‘It seems not,’ replied Ctesiphon. ‘Nemeidos’s squad will do a full sweep, but it looks like there are only tissue samples, not whole organisms.’

Deiphobus knelt beside the body of a woman whose long blonde hair was half-scorched black. She wore carapace armour, tailor-made for her slight figure, and emblazoned with the stylised ‘I’ of the Inquisition. One of her eyes was a fascinatingly complicated bionic, multi-faceted and apparently controlled by intricate clockwork. In life she must have been very striking.

‘We need to get the body to the apothecarion,’ said Deiphobus. ‘Some inquisitors conceal datavaults inside their bodies. Back of the skull, base of the spine. Perhaps she saved her research.’

‘Is there anything you can do?’ said Ctesiphon.

Librarian Deiphobus took off one of his gauntlets and held his hand over the dead inquisitor’s face. He closed his eyes, and concentrated for a moment. ‘The body is fresh,’ he said. ‘Sometimes some consciousness remains. But not here. She is gone. All of her.’

The other bodies were Ordo Xenos researchers. Most of them had some augmentation – a bionic eye, or obvious cranial implants under a shaven scalp. Many had hands plated in heat-resistant ceramite, to help them handling dangerous samples. They had been killed with a mixture of small arms fire and blade wounds.

‘The xenos struck quickly,’ continued Deiphobus. ‘It does not take a psyker to see that. We arrived but an hour after we received Carmillas’s distress signal and yet the battle was cold when we got here.’

‘How did these aliens even know she was here?’ said Ctesiphon.

Deiphobus glanced behind him, at the sealed drop-pod.

‘There is a place,’ he said, ‘where that very secret waits for me.’

They staked out the xenos like a sacrifice on some primitive world. Each limb was fixed to a post driven into the crystal ground. Its head was restrained, so it could not look away from Deiphobus as the Imperial Fists Librarian stood over it. The pink sun glared down into its face.

Squad Ctesiphon surrounded the alien, their boltguns ready.

‘These heathens slaughtered an inquisitor’s entire personal staff,’ said Sergeant Ctesiphon. ‘At the first suggestion of danger, you will each put two rounds into this alien’s central mass.’

‘I doubt that such will be necessary,’ said Deiphobus as he knelt beside the alien. ‘But if I give the order, execute it.’

‘Emperor’s luck be with you,’ said Ctesiphon.

‘The first thing we learn in the Chapter Librarium,’ replied Deiphobus, ‘is that there is no such thing as luck.’ He took off his right gauntlet and placed his hand against the alien’s forehead. Creatures with approximately human form tended to keep their brains in what passed for their heads. Deiphobus felt an unyielding cranium under the layers of rubbery, spongy skin.

He closed his eyes. He let his mind sink back away from his senses, imagining his consciousness draining out towards the hind-brain where the instincts of a human still remained, not quite erased by a Space Marine’s training.

He imagined a black ocean, torn by storms and endlessly deep. He fell, as if from the deck of a ship, and plunged into that ocean. The input of his senses – the faint whining wind of the crystal plains, the smell of gunsmoke and dried blood from the battlefield, the feeling of the armour encasing his body – fell away, separated by an increasing stretch of liquid darkness.

Down here, in the cold and blackness, strange things lurked, as they did in the lower reaches of any ocean. They were the rogue thoughts, instincts that a Space Marine ignored and the random outputs of a psychic mind. These were parts of himself that Deiphobus had discarded. Cowardice, a lurking predator, had been banished here, for a Space Marine was hypno-doctrinated to know no fear. The concerns of a normal man, for which a Space Marine had no time, were here too – a shoal of them, petty worries and fears that dominated a man’s mind. Deiphobus had once had a family, and down here the memories of them remained, ignored by the warrior. He had lived a life cut short in adolescence, when that youth had died and the Space Marine been constructed in his place.

Now Deiphobus sunk to the bedrock of his mind, the architecture from which all his thoughts and faculties hung. Here he had built, over years of meditation and study, the fortress from which he could conduct his psychic operations.

Deiphobus did not need to imagine the fortress of his mind, for he had built it in such detail and clarity that it rose up to him unbidden. Its command centre was a great circular room with a throne from which he could observe the whole fortress, and which had a hundred doors each leading to a different mental landscape. The fortress’s armoury had dozens of weapons and suits of armour, studied artefacts of the Chapter’s past with which Deiphobus could arm himself when the mental interrogations he performed became hostile. There were even rows of cells winding deep into the rock, where certain memories were held that were too important to forget but too dangerous to give free rein in his mind.

Deiphobus coalesced in the command centre, seated on the throne. The image of his mental construct looked much as the real Deiphobus did then, the armour perhaps a little more polished, the face perhaps a little more youthful, looking as Deiphobus had when he first built this place.

Outside this fortress, beyond the limits of Deiphobus’s own mind, was the alien’s consciousness. Hostile territory that Deiphobus had to invade. Each door in this place led to a different concept of that mind, which Deiphobus could navigate in search of the enemy’s secrets.

A human had that same basic architecture as Deiphobus himself. Deiphobus knew it well, and could use that to help him make of that mind a place he could search and battle through. But an alien’s mind was something else. Some xenos were psychically toxic, their minds coated with mental poison. Deiphobus’s interrogation entailed a risk that this alien might be just one such psychic deathtrap.

Deiphobus selected a door. It opened, and darkness was all he could see beyond it. A clashing, buzzing sound reached him, his mind’s interpretation of the alien’s surface-thought static. Perhaps it was the sound of the alien’s fear.

Deiphobus dived through the door. He gave himself burning wings to keep him aloft, and armed himself in the heavy gilded breaching armour he had seen displayed on the Phalanx.

He slammed into a wall of inchoate bedlam. It was madness. It was formless and unyielding. It was alien.

Deiphobus struggled to keep his self-image intact. It might dissolve in this chaos and leave him an unthinking, unfeeling particle, lost in here. He might never find his way out. He forced his armour to become more solid and heavy, layering more armour plates onto it until it resembled nothing that had ever been worn by a Space Marine. He imagined anchors dropping, finding purchase in the mire to lock him in position.

He was becoming less like a man and more like a battleship now, a space-bound machine of war. Deiphobus seized on that idea and now an armoured prow faced into the winds of formless matter that hammered at him. His anchors held him fast.

Deiphobus fired from the cannons of his battleship and blasted clear the area around him. It was scoured empty, resembling now the void of space.

Now Deiphobus took the alien’s mind and made from it planets and asteroids drifting around him, like the spacescape of an inner solar system full of young planets. He did not think he had enough control yet to conjure up a star to light this system, so he bathed it in a hard yellow-white light that glared down from nowhere. It was not perfect, but it would have to do.

Deiphobus lay at anchor, searching through the alien nebulae that glowed in every colour. Somewhere, there was something he could use, some common point of reference between this alien’s mind and that of a human.

His spaceship was not faring well. Cosmic winds were stripping away the gilt and revealing pitted steel underneath. The hull was beginning to disintegrate. Deiphobus could feel his orbit decaying, and the light from the nebulae and the stars was bending as the forces of this strange cosmos bore down on the invader.

Deiphobus let the doorway form again behind him and left the void behind. He coalesced again in the throne room of his fortress, letting his consciousness slip back into the familiar form of an Imperial Fist. That door closed, but now it had a window in it looking onto the voidscape Deiphobus had created from the formless mass. He locked the door with a silver key, and so that mental construct was locked into his memory, stored to be withdrawn and used later.

The Librarian held up a hand. His armour was, like the hull of the ship, scored and stripped down. Between the segments of his gauntlets he could see his finger bones, clean of flesh.

Deiphobus let the fortress drift apart, stone by stone, as he rose back towards the surface.

The bodies were burned, and the smoke discoloured the sky for miles around. Its reflection caught the crystals, so even they looked dirty.

Deiphobus watched the heap of corpses burning as he emerged from the drop-pod. Already there was little in the heap that could be recognised as either human, or as belonging to an alien of the species that still lay shackled inside the pod.

‘Librarian!’ said Sergeant Ctesiphon, who was overseeing the pyre. ‘We are ready to leave. There is nothing left on this world for us.’

‘Did Inquisitor Carmillas yield up anything?’ asked Deiphobus.

‘It does not look like it,’ replied Ctesiphon. ‘She had a data storage implant, but it contained only instructions to transmit an astropathic death-code in case the body was found. She is stowed on the shuttle. The apothecary might find more, but my gut tells me there will be nothing.’

‘Then stow the xenos,’ said Deiphobus. ‘We will be back in orbit within the hour.’

‘What was it like in there?’ asked Ctesiphon.

‘Alien. It was all I could do to force a foothold.’

‘It will give up the answers, Librarian.’

‘Ah,’ said Deiphobus, ‘but the answers to what? Even the most talented psyker cannot sift through the entire contents of a sentient mind. Answers are not always the biggest challenge.’

‘You need to know what questions to ask,’ said Ctesiphon.

‘Very good, my brother! This alien will keep all its secrets if I do not know to look for them. I will go through the usual, of course. What it is. What it was doing here. Recollections of the battle. But there is one question I would like to answer very dearly, and I fear it is that answer it will guard the most tenaciously.’

Both Deiphobus and Ctesiphon were looking at the pyre now. Ashes were blowing away. Soon only a few white embers would remain, by which time the Imperial Fists would have left this lonely world behind.

‘Why,’ said Ctesiphon, ‘was this alien the only survivor?’

‘That is the correct question, brother,’ said Deiphobus. ‘Have it restrained in the shuttle. I shall continue in the Nerve-Glove Hall.’

The Imperial Fists strike force finished their work and embarked onto their shuttles. Above them the shape of the Fate of Stalinvast hung, picked out bright silver by the system’s sun. In a roar of engines, they left that world which had never had a name.

Deep into the forest, life seethed everywhere. Creatures something like insects, but with scales and the darting cunning of something warm-blooded, skittered across the broad wet leaves. The ground was alive, consisting of a mass of oozing amoebas which writhed through the black loam. The sky was alive, heavy with clouds of wisp-like life forms that rode the air currents before falling in drifts to drain anything they touched of blood. The air that Deiphobus breathed was alive, with microscopic parasites competing to force their way into his bloodstream first.

Deiphobus trudged through the thickening vegetation. It dragged at him, trying to suck him down into the murk. It was up to his thighs, the slurping of the squirming mud like the sound of hungry jaws churning.

Around him, titanic remains of some xenos city decayed into the darkness. They looked grown more than built, great biological shapes of smooth stone now broken up and tumbled by invading roots. Something that might have been a face, or perhaps an image of a moon boiled in solar blazes, loomed over him through the dense canopy. Great stone staircases lead up to nothing. Once, it had been something magnificent, the kind of sight that could convince a man that the aliens who lived here were gods.

‘What,’ said Deiphobus, ‘can we conclude from such a place?’ His self-image here was that of an Imperial Fists Scout, with lighter armour that afforded a lower chance of getting bogged down or stuck. His used a Scout’s combat knife to slash and saw through the worst of the foliage as he forced his way onwards.

‘Fallen from grace,’ he continued. Though he seemed here to be talking to himself, in that fortress at the back of his mind his words were being inscribed on tablets which could be filed away with the rest of his crucial memories. ‘Once there was an empire, now no longer. But that does not mean this xenos is weak. They have known civilisation, and they lost it, and a species does not always do so unwillingly. Though their empire has fallen, they have not tried to rebuild it. Whatever they are now, they have chosen to be.’

The ground in front of Deiphobus gave way and he stumbled forwards. Suddenly an acidic light was shining down on him. The sky was a boiling orange, dominated by the red giant star that burned across fully one-third of it.

A path cut straight down through the jungle, as if carved by a laser from above. The ground was dry and solid, unlike the quagmire elsewhere. Deiphobus looked up and down the path, but it curved out of sight.

‘This is the first world the alien’s mind gave to me,’ he continued. ‘Not a barren place, to act as a firebreak, but a place teeming with life. Its mind seethes. It is intelligent, but perhaps does not have complete control over its own psyche. There may be parts of it the xenos itself does not know. But the path itself is the most interesting. It means…’

Deiphobus froze in mid-word. The movement he had spotted in the corner of his eye was not that of an insect or jungle predator. It was too deliberate, too calculated. It was human.

Deiphobus whirled around, drawing a bolt pistol. Inquisitor Carmillas stood behind him.

It was not Carmillas. She was dead. But the likeness was good. Her eyes were a little wrong, for the light behind them was not a glint of human emotion but a literal light, glowing as if the inside of her skull was on fire. Her fingers had too many joints and they did not all bend the right way, so the hand that gripped the hilt of her ornate power rapier looked more like a tentacled creature clasping its prey.

Carmillas lunged. Deiphobus turned the point of the rapier with his own blade but the rapier’s power field discharged with a crack like a gunshot in his ear. The knife shattered in his hand.

Deiphobus drove a shoulder forwards into the inquisitor’s midriff. She shifted to her back foot but held firm.

‘What are you?’ snarled Deiphobus.

‘Xenos within perimeter beta!’ gasped Carmillas in reply, speaking not to Deiphobus but to someone who wasn’t there.

Deiphobus drove the remains of his shattered blade up into the inquisitor’s stomach. The blade found a seam in her flakweave body armour and slid up into her abdomen.

It did not feel like it should. A Space Marine knew well what a knife felt like as it cut through skin and organ, and grazed against the spine and ribs. Carmillas was more like a solid mass, spongy and multi-layered. There was not enough blood. Not nearly enough.

Deiphobus put his shoulder under the inquisitor and threw her over him onto the ground. He followed up with a slash at waist height, further opening up the ruin of her torso.

Her face showed no pain. She looked more angry than anything, as if the wound was an insult. ‘Break open the armoury! To battle stations and repel them! Do not let them into the anatomy theatre!’

She lunged at Deiphobus, and her arm was jointed wrongly. The elbow bent the wrong way, the shoulder unfolding and giving her an extra joint that turned the point of the rapier under Deiphobus’s guard. The point punched between his ribs and speared him right through the torso.

The pain was real. Deiphobus gasped down a breath, and the effort tore open two of his lungs further. The power field burned out a great channel of burned flesh and organ. Red flashes burst in front of his eyes as one of his hearts was ripped apart and his nervous system plunged into shock.

But he was not dead. This was not real. He was not a Space Marine. He was a mental construct, psychically projected into the mind of an alien.

For a moment, the thought created a break in the pain. He could move, he could act, for another half-second longer.

He spent that half-second ramming his combat knife up into Carmillas’s throat. He twisted the blade and her head came off, revealing a shredded mass of grey-brown matter resembling the flesh of the xenos itself.

The inquisitor – which was not an inquisitor at all, but the alien’s concept of a human being – slumped to the ground. Deiphobus looked up at the sky and saw it was turning white. The blood was draining from his eyes and the world was greying out. It lost its shape, for the only thing keeping this world resembling a jungle was Deiphobus’s own willpower.

Deiphobus fell to his knees. He would have to give up on this projection. The xenos had been ready for him this time. But he had found out enough.

The jungle disintegrated, and Deiphobus was yanked up through the freezing ocean as his self-image exploded into a million shards of colour.

The apothecarion of the Fate of Stalinvast was dimly lit and cold. Many battle-brothers had breathed their last there, and their names were carved into the walls. This wing of the apothecarion was the Nerve-Glove Hall, and several devices, looking something like human-shaped casts split in two with their interiors covered in circuitry, were ranked in rows down the centre of the room. The nerve-glove was a tradition of the Imperial Fists – to anyone else it was a torture device, but to an Imperial Fist it was a means to express the strength of body and mind that Dorn’s example had instilled in them.

Deiphobus sat beside the autosurgeon unit on which the alien lay, its wrists and ankles shackled. The alien was comatose – it appeared dead to the sensors of the autosurgeon, but Deiphobus knew better, for its mind was still alive.

‘Librarian,’ said Sergeant Ctesiphon, who stood by the doorway. ‘You are awake.’

‘Most astute of you, brother,’ said Deiphobus. He was aware that sweat was running down his face and his hand still hovered over the xenos’s skull. He withdrew his hand and pulled his gauntlet back on. ‘How long have you stood there?’

‘Long enough to know the xenos is putting up a fight.’

‘It is,’ replied Deiphobus. ‘But there was a path.’

‘A path? Does it mean something?’

‘Everything in there means something.’ Deiphobus stood. His body ached. Every muscle must have been tensed. ‘Have you news?’

‘Techmarine Krusse found something else in the data-medium from Carmillas’s body.’

‘And?’

‘It was hidden, but in such a way that a standard Imperial tech-seance would find it. It was a single word.’

‘And?’

‘Vermilion,’ said Ctesiphon.

Deiphobus thought on this for a moment. ‘Vermilion,’ he repeated, as if searching for something concealed in the sound. ‘Nothing else?’

‘Nothing else.’

‘How far are we out from Beati Magnis?’

‘The crew say five days.’

‘That should be enough.’ Deiphobus looked down at the alien. It was disgusting. All aliens were, but this one had something particularly foul in its near-human proportions. ‘They know of us and what we look like,’ said Deiphobus. ‘But they know nothing of our anatomy. Carmillas may have been their first contact with humanity.’

‘Do they pose a risk?’ asked Ctesiphon.

‘Hopefully not so great a risk,’ said Deiphobus, ‘as we pose to them.’

Deiphobus picked up the path as a deep channel scored through a charnel heap the size of a mountain. In the distance, more mountains rose, stretching off in a mighty range that seemed to touch the purple-black sky seething overhead. The bodies were those of the same alien species whose mind Deiphobus was traversing. They were all different, their skin a different hue of grey and brown, their facial features arranged in a different manner.

This was not a sight from the alien’s imagination. Deiphobus had performed enough interrogations to tell the difference between fantasy and memory. The xenos had seen this once. It had witnessed mountains of its own dead. But the path had not been a part of that memory.

To traverse this region of the alien’s mind Deiphobus had taken on the form, not of a Space Marine, but of a hardy missionary, a leather-skinned wanderer leaning on a gnarled staff. He wore the once-white robes of the Missionaria Galaxia and his every step jangled with the gear he carried, enough to keep a man fed and sheltered through whatever wilds he might have to cross.

The watchtower was ahead, where the path finally ended. It was obsidian and jade, squat and powerful, a bastion against the wind that howled through the heaps of xenos dead. The door was a solid black slab with a single gap at eye level.

Deiphobus banged a fist on the door. A pair of eyes appeared at the slit. They were human eyes.

‘Speak the word,’ said a man’s voice.

‘Vermilion,’ said Deiphobus.

A few seconds passed. The door swung open. Deiphobus walked inside.

Out of the wind, it was warm. Light came from a circular hearth in the centre of the room. A few medicae orderlies were tending to wounded soldiers. Imperial Guard by the look of them.

Deiphobus knew their wounds never healed. The orderlies’ work was never done. They symbolised the sacrifices made to put this place here, nestled so deep in the alien’s mind that without a path, no one could ever find it again.

Inquisitor Carmillas sat by the fire, washing soiled bandages in a wooden pail of blood-pink water. She was not in her formal inquisitor’s garb. She wore a long white dress, already stained with the soldiers’ blood. Her belt held a sword – not a power weapon but a functional warrior’s weapon. Her hair was down around her shoulders. Deiphobus noticed she did not have her bionic eye. Perhaps this was how she had looked when she was younger.

‘Inquisitor,’ said Deiphobus. ‘I have come here to speak with you.’

‘I am afraid,’ replied the inquisitor, ‘that I do not have much capacity for conversation. I am a psychic construct of Carmillas, not the inquisitor herself. I am as she was in her unguarded moments, and I understand the likeness is very good, but aside from a few simple interactions I am unable to speak in her stead.’

‘That will not be necessary,’ said Deiphobus. ‘I imagine her psykers programmed you with the information I must request. I need to see the protocols with which this xenos was implanted.’

‘Of course,’ said Carmillas. She stood and wiped off her bloody hands on a cloth.

Gleaming black slabs of crystal rose from the floor.

OBSERVE, Deiphobus read from one slab. The words were carved in High Gothic. WAIT, GAIN TRUST, AND RETURN.

Another read, BE SILENT ON MATTERS OF MANKIND.

BE AS A SLAVE TO THE EMPEROR, read another.

‘I see,’ said Deiphobus. ‘This is as I suspected, but it is good to be certain. Were you given any knowledge on the xenos itself to impart?’

‘I was,’ replied Carmillas. Her eyes left Deiphobus and she seemed to be focusing far away. ‘The xenos has a cyclical notion of existence. Their attitude to civilisation reflects this. When their society reaches a pre-determined level of sophistication, they cast down their civilisation and put their cities to the torch, regressing to a feral existence. They then build up their civilisation again until it is time to cast it down once more. The xenos are currently towards the beginning of this cycle, approaching multi-system capacity. This species’ threat level will increase, and their reaction to contact with the Imperium is unknown.’ She turned back to Deiphobus. ‘Is this response to your satisfaction?’

‘It is, inquisitor,’ said Deiphobus.

‘Is there anything further for you here?’

‘No,’ said Deiphobus. ‘I have all I need.’

‘Then good day to you,’ said Carmillas. ‘The soldiers’ wounds must be dressed.’

Into the shattered crag of Miser’s Peak was carved a chamber lined with lapis and gold, lit by a chandelier of pilgrims’ skulls. A great throne stood surrounded by choir-servitors, their hooded, hunched forms kneeling in eternal supplication.

Here the air was chill, for this world was too far from its sun to permit normal human habitation. That fact helped keep it secret, for if there was one thing the Inquisition valued, it was secrecy.

On the throne sat Lord Inquisitor Vortz of the Ordo Xenos. His regal robes were of glistening loxatl hide and his armour was cut from the bones of a dozen species. He was an old man, and his breath misted in the freezing air.

His interrogators and explicators stood at attention beside his throne in the scarlet uniforms of his personal army. Vortz’s presence was such that his underlings might as well have not even been there.

Deiphobus nodded in salute. He stood at the foot of the throne, a place intended to instil the observer with a sense of awe and inferiority to the inquisitor. Deiphobus felt neither. Behind him, Chapter serfs wheeled in the gurney on which the alien was strapped.

‘Lord Inquisitor,’ said Deiphobus. ‘The Space Marines of the Imperial Fists make common purpose with your Holy Ordos. We have brought you the xenos recovered from Inquisitor Carmillas’s outpost.’

‘So I see,’ said Vortz. ‘We were dismayed to hear of the death of Inquisitor Carmillas. She was once the most promising interrogators in our service, and in later years earned great praise from her brethren as an inquisitor. Pray tell, Librarian Deiphobus, how did she die?’

‘In battle,’ said Deiphobus.

‘That is something, at least. My explicators will receive the alien from you. And thus is our business concluded, in the name of the…’

‘This is not a simple xenos,’ said Deiphobus. Though Vortz was probably not used to being interrupted, even a man of his pride knew better than to take a Space Marine to task for it. ‘I have delved into its mind,’ continued Deiphobus. ‘Carmillas left information in datastores within her body in case she died with the alien’s mission unfulfilled. Her psykers built within its mind a set of commands of which it would be unaware. It was a spy, Lord Inquisitor. It was programmed thus to gather information on the aliens’ civilisation and report it back to the Imperium. But her spy’s fellow xenos tracked it down to acquire it by force, and in the battle the inquisitor lost her life. And all of this, I suspect, is of little surprise to you Lord Inquisitor Vortz. Does not your own staff of psykers represent one of the Imperium’s finest resources in matters of the alien mind? Did not Carmillas learn from you?’

Vortz thought about this. Unease, well-disguised, passed over the faces of his underlings. ‘It is what I would have done,’ he conceded. ‘This species has been turning up in mercenary bands around the Ghoul Stars. Carmillas was eager to discover what danger it presented to the Imperium.’

‘They despise civilisation,’ said Deiphobus. ‘When their own grows too great, they burn it to the ground and start anew. When they look on the Imperium, it is with whatever passes in their minds for hatred. Watch them, lord inquisitor. This specimen will help you. They are savages, but they were not always so.’

Deiphobus turned and left the presence of Lord Inquisitor Vortz, leaving the xenos in the throne room.

Deiphobus, wearing the image that most resembled his physical self, slid the volume of memories into its place on the shelf. This was the library of his memory, a vast and shadowy place, on the shelves of which every interrogation was carefully filed away. Some memories were gemstones arranged carefully in display cabinets, or paintings hung on the walls, but most were books like the one in which Deiphobus had contained the memories of his interrogation of Carmillas’s spy.

‘Is this one mine?’ said Inquisitor Carmillas.

‘It is,’ said Deiphobus.

Carmillas was much as she had appeared in her sanctuary in the alien’s mind, although now there were no bloodstains on her dress. She had tied her hair back, as well, and looked a little more demure and official. ‘Might I read it?’

‘You may.’

‘My thanks. And, Librarian?’

‘Inquisitor?’

‘I cannot help but see how empty this place is. I take it that you do not make a habit of bringing in new guests?’

‘Mostly, the minds I examine have less savoury inhabitants,’ replied Deiphobus. ‘And I do not relish having them run loose in my mind. But you deserve to be remembered, inquisitor. And besides, this place has become rather overfull during the years. It needs a proper curator. If that work is not beneath you, inquisitor.’

‘Of course not,’ replied Carmillas – or at least, the memory that Deiphobus had of Carmillas, furnished by the echo of her he had met. ‘How many of us can help serve our Emperor after death?’ She look around and tutted. ‘This place is a mess, Librarian. You need me.’

‘Then I shall leave you to your work.’

‘I think that would be best.’

Deiphobus let himself fade away, the image he wore becoming translucent, then ghostly, and finally no more than a shadow. He felt the cold and heaviness of his physical body around him again.

He left all that remained of Inquisitor Carmillas in his mind, tending to the volumes of his memories.

Irixa

Ben Counter

Parchments covered in words of devotion hung everywhere, illuminated prayers from the hands of Terra’s own scribes. They had spent lifetimes hunched over their work, lifetimes scratching out the words of long-dead saints with quills carved from the skulls of penitents, ink distilled from the blood of martyrs. Holiness bled from the parchments, black ink turning red as it dripped onto the floor of the Phalanx’s war archive.

The ritual decontamination of the space station would take years. The evil done to it by the culmination of a daemon’s plan could not simply be washed away. It had to be prayed out of existence, scoured like a wicked man’s sins out of the steel of the Phalanx until it was fit to fly as a flagship of mankind again. Teams of Imperial Fists Chapter serfs scrubbed the contaminated decks with holy water while Ecclesiarchy priests were suffered to intrude into the Chapter’s world to bless the wargear that had seen the presence of the daemon. But the Phalanx was still a warship, and war did not pause to let its combatants cleanse themselves of the sin that it brought. The Phalanx still had to serve; the Imperial Fists still had to fight.

The parchments waved in the breeze generated by the air recyclers as Captain Lysander entered the war archive. His own wargear, his Terminator armour and the great storm shield currently strapped to his back, gleamed after the day’s maintenance rites. He looked less like a man and more like one of the statues of heroes that lined many of the corridors of the Phalanx, memorials to long-dead Imperial Fists whose acts of heroism had earned them a memorial in the heart of the Chapter. His shaven head looked like it had been chewed up and spat out, but his features had retained the nobility and focus that marked him out as a leader by sight alone.

The novices in the war archive seemed to shrink when they saw him. They were barely out of the earlier stages of physical transformation that would eventually make them Space Marines, and had mostly yet to serve as Scouts or as apprentices to the Chapter’s Techmarines and Librarians. They rarely saw the senior members of the Chapter, let alone stood before one of them as students. For the time being they were still men, not yet members of the Adeptus Astartes, not yet free of the weaknesses that the Emperor had created the Space Marines to overcome.

‘You know who I am,’ said Lysander. ‘And you know why I am here. You are the future of the Chapter. Some of you will one day serve as Imperial Fists, perhaps under me in the First Company. One of you may even wear these laurels as a captain, though I will not let that happen without you first understanding the meaning of war.’

He looked from one face to another. They stood in ranks, facing the tactical display table that took up a good chunk of the war archive’s floor space. Each novice had been picked as a youth from one of a hundred worlds the Imperial Fists Chaplains had visited, according to the most exacting standards of aggression, fearlessness and physical potential. Now they looked like children compared with the monster that was Lysander.

‘War,’ said Lysander, ‘is sacrifice.’

He waved a hand and the mimetic alloys of the table’s surface reconfigured themselves into a complex topographical map, rising up to form the peaks and valleys of a rugged snarl of mountains. A holo-unit mounted on the ceiling cast hundreds of glowing symbols across the map. Cylinders among the mountain slopes denoted artillery pieces. Airstrips dotted the tops of foothills. Dozens of unit markings swarmed around the valleys and the lower slopes, various colours depicting the many sides of a great, confused battle.

‘What do you see?’ demanded Lysander.

‘I see Valacian Pass,’ said one voice.

Lysander looked at the novice. His jet black hair contrasted with the red of his irises and the greyish tone of his skin. An underhiver, one of a subterranean race of scavengers and gang killers from some Emperor-forsaken hive city’s depths.

‘Novice Apeyo,’ said Lysander. ‘You memorise the Precepts Militant well. But that is not enough. What does Valacian Pass mean to you?’

Apeyo swallowed. ‘Captain Siculus led a force of battle-brothers in evacuating civilians from the Draven Mask rebels. The rebels were engaged in their own war with the Scarlet Moon cultists who…’

‘No,’ said Lysander. ‘The words of the Precepts Militant are well known to me. I have no need of them. I asked you what the battle means.’

Lysander was met with silence that seemed to go on forever until one novice cleared his throat.

‘Novice Arnobius, you alone wish to speak?’ said Lysander.

Arnobius wore the blue-trimmed habit of the Chapter’s Librarium, its hood covering his shaven scalp and the patches of regrafted skin on his face. Behind the scarred but unassuming face burned a mind that might – just might – have the strength to serve as a battle-psyker in the Imperial Fist ranks.

‘Siculus,’ began Arnobius, ‘had a choice.’

‘Enemy air!’ called out Scout-Sergeant Noctis over the vox-channel, and a split second later Captain Siculus heard the scream of the engines overhead.

Ahead was the vast sweep of Valacian Pass, a deep valley cutting through the red stone mountains. From Siculus’s vantage point in the hatch of his Damocles command vehicle, he could see the great train of refugees choking the entrance to the pass, marshalled by priests of the Ecclesiarchy crying out prayers and appeals for calm. Tens of thousands of them were making the march through the pass to the landing fields on the other side, where they could be evacuated from this world and from the rebel forces encroaching on its cities.

They were Ministorum acolytes and Mechanicus fabricators, Administratum clerks, medicae surgeons and orderlies, the law-scribes of the Arbites and guards from the prisons. The Adept class of Key Thol, the latest city to find itself in the path of the Draven Mask.

The people heard the engines, too. They knew what they meant. Siculus could see the panic running through them.

‘Cover!’ shouted Siculus into the vox. ‘Noctis, you are Squad Iason’s eyes!’

The craft screaming down the valley was shaped like a dagger, a cockpit blistering up from the tip of its blade. Siculus glimpsed the face of the pilot, a blank, chromed mask with a single eye drilled into it, as the fighter aimed its nose down the valley and sprayed fire from the guns mounted on its swept-back wings.

A chain of impacts rippled across the valley sides, spiralling down through the massed civilians. Bodies were thrown in the air, screams just audible over the engines as the fighter ripped overhead.

Siculus swung down into the interior of the Damocles. The Damocles was based on the Rhino APC, giving up most of its passenger capacity for boosted comms equipment that let the Imperial Fists force keep vox-contact through the interference caused by the mountainous terrain. Tactical readouts told Siculus that his force was scattering into cover. He had Scout Squad Noctis and the Devastator Squad of Sergeant Iason, along with his own command squad now sheltering in the rocky debris at the foot of the valley wall.

‘It’s a Red Fang,’ said Techmarine Hamoskon. The Techmarine was crammed into the back of the Damocles where there was barely room for the servo-arms folded up around his body. ‘It’ll cut those people to ribbons.’

‘Iason!’ ordered Siculus. ‘Take it down!’

The sound of gunfire hammered closer. A lance of light spitted the Damocles, shearing through between Hamoskon and Siculus. Siculus threw himself backwards as the Damocles was thrown into the air and he felt the shockwave slam into him, driving the inside of the side hatch into the back of his head.

He was out for a moment. His senses swam back into focus and he was being dragged from the burning wreckage by Hamoskon, the Techmarine using his servo-arms to haul the captain behind him.

Siculus rolled to his feet. He went through the battle-drills in his mind, ticking off his limbs and senses. He was not badly hurt and could fight on. The rite completed, Siculus turned his attention to his own squad, who were running from cover to take him to shelter.

They were his closest brothers, those who had fought at his side since he had been able to call himself an Imperial Fist. One man from each squad he had fought in now wore the red helmet of Siculus’s company, and made up his own honour guard.

Brother Achaikos pulled Siculus into cover. ‘It’s coming back for another pass.’

‘Open fire!’ replied Siculus. ‘Keep his eyes off Iason!’

‘Aye, my captain!’ replied Achaikos. He aimed his bolter at the sky and the other six brothers of the command squad did the same, stitching rapid bolter fire up at the silvery dart now wheeling back around to point down the valley.

Siculus could see Scout-Sergeant Noctis, kneeling out of cover watching the enemy fighter through his magnoculars. The sun glinted off the bionic eye of Sergeant Iason as he took the lascannon from the battle-brother beside him.

He was going to take the shot himself. Arrogance, maybe, or simply the knowledge that Iason was the best shot in the company. It mattered not in that moment as long as the shot was true.

More fire spat down from the sky. It blew shards of stone from the valley sides. The civilians were wheeling now, a melee without head or tail, rushing in every direction at once trying to find a way out from the valley that wasn’t there. People were dying there, blown apart by the fire or crushed underfoot. People who were Siculus’s responsibility.

The lascannon fired. A pulse of glittering crimson sliced one of the fighter’s wings off. The fighter kept its course for half a second and then one side dropped, throwing it into a spin that arrowed off-course.

It slammed into the side of the valley in a bloom of red-black smoke. Shards of stone fell in a dark hail over the panicking people. The sound of the impact boomed back and forth across the mountains, shaking snow from the highest peaks.

‘It will not be alone,’ said Siculus. ‘The Draven Mask have the skies of this world, but they have plenty on the ground, too. Noctis! My brothers! Advance, and keep your eyes high!’

Siculus ran past the wreckage of the Damocles towards the edge of the crowd. ‘Citizens!’ he shouted. ‘Listen! The enemy wishes you dead, but it will not find you here! The Emperor is with you, for we are the Emperor’s hand, and we will deliver you! Carry the wounded and leave the dead, obey your priests, and follow us through this valley! We are the Imperial Fists, they who stood at the battlements of Terra and dared the Enemy to attack, and we will not let you down! On this you have my word!’

Perhaps it was Siculus’s words that had an effect, or perhaps the Ministorum preachers got the majority of the crowd back under control. The heaving of the crowd subsided as the people began to move again down the valley, stepping around the heaps of broken bodies and smouldering craters. Siculus could hear the weeping and the wailing of those who had seen their loved ones die, and the crying-out of the wounded. Some were carried on the shoulders of companions; others dragged themselves along or limped in lopsided groups, leaning on one another for support.

‘I have eyes on,’ came a vox from Scout-Sergeant Noctis. His squad was moving rapidly down the valley, scrambling through the rocks that lined its side. Siculus scanned along the slope and saw the dark dots swarming there – light infantry, skilled and fearless, at home in the unforgiving terrain of the mountains. They were typical of the Draven Mask. They had infested this place, and now the call had come for them to crawl out from their holes and feast on the weak who limped past beneath them.

‘Noctis, hold and pin them down! Iason, move into position! My brothers, with me!’

‘Wait,’ voxed Noctis. ‘North-west, the second peak. I see him.’

Siculus looked to the north-west. There a shattered peak, like a broken fang, rose among the great flinty slabs of the range. Some ancient cataclysm had broken off its pinnacle and sent deep fissures running down its height.

There, among the broken, scorched rock, stood a coven of figures, their banners and cloaks waving in the cold wind. The augmented vision of a Space Marine could pick them out in every detail.

Seven of them stood there. Six were men, or at least had once been men. They wore plate armour looted from the tombs of this planet, forged into delicate scrollwork now bolted to bulging, mutated muscle. The weapons they bore had been taken from tombs and museums, blades, shields and lances from an empire that had died thousands of years before. Their faces were sagging knots of ragged skin and every one had put out his eyes, the raw, bleeding sockets the badges of their faith. For they had gouged them out at the order of the seventh.

The seventh was the Eternal Guide, the Light in the Darkness, Lord of the Beatifying Fire, Captain Cohpran Vaa’eigoloth of the Emperor’s Children.

He wore a cloak of caged flame, roiling around his shoulders and surrounding him in a heat haze. His armour was that of a Space Marine in bright polished purple, gilded panels bearing prayers to his own power and beauty. One shoulder panel took the form of a bird’s wing, its feathers picked out in pearls and rubies. Emeralds clustered on his chest in the shape of a planet surrounded by eight stars. His helmet was a featureless gold cowl save for the eyeslits, and on its brow sat a crown of silver dripping with gemstones of every colour. In one hand he carried the Corruptor Prince, a daemon bound into the shape of a staff Vaa’eigoloth had taken from the cooling body of Governor Calx of the Subdamnas Sector. In the other he carried a shield he had made from Autarch Ysandrion of Deldrenath Craftworld. The Autarch was still alive and his face, set into the puzzle of body parts making up the shield’s front, wept with pain.

Siculus froze. A Space Marine should never have allowed events to shock him out of his thoughts, but the sudden appearance of the Traitor Legion captain had thrown him. For a moment his mind was full of nothing but the vision of Vaa’eigoloth. This was the Emperor’s Children captain who had looted a thousand relics of the Emperor’s life and assembled them into a vessel for the daemon that still rampaged through the Ghoul Stars. He had raised a vast army of rebels, mutants and pirate vermin, solely to march them into a volcano so he could hear the laughter of his god as they burned. His armour had been forged in a pile of burning pilgrims and quenched in the tears of their orphans.

Siculus tore his eyes away.

‘We can take him,’ said Achaikos beside him. ‘He has the Six Furies with him but we are a match for them, if we move now and falter not.’

Squad Iason had seen the newcomer too. Already their heavy weapons were turning towards the shattered peak.

‘Captain?’ voxed Iason. ‘Your orders?

‘Hold,’ said Siculus.

‘If we take him down now, whatever plan he has for this world will not come to pass.’

‘And we will abandon these people,’ replied Siculus. ‘A planet’s worth of the faithful. Not to mention that Vaa’eigoloth may well be here solely to divert us from our mission.’

‘It matters not,’ said Achaikos. ‘The mission will be forgotten if we bring back his head.’

‘I agree,’ voxed Sergeant Iason. ‘It is clear to me on which path the greatest glory lies.’

Siculus paused. He saw himself carrying Vaa’eigoloth’s scorched helm back to the Phalanx and seeing it mounted as a trophy of war. And he saw the valley ahead of him choked with the refugees’ bodies.

‘I care nothing for glory,’ replied Siculus. ‘Iason, advance and engage at range. Noctis, support us.’ He turned to Achaikos and the other Imperial Fists of his command squad. ‘You are with me,’ he said. ‘Down the valley. Get these people to safety. Those are my orders.’

The Imperial Fists force followed the mass of refugees down the valley, Iason’s guns already hammering fire into the positions of the hidden Draven Mask rebels. Siculus looked back, only once, towards the shattered peak.

Vaa’eigoloth was turning away, perhaps in disappointment, perhaps in satisfaction. And Siculus could not help but wonder if, beneath that faceless helm, there was a smile.

‘A choice,’ said Captain Lysander. He looked between the faces of the novices. They were waiting for the object of the lesson, for Lysander to explain to them what they should have learned. ‘Arnobius?’

‘He was wrong,’ said Arnobius.

‘Explain, novice.’

‘Siculus had the chance to eliminate an enemy of Mankind. By the time the Imperium brought Vaa’eigoloth to battle he had gone between half a dozen more worlds and enacted countless evils on them all. All that could have been avoided if Siculus had killed him at Valacian Pass.’

‘I see,’ said Lysander. ‘Speak up, novices. Those who cannot express their own opinion in my presence will never dare walk into the guns of the enemy. Speak up.’

‘I disagree,’ said a novice near the back of the room. Novice Kogen was from a world of scattered islands and vicious sea monsters, where bronzed men fought kraken from the shores under two blazing suns. His skin was the colour of copper and tiny pebbles had been inserted under his brow and temples, framing his face in a scarified pattern. ‘Siculus’s mission was clear and he followed it through to the end.’

‘The loss of the adepts would have been regrettable,’ said Arnobius, ‘but that would mean nothing compared to the elimination of Vaa’eigoloth.’

‘But without the faith and trust of the Imperium’s people,’ replied Kogen, ‘the Imperial Fists can do nothing. If they cannot live in hope that we can deliver them, they will be without faith, and the enemy has his roots in the ranks of the faithless.’

‘There is no statue of Siculus among the heroes on the Phalanx,’ countered Apeyo. ‘With a kill like Vaa’eigoloth he would surely be commemorated as a hero. He would have brought great glory to the Chapter!’

‘And what more evil could the heralds of Chaos have done with a population devoid of hope and faith?’ said Kogen. ‘More than one Champion of the Warp could ever do, I would wager.’

‘I would take you up on that wager, Kogen!’ snapped Apeyo.

Lysander held up a hand. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘These were the same voices that Siculus heard in his head as he wrestled with that decision.’

‘Then what is the answer?’ said Apeyo. ‘Was Siculus right or wrong?’

Lysander smiled. He did not do this very often, especially in the presence of novices, and the unease that passed among them showed they were not sure what to make of it. ‘That question,’ he said, ‘will be answered with another.’

Lysander adjusted the map table’s readout. Valacian Pass and its array of tactical markers disappeared. A holo appeared above it, hovering in the air. It was a banner bearing the image of an iron fist against a pair of crossed lightning bolts. Burning xenos skulls were embroidered around the base of the fist, and above it was the symbol of a planetary system with seven planets. The banner pole was topped with an enormous alien skull, taken from a species with a large brain case and complicated mandibles. One of its eye sockets was burned out by a plasma blast and the skull was scrimshawed with hundreds of names.

‘What,’ asked Lysander, ‘do you see?’

For an uncomfortable moment, no novice answered.

‘The Standard of the Seventh,’ said Arnobius at last.

‘Where is it now?’ said Lysander.

‘The Chapel of Hamander.’

‘Why?’

It was another novice, Dacio, who answered. His pallid skin and overlarge eyes were marks of his origin, on a long-night world where the population had evolved to a near-abhuman strain. ‘It was retired as a relic,’ said Dacio. ‘It is brought out only when the whole Seventh is assembled to fight as one, and when its captain deems it fitting.’

‘Partly true, Novice Dacio,’ said Lysander. ‘But not completely. A more accurate answer would be that this standard hangs in the Chapel because of Manufactorum Sigma. I trust that you have read of it, my novices. I am not here to educate you on what happened there. I wish to find out if you understand what Manufactorum Sigma truly means when it comes to leadership. To the status of an Imperial Fist. To your futures in the Chapter.’

Lysander looked among the novices. They were uncertain. Their lessons until now had not been easy, but they had been simple – wargear rites, tactics, history, rote learning and muscle memory. Now they were being asked to think.

Kogen spoke.

‘Hamander had a choice to make, too,’ he said.

The Granite Sprawl was dying all around, and the Imperial Fists, like everything living there, were bleeding out of it. They were a part of its death throes – the last out, of course. The Imperial Guard had already fled on their seaborne transports and troop landers. The Naval airfields had been evacuated shortly before that. The Imperial Fists were the last out. When the last of them embarked on the Thunderhawk gunships waiting to take them back to orbit, there would be no humans in the Granite Sprawl.

The industrial city was a great dark stain across half a continent, its manufactoria standing as titanic cathedrals to the Imperial hunger for munitions and war machines. Though Captain Hamander had no love for this bleak and inhuman place, it wrenched at him to know it would be taken by the xenos.

Manufactorum Sigma had been the last glimmer of the front line. Now it was burning. The alien artillery had thrown beams of crimson light in through windows of shattered stained glass and set light to the very steel of its girders. The flames inside cast strange shadows from the blazing skeleton of the immense building.

‘Count off, brothers! We cannot wait for you!’ Hamander was in command of two companies’ worth of the Imperial Fists – the entirety of the Seventh and elements of the Fourth, Fifth and Ninth. His own captaincy of the Seventh made him the ranking officer but this was an army that could not be led by one man. Each unit operated independently in the withdrawal, brother watching over brother.

The acknowledgement runes flickered against his retinas. Seventeen squads of Imperial Fists were already embarked. The Techmarines and their tech-novices were still on the ground, overseeing the launch of the strikeforce’s eight Thunderhawks.

‘We are not fleeing,’ voxed Hamander as he reached the rear ramp of his command Thunderhawk, the gunship painted in the gold and black of his company. ‘We will return and rain fire on this place! When the xenos are celebrating chasing us off, then we will drop into the heart of them and scatter them in the confusion of dread!’

Hamander looked back at the manufactorum. The xenos were crawling through it. Light shimmered, fractured images shattering and reforming – a form of advanced force field that addled the eye and made them all but impossible to shoot down at range. The fire did not bother them, though the building was falling down around them. No doubt they had some protection from that, too.

Thousands of them were advancing on a front wider than the Imperial commanders had ever imagined they would. Somehow, through cunning or witchcraft, the aliens had smuggled whole armies into the Granite Sprawl and were rolling across those areas they did not already control. They would take it in its entirety, much of it intact, as the Imperium fled before them.

And then the Imperial Fists would return. Perhaps in hours, perhaps days. Whenever the xenos were most vulnerable. They would tear the heart out of the xenos command. All they needed was a good target.

They would return. Hamander would swear it as soon as he was clear, and have his battle-brothers witness the oath.

‘We’re taking fire!’ came a vox from Techmarine Machaon. ‘Evading now!’

Hamander looked back through the closing ramp of his Thunderhawk. Sprays of las-fire were spattering up from the burning manufactorum, and a bolt punched through the tail of the Thunderhawk Blood Star. Hamander’s own craft, the Hymn to Dorn, lifted off, the final Thunderhawk to do so, and the Imperial Fists army was in the air.

‘The Star is wounded but aloft,’ voxed Machaon. ‘Devlan Wrath is hit. She’s going down.’

Hamander ran to the gun port and saw the Devlan Wrath tipping to one side, shedding a hail of shrapnel from a destroyed engine. It dropped into a flat spin and crashed through a nest of antennae on the roof of Manufactorum Sigma.

‘That’s Squad Talthybius,’ said Hamander.

‘They have the standard,’ voxed Machaon in reply. ‘We must return.’

‘No,’ came a vox from Assault-Sergeant Lapithos. ‘Our orders are to withdraw. There is no gain in sending more battle-brothers to die down there.’

Sergeant Talthybius’s icon was still illuminated against Hamander’s retinal display, but he was gone from the vox-net. ‘Talthybius is alive,’ said Hamander.

‘Then avenge him,’ said Lapithos. ‘Do not join him.’

‘And let the standard of the Seventh Company fall into xenos hands?’ retorted Machaon. ‘I will not return to the Phalanx with my head hung low, knowing I let aliens desecrate the symbol of our honour! Knowing I did nothing!’

‘And how many of your brothers’ lives,’ said Lapithos, ‘will you spend to say you did something?’

‘Silence!’ ordered Hamander. ‘The choice is mine alone.’

‘I will go with you,’ said Machaon. ‘Down there, to the cauldron of fire. I will go.’

‘You will stay with the fleet and get us off this world,’ replied Hamander.

‘Do not do this,’ said Lapithos. ‘Losing the standard is a lesser disgrace than throwing your battle-brothers’ lives away for nothing. You can atone for the one, but not the other. Let the xenos have it and return to avenge Talthybius.’

‘He yet lives,’ said Machaon. ‘He fights alone, his brothers faltering when they should bring all rage and fury to the enemy!’

‘I called for silence! I am your captain!’ Hamander gripped the edge of the gun port as he looked down at Manufactorum Sigma. He could just see the crash site of the Devlan Wrath, a tangle of wreckage that had plunged through the roof of the manufactorum and lodged in its upper floors. Sleek alien grav-tanks were emerging from the burning shell of the building, sweeping round to converge on the site.

‘I need twenty brothers,’ said Hamander. He looked back to the Imperial Fists in his own Thunderhawk – the battle-brothers of Squad Sartan. They were covered in soot and mud from the gruelling journey through the burning manufactorum, and now he was asking them to go back there.

‘We go not for a chance of victory,’ he said to them, ‘but for the future. For the brothers who will take inspiration from our actions this day. It is much that I ask.’

‘Not too much,’ replied Sergeant Sartan. Sartan had lost his jaw in action two decades before and his voice was partially artificial, a metallic grating sound that suited him perfectly. ‘And any of my squad who will not stand beside you will have to face me in the afterlife.’

‘Assault Squad Martez are with me,’ said Machaon. ‘Martez has requested he join you.’

‘Then we are ready,’ said Hamander. ‘Take the Hymn down. Machaon, bring the Golden Dagger down with us.’

‘I cannot countermand your order,’ voxed Lapithos. ‘But I can ask you, not as an Imperial Fist, but as a friend. Good lives are not worth this gesture. Your life is not worth it.’

‘Recover my body, Lapithos,’ replied Hamander. ‘If it clutches not the standard of the Seventh in its fist, then do not mourn me too long.’

The two Thunderhawks, the Hymn to Dorn and the Golden Dagger, broke away from the ascending Imperial Fists gunship fleet and weaved through the fire streaking up at them. They swooped down low into the streets in front of Manufactorum Sigma, cutting off the sight lines to the alien artillery tanks gathered around the manufactorum’s main gates. Those streets were half-ruined tumbles of fallen debris with the occasional corpse dotted around. Skirmishes had washed back and forth across the Granite Sprawl before the xenos armies had pushed forward in strength, like the overture to a bloody play. Perhaps that was what the aliens thought this was – a play, a work of art, the battlefield their canvas. Some said that war was a dance to them, and that whether they lived or died mattered less than the artistry with which they made their steps.

The Hymn to Dorn slewed around, landing engines kicking skirls of dust up from the streets below. The main engines howled and the gunship shot forwards, covering the open ground ahead of the manufactorum before the enemy tanks could get it in their sights.

Hamander hung on as the gunship roared up through the main gateway of the manufactorum, ruddy gloom closing in as it passed into the burning building. Alarms were sounding as the gunship wove between rafters and fallen pillars. Fire was everywhere, rushing across the ceiling and pooling in great lakes around the factory floor. Enormous banks of machinery broke the surface like islands.

The Golden Dagger shrieked by into the ceiling, clipping a wing against a pillar and spinning out of control. It smashed through the rafters and disappeared in a shower of debris.

‘Damn it, Machaon!’ yelled Hamander.

The Hymn rose up through a great hole torn in the ceiling. The upper levels were a warren of offices, side chapels and adepts’ quarters, and everything was on fire. The Thunderhawk’s rear ramp opened up and superheated air slammed against Hamander as he leapt out, drawing his power axe from the scabbard along his back.

His lungs burned, even through the filters of his power armour’s helmet. Without the auto-senses of his eyepieces and his ocular augmentations, he would have been blinded by the smoke. The fire was white blooms against the monochrome chaos, his vision sacrificing colour to pick out movement.

Through the fire stumbled the battle-brothers of Squad Martez. Hamander saw Techmarine Machaon among them, obvious by the silhouette of his bulky forgemaster’s armour and servo-arm.

‘Machaon!’ yelled Hamander. ‘You were to drop off your brothers and withdraw!’

‘The Golden Dagger has fallen,’ replied Machaon. ‘Without my steed, I cannot ride! And so fate has decreed I must fight with you!’

‘Strange fortune that fate compels you to defy me.’

‘We can have an open discussion of it back on the Phalanx,’ said Machaon.

Both squads were deployed. Sergeant Martez was rallying his brothers, who, while battered and scorched, looked like they had made it into the manufactorum’s upper floors at full strength. Hamander saw the last of Squad Sartan jumping from the Hymn to Dorn.

‘Get clear!’ Hamander voxed to the pilot. ‘Join the fleet!’

The Hymn could do nothing here, with no lines of sight to bring its guns to bear. It rose up through the hole in the manufactorum roof, even as the rest of the Thunderhawks passed overhead, silvery sparks reaching the upper atmposphere.

Gunfire spattered from their flank, shredding through carved wood partitions and mounds of flaming ledgers. A missile streaked past, bursting in a spray of fire against a wall.

‘Scatter and advance!’ yelled Hamander. ‘Keep eyes on all sectors!’

‘Do they seek us, or Talthybius?’ voxed Sergeant Sartan.

‘We will know soon enough,’ replied Hamander.

He saw one of the aliens through the flames. It wore close-fitting armour of curved plates, coloured in reds and oranges with a red helmet inset with triangular green eyes. It carried a weapon of unmistakably alien design, a fat tapering barrel hooked up to an ovoid power pack wrapped around with thick cables and circuitry. A gemstone was set in its chestplate. These aliens all had such gemstones displayed on their armour.

‘Fire Dragons,’ growled Sergeant Martez.

Imperial Fists were firing in all directions, aliens running at them through the flames, firing bursts of crimson power. Up close, here in this close-quarters firestorm, they were deadly. One of Squad Sartan – Brother Closs – fell as a blast melted right through his armour and out through his back, leaving a smoking hole straight through him.

Hamander dived through a burning wall, wood splintering under him, and he crashed into the alien who was aiming a shot behind it. His weight drove the alien to its knees and Hamander hacked down with his axe, slicing off one of the alien’s arms.

With his free hand he grabbed the alien by the faceplate, one thumb crunching through its eyepiece. He wrenched the helmet off its head, seals and cables popping as it came away.

The aliens were like parodies of humans. Long, thin faces and large eyes, like those of some feline hunter, which some thought beautiful. In the language of the Imperium they were called eldar, but to Hamander, they barely deserved a name at all. He pinned the eldar to the floor with the butt of his axe and wrapped his hand around its face, snapping its neck with a flick of his wrist.

‘I see him!’ came a vox from one of Squad Martez. ‘Talthybius! I see him! To our west!’

Martez jumped up from the alien’s body. The Imperial Fists were already charging through the wreckage, bolter fire streaking through the ruination littered with the corpses of dead xenos. Two Space Marines lay there too, the fusion weapons of the Fire Dragon eldar having melted through their armour and cooked the flesh inside.

Hamander could see Talthybius now. He held the standard of the Seventh as high as he could, but he was wounded, almost lying on his back as he fired seemingly at random around him.

But it was not random. He was surrounded. Aliens darted from the flames, running almost too fast to see, lashing at Talthybius with silver blades. They moved with the spring of acrobats, their armour the colour of bone, and their tall masks were fringed with flowing red hair.

Talthybius shot one down, sending it tumbling into the fire. But a dozen wounds were opened up in his armour. Members of his squad lay all around him, sliced open, armoured limbs and heads cut off and burning.

Hamander had seen battle-brothers fall in combat before, but it seemed that each time, it got worse. Rogal Dorn had taught the first Imperial Fists to take that anger and focus it, only unleashing it when the only tactical option left was relentless, headlong attack.

The battle-brothers of Squads Sartan and Martez were doing that now, sprinting through the flames to reach the enemy. Blades clashed on ceramite. Bolter shells chewed through the burning walls. Aliens were thrown to the ground and a ceramite boot crunched down onto the neck of one of them. Sergeant Martez lanced one through the belly with his power sword.

Machaon walked calmly, firing bursts of rounds from the storm bolter he had built himself in the forges of the Phalanx. Eldar ran at him and tumbled to the floor, blown open by the blessed ammunition.

Hamander ran through the bedlam. He slid to the ground beside Talthybius. The sergeant was one of the biggest men in his command, and in all likelihood would have represented the Chapter at the next Feast of Blades. Now he was cut low. One wound had opened his face from forehead to lip. Another had ripped open his abdomen and his entrails glistened in the flames.

Talthybius looked around, face full of the pain he was holding back.

‘No,’ he said.

‘We are with you, brother,’ said Hamander. ‘We stand together.’

‘No, captain!’ said Talthybius. ‘You should have fled! You should have abandoned us! Only death remains for you here!’

‘Not so, Talthybius. No brother is given up for dead when he and a single Imperial Fist yet live.’

‘Damn it, Hamander! How many lives did you give up to these aliens, so you could die beside me?’

‘They will not take you, brother, and they will not take the standard.’

‘The standard? You throw away your lives for this? For a handful of silk? The battles you could have won, Hamander! The tides you could have turned! And now they are all lost, for you forsook them all for this gesture.’

The Imperial Fists formed up around Talthybius and Hamander. The eldar were disappearing, flipping away through the flames, evading the bolter fire that rattled after them.

‘We will get you out of here,’ said Hamander. ‘You and the standard. And you will be hailed as a hero before your brothers.’

‘I am dead,’ said Talthybius. ‘Leave me. Take the standard. Die with it in your hand.’

Hamander hauled Talthybius to his feet and dragged him behind him. ‘Brothers,’ he voxed. ‘Find a way down. Find us a landing site!’

The whole manufactorum seemed to shudder. A beam of scarlet light ripped up through the floor, bathing everything in a momentary flare of bright red.

When it died down, there was a hole in front of Hamander where a couple of his Imperial Fists had stood. They were gone, vaporised.

On a column of flame and shuddering haze rose a beast three times the height of a man, seemingly clad in molten armour that hissed and spat as it burned. It wore a crown of twisted bone and one of its hands was a bloody steel gauntlet, shedding an endless torrent of gore. In its other it carried an enormous sword, glowing with power that issued from the alien runes inscribed on its blade.

The terrible shrieking that issued from it was almost deafening.

‘Their god!’ yelled Techmarine Machaon over the noise. ‘Summoned to war! Witchcraft, brothers! Alien witchcraft!’

The Imperial Fists had recovered quickly from the shock of the demigod’s appearance. Bolter fire smacked into its molten hide, seemingly making no impact at all. It turned its burning green eyes from one Space Marine to the next, and if Hamander could read anything from its inhuman face it was scorn and anger.

‘You shall not take the standard!’ yelled Hamander, barely able to hear his own voice. ‘Not while one yet lives!’

The demigod thrust its sword down and Hamander rolled to the side, catching the end of its blade under the head of his power axe. Sparks flew as the axe’s power field fought against the energy of the sword. The demigod was strong, monstrously so, and Hamander felt himself being forced back.

‘When your kind have been forgotten,’ snarled Hamander, ‘they will remember us! They will remember this, when all who knew of you are rumours and dust!’

More aliens were storming into the upper floors. Some had chainblades and heavier armour, plated emerald green. Others, in black and purple, walked slowly through the fires to bring their rocket launchers to bear. The Imperial Fists who remained yelled their war-cries and ran into the fray, bolter fire streaking everywhere.

The demigod lunged forwards and threw Hamander onto his back. Its blade came down like a guillotine, reflecting the flames and the sight of his brothers dying.

‘You have seen,’ said Lysander, ‘the Standard of the Seventh. You have heard the name of Captain Hamander of the Seventh Company, and looked on his image, carved in granite, looking down as you knelt in his chapel. What was it worth to put that standard in such a place of honour? To put Hamander’s name among those of our greatest heroes? If you knew you could buy that for yourselves, for the honour of your Chapter and the glory of your Primarch, how much would you spend to get it?’

None of the novices answered.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘You would charge into hell if I demanded it. You would grapple with the alien and lock horns with the daemon. Yet you will not answer a mere question? Apeyo! How much?’

‘The life of any battle-brother who would stand with me,’ replied Apeyo. ‘If they wished to put themselves on the line for such glory, I would not hinder them.’

‘And your own life?’ said Lysander.

‘Of course,’ said Apeyo. ‘My life for the glory of Dorn.’

‘Your life,’ said Lysander. ‘A life selected from a pool of millions of supplicants. Crafted in the image of Dorn, some say crafted from the very flesh of the Emperor Himself. Armed with the best battlegear. Transported on the best spacecraft. The recipient of resources that the Imperium can ill afford to muster, a life owed to the labour of a trillion men to make the existence of the Space Marines possible. This you would spend to purchase something as meaningless as glory?’

‘I do not believe that glory is meaningless, captain,’ replied Apeyo.

‘But compared to the life of an Imperial Fist?’ said Lysander. ‘How much weight does glory have, placed on the balance beside such a life?’ He turned to the other novices. ‘Answers!’ he barked.

‘None,’ said Kogen.

‘Then Hamander was wrong?’ said Lysander.

‘Yes, he was.’

‘This hero before whose statue you have knelt? This man whose battles and lessons have been taught to every novice since his death? He was wrong?’

Kogen could not answer. Lysander walked up to him, looming down over the novice.

‘Tell me,’ said Lysander, ‘that Captain Hamander made the wrong choice. Before me, before your brothers, tell me that.’

Kogen stayed silent. His eyes flickered to the faces of the novices beside him.

‘And if you cannot say it,’ continued Lysander, ‘then say that, too.’

‘I cannot, captain,’ said Kogen.

‘Good,’ said Lysander. ‘The force returned some days later to find the two survivors of the mission to recover the standard. Hamander was not one of them. He died at Manufactorum Sigma. Were it not for his actions, the standard would surely have been lost and a great shame brought upon the Imperial Fists. And yet, twenty Space Marines died for this. For silk and stitching.’

Lysander dismissed the holo-projection with a wave of his hand and the war archive reverted to its normal half-gloom. He walked between the rows of novices – they were already beginning the augmentation of their skeletal and muscular systems, but even so he towered over them. They did not shy away from him. That was good. The cowardice of a normal man was being hammered out of them. A decent proportion of them would receive the armour of a Scout, and of those, many would take on the armour of a full battle-brother. They were not ready yet, of course. Perhaps they never would be, until they wore the black fist of the Chapter in anger before the enemy.

‘One final question,’ he said. He took from an ammo pouch at his waist a single bolter shell. It was inscribed with the initials ‘IRIXA’, inlaid with gold filigree and studded with emeralds. It had been drilled and threaded onto a thin chain, to be worn as a talisman. ‘What do you see?’

He held the bolter shell up. The novices watched but there was no recognition on their faces.

‘Imperator Rex In Xanatar Aeternam,’ said Lysander. ‘What do those words mean to you?’

‘Xanatar is a world on the Eastern Rim,’ said Novice Lukra, a short, stocky lad with huge meaty hands and a square reddish face.

‘And what of Xanatar?’ asked Lysander.

‘I know no more about it, captain,’ said Lukra. ‘Such is my shame.’

‘You want me to tell you what punishment you are to administer to yourself for your ignorance,’ said Lysander, ‘and then explain to all of you what you do not know. There will be no session in the nerve-glove, Novice Lukra. None of you have been told of Xanatar. That is because this bolter shell was one of a hundred created in the forges of the Phalanx for Chaplain Belisar four hundred years ago. If you know of Belisar it is only as one of thousands of names on the rolls of honour, perhaps an inscription on the wall of the Reclusiam. He is not commemorated as a hero here, or recorded as a strategist in our histories. None teach of him at all, save I. I show you this because once, like Siculus and Hamander, Belisar had to make a choice.’

The storms of Xanatar had killed civilisations before, rising up from the flint deserts in blizzards of razor-sharp stone. Every few centuries they would rise, occasionally striking a few decades apart or waiting for millennia, but they always returned and they always wiped out whatever hopeful young culture had sprung up on the rich volcanic slopes of the lava rivers.

They had stripped the Imperial colony of Port Xan of everything above ground. Of those caught in the open, not even bones remained. It had happened three weeks ago and the flurries of stone were still lashing against the chewed foundations. The small population were sheltering in the hazard bunkers underground, or huddled in twos and threes in the basements and storage cellars where they had fled to when the sky first turned dark.

Through the brown-black blur of the storm, the dark red glow of the nearest lava river cast a blood-coloured light. It was a tributary of one of the greater volcanic flows. Xanatar’s volcanoes placed a constantly renewed layer of nutrient minerals on the planet’s surface, making it extremely fertile and a coveted location for conversion by the Administratum into an agri-world to feed the young worlds of the Eastern Rim. And it would be a hugely productive world again, until the next storm came.

Chaplain Belisar walked against the storm, the weight of his Terminator armour alone keeping him on his feet. The black paint on its leading surfaces had been scraped off by the hail of flint, revealing the dull gunmetal of the ceramite underneath. The auto-senses built into the skull-faced helmet struggled to make anything of the storm save for a seething darkness and the deep red ribbon of the lava river up ahead.

Belisar forced his eyes to focus and could just see the shattered foundations of Port Xan nearby. He was in the middle of the settlement, what remained of it. The ruins of the tallest structure barely came up to his shin. He tried to find movement in the darkness that was not a part of the storm’s chaos.

A shadow moved against a shadow. Belisar drew his storm bolter, bracing his wrist to hold its twin barrels level against the stone wind.

‘Ill met,’ said Belisar on a broad-channel vox-broadcast. ‘But met as a brother, nonetheless.’

From the darkness coalesced the shape of a Space Marine. In the light his Terminator armour would have been an iridescent black, like the carapace of a beetle. The emblem of a golden fist gripping a hammer was inscribed on his chestplate and the same symbol was sculpted in deep relief on one shoulder pad. Mounted in the Space Marine’s golden helmet were a pair of similarly coloured sensor lenses in which Belisar could see his own reflection. On one knee guard was a campaign badge depicting a storm cloud and lightning bolt, demonstrating that this battle-brother had fought in the crusades among the Imperium’s eastern reaches over the last decade.

‘Chaplain,’ said the Space Marine. The vox-net was distorted but audible. ‘I guessed that they would send you.’

‘At the Feast of Blades when we last met,’ said Belisar, ‘you defeated me and won the laurels for your Chapter. You conducted yourself as an honourable brother in all things. That is why I know you are not what some say you are.’

‘And what,’ came the reply, ‘do they say of us?’

‘That you are traitors,’ replied Belisar. ‘But I know that you are no traitor, Tek’Shal.’

Tek’Shal walked a few paces closer. His marks of rank were visible now. He had a veteran sergeant’s chevrons on the body of the boltgun hanging at his side. Acts of leadership were commemorated by the gilded crux terminatus and winged bolter shell hanging from the brocade across his chest. One greave was carved with the pattern of a spider’s web, with purity seals pinned to it like trapped prey.

‘Because I am a son of Rogal Dorn?’ said Tek’Shal.

‘Because I learn a great deal about those I fight. It is a Chaplain’s role to do so. I know you, Tek’Shal, better than you realise.’

‘So you think you can convince us to kneel as inferiors?’

‘Not kneel,’ said Belisar. ‘No one is asking for your obeisance. Just to take a step back from this path. It is not too late to choose a new one. Step away from it, leave Xanatar and the Eastern Reaches – not for good, just to demonstrate you have no designs upon it yourself. The Imperial Fists have great influence among the Imperium’s military, we will see to it that there are no repercussions. I swear this as a brother.’

‘You cannot swear that,’ said Tek’Shal. ‘Not when you will strip from us all we have earned.’

‘This world means so much to you?’ said Belisar, holding his arms wide to indicate the tortured landscape around them both. ‘This is worth abandoning the Imperium for?’

‘Xanatar is where it starts,’ came the reply. ‘We have laboured years among these stars, fighting the Emperor’s fight, unheralded and unthanked. Not for us the honours of Terra, the fame of Dorn’s favourite sons! These hands that have taken a thousand lives have laid a hundred brothers to rest. All we ask is to keep what we have earned! The worlds of this subsector, in recompense for the war we fought and won here. Is this not what the lowest Imperial Guard regiment is offered – the right of settlement in conquered territory, in recognition of their sacrifice? Thus we claimed Xanatar, the first world in our dominion. Thus we will take what we are owed, nothing more.’

‘We are Space Marines!’ said Belisar. ‘We exist to fight the Emperor’s war. We do not need the power over a world to motivate us to our duty. Where did you learn that you fight for reward? Our duty is its own reward, to see it done or die in the attempt. It is not the place of a Space Marine to seek to rule what he conquers. It is his place to win it back and defend it for the dominion of the Emperor, not his own.’

‘And what of the Ultramarines?’ retorted Tek’Shal. ‘They rule their own empire, do they not?’

‘That is different, brother. You know that.’

‘Is it, Chaplain? Why? Because the Ultramarines have the most glorious of histories, because their word is heard when ours is ignored?’

‘Because the Emperor granted that dominion to Roboute Guilliman! He who does not walk among us cannot cede the worlds of His Imperium to you!’

‘Then what He cannot give us,’ said Tek’Shal, jabbing a finger towards Belisar, ‘we will take!’

‘I see,’ said Belisar. ‘You are certain in the principles of what you do. I must respect that. But the consequences are another matter.’

‘Ah, the consequences!’ replied Tek’Shal. ‘And tell me, what will they be? The Lords Militant will declare us Excommunicate, perhaps? A Naval fleet will appear in a few years’ time to bring us to justice. Every line of ours they cross, we will be waiting. We will storm them and cripple them, one by one, just as we did the xenos and the traitor who once held these stars! Do not speak of consequences, Chaplain Belisar of the Imperial Fists. Those who fight us will feel the consequences of denying us what is ours by right.’

‘No,’ said Belisar. ‘Those are not the consequences of which I speak.’

‘The Imperial Guard, then? A million men sent to drive us out world by world? They will never bring us to battle. As Dorn once taught his scouting corps, we will melt away and emerge again in twos and threes to kill a dozen men and vanish. Every force landed against us will be picked apart and bled white. The lifeless husks of armies will litter these worlds. You know this to be true, Belisar. You know how we fight.’

‘Again,’ said Belisar calmly. ‘That is not the consequence you face.’

Belisar took a single bolter shell from the ammunition pouches around his waist. He held up the shell so Tek’Shal could see it. It was intricately inscribed, and among the scrollwork were the letters ‘IRIXA’.

‘Imperator Rex In Xanatar Aeternam,’ he said. ‘The Emperor Reigns on Xanatar for All Time. Lowly as this world is, it is the Emperor’s. The bleakest rock is His, and it is our duty to keep it His. I came here willing to kill you, Tek’Shal, because my duty to the Emperor and His Imperium is greater than the bond of brotherhood between us.’ Belisar put the shell into the chamber of the storm bolter. ‘I knew that you were a man of honour. But I am not. I will shoot you down here, though you are without a weapon in your hand. I will put you down, be you a fellow son of Dorn or no.’

Tek’Shal could have gone for his own bolter, hanging at his side. But the storm bolter was aimed right at his head, and he could not have drawn his weapon before Belisar’s finger pulled the trigger. The Terminator’s hand did not move.

Belisar sensed that Tek’Shal was smiling beneath the many-eyed faceplate of his helmet. ‘I am not alone on this world,’ said Tek’Shal. ‘What will you do when I am dead?’

‘I forged a hundred bolter shells for Xanatar,’ replied Belisar coolly. ‘When I have killed you, I will have ninety-nine left. How many of your brothers will I kill before they overcome me? I am a Reclusiarch of the Imperial Fists. I have faced members of the Traitor Legions, and unlike any of your men I have killed a Space Marine before. So, how many will I kill? And when I am done, how great a will do you think the Venom Thorns will still have to rule their own empire?’

‘We will weave the web around you, strangle you like prey,’ said Tek’Shal. There was steel in his voice now.

‘Khorhadek, captain of the Skulltakers, took an oath to kill me and give my head to his god,’ replied Belisar. ‘But it was his skull that became the trophy, for I placed it on the Altar of Brotherhood on the Phalanx.’ Belisar kept the storm bolter levelled at Tek-Shal’s face. ‘I will break out of your web as I broke out of his, and stalk you through this storm like the Emperor’s own ghost. All of this will happen unless you leave Xanatar and every other world in this sector to the rightful rule of the Emperor.’

‘You will not kill a Space Marine,’ said Tek’Shal. ‘And we will not give up our right to rule what we have conquered.’

The storm bolter did not waver.

‘I fought you, too, remember,’ continued Tek’Shal. ‘And the man I fought was not one who could kill a battle-brother in cold blood. Chaplain or no, you are a Space Marine. This is not a choice you can make.’

Belisar did not move. Neither did Tek’Shal.

The storm screeched across Xanatar, so dense that it seemed to hide everything on its surface from even the Emperor’s eyes.

‘What did he choose?’ asked Novice Arnobius. The novice’s eyes were still on the bolter shell dangling on its chain.

‘What,’ said Lysander, ‘do you think?’

‘Tek’Shal was a renegade,’ replied Arnobius. ‘A Chaplain would have no choice but to…’

‘To kill another son of Dorn?’ interrupted Lukra. ‘Can any Space Marine do so? Not in combat, in battle, but as an execution?’

‘Then you think, Novice Lukra,’ said Lysander, ‘that Belisar should have let Tek’Shal rebel against the Emperor’s rule?’

‘I think he would not have,’ said Lukra. ‘But as to whether he should have? I think that is another question I cannot answer, captain.’

‘That is because you are a novice, Lukra,’ said Lysander. ‘Because no such choice has been demanded of you. But one day, it will. This I swear. No one who fights in the Emperor’s name can ever do so without making decisions that cost lives, or determine the honour given to the Chapter and to the Emperor, or which can force us against every principle we have devoted our lives to upholding. To answer your question, Novice Arnobius, Belisar left Xanatar alive. That is all anyone knows of the matter. What he did, what befell Tek’Shal and his Chapter, Chapter records do not show. They have been lost to the ages. Nothing but a trace of the incident remains, and that was only recently discovered in the Phalanx’s archives.’ Lysander coiled the chain around the bolter shell and put it away again. ‘I can preach no lesson from Chaplain Belisar’s example. You must draw your own lesson. You must make your own choice.’

Far off, in the distant depths of the Phalanx, a bell tolled.

‘Bolter drill is due,’ said Lysander. ‘The lesson is ended. Go, novices, to your duties. Dismissed.’

The Phalanx was an old ship, one of the oldest in the Imperium. Parts of it, some believed, dated from the Age of Strife before the Emperor had conquered Holy Terra and forged from that darkness the current age of Mankind. Segments of hundreds of ships could be found within the vast mobile space station, and every few decades explorator teams were permitted on board to delve into the most ancient parts, forgotten and unused. Sometimes they turned up fragments of Imperial Fists history thought lost. Sometimes they found whole chapels, barracks decks, training halls and memorials that had been forgotten. In the voids between the mapped and used parts of the space station, there were corners that concealed secrets.

In one such void, choked with slanting support beams and wreathed in centuries of dust, stood a lone statue. Once, perhaps, it had been part of a larger memorial or statuary hall. Now it was all that remained.

It was of a Space Marine in Terminator armour. It was carved from obsidian, with a mask of ivory. The mask was in the form of a skull, the traditional garb of the Chaplain.

Lysander ducked beneath one of the beams to reach the foot of the statue. It was larger than life-sized, and the carved lenses of its eyepieces seemed to stare down at him. There must have been no question of the statue being sculpted with the Chaplain’s face showing – the skull was the face he displayed to the Chapter, the face with which he confronted his foes. That was the way of the Chaplain. On the battlefield he was not a man but an idea, a symbol, a vision of the Chapter incarnate.

The name inscribed on the base of the statue was Belisar.

Lysander knelt.

‘When I was but a novice,’ said Lysander, ‘I taught myself that there is no limit to what we must do for victory. Lives are forfeit to it. Even honour. Even the principles that make a Space Marine what he is. When I read the record of Xanatar, I knew the choice I would have made. And when I found this place, I knew I was right.’

Lysander looked up into the ivory mask. ‘I know that I am right. I pray that I am right. And that those who follow me will be right, too.’

In the statue’s right hand was the storm bolter, inlaid with deep yellow lacquer. In his left hand was another helmet, this one carved from iridescent blue stone – a neat hole was bored through one eyepiece, the impact of a bolter shell right through perhaps the only weak point in a suit of Terminator armour.

At the statue’s feet was an ammunition box. The box stood open and in intricate detail, as if it was the most important part of the whole statue, were rendered the ninety-nine bolter shells that remained.

Thunder From Fenris

Nick Kyme

‘No son of Russ should die like this.’

Afger Ironmane was crouched in the snow. He regarded the mangled corpse lying next to him forlornly.

It was Barek Thunderborn, a fellow Space Wolf, his brother.

Steam was rising from the carcass of Barek’s beloved wolf-mount, Gerik. The monstrous beast had been torn apart.

The drifts had lessened in the last hour, and rolled slowly across the tundra. Even so, they had begun to settle over Barek’s corpse. The Space Wolf’s blood, still warm from his recent slaying, created dark-red blossoms in the veiling snow. It did little to hide the lacerations in his battle-plate. Nor did it smother his grievous wounds. Cooling intestines were heaped just below Barek’s groin and trailed a half metre from the murder site.

‘Slain by one of his own.’ Afger bit back his anger, but his gauntleted fist was clenched. Snow dappled his armour, turning blue-grey into dirty white. It piled on his pauldrons, only to loosen and cascade off as he got up. Clods of snow clung to his beard too, the black and iron-grey streaks powdered white.

‘We don’t know that for sure, brother.’

Skeln Icehowl was standing farther away. His voice was deep, like the rumble of slow-moving icebergs. He patted his giant wolf-mount Fenrir as it bristled at the stench of blood.

Like his battle-brother, Skeln wore the blue-grey power armour of the Space Wolves. And also like his brother, it was festooned with fetishes and totems honouring their liege-lord Leman Russ and the fierce warrior-pride of the Wolf Guard of Fenris. A fanged necklace hung around Skeln’s gorget, and a pelt of thick fur draped down his armoured back. Runic talismans dangled off leather thongs attached to his breastplate, which carried the gilt sigil of a winged, lupine skull.

Skeln’s blond beard was less wild than Afger’s and wreathed by snow. He carried a scar across his forehead and above his left eye – a relic of an earlier battle. Both warriors had a feral cast to their features, the echo of their namesake, and went unhooded, preferring to feel the icy caress of the weather.

‘It was Hagni,’ disputed Afger. ‘What else could tear Barek Thunderborn apart like this?’ He gestured to the butchered remains. With Barek’s power amour split like paper, his flesh torn and organs ripped from his body, Skeln found an argument difficult to come by. Instead he snarled, showing long canines. His massive wolf-mount bared its own fangs in empathy.

Afger and Skeln hailed from a rarefied, some said mythical, brotherhood within the Space Wolves. They rode thunderwolves, the greatest of all the Fenrisian wolves, as a man would ride a horse. Such creatures were massive, more monster than wolf, easily twice as large as a Terran bear and many times more ferocious. Thick fur was as strong as steel wire. Long fangs were sharp and broad like swords. Few could master such beasts as those that stalked the Mountains of the Maelstrom, and even then they were not wholly tamed.

‘The Scions of Pestilence are dead. Our mission is ended,’ muttered Skeln. ‘Hagni must be found and captured.’

‘He is wulfen!’ Afger was vehement. ‘He must be killed.’

‘No, Afger,’ Skeln’s voice was firm. ‘The Wolf Priests will judge him. It is not for us to decide.’

‘Barek Thunderborn lies dead and it is not for us to decide? Hagni is our brother no longer. He slew a thunderwolf, Skeln.’

‘I won’t condemn him, Afger. What if it was you we hunted?’

Afger thumped his breastplate. Nearby, his wolf-mount, Skoll, growled and pawed the ground.

‘Then I would welcome death as release from dishonour.’

Fenrir snarled, hackles rising on its muscled neck. A sharp word from Skeln quelled his mount’s ire to a low growl. Any retort would have to wait, as the sound of an approaching vehicle interrupted them.

Both Space Wolves turned and saw a Chimera armoured troop carrier rumbling towards them across a snow-choked road. Several kilometres behind it, south of the Space Wolves’ position, loomed a dark bastion. It was the Imperial command post of the Cadian 154th, the ‘Fusiliers’, and the slab-sided Chimera tank that ground to a halt before the Wolves belonged to the regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Vorin Ekhart.

The rear hatch squealed opened on half-frozen hinges, landing with a dull thunk, and a jowly man in the olive drab of the Cadians stepped out.

Colonel Ekhart rubbed his gloved hands together, his breath ghosting the air, as he tried to ward off the cold. Neither the storm coat he wore, nor the thick moustaches framing his upper lip, could keep him from shivering.

‘Your men are as grey as the weather, colonel,’ remarked Skeln, appraising the bedraggled state of the Kasrkin storm troopers accompanying him.

Ekhart looked skyward to a blanket of oppressive platinum, and shrugged. Skeln’s shadow eclipsed the officer, the Space Wolf half again as tall and almost twice as wide. To his credit, Ekhart didn’t look intimidated.

‘A long campaign and this damnable cold,’ he uttered by way of explanation. ‘A few weeks for you, my lord, has been the best part of a year on Skorbad for my men and I.’

The colonel stole a furtive glance at Fenrir, who lathed the air with its long, pink tongue, and tried not to show his disquiet. He was dwarfed by the monstrous wolf. Ekhart would barely be a morsel to a beast like that. Even faced with it now, the colonel couldn’t quite believe his eyes. He hadn’t known such creatures even existed, until he’d seen one. Thunderwolf – the name was mythic, almost otherworldly. Yet here two of them stood, like monsters from some elder age, their masters no less impressive and god-like.

Skeln bared his fangs, grinning, though the gesture failed to reach his eyes.

‘Fenrir…’ he warned in a low growl, before the beast backed down and stopped trying to taste the human meat. ‘The Scions of Pestilence are all dead, colonel,’ Skeln continued. ‘You’ll be leaving this rock soon enough, bound for fresh fields and greater glories in the name of the Allfather.’

Skorbad had been in the clutch of a deadly Chaos plague when the Space Wolves had arrived. A cult of Nurgle, one of the Ruinous Powers and the entity that revelled in disease and despoliation, had arisen in one of Skorbad’s monolithic cities. Infection spread quickly, the plague’s victims sickening and dying, before stirring into horrific un-life as mindless flesh-eaters. The Cadians had done their best to staunch its spread but had been unable to locate and destroy the plague’s propagators, a war band of Chaos renegades called the Scions of Pestilence – in truth, bloated monstrosities swelled by Father Nurgle’s corruption.

In three short weeks, the Wolf Guard had trawled the cities of Skorbad, found the renegades and despatched them one by one. Hordes of zombies still haunted the deepest ruins but were waning, and aimless without their Chaos pack masters. The Space Wolves’ role in the conflict was over, until Hagni had turned. So far, only the Space Wolves knew of it.

As for the Cadians, they were to consolidate their position and then hand over control to Skorbad’s Defence Forces, who would mop up what was left of the zombie hordes. The less enviable task of putting back together the shattered world’s infrastructure was the job of its governor and his bureaucratic staff.

Ekhart made the sign of the aquila at the Space Wolf’s utterance of the name the sons of Russ used for the Immortal Emperor of Mankind.

‘Indeed, and I’ll not be sorry to leave this place either,’ he then replied. ‘We caught your coded vox echo over our instruments, and I wanted to come out personally to express my gratitude for–’ the colonel stopped abruptly for a sharp intake of breath. ‘Throne of Earth!’ he swore. ‘Is that…?’ Colonel Ekhart had noticed the visceral remains of Barek, just visible beneath the falling snow.

‘Aye, it is,’ Skeln uttered solemnly, not turning to follow the colonel’s gaze.

Ekhart was shaking his head. Somewhere behind him, a Kasrkin threw up. ‘How could…?’ There was a tremble in the colonel’s voice.

To witness one of the Emperor’s Adeptus Astartes, a fearsome Space Wolf at that, killed in such a way was disturbing. Something that could do that, something that could kill one of the mythical wolves must be…

‘A beast,’ answered Afger, having stayed silent until then. He locked eyes with Skeln, ‘One that must be hunted and slain in turn.’

Ekhart averted his gaze to focus on Skeln. His tone was incredulous.

‘I thought you said the Scions of Pestilence were dead.’

‘They are,’ replied Skeln, turning away, not deigning to elaborate.

‘I have heard tales…’ Ekhart began.

Skeln glared back at him.

The colonel licked his lips nervously.

‘Of Space Wolves becoming beasts.’

The curse of the wulfen was the secret burden of the Space Wolves, a genetic flaw handed down by their progenitor that could manifest at any time. Rumours abound, as they always did, but this was one ugly truth to be kept by the Chapter, and the Chapter alone.

‘Go back to your bastion and lock the gates,’ snarled Afger, losing patience. Mounting up, he reined Skoll towards the open tundra. Kilometres distant the black silhouette of Helspire, one of the largest of Skorbad’s cities, blighted the horizon. Hagni would be seeking refuge after his kill. ‘We have lingered here long enough, brother,’ Afger said to Skeln, who nodded.

‘Will you…?’ Ekhart ventured, taking an involuntary step back. His storm troopers levelled their lasguns, as they imagined monsters in the warriors before them.

‘You’d be dead before you’d pull the trigger,’ said a rasping voice.

A Kasrkin put up his hands as he felt the sharp caress of metal at his neck.

A third Space Wolf emerged out of the drifts that had grown more belligerent as they’d been talking, having crept up on Colonel Ekhart’s party.

Skeln scowled, but was inwardly impressed at his brother’s stealth.

‘Thorgard,’ he said.

The Space Wolf lowered his wolf claw and laughed. He hadn’t ignited the blades; at such close proximity, the electrical charge alone would have sheared the Kasrkin’s head off.

Thorgard had a closely-cropped beard with a long mane of ruddy hair, plaited with rune stones and bound by bronze rings. His humour was booming, and showed his perfect white fangs.

‘Your men were sleeping, colonel. Perhaps you should find some better bodyguards,’ he said good-naturedly, tramping past them with a feral glint in his eyes. ‘Brother,’ he added, the grin just for Skeln as he walked on.

Thorgard’s face saddened as he regarded Barek, but was quickly impassive.

‘The Allfather will judge him, now. It’s out of our hands.’

Afger growled something under his breath, unimpressed at his brother’s antics.

Skeln ignored their bickering, his attention on Ekhart who had yet to lower his guard.

‘Our will is strong, colonel,’ he assured him. ‘You need have no fear of us.’

‘Can you be certain of that?’ asked Ekhart, craning his neck as Skeln mounted Fenrir.

Skeln noticed Thorgard’s beast pad over to him from where he’d left it hiding amongst the snow so he could play his trick. Its name was Magnin, and it bowed its head to allow Thorgard to straddle it.

Facing the colonel, Skeln’s eyes were dark hollows. ‘Do as Afger said: go back to your bastion. Lock the gates.’

He urged Fenrir with a firm command and went to join his brothers, leaving Ekhart no less uneasy.

They had tarried long enough. Barek’s slayer must be found and stopped, one way or another. Skeln only hoped there was some of Hagni left to bring back.

Colonel Ekhart shuddered as he watched the thunderwolves lope away. It wasn’t from the cold, either.

A terrible, wracking cough gripped him. It felt like burning acid in his lungs. When Ekhart took his hand away from his mouth, there were traces of blood on his glove.

‘Sir?’ said the sergeant of the Kasrkin, about to go to his colonel’s aid before being waved away.

‘It’s nothing,’ Ekhart lied. ‘Into the Chimera,’ he added, before about facing. ‘We’ll wait for the landers at the bastion and lock our gates.’

‘They’re surrounded,’ hissed Afger, sliding up his bolter to sight down its barrel. ‘I count sixteen left. Estimate thirty dead.’

‘Enemies?’ Skeln’s voice inquired from below.

‘At least sixty… maybe more.’

Following Hagni’s trail, the Wolf Guard had entered Helspire without incident. On the way, Thorgard had told them of his discovery of Warg, Hagni’s thunderwolf, ripped apart like Barek and half-buried by a forlorn roadside. Skeln hoped shame had compelled Hagni to try and conceal the carcass, that some of the warrior yet remained within the flesh of the beast. Shreds of armour had littered the trail, too, discarded by Hagni as he outgrew it, shed like old skin as he metamorphosed beneath.

As it had eclipsed the Space Wolves, the long shadow of Helspire had been a blanket over Skeln’s thoughts. Entering the darkness of the city, he became alert and set his troubles aside.

The sprawling cityscape was ghostlike and silent. Shadowed avenues held potential threats at every turn, huge towers loomed forbiddingly, watching, waiting. Ruins filled the broken streets and plazas, stark evidence of the brutal fight that had unfolded here. It proved little impediment to the monstrous beasts rode by the Wolf Guard. None challenged them. Most of Helspire’s populace was either dead, in hiding or had already fled elsewhere. It made hearing the crack of las-fire and the frantic shouts of Cadians easy to discern. The battle din echoed loudly in the empty city. Tracking it to its source had been even easier.

What might once have been a public auditorium stretched out below Afger. One of its columns, no longer supporting the vaulted ceiling, had half-collapsed. Crashed into the wall and held fast, it offered a high vantage point. Skoll had crawled stealthily up the column and lay on its belly as Afger leaned over to survey the scene beneath him.

There was only room for one thunderwolf at the column’s broken summit, so Skeln waited some fifteen metres or so below with Thorgard and their mounts, hidden by the ruins.

Afger saw a ring of battered-looking Cadian Guardsmen, pulling ever tighter; snapping off sporadic bursts with whatever was left in their weapons’ power packs. Converging on them, a shambling horde of flesh-eaters, their bodies rank with decomposition. The whiff of decay made the Space Wolf’s olfactory senses rankle. The wretched plague victims shuffled on broken limbs, old wounds ragged and dark in their dirty uniforms. Some clutched lasguns like clubs, in parody of their former lives and compelled by degrading muscle memory. Others merely reached with taloned fingers, their sharpened nails piercing their gloves; dried blood masking their grotesque and hungering faces.

‘To be killed by your former comrades in arms…’ Afger whispered, shaking his head, then realised what he was saying. He held his tongue as another Cadian was dragged screaming into the mob and slowly devoured. The rest were fighting hard. They wanted to live.

‘Skeln,’ uttered Afger, ‘High and low.’

Turning to Thorgard, Skeln found his brother was already gone.

‘On my way,’ Thorgard’s voice came through the comm-bead in Skeln’s ear. Always a step ahead was Thorgard.

Skeln mentally traced a route for Fenrir through the ruins that would bring them to the auditorium floor.

‘We are ready, Afger.’

A second’s pause went by.

‘Now,’ snarled Afger.

Skoll got to its haunches and leapt off the column, a howling battle-cry on the lips of man and monster.

They fell amongst the zombie horde and laid about them with fury. Skoll crushed three of the plague creatures as it landed, dashing out their putrid brains with sweeps of its claws. It seized another in iron-hard jaws, biting it in two and casting aside the remains like unwanted meat. The legs stayed inert, but the zombie’s torso began to crawl along the ground, driven by keening hunger.

Afger paid it no heed. Unleashing his bolter, he gunned down a slavering zombie pack, their bodies exploding as the mass-reactive shells blasted them apart. Gore spattered his armour and Skoll’s brawny, half-cybernetic flanks. Man and beast revelled in it, this baptism of blood, howling for more carnage.

As the creatures moved on Afger, this new prey taking the pressure off the still firing Cadians, Skeln roared into view. He drove Fenrir headlong into the diseased masses, the thunderwolf using its bulk and power to batter through them. Rotting corpses were tossed aside, smashed like kindling against pounding surf, before Fenrir slowed and the real slaughter began.

A zombie leapt at Skeln, having launched itself from a high pile of rubble, only for the Space Wolf to arrest its flight with a blazing retort of fire from his bolt pistol. The creature was held in mid-air, caught in the explosive web from Skeln’s weapon. The muzzle flare lit its gruesome features in monochrome before it disintegrated against the bolt pistol’s power.

A half-second and Skeln swung his weapon around to dispatch another zombie trying to rake Fenrir’s exposed flanks. Decaying talons met adamantium skin and shattered, before Skeln killed it. The monstrous wolf had just torn the head off another plague creature and was spitting out the saliva-drenched skull when Thorgard appeared on the far side of the auditorium, wolf claws crackling.

He sheared through a half-dozen zombies as Magnin carried him low across the floor. Heads, limbs and torsos fell like macabre rain in his wake.

The Space Wolves were three points of a triangle, herding the diminishing zombie horde together, what was left of the Cadians standing at the edge of the corral’s bloody perimeter.

Each time the thunderwolves drove in to the zombie horde they tore out again, wreaking carnage, slaying any stragglers and tightening the noose before charging back in. It was savage and furious, but not an iota of rage was wasted. Every shot was a kill, every blade stroke left a dismembered corpse behind it.

Sixty soon became thirty, then twenty as the Space Wolves butchered with controlled ferocity.

‘For the Allfather!’ roared Afger, his snarling face framed by the flare of his bolter’s thunder.

Thorgard echoed him then leapt up onto his beast’s back, balancing on its broad shoulders for a moment like an acrobat at a carnival before catapulting into the zombies. Lightning arcs tore strips in the half-darkness, describing the deadly passage of Thorgard’s wolf claws. Magnin peeled off, loping around the edge of the plague-ridden masses, biting off heads and shredding bodies with its claws.

Skeln had drawn his rune-etched power axe and stormed in, straddling Fenrir’s back. He howled savagely, hacking down to bifurcate a zombie’s skull before decapitating another with the upswing. Cutting the last of the creatures down, he reined Fenrir in. Even then, the thunderwolf worried at the ruined corpses of the twice dead.

It had lasted only minutes, yet the desolation of dismembered bodies swathed the auditorium floor.

Afger was breathing hard, not from exertion but from the feral rage still fuelling him. He eyed the eight Cadian survivors and motioned to Skeln.

‘What should we do about them?’

The humans were cowering, awestruck and fearful at the same time, faced with the monstrous thunderwolves and their riders. Several were injured, already showing signs of infection. A Space Wolf’s biology was engineered to withstand such contagions. A Cadian’s was not.

Skeln’s body language was resigned as he dropped down off Fenrir and stalked over to the Guardsmen.

‘We can take no chances.’

To succumb to such a flesh plague was horrendous. Skeln could scarcely imagine the dishonour in it should his brothers be susceptible to it; should they ever turn. At least the wulfen curse was pure; at least it embraced the unfettered feral rage that lurked at every Space Wolf’s core. But this… it was ignoble, debased. Grace of Russ that they should be spared such a fate.

Some of the Cadians pleaded for death. Some got to their knees.

The Space Wolf levelled his bolt pistol. A few of the men closed their eyes, their lips moving silently.

‘Receive the Emperor’s Peace,’ Skeln muttered sadly.

A bark of fire silenced any screams and eclipsed the Guardsmen’s lives forever.

‘It had to be done, brother,’ Thorgard said to Skeln as he was tramping back again.

Skeln mounted up.

‘Aye.’

Afger turned his back on the carnage of the dead Cadians. It was a pity they could not save them, but many more would die if they did not find Hagni soon.

‘The plague worsens,’ Afger stated flatly. A burst from his bolter slew the zombie torso labouring to claw across the floor towards them. Eerie silence followed for a moment after.

‘Ekhart’s soldiers,’ he sneered, evidently unimpressed. ‘I wonder how many more have fallen?’

‘It is a small matter,’ replied Skeln. ‘Infected or fully turned, we have to despatch any we come across until Hagni is found. Though the Scions are slain, the plague must not be allowed to spread.’ He fixed Afger with an icy glare. ‘Mercy guides our hand in this, not revenge. You’d do well to remember that, brother.’

Afger snarled and turned away.

‘Lead on, Thorgard,’ he growled a moment later.

Skeln regarded the dead Cadians again, the ones he had been forced to kill.

How many did you butcher¸ Hagni?

Thorgard had the wulfen’s trail again. The hunt was back on.

Thorgard sat alone, in the lee of a ruined meat-farm outhouse. It was towards the heart of Helspire and had been badly damaged in the fighting, little more than a broken corner of prefabricated rockcrete with the skeletons of other structures and the shells of destroyed Chimeras half-buried in the snow nearby. A Cadian platoon had come this way, but had got no farther.

The drifts had worsened in the last few hours. An almost total white-out smothered the horizon. Visibility was abysmally poor, even for the Space Wolves’ acute senses.

Thorgard’s head was bowed, as if in contemplation, oblivious to the snow flurries dancing around his head and clinging to his beard like arctic limpets. He’d built a fire, using his body and the ruin to shield it from the ice winds rolling across the urban tundra, and flensed the meat from some shaggy-haired bovine, indigenous to Skorbad and somehow missed in the evacuation. It was messy work; blood painted the ground around him and gave off a coppery stink.

A hundred metres away, two Wolves were watching.

‘Hagni may be a beast, but he hasn’t lost his instincts,’ hissed Afger. ‘The wulfen won’t take the bait. Why do you insist on trying to snare him, Skeln?’

The other Space Wolf crouched alongside him in a ruined warehouse structure. Skeln was staring intently at the perimeter Thorgard had made, at the traps and foils he had set, hidden well in the snow and rubble. They kept low and to the shadows, Fenrir and Skoll lurking just behind their masters.

Of Magnin, there was no sign. Like its rider, the thunderwolf was adept at stealth – an uncanny feat for a monstrous beast that was nearly two and half metres from claw to shoulder.

‘His fate is not ours to decide,’ Skeln replied at length. He glared at Afger. ‘I’ve told you this already, brother. I won’t give up on Hagni. Not yet.’

Due to the escalating drifts, the trail had grown cold in more ways than one. Hagni’s wulfen scent was no longer redolent on the breeze. His tracks had disappeared, as well as any other signs of his passing.

‘You must be prepared to kill him, Skeln. If Thorgard or I fail, you must do it!’

Skeln grunted and went back to surveying Thorgard’s concealed deterrents.

‘Only if there’s no other choice,’ he muttered.

Something niggled at the back of Skeln’s mind. Hagni was leading them further into disputed territory, where the punitive influence of the Imperial Guard had not reached fully. On the way, they’d seen entire platoons frozen solid, grimaces etched permanently on the troopers’ faces under the ice. Convoys of vehicles, Chimeras and even battle tanks, were left by the roadside – empty and abandoned. Was Hagni even fleeing from them? Or was it the wulfen that, even now, laid the trap and not the Wolf Guard?

Skeln had no more time to ponder.

Shadows smeared the snowy fog, grey against the drifts. They were heading for Thorgard.

Afger bared his fangs and scowled. Even in the snow storm, he was close enough to detect the stench of putrefaction. The wind rose abruptly, intensifying to a shrieking gale. Thorgard huddled close to the fire, but made no move, as the shadows approached. A spurt of crimson laced the ground as he sheared away another scrap of raw meat. The shadows jerked and quickened.

They were just a few metres away now… drawn by the blood.

A form emerged, its crooked fingers reaching, shuffling close to Thorgard on bent, misshapen limbs. It was not alone; not nearly alone.

A hundred metres away, Afger reached for his bolter.

Skeln laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘What if he cannot hear them?’ the twitchy Wolf Guard rasped.

The wind had built to a scream. It buffeted Thorgard’s plaits, tossing them around like vipers. Still he flensed, occasionally devouring a strip of the raw meat.

‘He’ll move.’ Skeln’s tone was reassuring, but he reached for his bolt pistol anyway.

Just a metre away – still, Thorgard seemed oblivious.

Could he not scent the creatures?

‘He’ll move…’ The confidence in Skeln’s voice was waning rapidly. The zombie was almost within touching distance… ‘Arse of Russ!’ he swore, powering to his feet and wrenching his bolt pistol free–

–just as Thorgard leapt up, a backhand slash with his wolf claw cutting first through the reaching zombie’s wrist, then driving on into its upper torso and scything through its neck. Its head bounced onto the ground and Thorgard kicked it into the face of another assailant, before launching forward, claws wide, to cleave the plague creature in two.

Thorgard decapitated four more in as many seconds, grinning wildly at the shredded corpses at his feet, and it was over before it had begun. The zombies’ lighter body mass had evidently failed to set off the snares meant for Hagni, but had not been so silent as to fool Thorgard.

Now only fifty metres away and slowing to a walk, Skeln sighed with relief. He and Afger were about to relax when the grey shadows returned. As the zombies appeared in their droves, it became clear by their uniforms what had happened to the crews of the vehicle convoy.

‘Now we go!’ roared Skeln.

Together they plunged into the drifts, weapons booming.

Thorgard rushed forward and bisected a creature from groin to sternum, using his momentum to push through it and leaving the two ragged body hunks flapping impotently, a metre of gore-slicked snow between them.

To his left a zombie stuttered, its advance halted by the staccato fire of Afger’s bolter. A second burst spun it on its broken ankle and pitched the creature back.

An exploding cranium painted Thorgard’s power armour in thick, dead blood and brain matter. The zombie collapsed to its knees like a puppet without its strings and slumped headless in the slushed snow.

The muzzle flash had barely died from Skeln’s bolt pistol as he drew his power axe and went hand-to-hand. Still a few metres from Thorgard, the other Space Wolf found it hard to maintain his brother’s frenetic pace.

Afger sensibly kept his distance, using his bolter’s range to protect his battle-brothers’ flanks. Fenrir and Skoll barrelled past him on either side as he took up a ready stance and switched to rapid fire. As the pair of snarling thunderwolves hit, Magnin rose out of a snow mound, shawled white and growling for blood. The creatures tore into the undead tank crews, ripping off limbs and raking bodies. Any normal enemy would have fled before such carnage, but the plague zombies had long since forgotten fear. They knew nothing now but the urge to feed, the maddening hunger for flesh that was never slaked.

Skeln hacked through a zombie’s spinal column, just as three more of the creatures rammed into him. He was rocked on his heels but kept his footing, splitting the skull of one with his elbow and shredding the other two with a close-range burst of his bolt pistol.

‘Ha!’ Thorgard bellowed, surrounded by plague creatures. ‘Now this is sport!’ He drove a wolf claw into the torso of one, tearing the blades upward and shattering its clavicle. With the other hand, he swiped off a zombie’s head before crushing it to the ground with a heavy boot. One leapt onto his back, scratching at his neck and gorget. Thorgard reached around to seize it and throw it off when another zombie fired a shot into his torso, an old memory triggering the lasgun in its grasp.

Grimacing, the Space Wolf was about to slash it when he found his arm pinned by another creature. A fourth had mounted his right pauldron and was gnawing at the ceramite.

‘Not like this!’ Thorgard raged. ‘Teeth of Russ, my end will be worthy of a saga!’

Heat singed his face as Afger’s bolter shells tore into the zombies clambering over him. The one clinging to his pauldron was torn off, claws still embedded in the ceramite, whilst the creature pinning Thorgard’s arm was struck in the back. The ammo storm rolled up its spine to burst open its head like a rotten fruit. As Thorgard yanked the zombie off his back and then punched his fist through the lasgunner, Magnin leapt to its master’s defence, crushing another two.

‘We cannot slay them all.’ Afger’s voice was tinny and cracked with static as it came through on the comm-bead in Skeln’s ear.

‘Agreed,’ he replied. ‘Mount up and break through.’ Afger cut the link when Skeln had finally caught up to Thorgard. ‘It seems your lure was too effective, brother.’

Some of the other Space Wolf’s eagerness had diminished.

‘I had hoped for larger prey,’ he confessed.

Skeln howled and Fenrir bounded to his side, after finishing a zombie with a savage twist of its jaws.

‘We’re done here,’ he told Thorgard as he climbed atop the monstrous thunderwolf’s back. They’d cleared a bloody gap in the horde but had only seconds until the next wave of plague creatures were upon them.

Thorgard nodded reluctantly. He was summoning Magnin when Afger’s voice crashed in on the comm-bead.

‘There!’ he cried, ‘There, I see the beast! Hagni is abroad and in my sight!’

Afger was pointing, even as he slung himself across Skoll’s shoulders and urged the thunderwolf to charge.

Skeln and Thorgard followed his outstretched finger to a dark silhouette crouched on the horizon line. Though distant, the Wolf Guard made out hulking shoulders and a broad back, hirsute with fur. Skeln thought he caught a shimmer from a pauldron hanging loosely off the beast’s shoulder.

There could be no doubt. It was Hagni; now more beast than man.

Howling a battle-cry, Afger hammered past the other two Space Wolves, intent on his prey. Skoll used its muscled bulk to heave zombies out of its way, crushing bodies beneath it as drove inexorably forwards.

By the time Skeln and Thorgard had spurred their mounts, Afger was well ahead of them. They too battered their way through the plague mob, cutting a bloody path to the open ground ahead. Soon, the horde was floundering behind them and an arctic waste beckoned where the chase was on for Hagni.

‘Damn you, Afger,’ hissed Skeln, eyes locked onto his brother, now even farther in front of them.

Hagni’s silhouette had not yet moved. It merely watched its brothers’ approach. At this rate, Afger would reach it well before Skeln and Thorgard. He seemed hell-bent on facing the wulfen alone. And despite the fact he rode Skoll, Skeln recalled all too well the butchered remains of Barek and his thunderwolf. Alone, Afger faced a very uncertain victory.

A sudden cracking arrested Skeln’s thoughts, and a chill entered his spine.

‘Skeln!’ said Thorgard. He was looking downward, already slowing. ‘The ice!’

The snowy tundra they traversed was not solid ground at all. It was a lake, frozen stiff by the cold weather, but now breaking up with the heavy footfalls of the thunderwolves. Skeln saw the ground webbing beneath Fenrir’s massive paws. An ominous cracking sound followed it.

‘Hold!’ he roared, reining the monstrous beast in and stalling the pursuit. Opening up a channel, he shouted into the comm-bead.

‘Afger! Slow down, the ice is cracking.’

‘I have him. The beast won’t escape again.’

‘Afger–’

–wasn’t listening. He severed the link and rode on harder.

‘I’m sorry Skeln,’ he muttered, ‘Barek must be avenged.’ He peered down the end of his bolter, bringing Hagni into his sights–

‘You are mine, wulfen…’

–when the beast slipped away and was gone.

‘No!’

That was when the ground fell away and icy water rose up around them. Weighed down by armour and augmetics, man and beast were dragged into stygian gloom.

Darkness surrounded him, together with a sense of lightness that Afger had not felt for some time. The rage, the grief at Barek’s death, the burning desire for vengeance, all of it seemed muted by the cold. And for a moment, just the briefest of moments, Afger almost gave in.

Something strong and vice-like seized his wrist. He was travelling upwards again. He saw the vague suggestion of light. Air rushed his lungs and raucous noise clamoured into being as Afger breached the freezing surface of the water.

‘Hold on,’ snarled the voice of Skeln, beard dripping icy wet from when he’d plunged in to grab him.

‘Thorgard, I have him,’ he growled, and the other Wolf Guard came into view. He’d removed his wolf claw gauntlets – they lay on the ice nearby – and leaned over to grasp Afger’s power generator.

‘No,’ Afger roared, thrashing. ‘Leave me! Follow Hagni! Avenge Barek!’

Skeln wasn’t listening. Together, he and Thorgard hauled Afger up and onto the fragile ice bank.

Skoll had not been so fortunate. The thunderwolf’s sheer bulk, its cybernetic body fashioned by the Iron Priests, had sunk it like an anchor. With nothing to cling to, the great beast had drowned in the black depths of the lake. It was a poor end for such a noble creature.

Afger’s expression told Skeln that Skoll’s former master thought so too.

For a short while, they sat on the ice, not daring to move should it crack again and swallow them all this time. The zombie hordes were far enough away not to trouble them.

Skeln glared at Afger, his gaze murderous. Thorgard tentatively retrieved his gauntlets. Afger merely lay on his back and stared into the sky. Cold and pitiless, it echoed the feeling in his hollow heart.

Afger had not spoken for over an hour after the incident on the lake. He felt the loss of Skoll keenly, so strong was their bond. The separation of a limb would have been easier to take. When he did finally give voice, now running alongside Skeln on Fenrir’s back, it was clear his mood had not improved.

‘You should have let me sink and gone after the wulfen,’ he growled.

Skeln’s retort was biting.

‘You’ve lost your mount, and we are two brothers down already, Afger. I will not lose another in a vain and foolish sacrifice.’

‘I would not have drowned,’ Afger snapped.

Skeln looked down at him.

‘No, brother, but you would have given up.’

Afger’s shadowed expression betrayed his shame.

Thorgard had found Hagni’s trail again soon after leaving the ice lake, now far behind them, and was leading the Wolf Guard down into the catacombs of Helspire, the urbanisation of the city growing around them suddenly like a virus.

Here, the city was at its darkest. These were its sinks, its bowels, the very bones of its construction. Streets and avenues became tunnels, towers morphed into the sweating columns of foundation stones and the platinum sky was replaced by the rockcrete underbelly of the roads above. A sewer stink pervaded, sullying the icy crispness of the air. Stagnant heat lingered, emanating from the buried fusion generators that ran the benighted city’s power grid.

Thorgard sniffed the air, finding the wulfen’s scent. There was something else, too, something he couldn’t place.

‘It’s strange…’ he muttered, oblivious to his brothers’ arguing.

‘What is?’ asked Skeln.

‘Since killing Barek, Hagni has had many days to get ahead of us. I expected to track him to a lair, not to see him out in the open, especially so blatantly. It’s as if he wants to be caught.’

Afger bristled.

‘He begs for death.’

Skeln’s eyes became cold, hard bergs. His anger made him rasp.

‘No Space Wolf would ever desire that. No Space Wolf would ever die without a fight.’

Chastened, Afger realised he had spoken out of turn.

‘Sorry, brother,’ he admitted. ‘I am not myself.’

Skoll’s death had hit him hard.

‘But what other explanation is there?’

‘No, it doesn’t feel like that,’ offered Thorgard, challenging Afger’s earlier remark. ‘There is no sport in this. I’ve seen whelpling aspirants harder to track. Hagni allows us to catch up, only to then flee.’

‘He’s getting careless then, that’s all,’ said Afger, ‘and hungry. There is only dead flesh here, no fresh meat to sate the beast.’

Skeln was silent and stern. That was when he noticed the sigils daubed on the walls and the rank, pervading stench growing stronger. They were deep into the heart of Helspire now and reaching the end of a long, broad sewer conduit. A chamber loomed ahead, a sickly oval of light announcing it.

‘There’s something else here,’ hissed Thorgard suddenly, reining Magnin to a stop and speaking Skeln’s thoughts aloud. ‘Very large, very strong. Its scent mingles with the wulfen’s…’

Thorgard turned to face his brothers.

‘Hagni wasn’t trying to flee or merely running wild–’

‘He was leading us,’ said Skeln.

‘There may be some of Hagni left after all…’ hissed Afger.

Skeln ignored him.

‘But leading us to what?’

Thorgard ignited his wolf claws. Their electrical glow framed his face in an eerie light.

‘Brothers…’

Misshapen forms were shuffling into the dirty oval of light. In the chamber beyond, Skeln knew in his core they would find Hagni, and whatever it was he had been leading them to.

Skeln had drawn his weapons, Afger too.

‘Thunderwolves!’ he roared, glaring at the approaching zombies, ‘For Fenris and Leman Russ!’

Howling, the Space Wolves charged down the tunnel, making for the opening and whatever waited for them beyond it.

Skeln’s uppercut smashed a plague creature aside, tearing open its torso and spilling diseased innards. He hung down along Fenrir’s flank like a trick-rider from the old clan gatherings of his former life, when he was still human. Another was flung into the tunnel wall, its bones shattered by the force of Fenrir’s swipe. Afger raked three more with controlled bursts from his bolter. The explosive rounds turned the creatures into little more than a visceral mist. Thorgard cut down the rest; by the end of it, his scything wolf claws were slick and red.

‘A vanguard, nothing more,’ he breathed. The actinic glare from his blades pooled deep shadows around his wild eyes. He was ready for more.

Skeln snarled at the miasma of pestilence coming from the chamber entrance.

Howling, and the deep bellowing of something large and unnatural, emanated from it. It was a wolf fighting a monster.

‘Steel yourselves, brothers,’ Skeln growled, and passed through the dirty oval of light riding Fenrir.

The chamber was a confluence of sewer pipes. Rusted openings in the walls disgorged filth. It pooled in a deep basin in the middle of the room. Wallowing in the dark morass was a pustulant giant.

Sloth-like and disgusting, burgeoning rolls of putrescent-yellow flab ruptured the creature’s armour. The fragments of ceramite that still clung to its grotesque bulk were adhered by rivulets of puss, bursting from the boils and sores infesting its blubbery flesh. Horrid and distended, the beast’s mouth was a gaping maw. Several tongues lolled from one encrusted corner. They licked and probed at the sores lasciviously, tendril-like and sentient. Filled with ranks of needle-like teeth, its mouth was like that of a bloated shark.

Skeln saw the potential in those fangs to inflict the wounds that had killed Barek Thunderborn and hope flared that Hagni could still be saved. He wrinkled his nose at the noisome stench emanating from the thing’s corpulent body. Fat flies buzzed around it in a swarm.

Facing it across a river of pestilence was Hagni.

He was not as Skeln remembered him. Hagni’s armour hung off his body in scraps. His lupine form, now covered in thick fur, had simply outgrown it. Fangs were like daggers in his long mouth, stitched around a slightly protruding snout. Sinew throbbed like cords of steel across a brawny body stretched and made more muscular by the changes wrought by the wulfen curse. Horrific as it was, it was as nothing compared to the other monster in the room.

It was one of the Scions of Pestilence, now swelled by plague and decay, favoured by its dark lord and mutated into a hideous plague-spawn, unrecognisable from the traitors the Space Wolves had hunted previously. Even now, before their eyes, it seemed to be growing, absorbing the filth from the tainted sewer pipes. It had not always been this size, and explained how the creature had managed to kill Barek Thunderborn and slip away undetected… almost undetected. The Space Wolves had somehow missed it, but Hagni, turned to wulfen, his preternatural senses enhanced, had not. He could not defeat it alone; there was enough of the Space Wolf remaining to realise this, or perhaps it was merely instinct that had compelled Hagni to seek out allies and draw them to this fight. Skeln hoped for the former.

Skeln processed this in a half-second, before baring his fangs and howling–

‘Slay it!’

A ripple of explosive fire stitched the plague-spawn’s bloated body and a burble of what might have been pain bubbled from its swollen lips. A stream of corruption belched from the creature’s maw by way of riposte, but Fenrir was already moving. An acid-hiss erupted behind Skeln, head down, as his thunderwolf bounded away from the deadly spray. Afger stormed forwards at the same time, working his way through the mire to the plague-spawn’s left.

Zombies stirred in the wretched muck, corpses surfacing like gruesome buoys, animated by the plague-spawn’s presence. Afger shot them down as he moved, shredding them to pieces as he kept an eye on Hagni.

The wulfen ignored him and launched itself upon the creature, raking its rancid flanks. Flesh tore away, wretched and thin with decomposition. Black, sap-like blood started to mat Hagni’s fur as he clawed at it. Like a geyser exploding from the earth, the wulfen was struck in the face by a plume of bile. The force of it pitched Hagni off the plague-spawn’s body and sent him careening into the chamber wall.

Thorgard rode Magnin down the creature’s right flank. Its tongues lashed out like serpents, jabbing at the thunderwolf. The fleshy muscle was laced with barbs and tiny mouths, fang-filled and drooling pus.

Despite its bulk, Magnin turned and weaved to evade the probing tongues. One nicked Thorgard’s pauldron, leaving an acidic scar, as his thunderwolf jinked to the side. He followed its course as it seized a zombie shambling behind them, ripping the creature off its feet and hauling it forwards with a predatory jerk. Swept up in an eye blink into the plague-spawn’s maw, the zombie’s rotten bones crunched as it was devoured.

Head down, Thorgard urged Magnin on.

Skeln ducked another putrid stream from the plague-spawn’s mouth. He had torn out his bolt pistol and the muzzle burned white-hot with the flare of his weapon’s fire. The mass-reactive shells bit deep, sinking, as if in rubber, below the creature’s flesh. Explosions rippled beneath the sickly skin, bulging like tumours, but the plague-spawn’s epidermis just stretched to compensate, any damage that had been inflicted regenerated instantly.

Frenzied bolter fire from Afger’s position suggested Skeln’s battle-brother was similarly frustrated.

Skeln unsheathed his power axe and fed a ripple of energy across the rune-etched blade. It was time to get in close.

For Hagni, getting in close was the only way he knew how to fight. Dazed but unbowed, he shook away the wretched bile gumming his fur and drove at the creature again. As wulfen, Hagni was even larger than his Wolf Guard brethren. At over three metres tall, he was a monster. Yet even Hagni was small compared to the plague-spawn, so grotesquely swollen as it was by Nurgle’s taint.

Leaping onto the creature’s back, Hagni slashed and gored, searching for vital organs amidst the blubbery mass. The wulfen was elbow-deep in putrid blood and viscera, but the folds of flab, like fleshy armour, were too thick for him to inflict any serious harm.

Below, Thorgard raced along the plague-spawn’s flank, wolf claws spitting lightning. The stink of burning flesh was redolent in the air, but the long grooves he carved in the creature’s side merely oozed and closed up again, a roll of flab melting down over them.

Skeln was getting dizzy. The vile stench emanating off the creature made the air thick with its contagion. Fat flies buzzed around his face, trying to infest his mouth, ears and nostrils as he sought to get in close. He hacked away a tendril-like tongue and heard a deep yelp of agony from across the chamber. Though his view was occluded by the spawn’s bulk, Skeln recognised the cry of Thorgard’s thunderwolf. Magnin was wounded, possibly even dead.

‘Thorgard!’ he bellowed down the comm-feed.

Crackling static and a half-heard roar of anguish returned to him.

‘Brother, answer me!’

Skeln was pinned by the lashing tongues, oozing fronds attached to the pair that assailed him like the stingers of some rancid cnidaria. He couldn’t get to Thorgard. He couldn’t help his brother.

Another channel opened up in his ear.

‘This isn’t working–’ snarled Afger.

Bolter fire interrupted him.

‘We need to burn it!’

‘With what? We have no flamer, no incendiaries, we–’ Skeln had detected something, a distinctive tang in the mire of sewerage. He fended off a probing tongue, the plague-spawn burbling with laughter. A moment’s respite allowed him to cast about the chamber.

Pipes, everywhere pipes…

Skeln allowed himself a grim smile as he found what he was looking for.

A shadow eclipsed him as the plague-spawn leaned down, the shifting of its mass releasing noxious gases trapped within the rolls of flab. Skeln fought not to gag and reined Fenrir back. The tongue tendrils recoiled and Skeln urged his mount away. Fenrir turned and leapt, narrowly avoiding the burst of corruption vomited from the spawn’s distended mouth. It was still drooling acid as its burbled laughter came again.

But now Skeln was no longer penned in. He used this freedom of movement to ride Fenrir around the plague-spawn’s side, searching for Thorgard, following a pipe kept at the periphery of his vision.

Magnin was dead. The noble beast lay on its side, a brackish liquid trickling from its maw and pooling around its snout. Three deep puncture wounds were visible in its flank, having entered flesh. They were dark and infected from where the plague-spawn’s tongues had raked it.

Whatever poison was harboured by the plague-spawn, it was more deadly and virulent than that carried by the zombies. If it could kill a mythical thunderwolf, it could kill Skeln and his brothers too.

A desperate roar seized Skeln’s attention and his gaze was drawn upward to where Thorgard and Hagni had mounted the plague-spawn’s back and were tearing at it with their claws.

Lost to grief and vengeance, Thorgard was no further use right now.

A loud crack, followed a shallow crump and the tang of explosive, came from the opposite end of the chamber.

‘Afger?’ Skeln hoped at least one of his battle-brothers still had something left.

‘Bolter’s dry… switching to grenades…’ came the fragmented response.

‘Is it working?’

Fenrir had slowed so Skeln could reload his bolt pistol. Last clip.

Thorgard and Hagni were keeping the creature occupied, eliciting bellows of pain as they tore into its blubbery hide.

Several seconds elapsed before Afger answered. Another explosive rocked the chamber. He sounded annoyed.

‘What do you think?’

Skeln reined Fenrir around, tracing the pipe he had seen earlier to the source of its rupture. He let rip a desultory burst, downing a pair of zombies creeping towards him, before fixing his attention back on the broken pipe.

‘Hang on to whatever grenades you’ve got left. We’re going to need a spark for our accelerant.’

‘What are you talking about, Skeln?’ Afger spoke between thrusts. He’d drawn his combat blade.

‘Can’t you smell it, brother? The tainted water, just below the reek of decay…’

‘Promethium,’ replied Afger a moment later.

Skeln reached the ruptured pipe. It was one of Skorbad’s main fuel lines, fed from its major pumping station. Volatile liquid exuded from it in a slow but steady trickle. They’d need more. Much more.

Skeln jumped down off Fenrir’s back. The thunderwolf turned, guarding its master’s blindside as Skeln sheathed his weapons. He’d have to tear a wider opening in the broken pipe – he couldn’t risk a spark before the tainted water was saturated.

Digging his gauntleted fingers around the ragged hole, he heaved and pulled. The metal screeched but gave instantly. Corruption had ravaged it, degrading the tough housing of the pipe. Promethium was gushing freely now. It lapped onto the floor and spilled eagerly into the morass where the plague-spawn was languishing.

Skeln turned, leaping onto Fenrir’s back again. He unclipped a grenade from his belt. The thunderwolf was barrelling towards a sewer-slicked column at the edge of the room.

‘Find cover,’ he growled to Afger.

Reaching the column, Skeln swivelled his torso and pressed the detonator stud on the grenade. Its parabola took it across the chamber where – a second before it splashed down – it exploded, igniting the promethium drowning the tainted pool.

A burst of incendiary lit up the room, fire sweeping through the water in a purging wave. Through the inferno’s glare, Skeln thought he saw two figures leap free, obscured by smoke and rising flame.

The plague-spawn bucked and thrashed, powerless to heave its monstrous girth away from the burning pool, its efforts only splashing fiery promethium over its waxy skin. It burned, and as it burned, seemed to shrink. Like a diseased candle against the attentions of a blowtorch, the Scion of Pestilence melted away, shrieking rage and denial.

A curtain of fire was left flickering across the surface of the pool; the roaring promethium flames had died quickly. A dark green sludge, polluting the already tainted water, was all that remained of the plague-spawn. Cleansing fire had destroyed it.

Relieved to see Afger alive and well, across the other side of the chamber, Skeln then looked for Thorgard. Another tunnel lay across from them, opposite where the Space Wolves had entered. Diminishing boot steps echoed from the shadows there.

Thorgard was alive, but he had gone after Hagni.

Skeln met Afger’s gaze and the two of them raced towards the tunnel mouth.

Fenrir slowed, keeping pace with the other Wolf Guard, then charged into the gloom of the tunnel.

‘He is a fool!’ snarled Afger. ‘Alone, he is no match for it.’

‘He is blinded by grief. Magnin is dead, Thorgard wants to finish the mission to honour his mount’s sacrifice,’ Skeln countered, adding, ‘Besides, I remember you were determined to face the beast alone, too.’

Afger sniffed his contempt.

‘So you now acknowledge it is a beast?’

Skeln’s reply was prevented by a scream up ahead.

It was Thorgard.

Fenrir rode on faster–

But was too late.

Thorgard’s half-eviscerated body was lying in the centre of the tunnel, wet and bloody. His torn throat hung open like a second mouth, fixed in a dark red scream.

Afger snarled, walking over to take up one of his fallen brother’s wolf claw gauntlets. He winced as he stooped down, gingerly touching his chest.

‘It’s nothing,’ he growled, before Skeln could say a word. Swiftly, Afger changed the subject back to the wulfen. ‘It’s of the killing mind, now. Hagni is lost to us,’ he said, removing his old gauntlet and pulling the weapon onto his fist.

Skeln was silent, but didn’t linger with Fenrir. There was no time for remorse. The wulfen must be stopped.

The trail was easy to follow. Fenrir tracked the wulfen by the scent of Thorgard’s blood still on the beast. The tunnel took them back up into the snow drifts and arctic tundra of Skorbad. Crimson droplets dotted the landscape at long, loping intervals.

Skeln knew this road, and realised where the wulfen was headed.

‘It returns to its old hunting ground,’ muttered Afger, running alongside them.

Skeln urged Fenrir on and allowed the howling ice-winds to smother his thoughts.

In less than an hour, the bastion loomed on the horizon.

‘Something is wrong,’ said Skeln.

The Imperial command post was dark, as if it had lost all power. Smoke trailed from unseen fires behind the walls and there were no visible sentries. As the Space Wolves drew nearer, they saw the gate was wide open and streaked with bloodstains. A Chimera had slewed to a stop a few metres away, the vehicle’s exit ramp yawning. There was more blood here too.

Two hundred metres of open ground lay between the Space Wolves and the bastion.

Afger was incredulous.

‘Not even the wulfen could’ve got so far ahead and done all of this…’

Skeln eyed the silent battlements. His gaze narrowed.

‘It didn’t.’

Shambling into view where they had laid crumpled and inert, figures wearing the olive drab of the Cadian 154th and cradling lasguns in crooked fingers appeared. Old memories compelled them. The plague had come here, and now the bastion had an undead garrison. In his last act, before the feral aspect of the wulfen had claimed his mind, Hagni had led them here.

Afger grimaced, gripping his chest again, but kept his pain hidden. In the sewer chamber, there hadn’t been enough time to reach cover…

A spark of melancholy flickered suddenly within him. The end of the road was near.

‘I wish Barek and Thorgard were with us.’

‘So do I,’ the solemnity in Skeln’s voice turned to anger, ‘We finish this.’ He outstretched his hand, beckoning to his brother.

Afger seemed reluctant.

‘You’ll never reach the bastion alive on foot, and I need your bolter and blade with me, brother.’

Skeln gestured again.

After a moment, Afger took his hand, seizing Skeln by the wrist and swinging up and onto Fenrir’s broad back.

Skeln spurred Fenrir on just as the zombie-Cadians were levelling their guns.

‘The last charge of the thunderwolves, brother.’

‘Let it be a worthy end, then.’

‘I’ll see you in the halls of Russ, Afger.’

For the first time in weeks, Afger smiled.

‘Aye, that you may.’

Skeln kicked Fenrir’s flanks and the beast began to charge.

If there had been anyone alive to see it, the deed would have been worthy of a saga or two.

Skeln and Afger howled together as las-bolts filled the air around them.

Fenrir died just before they reached the wall. An autocannon burst had opened up its torso in a red mist and the great beast collapsed in the snow, leaving a crimson smear behind it. Their armour punctured and torn by las-blasts, the Wolf Guard burst into the bastion and commenced slaying everything inside.

A ragged firing line, a crippled mockery of disorder, opposed them as they barrelled through the gates. Bolters flaring, the Space Wolves swept the zombies aside and then split up, intent on destruction.

Skeln took the stairway to the battlements. Zombies fell like suicides, heaved from his path as he rose up the steps. He savaged with his fangs, tearing open throats, and split torsos with his power axe to reach the summit. The battlements became a field of slaughter, a reaping of cleaved limbs and staved-in skulls. Russ’s name bellowed loud above the carnage, piercing the blood-red night.

Fires began below. Promethium storage sheds were set ablaze by Afger’s bolter. Explosions cracked, billowing black smoke. Bodies were heaped onto the conflagrations, like heretics onto a pyre. He went to his fists, snapping spines across his knee, wrenching bones from decaying sockets. Afger carved a red ruin with Thorgard’s wolf claw, anointing it in old blood to honour its fallen keeper.

Skeln’s bolt pistol had long been empty when he noticed the wulfen amongst the horde, clawing and shredding with abandon, reunited with its former brothers for one last fight. He’d lost sight of Hagni after that, the need for killing preventing any pursuit.

The Space Wolves were gored and burned, but in less than twenty bloody minutes, the entire Cadian garrison was destroyed. Skeln had not seen Ekhart in the mob, but then could have missed him easily. A haze had fallen upon the Space Wolf, blood-red and frenzied. There was no way to identify any individual amongst the heaped body parts.

Heaving air into his lungs, Skeln was standing at the bastion’s perimeter as it burned. After they’d vanquished the undead Cadians, he and Afger had spread the fires. The roaring flames cast a sombre light on the mound where Skeln had buried Fenrir. He’d wept as he’d done it, Afger looking on, honouring them with stoic silence.

In the aftermath, there was no sign of Hagni. Skeln assumed the beast had loped away once the killing was done. But it was not ended. There was no monster to lead them to, no fight save the one that was left between former brothers. Hagni knew it as well as Skeln did. A reckoning was near.

‘Time to move, brother,’ Skeln said to Afger.

The wulfen was still loose. It was all they had left now to stop it.

‘Brother,’ Skeln repeated when there was no answer. He turned…

Afger was slumped against the hull of the abandoned Chimera. His arms hung down by his sides and his cold eyes were glassy.

For the first time, Skeln noticed the wound in his torso. It was deep and mortal. Afger had held on long enough to finish the fight and see his foes burn. He was with the Allfather now, feasting in the halls of Russ.

‘Be at peace, brother,’ Skeln whispered, closing Afger’s eyes.

All dead now, except for him – a lone wolf with but one duty left to it.

Skeln took off his left pauldron, stripped away the arm greave and vambrace of his power armour to leave his skin bare. With a tooth from his fang necklace, Skeln carved the runes of Barek, Thorgard and Afger in his flesh. At the end, he added Hagni.

The bolt pistol was empty, so he dumped it along with his gun belt. Hefting his power axe, he ignited the blade and trudged into the ice wastes.

Somewhere in the drifts, Hagni was waiting.

‘Wulfen!’ His challenge echoed across the tundra.

A few moments later, a feral howl answered.

The Arkunasha War

Andy Chambers

Cymbals and drums sounded tinny and distant in the thin, cold air as they welcomed him to the new world. Looking down from the top of the ramp, the shuttle’s only passenger seemed surprised to find any kind of welcoming committee, even one as small and dispirited as this one, awaiting him. High overhead, twin suns lit the scene with a fierce glare but little warmth; what little heat there was to be had was being ripped away by a chilling breeze filled with fine, irritating dust. Gentle ripples of rust-red sand marked the edge of the landing pad and marched off towards the foreshortened horizon with monotonous discipline. A small collection of domes, blocks and stubby towers in the mid-distance constituted the apparent entirety of Arkunasha’s one and only colony, the handful of off-white shapes looking lonely and isolated on the too-wide canvas of an empty world.

The newcomer was tall and broad-shouldered, and showed scarification, unusual in a society with the capacity to heal any such blemish at will. A warrior, clearly, past his first flush of youth but still vital. There was a penetrating look to his dark eyes as he squinted through the glare and stinging dust at the welcoming party, wishing he had accepted a filter plug for his nasal slit when the shuttle pilot had offered him one. He beheld the tall, serene-looking profile of the colony leader and the squat shape of the chief engineer among a handful of others at the bottom of the ramp. One of the cymbal players, a wiry-looking fellow with blue facial markings, broke away from the small crowd and hurried upwards.

‘Please to be meeting with the exalted prince, great warrior, I, unworthy associate, will conduct you hence if willing?’

‘Of course, I…’ But the low ranking associate was already backing away and gesturing as if to draw the warrior forward on invisible strings. The bemused warrior followed him, his armoured toe-hooves clacking down the ramp and onto the first true ground he’d touched in weeks of travel.

‘To make introductions,’ the associate said, gesturing to the broad-shouldered warrior and the colony leader in turn. ‘This great warrior is Shas’o Vior’la Kais Mont’yr. This exalted prince is Aun’o T’au Vasoy Ty’asla.’

The warrior knelt before the stately aun’o and bowed his head before rising and addressing him.

‘Aun’o, I am flattered that you came to meet me but I would not have discomforted you so.’

The aun’o’s face was thin and high boned, virtually a T-shape with a narrow slit of a mouth at the bottom that radiated faint but constant disapproval. The aun’o’s mark of celestial devotion gleamed from the top of his nasal slit like a third eye. When he spoke his voice seemed dull and flat, a disinterested burr.

‘Nonsense, shas’o, it was only seeming for me to be present in order to make acquaintance and welcome you to Arkunasha at the first moment of your arrival.’

The associate cleared his throat and rattled his cymbals quietly before speaking again.

‘Also, great and exalted ones, here is honoured trustee fio’ui Ke’lshan.’ The portly engineer nodded stiffly to the warrior, who saluted him in return.

‘We shall have much to discuss, fio’ui,’ the warrior said politely, ‘and I hope we can work closely together for the protection of the colony.’

The flat-faced engineer gave a non-committal grunt at the prospect, eliciting the shadow of a frown on the warrior’s face. The associate smoothly broke into the moment of silence that followed.

‘Please to be moving to the concourse area where refreshments are now being served.’ Taking their cue the drums and cymbals rattled again as the water caste members began leading the way towards a torus–shaped structure nearby. The warrior refused to be immediately drawn after them, addressing a question to the associate.

‘And where are the warriors I am to command? I am surprised to find that they have left greetings, welcome as they are, to others, while absenting themselves.’

The aun’o answered directly, cutting across the associate’s platitudes even as they began.

‘The shas’la are sulking in their barracks after being refused permission to bring weapons along to a greeting. They declared that they would rather go naked than suffer the shame of being disarmed at the first encounter with their shas’o! This, on a world completely empty of any other living beings save for ourselves. Just whom do they propose to shoot, I wonder?’ The aun’o tittered briefly at the thought, before subsiding into an indulgent clucking. The frown returned to the shas’o’s face and remained there.

‘What’s that supposed to be?’

‘It’s a world, boss, the mekboss wants to go there.’

Ork Warboss Gorbag Gitbiter leaned forward, peering down at the wiry little gretchin before his throne. The gretchin quaked, the big shard of glass in its hands quivering and making the dirty yellow-brown ball on its surface bounce around uncertainly.

‘The mekboss, eh?’ Gorbag rumbled with a voice like stones tumbling down a shaft. ‘Well, I’m the warboss and I say where we go!’

The gretchin rocked back on its heels at the blast of sound and spittle flying from the impressively tusked jaws of the hulking warboss. It desperately wanted to chuck away the viewing glass and run off behind a console or into a duct, but it was smart enough not to try. The complex symbiotic relationship between the warlike orks and their smaller, weaker gretchin cousins has long depended on the quick wits and diplomacy of the latter. Thousands of years of genetic heritage conspired to keep the gretchin’s mind focussed enough to squeal out the words that might save it.

‘The mekboss said the ships are gonna break if we don’t go!’

The warboss paused at that. Glaring red eyes pierced the quivering gretchin with new interest.

‘What… did you just say?’

The gretchin’s healthy green pallor had gained a distinctly whitish cast, the world in the viewing glass oscillated tightly back and forth in its grip.

‘The mekboss said to tell you we got too many holes. Some are so big the boys are falling out and all the... the breathy stuff is leakin’ out.’

Gorbag thrust his mighty jaw out truculently. ‘Breathy stuff? You mean the air, you stupid little grot?’

‘Yes, boss!’

‘So we’re gonna be stuck there?’ Gorbag’s three-metre tall form seemed to sag at the prospect. No more reaving across the stars for him and his bloodthirsty crew of freebooters; they would be stuck on one stinking planet with no way off it and nothing to fight but each other.

‘No, boss! The mekboss says there’s metal on this world. We can fix all the holes an’ keep goin’!’

Gorbag seemed to swell up visibly at the prospect. He grabbed the viewing glass from the gretchin with a gnarled claw as big as its torso and glared at it with a rapacious gleam in his eyes. The gretchin failed to relinquish its grip quickly enough and ended up dangling from Gorbag’s fist by one arm.

‘Anything to kill?’ Gorbag demanded.

‘No, boss,’ the grot squeaked apologetically, ‘leastways nothing good.’

The shas’o found the warriors beneath his command awaiting him at their barracks, just as the aun’o had said. The warriors stood in ranks inside the quadrangle formed between their quarters, garages and armoury. Each was in full armour, the jointed plates giving them an insectile quality in the harsh glare of the twin suns. They held their pulse rifles upright before them, long-barrelled firing chambers pointing rigidly at the skies. Small mounds of windblown dust reaching up to their ankles showed they had been silently awaiting him for quite some time. The shas’o dropped his single carry bag with an audible clank before blowing out his cheeks in a long-suffering sigh.

‘And just what is the meaning of this?’ he shouted in a parade ground bark very different to the tone he had used with the aun’o and fio’ui. A fire warrior with the stripes of a shas’ui took a step forward and replied.

‘It is my responsibility, shas’o,’ the shas’ui said, their voice made slightly distorted by the audio pickup of their enclosed helmet. ‘Any punishment due is mine alone.’

A murmur of discontent rippled out behind the shas’ui as they spoke and the forest of pulse rifles swayed slightly in response. The shas’o raised a hand to silence it.

‘I am led to understand you all refused to leave your barracks unarmed? On the idea that it would shame you in my eyes not to greet me as warriors?’

‘The aun’o believes that with no enemies present our weapons are only a danger to ourselves and others, shas’o, The shas’ui replied cautiously. ‘The exalted one believes us too ill-trained and unreliable to bear arms.’

‘Enough! Put down your weapons at once!’ The shas’o barked. As one, the assembled fire warriors placed their rifles on the ground. ‘Now take off your armour. You heard me, every piece!’

The shas’o watched while the warriors more hesitantly unclipped shoulder guards and breastplates, thigh pieces and curved helmets. The shas’ui proved to be an attractive female with a fine scalp-lock, the others lost their uniformity and were revealed as a selection of males and females of a young age, few probably even close to their first trial by fire. The variety of their physiognomy showed that they hailed from a variety of different septs. There were some dark faces from Vior’la that were eyeing him with approval, a gaggle of pallid D’yanoi that look confused, several Sa’ceans that obeyed quickly and efficiently without hesitation.

Finally, each warrior’s weapon and armour sat beside them in the dirt and they stood shivering in only their undersuits. The shas’o walked over to the shas’ui’s neat little pile of equipment and kicked it over.

‘These objects do not make you a warrior!’ he shouted into her face. He stalked to another pile and scattered it, catching the owner’s look of horror as their cherished pulse rifle clattered to the ground. He laughed, a short, harsh sound within the confines of the quad, and pushed another warrior in the chest causing them to stagger back a pace.

‘The will, the ability to fight, to be a warrior, does not reside in your weapons, nor is it inside your armour unless you bring it there yourself! The warrior begins within, a warrior is one who still fights with whatever they have and with nothing at all if they must!’

The shas’o had their complete attention now; every eye was on him and he saw the unconscious flaring of nasal slits in approval on many faces. He bent down and drew two fighting sticks from his carry bag, ironwood rods as long and as thick as his forearm. He tossed one into the dust before the fire warriors and hefted the other in his fist.

‘Now… who among you is enough of a warrior to fight me for the right to put your armour back on?’

Two days later, a Devilfish personnel carrier skimmed over low dunes with all the smooth agility of its namesake, its graceful lines speeding across the sands. Inside, the shas’o watched the external monitors with interest, noting the tall double plume of dust snaking in their wake that would be visible for miles. He bore the pain of his bruises stoically, as did the five other fire warriors beside him in the passenger compartment.

He’d beaten all of them, one on one, even though it had taken all night and most of the next day. The smarter ones had waited until he was tired before taking their chances, managing to get a few telling strikes on him. Afterwards, the shas’o had fought them in pairs and groups to allow them a little revenge. Not bad, but some of them really were ill-trained and all of them were very inexperienced. More importantly, they were now thinking of themselves as warriors again, instead of scolded children. He turned to the shas’ui, raising his voice above the whine of the Devilfish’s ducted turbines.

‘No other living things on the entire planet?’

‘Nothing at all, not a plant, not an animal’. The shas’ui’s responses were clipped and coolly professional but the shas’o could tell that she was barely holding her excitement in check. The aun’o, in his ineffable wisdom, had virtually confined the fire warriors to their barracks for fear of accidents or unnecessary wear and tear on their equipment. The current reconnaissance run into the desert would be their first training hunt in months.

‘But our colony here is purported to extend over three quarters of the planet’s surface,’ the shas’o prodded.

‘That is something of an exaggeration, shas’o, the main colony is here in the Argap highlands. The fio have indeed established many other facilities but they are all small, highly automated and widely dispersed.’

‘Their purpose?’

‘Metal extraction and purifcation. The sands we are traversing bear huge quantities of metallic oxides mixed with silica and carbon. The fio believe them to be the detritus of a civilization that once covered this world.’

The shas’o blinked with surprise. ‘My briefing material said nothing about this, perhaps you jest with me, shas’ui?’

The shas’ui gestured at the red dunes sliding past on the monitors. ‘No, shas’o, I do not jest. The sands you see out there really are composed of rust. The fio don’t know whether the gue’la or or’es’la lived here, certainly it was a long time ago.’ She paused. ‘Permission to ask a question, shas’o?’

‘Granted– I value obedience, but ignorance is a weapon placed in our enemy’s hands. What is it?’

‘Your name – Shas’o Vior’la Kais Mont’yr. You’ve earned two adjuncts to your name already. You have seen battle and been named as skilful by your fellow warriors. You must have passed at least three trials by fire to achieve the rank of shas’o…’

‘I’m sure you have a question in there somewhere, shas’ui. What’s troubling you?’

‘It’s just… why would the shas’ar’tol send someone like you to a place like this? Surely you would do more good in an active conflict region than being crèche supervisor in some forgotten outpost.’

‘I go where the greater good commands, like any diligent student of the Tau’va,’ the shas’o replied. ‘If my seniors at high command believe I can have the most effect here, then that becomes my singular purpose and I give no thought to potential glories lost elsewhere.’

The shas’ui looked at him in frank disbelief, and seemed to be trying to deduce just who he had offended and how. She opened her mouth to ask another, probably even more impertinent, question when the Devilfish lurched suddenly, banking sharply to one side. The fire warriors were thrown against their restraining harnesses with a chorus of suppressed groans. On the monitors, the shas’o caught a glimpse of a yawning darkness amid the dunes that rapidly vanished down one side of the personnel carrier.

‘Canyon,’ the shas’ui explained. ‘Natural erosion cuts channels into the desert, they–’

‘I know– that part was in the briefing materials. It also means we’ve arrived at our destination. Prepare to disembark.’

The sand-laden winds had ground the exposed rim of the canyon to a pitted smoothness. Across the gap, the far cliff was marked with uneven bands of strata made up of a fantastic array of reds, browns and blacks. Thirty metres below, on the canyon floor, spires and mushrooms of basalt protruded from a bed of rust-coloured sand. Behind the shas’o, three Devilfish carriers lifted off in unison and turned their elegantly curved prows back towards base. Three bemused squads of fire warriors were left standing in the thick cloud of dust kicked up by their departing personnel carriers. They looked questioningly at the shas’o. He opened a common frequency to address them all.

‘Until now, you’ve only thought about these canyons as obstacles to be crossed,’ the shas’o told them. ‘We’re here to learn that they can be your best ally or your worst enemy. In this hunt, you must simply return to the colony without being tagged. The Devilfish will be patrolling the desert and hostile pathfinders and gun drones are in the canyons. Question one, which way do you go?’

‘Through the canyons, shas’o,’ the shas’ui responded promptly.

‘Very good,’ nodded the shas’o. ‘Now tell me why.’

‘The Devilfish would easily detect us and tag us in the open.’

‘You discount the threat of pathfinders and gun drones?’

‘No, but the pathfinders will require support to stop us and the Devilfish will be highly restricted if they enter the canyons. The gun drones can be outsmarted or outfought one on one as necessary.’

‘I concur with your theories, shas’ui. Now let’s go and put them to the test. Pay close attention because we will be performing another hunt out here tomorrow, with battlesuits.’

Pulse blasts criss-crossed the canyon in a flickering web of light. Every nook and cranny seemed to birth and receive its own false lightning faster than the eye could follow. After a week of successive hunts in the desert, the fire warriors were improving, the shas’o noted with approval. The blue ‘prey’ cadre in this hunt had turned on their pursuers and caught them with a classic mont’ka, a killing blow. The strung-out red cadre suddenly found their lead elements caught in a canyon too narrow to redeploy in. In thirty more seconds the surrounded warriors would be cut down and the red cadre would become prey.

The shas’o and his team leapt from the canyon lip eighty metres above, the flat plates of their crisis battlesuits gleaming in the bright suns. Blue-white stabs of flame from their shoulder-packs steadied their fall as the canyon floor rushed up to greet them. At the last second, their jetpacks kicked in and robbed them of their momentum, their duralloy leg-claws crunching into the sands in unison. The three-metre tall armoured suits raised arm-mounted weapon pods and rapid bursts of plasma rifle fire ripped into the firefight from a new angle.

The blue cadre ambushers were caught between the crisis suits and the red cadre survivors. Decisive action could still have saved them; enough were combat effective that a concerted attack on either the battlesuits or the reds might have still carried the fight. But the blue cadre’s cohesion had disintegrated when the crisis team landed. They panicked and fought their own immediate battles without regard to what was happening behind them. In a few seconds, the moment had passed and the red cadre carried the blue’s position. The blue’s hasty ambush became their last stand.

‘You cheated!’ the shas’ui was standing before the shas’o’s suit, glaring defiantly up into the monitor lenses that peppered its head. The shas’ui’s own light armour was discoloured where simulated plasma fire had killed her in the fight.

‘I’m sorry, shas’ui, in what way did I cheat?’ The voice came from the battlesuit’s external speakers, somewhere in its midriff.

‘You said that you would observe and take no part in the action!’

‘I did, but sometimes in combat you will also find things to be different to what you anticipated.’ The suit’s speaker made the statement flat and unaffected, yet it ended the shas’ui’s tirade as if she had been struck.

‘I apologise, shas’o. I did not mean to impugn your teaching.’

The heavily-armoured suit raised one weapon-mounted arm in a curiously lifelike gesture of conciliation. ‘No, it is I that should apologise, shas’ui. The reds were fairly caught, and credit is due to you for that. I felt there was no further lesson left to be learned there. However, there was still a lesson for you to learn. Can you tell me what it was?’

‘No rearguard,’ the shas’ui said bitterly. ‘When I was sure we’d caught them, I didn’t detail anyone to watch our back.’

The shas’o broadcast his findings on the hunt to all of the fire warriors present, reds and blues alike.

‘You have fought well, but with mistakes on both sides. Overlooking that a force of which you are unaware might come against you during an engagement is an easy mistake to make, just as easy as rushing headlong after a fleeing enemy and suffering a reverse. Natural eagerness to turn every weapon on the acquired target can obscure the need for a rearguard, or a reserve, to cover the eventuality that all does not proceed as hoped for. Learn from this.’

The shas’ui was studying the patina of simulated pulse rifle hits on the commander’s suit. ‘Are those mine?’ she eventually asked when the shas’o’s wisdom had been dispensed.

‘Indeed they are. Some nice grouping, shas’ui.’

‘I’ll get you next time.’

It took two more weeks of training hunts before the fio’ui took exception to the additional maintenance burden the fire warriors were incurring. As the shas’o returned to the barracks after dusk, he sighted the fio’ui’s dumpy form waiting patiently beside the gate post like some carved heathen icon.

They had been using battlesuits again that day, and the shas’o’s was close to the limits of its endurance. The suit’s armoured casing was streaked with smears of dust and its clogged servos whined plaintively with every step. They’d found that the crisis battlesuits were excellent for supporting the troopers in the close confines of the canyons, far more practical than the larger Devilfish or Hammerhead support vehicles. The only downside was the battlesuit’s limited endurance, which meant they would need to cache extra power cells to operate in areas remote from the colony.

The shas’o’s mind was filled with plans as he approached, but the sight of the fio’ui gave him pause. He halted the crisis suit and opened its chest cavity so that he could dismount and meet the fio’ui face-to-face. One of the earth caste would never be intimidated by a piece machinery, however martial its function, but it never hurt to show some politeness to another caste. The fio’ui was of the Kel’shan Sept, and so apt to be stubborn and mistrustful of outsiders at the best of times.

‘Greetings, fio’ui,’ the shas’o began. ‘You come without the por’la at your side. Am I to understand that this is a social visit with no call for negotiation?’

‘You understand wrongly,’ the fio’ui grumbled. ‘I have come to inform you that your… outings must stop. There is serious work to be done and my apprentices are being distracted by your indulgence.’

‘Training is no indulgence, fio’ui, if my warriors are to retain any value as a fighting force. Just as your own apprentices would not expect a mechanism to function if it was left unattended, I cannot expect my warriors to fight if they never lift a weapon.’

The fio’ui thrust his jaw out truculently and began again. ‘It must stop. The aun’o demands maximum output.’ Having evoked the name of the aun’o, the engineer closed his mouth and moved to leave, as if no more need be said.

‘Wait, fio’ui,’ the shas’o said. ‘Even absent the por’la can we not come to compromise?’

The fio’ui seemed a little shocked by the concept, but he paused to listen. Encouraged by his own boldness, the shas’o pressed his point further.

‘I have many pairs of idle hands on Arkunasha colony, not to mention numerous drones without true purpose. Teach my fire warriors how to perform their own maintenance schedules and I will have them assist in monitoring the extraction and purification facilities across the planet. You would exceed your estimated output in no time.’

The fio’ui’s heavy brow furrowed uncertainly as he wrapped his mind around the unfamiliar concept. His voice was still gruff but there was a gleam of hope in his eye. ‘The shas’la would refuse,’ he muttered. ‘You of the fire caste have always believed manual labour beneath you.’

‘Bold words,’ shas’o smiled, ‘some fire warriors would demand satisfaction for their bruised honour on hearing them. I am not so ignorant and I’m ready to shoulder my burdens alongside my brothers and sisters. The shas’la will obey my commands, and they are just as eager to be of more value to this colony. Only caste barriers prevent their willing contribution to it.’

‘Very well, shas’o, I shall consider your unorthodox proposal and discuss with my own kind. I… thank you for your time.’

The shas’o watched the chief engineer shuffle away through dim pools of illumination cast by the colony lights. He smiled to himself. Another opponent laid low by a surprise attack. After a time he went inside to prepare briefings for the next training hunt.

Fire and iron thundered out of the void with twisting, belching black trails chasing at its back. One, two, then three fiery meteors were vomited from the sullen skies, the clouds peeling back in ragged tatters where the smoking lances pierced them from above. Distance made the churning smoke and fire trails seem absurdly slow-moving as their burning tips crawled across the sky.

The shas’o watched the apocalyptic sight through the screens of the colony information center. A crisp line of characters at the bottom of the image announced that it was being relayed from a metal extraction and purification facility somewhere on the far side of the planet.

‘Still no word from the Vior’la Gal’leath M’shan?’ he asked.

The fio’la technicians hunched their shoulders helplessly. The only ship within communication range of Arkunasha colony had dropped off the grid hours before. All their attempts to raise it had met with stubborn silence. The fio’ui was clinging tenaciously to the idea of a meteor storm being responsible for the break in communications. He gestured sharply at the screens.

‘Meteors, see?’ the engineer grunted. ‘They’re starting to break up.’

A handful of smoking coals were indeed dropping away from churning masses and curving downward at a steeper trajectory. The shas’o shook his head as most of the smaller smoke trails corkscrewed and levelled out just before they hit the ground. One came rocketing straight towards the extraction facility, creating a momentary impression of something big and close before the image disintegrated into static.

‘Facility 7352 is no longer transmitting, fio’ui,’ one of the fio’la called apologetically.

‘Because those are Ore’s’la ships and attack craft, not meteors,’ the shas’o said quietly. ‘Fio’ui, I need you to tell your people to prepare for evacuation–’

‘You will do nothing of the kind, fio’ui,’ the aun’o’s voice rang out in the quiet information centre as he swept in through the outer doors. ‘There is no call for such precipitous action at this time.’

The aun’o stood at the entry surrounded by a small coterie of nervous-looking water caste members. His expression was that of a tutor finding his students engaged in some distasteful, and probably illegal, activity.

‘My apologies, aun’o,’ the shas’o replied somewhat tautly, ‘but the protection of this colony is my responsibility and I must advise immediate evacuation.’

‘Because a handful of pirates have landed on the far side of the planet? Something of an overreaction on your part. Understandable, I suppose – this must be very exciting for you.’

‘Apologies again, aun’o, but this is no mere handful of pirates. Or’es’la ships of that size carry tens of thousands of their warrior caste. I have insufficient forces to defeat them all when they locate the colony. We must remain mobile to stay ahead of the invaders until reinforcements can arrive.’

‘Don’t you mean if they locate the colony, shas’o?’

‘I mean what I say. It will only be a matter of time before the Or’es’la locate more of the extraction facilities, and believe me they will trace them back to us. They will travel any distance to find battle, aun’o – we must not be here when they arrive.’

Aboard the lead ork cruiser, Warboss Gorbag Gitbiter gripped the arms of his command throne and laughed uproariously at the sight of orks and grots being hurled around the ship’s bridge. Smoke and blasts of flame accompanied their thunderous progress through the skies. The vibrations running through the ship felt like a thousand jackhammers were being jammed against its patchwork armour plating.

Gorbag mashed random buttons on the arm of his throne until a frightened-sounding grot voice squeaked from a speaker grill in response.

‘Tell the flyboys it’s time to drop and give ‘em a boot up the arse from me,’ Gorbag growled happily. With nothing to kill on this planet, the landing was going to be the most fun part and he was going to squeeze out every bit of it. Distant clunks reverberated through the hull as landers and flyers dropped away from the giant ship with all the aplomb of baby chicks falling out of a large, ugly nest.

A chaotic selection of viewscreens flickered into life around the bridge, half exploding in showers of sparks before immediately going dead. Of the remainder, some showed only static, but others showed the juddering, leaping views from the noses of the ork flyers. Boring-looking sand dunes and rocks bounced around on the working screens for a few seconds before one was lit by the stabbing flames of nose guns firing. Gorbag’s attention snapped to the screen and his impressively-tusked jaws champed convulsively. A little sprawl of silvery towers and pipes in the desert was disappearing in a storm of explosions. Gorbag cuffed a nearby gretchin excitedly and sent him flying.

‘Something to kill!’ Gorbag roared, jabbing one clawed finger at the flickering image ‘Get us down there! Now!’

The desert horizon that had once been so crisp and clear was smudged with plumes smoke. The or’es’la had been busy destroying every extraction facility they could find in this part of the world, apparently racing one another for the joys of reaching them first and destroying the handful of drones defending them. The shas’o glanced out to his flank, where two Hammerheads were churning through the dust, their dart-like hulls completely dwarfed by the long railguns they carried in their turrets. He looked down into the canyon lying diagonally before him, where fire warriors advanced through rocks and took up positions.

It had taken almost a week of strenuous argument to persuade the aun’o to allow the fire warriors out of the colony at all. Eventually the aun’o had conceded that at least tracking the invader’s progress was necessary, and some reconnaissance might be in order. If the aun’o had paid attention to the forces the shas’o had chosen to take on his ‘reconnaissance’ mission, he might have questioned his intentions more thoroughly. He had brought almost a full cadre; half a dozen fire warrior squads in Devilfish carriers, pathfinders, two crisis teams and a squadron of Hammerhead tanks as a ‘covering force’. Even so they were horribly outnumbered by the or’es’la in this region.

Flickers of light at the horizon caught the shas’o’s attention. He increased the optical gain on his battlesuit’s sensors in time to see several disc-shaped drones fly into view. Brightly glowing tracers chased them, kicking up spurts in the dust as the drones bobbed and weaved frantically to avoid them. A second later, the first of their pursuers leapt over the horizon on a belching tail of smoke, a crude looking or’es’la flyer with its nose aflame with twinkling gun flashes. The shas’o’s crisis suit immediately registered two high-energy discharges to his flank as the Hammerheads fired their railguns in unison. The flyer disintegrated into an expanding cloud of flaming debris an instant later. The rain of hot shrapnel was still falling as the horizon darkened with the arrival of the main enemy force.

The dark silhouettes of what seemed like hundreds of vehicles came streaming into view, a mobile mass of churning dust and metal. The two Hammerheads turned tail and fled, in accordance with their orders, turning their long railguns rearwards to menace their still distant pursuers. As the enemy drew closer, they became distinguishable as a column of tanks, bikes, guns and trucks mixed together without any apparent formation. They came on with the subtlety of a battering ram, completely intent on the vanishing Hammerheads and unaware of the fire warriors lurking on their flank.

Invisible markerlight beams fired by the pathfinders reached out to the onrushing horde to guide in a salvo of seeker missiles. The seekers were a precious commodity, one-shot self-guided weapons being launched from a trio of Devilfish hidden further down the canyon. The slender missiles flashed unerringly into their designated targets, ripping ragged holes in the column wherever they struck. The or’es’la dissolved into a chaotic mess of vehicles, charging in every direction, careening into each other, crashing into rocks and toppling down soft dunes. The rapidly-thinning horde spilled within pulse rifle range and the fire warriors’ bright volleys crashed out to immolate individual vehicles in dirty orange explosions. Submunitions from the disappearing Hammerheads blossomed over the scene almost as an afterthought, shredding the exposed or’es’la gunners and drivers in a storm of hyper-velocity shrapnel.

The remaining vehicles turned for the horizon and sped away as fast as their tracks and wheels would carry them, leaving perhaps half of their number as twisted wrecks on the desert dunes. The shas’o was tempted to lead his crisis teams into the field of burning wreckage to chase down the survivors to truly seal the victory. There would be no quarter asked or given by the or’es’la, and any that escaped now would fight again with renewed ferocity in their next battle. He checked his impulse and signalled the fire warriors to begin withdrawing to the waiting Devilfish. More smudges were appearing on the horizon all the time, showing that more or’es’la were converging on this position. It was time to leave and set another ambush elsewhere.

The link to Arkunasha colony was weak and uncertain, jumping and sliding as the signal bounced off the ionosphere. Even so, the aun’o’s disapproval communicated itself readily through the tiny screen in the shas’o’s battlesuit as he trudged through a shadowed canyon along with the rest of his weary cadre. Night was falling, the time when the or’es’la stopped moving and the shas’o’s dwindling force could quietly shift between sectors. Endless days and nights of ambushes and running fights had taken their toll on the shas’o’s endurance, and his patience.

‘I understand your concerns, aun’o,’ he said tiredly. ‘However, it is necessary for me to remain in action. As I explained before, should the or’es’la reach the colony, they will destroy it and kill everyone there. I can only ensure your protection by engaging the enemy–’

‘You overrate your personal importance,’ the aun’o chided, ‘even if what you say is true – which, frankly, I doubt – your shas’ui can command in your absence. Is that not a keystone of your warrior philosophy?’

‘Leaving an inexperienced shas’ui in command at this juncture would amount to a gross dereliction of duty on my part. My presence at the colony is completely unnecessary and would jeopardise my warriors.’

The tiny image bobbed and darted silently for a moment and the shas’o feared the aun’o was going to give him a direct order to return. The other tau’s high-boned face turned away for a moment as someone spoke to him from off-screen. After several moments the Aun’o turned back with a pallid look on his face.

‘A courier has arrived from the shas’ar’tol… they say no reinforcements are available at this time. Limited evacuation may be possible later, but for now Arkunasha colony is exhorted to resist to its last breath, for the greater good.’

‘For the greater good,’ shas’o agreed. He waited for the aun’o to say something else but the silence stretched on until he spoke again.

‘Aun’o, you must board that courier and leave the colony at once. I will accept no argument about this and, if necessary, I will return and put you on the ship myself. Your protection is my first responsibility and the dangers will only increase from now on. Leave now while you still can. I must attend to my warriors.’ The tiny head on the screen nodded abruptly in response and the image vanished.

The shas’o looked at the lines of fire warriors winding along the canyon on foot and felt an invisible burden lift from his soul. With the aun’o gone, he would have a free hand at last, no more negotiating and explaining every action. He turned his mind to current dispositions. The surviving Devilfish were out some distance away, scouting for the enemy and the Hammerheads were perched somewhere above on the dunes, keeping a watch for flyers. Their attrition so far had been light, but maintaining supplies of ammunition and energy cells was a constant concern. The supply cache they were approaching was one of the last that had been placed before the invasion and the only one close to what now amounted to the front lines. Risk of interception and limited resources meant most of the newer caches were only a day or two’s travel from the colony. Too close, but they had been left with little choice.

One of the fire warriors left the line and picked their way to where the crisis suits were labouring along the soft sand of the canyon floor to conserve their energy. It was the shas’ui, her armour flecked and chipped where she had been caught in an or’es’la shell burst that morning. The monocular eye-piece of her helmet gazed up at the shas’o’s monitor head in mute question until he opened a channel to her.

‘Word has arrived from the shas’ar’tol that there are to be no reinforcements,’ the shas’o told her simply. ‘We must fight on with what we have.’

‘Not long ago I would have said that was impossible, but these past weeks you’ve led the or’es’la around by their noses so well that I can’t see why we can’t do it forever.’

‘Supplies, mostly, and the or’es’la will learn to be less cooperative over ti–’

An urgent communications request from the Pathfinders was winking in the corner of one of the Crisis suit’s screens. The shas’o accepted it and was treated to a grainy view of the desert above. His stomach turned over at the sight and his exhaustion vanished. An array of dark brown shapes were moving through the gathering gloom, the sullen flames gouting from their exhaust stacks briefly illuminating their rusting armour and the swarming or’es’la warriors clinging to every vehicle.

‘Course?’ the shas’o snapped.

‘Closing on our position. They haven’t sighted us yet.’

‘Pull back into the canyon and let them pass, we can’t–’

‘Second group sighted, shas’o!’ The view spun to show another distant column converging on the opposite side of the canyon. ‘The first group are halting now, it looks as if they’re stopping for the night.’

‘Plant five photon grenades on maximum delay and pull back immediately.’

‘Acknowledged, shas’o.’ He closed the link and addressed the shas’ui on a direct channel.

‘Pass the word, shas’ui, I want the supplies recovered and brought back down the canyon as quietly as possible, no one is to engage the or’es’la.’

‘Shas’o?’

‘I have something much better in mind for them.’

The shas’o triggered his jet pack and bounded away down the canyon in a series of low, swinging leaps to stay below its rim. He reached the retreating Pathfinders and had them markerlight the position of their photon grenades up above. He turned and leapt for the opposite lip, using his remaining reserves of energy lavishly to thrust himself over the edge. Dark shadows blotted the frozen waves of dunes to either side of the canyon and were made hard-edged by guttering oil-fires lit by the or’es’la.

The shas’o levelled his plasma rifle and let rip at the closest targets. They were beyond effective range, but he loosed off several incandescent bolts into the gloom before jumping back down into the canyon. A moment later, the photon grenades detonated, their stark white flashes burning away the night vision of anyone looking for the source of the incoming fire. Fat red tracers buzzed across the canyon in both directions, followed by the distinctive crack-swish sound of larger projectiles.

The Crisis suit’s energy reserves were into the orange, but the shas’o leapt a short distance further along the canyon before mounting the opposite side and firing again. That provoked another wild burst of fire from the or’es’la, and in the brief moment he was above the lip of the canyon he glimpsed the insane crossfire already occurring between the two camps. He dropped to the canyon floor and left the or’es’la to their sport; with any luck they would keep shooting at each other all night.

‘O’Shovah?’ the shas’ui’s voice was unsteady, the pain of her shattered body edging the word.

Shovah meant ‘farsight’. The fire warriors had taken to calling him that during the desert campaign. O’Shovah, Commander Farsight, just a jocular nickname at first but it had grown into a watchword, almost a prayer. Farsight will see us through, Commander Farsight will outwit the or’es’la once again, they can never catch Farsight.

It seemed like a bitter reprimand now, trapped for weeks in the Argap highlands with no room to manoeuvre and endless hordes of foes surrounding them. Every day was another day of grinding siege, insane assaults, and casualties on both sides. The or’es’la died by the dozen for every fire warrior they dragged down, but each loss was keenly felt by the small band of defenders.

Now the shas’ui was among the fallen, another casualty ticked off the shrinking roster of colony defenders. She had been caught in an or’es’la rocket attack while dragging an injured comrade clear, her limbs shattered and torso pierced by randomly flying metal. It all seemed so senseless.

‘Rest easy, shas’ui,’ he said. ‘Another shuttle got through. You’re going to be evacuated.’

‘No!’ The shas’ui lurched on her narrow cot, trying to rise. ‘I will stay and fight!’

‘You will heal and fight another day,’ the shas’o, O’Shovah as he was coming to think of himself, said coldly. ‘Your injuries would impede you in battle to the point of uselessness.’

The shas’ui sank back, too weak to protest further, her eyes searching O’Shovah’s face. ‘Why don’t they evacuate all of us? Why are we still here?’

O’Shovah had no answer. The aun’o was gone, the colony ruined and most of its population killed or fled. There was no reason to stay but the shas’ar’tol insisted that they hold on. Reinforcements were trickling in, but they were barely enough to keep pace with the attrition incurred by the siege. No counter-offensive was possible, only endless positional warfare through the peaks and passes of the highlands.

‘I don’t know, shas’ui,’ he confessed. ‘We must place our trust in the greater good.’

Shells screamed down in ragged salvos, pulverising rock and throwing up towering clouds of dust at the edge of the colony. They were concentrating on the dugouts around the skeletal remnants of the workshops. Their howling mingled with the first explosions, and soon the fire warriors could hear nothing but the crash of explosions and the whickering of shrapnel.

In recent weeks the or’es’la had fallen into a pattern of hoarding up their ammo and loosing it all off before an assault. In terms of inflicting casualties, it was actually less effective than their old method of firing short, unexpected bombardments whenever a crate of shells was brought up, but it was a lot more unnerving. It meant the or’es’la were coming again.

O’Shovah crouched in his crisis suit inside a shelter he’d helped the Fio to dig for him at the head of a feature they’d dubbed the slipway. It was an erosion-cut channel leading down from Arkunasha colony to a nearby valley in the highlands. Windblown sand and dust from the plateau poured continuously down the slipway like a slow motion avalanche confined by high rock walls on both sides. The or’es’la had fixated on the area as the widest point of approach and it was already littered with half-buried wrecks left by their previous attempts to storm it.

O’Shovah crouched in his hole, feeling the bedrock tremble as shells burst nearby. He found that he trembled with it. The bombardment seemed endless, maddening. Shells of all calibres poured down and were joined by the howl of rockets just as it seemed it could get no worse. Red flames spurted up on all sides and flashes filled the air. The world seemed engulfed by roaring giants on every side.

Suddenly, the or’es’la barrage dribbled away to nothing, a few paltry shells whistling down as the towering smoke clouds began to drift away in the wind. Then he heard the roar of many engines and the rumbling sound of tracks. O’Shovah emerged from his shelter, far enough to see down the slipway, as around him, surviving fire warriors looked cautiously out from their own redoubts and bunkers. Perhaps four teams remained, holding onto a precarious horseshoe of positions at the top of the slope, with barely one team in reserve. Ugly or’es’la battle-tanks were crawling to the base of the slipway, five steel giants with groups of smaller vehicles ranged to their left and right. Behind them, another wave of at least twenty vehicles was coming into view, labouring hard in the soft sand.

O’Shovah was speechless. The enemy had never before attacked in such strength. A wave of improvised seeker drone-missiles flew past, plummeting into the approaching behemoths. Two of the leading vehicles crumpled in flames and were soon joined by others as two Hammerhead tanks began firing from the heights. The air was split by harsh flames as the duel was played out, the or’es’la firing at the blue-white flashes of the Hammerhead’s railguns. The first enemy tank was hit and burst into flames. A second, immobilised with track damage, continued to fire until it was hit beneath a turret by a railgun round. The shot tore the turret from the vehicle in a spray of sparks. Flames shot into the air, enveloping the crew as they tried to escape.

A call came in. ‘Infantry climbing the slipway, O’Shovah!’

From among the tanks appeared or’es’la warriors in blood-red armour. They were running up the slipway and making better progress than the slithering wave of vehicles. At an order from O’Shovah, precision pulse rifle fire swept across them, temporarily clearing the slope of running shapes. The Hammerheads were now firing in salvos. A dozen burning enemy vehicles lay scattered in the sand as testimony to their handiwork. The leading vehicles had climbed as far as a chain of tethered charges hidden in the slipway. Three were disabled with shattered tracks and the rest swung away to one side in apparent confusion. The second wave of vehicles began to climb the slope. Three took direct hits from the Hammerheads and blew apart, but the rest kept churning upwards towards the workshops with single-minded determination.

O’Shovah emerged from his shelter and signalled his surviving bodyguard to follow as he moved behind the protective glacis to reach the dugouts at the workshops. They loped along behind roughly-piled foam-metal blocks, already half buried by the sliding sand. Shells fired by the or’es’la hammered into the area. Red and yellow tracers from their secondary armaments buzzed around the fire warrior positions. A quick glance at his lateral monitors showed O’Shovah more vehicles climbing up on his right as he approached, while his two bodyguards loomed reassuringly in his rear view. O’Shovah leapt over the top of the glacis. Tracers streaked past him as he broke cover. He zig-zagged the battlesuit with surprising dexterity for such a cumbersome device, spotted a large, half-collapsed crater just below him and took cover in it. A moment later, his bodyguards were also in position above and below him on the slope.

Ahead of them, an or’es’la assault group was breaching the top of the slipway, moments away from overrunning the position. O’Shovah locked on to a vehicle and its surrounding infantry, punching a plasma bolt into the former and allowing a salvo of smart missiles to pick off the latter. More plasma bolts and fusion blasts from his bodyguards ripped into the flanked or’es’la. Almost simultaneously, a burst of heavy calibre slugs stitched across the upper torso of O’Shovah’s armour, pitching him out of the crater and sprawling him full-length in the sand. His systems displays were alight with warning indicators as he struggled to stand. His bodyguards moved to protect him. One was blown almost in half by a stray shell, his crisis armour bursting open like rotten fruit.

The shattered remnants of the assault group were running towards them with a truly enormous or’es’la in the lead. Darkness was sliding across the battlefield behind the charging alien like the shadow of death. O’Shovah sighted manually on the bestial-looking warrior and punched a plasma bolt into its torso. To his dismay the creature’s armour shrugged off the strike and it continued to surge forward with its hugely tusked jaws roaring thunderously. O’Shovah tried to fire his rifle again but found it inoperative, he tried to operate his jetpack and found that inoperative too. The or’es’la continued to charge forward, only metres away now.

A blaze of energy engulfed the or’es’la from above, brilliant white beams dancing from one figure to the next, leaving burning torches in their wake. Gazing up, O’Shovah laughed as he saw wide delta shapes blotting out the suns. The familiar silhouettes of Manta missile destroyers hovered above like guardian angels, finally enough of them to evacuate the whole colony.

The aun refused his requests for an audience immediately after evacuation. It was just as well; he’d been furious when he first saw the tau war fleet in orbit. That anger had cooled and hardened in the intervening time. He had visited the shas’ui and seen her adapting to her newly-grown prosthetics day by day. He had seen the other survivors of Arkunasha colony and mourned their dead with them. When the aun finally sent for him he came calmly enough.

There was a triumvirate aboard the Vior’la Gal’leath M’shan comprising Aun’o T’au Vasoy Ty’asla and two other aun, a male and a female, that O’Shovah did not recognise. They did not introduce themselves, nor speak at all when O’Shovah was conveyed to their veiled, opalescent sanctum. Instead Aun’o Vasoy smiled fondly at O’Shovah as he entered and bid his accompanying water caste associates to leave them. Only when they were alone did the female speak.

‘You have done well, shas’o. You bring credit to your caste and your sept. We understand that you are distressed by the casualties incurred under your command.’

She paused as O’Shovah shook his head.

‘Casualties are a fact of war,’ he replied. ‘I am distressed by being starved of reinforcements that evidently exist and the unnecessary hardships thereby inflicted on my command.’

The unidentified male aun spoke. ‘Surely it is not your place to question the strategies of the shas’ar’tol?’

‘It is my place to question poor strategy whenever I see it, and this strategy did not originate from my honoured colleagues at the shas’ar’tol.’ He paused to pull a flimsy sheaf of message transcripts from inside his tunic. ‘I checked.’

Aun’o Vasoy replied. ‘Your success in small unit engagements with the or’es’la has enabled the build up of large reserves. When the campaign to retake Arkunasha begins, it will be undertaken with overwhelming strength.’

‘In other words, you decided to throw away lives now for an easier victory later.’

‘As is our remit, for the greater good.’

There was an awkward moment of silence as O’Shovah failed to respond. Aun’o Vasoy seemed genuinely puzzled.

‘Shas’o, you act as if the war was lost, when your actions have virtually assured victory.’

O’Shovah dashed the transcript on the floor in sudden fury. ‘Because I was not told!’

The aun drew back from his anger, their eyes becoming hooded. O’Shovah breathed deeply, mastering himself before speaking again.

‘You allowed me and my cadres to fight in the belief that no help was coming while you sat in orbit doing nothing. With sufficient forces, I could have ensured that the or’es’la never even reached the colony!’

‘Possibly,’ Aun’o Vasoy admitted. ‘Yet your situation spurred you to the highest efforts. As you said yourself, casualties are a fact of war. Yet you minimised your own and maximised those incurred by the enemy. Is that not victory?’

‘Of a sort,’ O’Shovah admitted bitterly. ‘And yet superior attrition seems to be the lowest form of success to my eyes.’

‘Come now, you must lay aside your grief for your lost warriors,’ Aun’o Vasoy said reasonably. ‘You have the gratitude of the Tau Empire and the approbation of your fellow caste members. I understand that they have even gifted you a new name in celebration of your success.’

The warrior’s face had become an immobile mask. He revealed nothing of his inner feelings when he responded finally.

‘Indeed, they have dubbed me O’Shovah – Commander Farsight – for my alleged ability to see into the future, and I have pledged to them that in future times the Tau Empire will remember my name.’

Bitter End

S P Cawkwell

For many years, he had made bargains, accords and dark pacts, both with powers he could name and several more that he dared not. He could not remember the last time he had merely requested something and the Imperium had provided it. In the days of his hated and enforced servitude to the Corpse-Emperor, he had but to requisition something and it was his.

Now, whenever he wanted something, Huron Blackheart simply reached out with the might of his loyal Red Corsairs and he took it. His greedy, grasping claws closed around objects, people and entire star systems and stole them away. He looted and plundered, he stole and he murdered. Occasionally though, he would come upon a treasure that he could not simply claim.

When this happened, he would be roused from the shadows in which he now existed and he would hunt down his quarry in an entirely different manner. He would sit down with agents of the most powerful and most influential and he would talk. He would barter and negotiate, bringing his considerable charisma and cunning to the fore and he would make more deals.

His reputation preceded him wherever he went and many wisely shied away from reaching any sort of arrangement with the Tyrant of Badab, fearing for their lives. But there were many more who boldly sealed their agreements with him in blood.

Sometimes, Huron Blackheart even kept his word.

This had been an agri-world once. But in the wake of an exterminatus it had become uninhabitable. Its given name was lost in history, leaving it with the identifier that had been bestowed upon it during the halcyon days of the Great Crusade. Eighty-Three Fourteen was a wasteland. Nothing grew here any more and the only things that lived were the most tenacious of bacteria. The seas had boiled away, leaving vast expanses of arid ground that was cracked and blistered. The ferocity of the bombardment had broken open the crust and disturbed something deep in the planet’s core. Volcanic lava bubbled up through the wounds in the earth and spilled across its ruined surface like blood. There was a constant smouldering heat haze that loaned everything a slightly distorted, unreal appearance.

It was a prime example of an inhospitable environment but the gigantic figures making their steady way across its broken surface were not in the slightest bit bothered by the poisoned air or the excruciating heat. They walked without tiring, keeping up a pace they could sustain for many days if they so desired. They had marched to war in this way many times. But on this day, there was no war to be had. This was a deputation sent to accompany their lord and master to a summit.

Huron Blackheart walked in the midst of half a dozen of his Red Corsairs, the only one not wearing a helm. The countless implants and prosthetics that held his brain within what remained of his skull meant that wearing a tactical armour helm caused him great discomfort. Additionally, for the most part, it was such a laborious and time-consuming process to rewire sections of his cranial implants to accept a helm that it was little more than a hindrance. The complex, wheezing workings of his replacement lungs and respiratory system filtered the atmosphere in much the same way as a helmet anyway; and thus the choking, sulphuric air had no effect on him at all. Bareheaded, he stood out as unique amidst the group.

He could have made this journey alone but had elected to field a show of strength. He was wily and astute, blessed with cunning and guile like no other. But he did not trust the individual with whom he was dealing.

It had been a tedious process setting up this meeting. Dengesha had not been prepared to travel to Huron Blackheart’s stronghold deep in the heart of the Maelstrom and neither did the Blood Reaver care to board a ship almost entirely populated by warp-witches. He had used sorcerers for his own ends before, of course. Indeed, it had been his own cabal who had suggested Dengesha as the best possible candidate for the task. Increasingly heated exchanges had taken place until an impasse had been reached. Neutral ground was the solution.

On a rocky outcrop overlooking the volcanic plains of a world that had once teemed with life, the shape of another giant could be made out. A baroque silhouette, picked out by the weak rays of the sickly yellow sun, stood alone. One of Huron’s retinue pointed upwards with the muzzle of a bolter, indicating the other’s presence.

‘I see him,’ Huron said, simply. ‘I told you he would come.’ A deep chuckle came from his ravaged throat. ‘He could not help himself.’

Dengesha took no sobriquet in order to convey his greatness. It was not in his nature to embrace an honorific that extolled his deeds to the outside world. He was no Despoiler or Betrayer. He chose instead to let his actions speak for themselves. For centuries he had stood at the head of the Heterodox, a cabal of sorcerers who, it was rumoured, had splintered centuries earlier from the Word Bearers. Dengesha was said to have studied the heart of Chaos Undivided for more than five thousand years and as such, his well of knowledge ran deep.

There was nothing about Dengesha that suggested such great age. His visage was timeless and its individual features unimpressive. He bore several scars on his face but more than this were the countless runes and brands that were seared into his skin. They writhed and twisted now under Huron’s scrutiny, living things that spoke of a true disciple of the Dark Powers. He felt no discomfort in the sorcerer’s presence. He was fully at ease with his own confidence.

The two Space Marines, the warrior and the psyker, had moved to meet one another within a cave in the rock face. Neither’s attendant retinues were with them as per the terms of their agreement.

The cave had once been a natural wonder and the source of a wellspring that had kept the local agricultural workers provided with water. As high as a refinery tower within, the cave was studded with broken, jagged stalagmites and stalactites that glittered with seams of semi-precious rock. Inside this cave, high above the shattered plains, was the only moisture remaining anywhere on the planet.

The underground spring that had once nourished crops and quenched the thirst of thousands of Imperial workers was now a toxic sink hole, steaming and roiling gently. Periodically, air would escape from a fissure and expand with a rush, spraying boiling water in all directions. It spattered against the armour of the two giants who stood face-to-face. Neither gave ground for some time and then the psyker broke the stalemate with a bitter greeting.

‘Blood Reaver.’

Huron greeted the sorcerer in kind and they considered each other in further mute, candid appreciation for a while. Their eyes locked and the sorcerer’s head tipped slightly to one side. The master of the Red Corsairs felt the faintest brush on his mind as the other attempted a psychic evaluation. The resultant sharp intake of breath brought a smile.

‘Difficulties, Dengesha?’

‘You are no psyker and yet you are warded… what is it that shields your mind from my sight?’

‘Are you so disappointed? Should you not be wary of being so free with the admission that you are invading my thoughts without my permission?’ Huron’s voice was grating and harsh, dragged from replacement vocal cords and a vox-unit that had been tuned and retuned until it sounded as close to human as it could. Which was not very.

‘You know my nature, Lord Huron. It is, after all, why you sought me out. Now answer my question.’ Dengesha’s words were demanding, yet his tone remained deferential. Huron approved of the approach. ‘What is it that grants you this protection?’

‘Perhaps you should tell me what you have heard?’ The question was thrown back at the sorcerer who folded his arms across his chest.

‘I have heard,’ he said, choosing his words carefully, ‘in rumours whispered throughout the Eye that the four favour you. You carry a boon they granted you. I have heard that something walks at your side and grants you certain… benefits.’

‘You are very well informed.’ Dengesha took another sharp intake of breath and Huron continued. ‘Does that surprise you, sorcerer? Do you taste envy? Are you curious as to why it is that the Dark Powers see fit to grant me such a gift? Look closely, Dengesha. Tell me what you see.’

The sorcerer considered the Red Corsair for a few moments. He looked the warrior up and down. A giant clad in desecrated red armour with so many augmetics and implants that he looked more like a blighted tech-priest or enginseer than the scourge of the Imperium. The metal-plated head shook slightly and a quirk of amusement twitched the lipless mouth.

‘No, Dengesha. Look properly. Use your witch-sight.’

The sorcerer looked. And he saw.

The word hamadrya had never been a part of Huron Blackheart’s vocabulary until the day he had been reborn. There had been many deals made in those few days when he had hovered in the grey mists that lingered between life and death. His body had been left all but useless in the wake of the Star Phantoms assault on the Palace of Thorns and without the anchor of its corporeal weight, his soul had been free to wander at will.

Nobody knew who – or what – he had consorted with in those days. But if the thought was never expressed aloud, all of the Red Corsairs knew that their lord and master had to have made some pact. He could not have survived otherwise, despite the ceaseless labours of his most faithful. They could repair the physical damage to their Chapter Master’s body, but that was all.

But none ever asked of the events that had transpired and Huron Blackheart never volunteered the information.

The hamadrya had begun its life as a thought. A potentiality. A tendril of insubstantial warp-stuff that draped itself invisibly across Huron’s mantle. Over weeks, months and years it had become something more tangible. In its earliest stages, it was nothing more than a wisp. A curl of smoky air that lingered around the warrior’s shoulder like a mist snake wrapping itself protectively around him. Huron himself seemed either oblivious or indifferent to its presence, but over time began to notice that he was developing a sensitivity and then a resistance to psychic intrusions.

The more he realised this, the stronger the warding became until the ethereal presence at his shoulder took on a more corporeal form. Sometimes it was reptilian. Sometimes avian. Other times simian. Always animalistic and always no larger than the breadth of the warrior’s shoulder span. Others could see it, but never for long. Most of the time it could only be glimpsed briefly out of the corner of the eye, leaving the viewer wondering if they had seen it at all.

It granted Huron Blackheart an extra layer of power that boosted an already overinflated sense of ego. But it had limitations. It was a creature of the warp, after all.

The sorcerer looked. And he saw.

‘I confess, my Lord, that I did not believe the rumours to be true,’ he confessed. He had considered the tale of the familiar to be nothing more than a figment of the mad Tyrant’s overwrought imagination. Yet his witch-sight gave him a unique view. ‘I have never seen its like before. Is this what they call the hamadrya?’

‘Indeed it is. And you would do well not to concern yourself further with its origins or its purpose. Consider instead the question my agent put to you.’ Always quick to the point, Huron Blackheart did not care to linger on matters past.

‘Yes, Lord Huron.’ Dengesha bowed from the waist. ‘I consider it a great honour that you seek my assistance in this matter. I understand that your… blessing loses power; that it becomes weaker the further from the heart of the Maelstrom you travel. In conjunction with your own cabal…’ There was unmistakable superiority in Dengesha’s tone as he said the word, ‘I have determined what you need to overcome this limitation.’

‘The hamadrya is a thing of the warp,’ Huron said. He drummed his fingers idly against his armour plated thigh. The noise reverberated through the cavernous chamber, the acoustics oddly distorted. ‘It draws its strength from the powers therein. And the further from its source I travel…’ He broke off and raised his head to study Dengesha. ‘My cabal have told me what I need. A potent soul, shackled by arcane powers. The hamadrya can feed from its torment for all eternity. But my sorcerers, strong as they are… cannot do this one thing.’

Huron’s red, artificial eye whirred softly as it focused. ‘Give me my solution, Dengesha and we will share the spoils of war.’

‘You need a potent soul.’

‘I have found such a thing. Sister Brigitta of the Order of the Iron Rose.’

‘I have heard of this Order and of this woman. The self-proclaimed saviour of her people. She who bears the sins of a generation on her shoulders.’

‘Aye. One of the faithful. A powerful symbol.’

‘You need a suitable vessel. Such a thing will not be easy to locate, my Lord. It could take many long months of searching…’

‘You underestimate my resources, Dengesha.’ Huron’s twisted face distorted in a smile again and he twisted a loop on his belt bringing an object slowly into view.

The bottle was exquisite. Deep, emerald green in colour, it was a fusion of bottle and vial with a wide lip tapering to a long, slim neck that fed into a small oval bowl. It was encased within beautiful fretwork, wrought from copper or brass or some other burnished metal that snaked around its delicate surface.

‘My cabal attached this vessel to my belt,’ said Huron. ‘They told me that only another sorcerer could remove it, that if I were to touch it myself, the power would be tainted.’ He shifted his hip slightly so that it was facing Dengesha, who snapped open the belt loop, taking the bottle in his hands. He could feel its imbued power; a thrum of psychic energy that made his hands vibrate gently as he held it. Huron studied him.

‘On the understanding that you will give me what I ask for, I make a gift of this vessel to you so that you may work whatever fell deeds necessary. Do you accept?’

‘Gladly, my lord. Such an arcane item… such a relic must have cost you dearly. Where did you locate it?’

‘My sources are many and varied. Do not bother yourself with detail. Is it adequate for its purpose?’

‘More than adequate.’ Dengesha studied the bottle in admiration for a while, then with a series of hand movements, caused it to disappear. It was little more than cheap theatrics and it did nothing to change the expression on Huron Blackheart’s artificial face. ‘This Sister Brigitta of yours will be heavily guarded, of course. I will need absolutely no distractions whilst I perform the binding.’

‘Leave that side of the bargain to me, master sorcerer. My Red Corsairs will distract whatever pitiful forces guard her and you will take your coterie and perform your rituals. You will present me with what I want and in return, I give the Heterodox the world in her charge for your chapels and its people for,’ he gave a creaking shrug, ‘whatever you see fit.’ His augmetic eye darkened briefly as though he blinked, a slow, thoughtful thing that was somehow unsettling. ‘Do we have an agreement?’

‘A world and its subjects? My lord, that is… very generous of you.’

Huron shrugged. ‘My Corsairs will still take what spoils we desire, but it is not beyond me to show gratitude and generosity. Now tell me, Dengesha of the Heterodox, do we have an agreement?’

‘We do.’

There were many who boldly sealed their agreements in blood. Dengesha of the Heterodox was one such individual.

Sometimes, Huron Blackheart even kept his word.

The temple burned.

Since time immemorial, the Order of the Iron Rose had been cloistered within their monument to the Emperor of Mankind. A dizzyingly aesthetic building, the temple had stood proudly within well-guarded walls for countless generations. The sisters lived their studious lives quietly, only leaving at times of war when their fierce battle skills were most needed. Then, their comparative gentleness could easily be forgotten in the face of their roaring battle madness.

Sister Brigitta was the incumbent canoness, but had always eschewed the title, preferring to remain on the same level as her sisters. She was dearly beloved by all who knew her. Intelligent and insightful, her words of wisdom on any number of subjects were treated as precious jewels to be collected and admired.

She stood now, clad in her copper-coloured battle armour, her black and silver-flecked hair streaming in the breeze. The armour forced her to stand upright with a grace and dignity that added weight to her command. Her jaw was tightened and her face bore an implacable expression as she stared down from the highest chamber of the steeple at the slaughter taking place far below.

Tears ran down her face, but not of fear. They were tears of rage and regret that the sanctity of the temple had been violated. At either side, her two most trusted lieutenants also wept at the wanton destruction that rampaged below.

They had come without warning. They had struck fast and they had struck without mercy. The loyal Palatine Guard who protected the sacred grounds had done an admirable job of holding the enemy at bay but ultimately, they were only human. What hope could they have against the Adeptus Astartes?

Sister Brigitta surveyed the carnage. Seemingly countless forces of the giant Space Marines pitted against the pitiable wall of humanity. That delicate wall of mortal flesh was the only thing standing between the Chaos forces and the sisters.

From here, she could not see the faces of the brave guardsmen who died in their futile efforts to protect the Order, but she imagined that each shared the same look of zealous ferocity. The Order of the Iron Rose preached that fear made one weak and had no place on the battlefield.

The barking report of bolter fire filled the air and the murderous whine of chainblades was all-pervading. The screams of the dying were agony to listen to and the ground below was already running scarlet with the blood of the fallen. Some of the Chaos warriors fell upon their victims, hacking and dismembering. The sight sickened Sister Brigitta. Beside her, Sister Anastasia murmured a soft litany, commending the souls of the departed to the Emperor.

‘We must meet in the central chamber,’ the canoness finally said, tearing her eyes from the slaughter. ‘Gather the Order, Sister Anastasia.’

‘Yes, sister.’ Anastasia left immediately to carry out her superior’s command and the canoness stood for several moments longer, salt-tears running down her weather-tanned face.

‘The Order of the Iron Rose will stand to the last, traitors,’ she promised, raising her voice to be heard above the growing wind.

The Red Corsairs had dealt with the pathetic human threat in short order. Even as the last guardsman died, pierced on the end of a chainblade, Huron Blackheart’s warriors had turned their weapons on the temple walls and gates. They had been erected over the course of many years by master craftsmen and artisans.

What had taken humanity years to perfect and construct was levelled in minutes by four Traitor Space Marines and their multi-meltas. The irony of that equation amused Huron Blackheart enough to make him laugh out loud.

He had accompanied his forces to the surface of this world but had taken no part in the battle. He had stood to one side with Dengesha and his cabal of sorcerers, watching with displaced indifference as they butchered their way forwards.

Another direct hit on the wall finally reduced it to molten slag, a huge cloud of pale steam billowing outwards from the destruction and coating the armour of the warriors in a fine film of grit. The Red Corsairs did not wait for their master’s order to proceed. They crossed the threshold of the sacred temple and met the second wave of PDF forces with renewed vigour.

Dengesha moved forwards dispassionately, his cabal moving with him like a flock of birds flittering around their mother. Fighting independently, each warrior-psyker was capable of incalculable destruction. Fighting as a unit, they were imbued with such power that no mortal man could look upon the forces of the warp flowing from them and hope to survive.

Dark lightning flickered from fingertips, fire burst from the palms of their hands and the very earth itself trembled where they trod. The sheer, raw power they exuded was tremendous and Huron Blackheart watched their performance with something akin to raw hunger on his face.

Three guardsmen were incinerated with a blast from Dengesha’s fingers, their bodies catching fire as though they were nothing more than dead wood. They died in terrible agony, screaming and begging for mercy. Huron watched as their ravaged faces slowly melted, like candles burning down to the taper.

Another unfortunate soldier was caught in the mesmerising stare of one of the Heterodox and found himself unable to move. With a press of psychic power, the sorcerer burst the guardsman’s brain like a ripe fruit. The man fell to his knees, blood and grey matter dribbling from his ears before he pitched over, face first into the dust.

The winds had whipped up to a frenzy now, but these were no natural weather conditions. This was the work of the Heterodox and the winds carried maddening whispers, half-heard promises and dire threats. They blew from the very heart of the warp itself and plucked at the souls of men with ethereal claws. Some who were caught in its path went mad in an instant, hacking and slashing at phantasms only they could see or hear. Others stood their ground more firmly, litanies of warding on their lips.

But each was slain. Each pitiful stalk was reaped and the more death and destruction there was, the more powerful the cabal seemed to grow until, with a feverish cry to the dark gods of Chaos Undivided, the Heterodox unleashed the true horror of their collective.

From without, the sounds of battle echoed. From within, the sisters of the Order radiated a calm composure. A small order, barely one hundred Sisters of Battle had gathered together in the central chamber. They were all clad in armour similar to Sister Brigitta’s, although where hers was a burnished copper hue, theirs were a deeper colour, a reddish bronze that glinted in the light cast by the candles and sconces on the walls.

‘Our time here is short, sisters,’ the canoness began when she had Anastasia’s assurance that all were present. ‘Our enemy has breached the gate and they will soon dare to desecrate the most sacred inner sanctum of our beloved Order.’ Brigitta reached up as she spoke and braided her thick hair into a plait that hung like a rope down her back. None of the Order would go into battle with their hair loose. It was an affectation, but an important one. Brigitta’s visual reminder of the very physical pre-battle preparation instilled focus amongst the gathered sisters. In the ensemble, others mirrored her action.

‘We will not stand and allow that to happen. We will hold out against these intruders for as long as the Emperor gives us the strength. We will stand our ground until the bitter end. We fight the gravest of traitors, my sisters. We battle against fallen angels. Traitor Space Marines. And they bring witch-kin with them.’

A palpable ripple of dismay ran through the sisters. They had stood proud against countless enemies. Aliens, cultists, even a preceptory of Battle Sisters who had lost their way, and they had always triumphed. They had fought alongside Space Marines many times. But the Order of the Iron Rose had never fought against them.

Brigitta raised a hand for silence and she got it immediately. From outside the fortified walls of the temple, the muffled sounds of gunfire and terrible, bloody death could be heard, filling in the pauses in her impassioned speech.

‘We are the beloved of the Emperor. We are the Sisters of the Iron Rose. We stand as a reminder that the flower of that name is protected by thorns. We will not allow these foul traitors to reach out and pluck us from existence without exacting our payment in blood first.’

She raised her bolter to her shoulder and cast her eyes around the assembled battle sisters. ‘We will make our stand in the rear courtyard. If we draw the traitor filth out into the open, they may exact less damage on our temple.’ It was unlikely, and most of the Order knew it, but they were words that encouraged her sisters. Brigitta was under no illusions; the battle that was coming towards them could well be the last thing any of them saw. But they would die as they had lived, defending the Emperor’s legacy.

The clouds above the temple boiled, swirling together in a dark mass of intangible horror. The wind was now a gale, screaming its unnatural, elemental fury across the surface of the planet and whipping up the detritus from the fallen walls into plumed, choking columns. Lightning coruscated within the cloud and as it moved, it picked up dust and debris, including corpses of the fallen.

The Chaos-driven maelstrom moved with almost agonising slowness across the battlefield. Beneath it, the earth split and wept streams of tar and sulphur. Those who still stood were either knocked from their feet by the quaking of the ground beneath them, or they were caught up in the storm’s passage and sucked, screaming, into its abyssal depths.

From what remained of the temple walls, valiant surviving forces turned the defence guns on the cabal who stood as a pack, their hands raised, palms upward, to the skies that bubbled overhead. Each of the twelve was the perfect mirror image of the others. Whilst all were wearing horned helms, their stance was arrogance itself.

The armoured turrets roared defiance and one of the sorcerers was destroyed, his torso chewed apart by the stream of high-velocity shells. The cabal did not change position but, as one, their heads turned towards the weapons mounted on the wall.

Dengesha made a slicing motion with his hand and the winds changed direction and increased speed, moving with impossible haste towards its new target.

Sister Brigitta stood defiant amidst her battle sisters. She was a woman who had lived a life filled with devotion to the Emperor who she loved every bit as much as she cared for every woman who stood around her. Their honour and courage now, in the face of overwhelming odds, was a reward unlike any other.

From the youngest novice to Sister Anastasia, with whom she had fought in many engagements, she knew each one of them. She knew their life histories. She knew their hopes and she knew their fears. She was no psyker, but you could not live your whole life within an Order and not gain remarkable skills of perception.

She loved her sisters and though she may die here today, that love would bring her faith and the strength to stand her ground.

Her thoughts were wrenched back to the present as she heard the echo of a crashing thump in the distance. The sound of weapons being brought to bear against the gate.

‘They come,’ she said, her voice low and soft, yet carrying such authority that every one of the Order stood straighter. There was the sound of weapons being readied, of magazines being slammed into place, of swords being drawn from sheaths. There were overlaying, incomprehensible litanies and prayers.

Another sickening crump against the gate.

‘We will stand defiant,’ Brigitta said, raising her bolter above her head. ‘Ave Imperator!’

The battle cry was echoed, but was drowned out by the sound of an explosion that blew in the ancient, stained crystal windows as the enemy breached the gates.

‘Be ready! Hold firm! Do not doubt in yourself for one moment. Trust to your sisters and trust to your blessed weapons. A morte perpetua. Domine, libra nos!’

Battle cries were torn from their throats and one hundred battle sisters took up arms and prepared to make their stand.

The maelstrom ripped the guns from their mountings as though they were plants placed in dry soil. The guardsmen who had manned them were pulverised by the shrapnel from the destruction as the howling, unholy winds ripped the turrets into nothing more than shards. Mangled pieces of weaponry tore through their bodies, cutting them to ribbons and, in one young soldier’s case, decapitating them. The spiralling morass of metal and ruined flesh added its mass to the storm and above the temple, the skies began to rain droplets of blood.

At the final gate, Huron Blackheart’s traitors had set melta charges against the armoured portal. The blocky devices clamped to the towering hinges with a metallic clang and the Corsairs withdrew. The bombs detonated with a wash of heat and an earth-shattering explosion that rocked the ground.

Slowly, Dengesha’s cabal ceased the link with their powers and the violent, raging winds began to subside. The first obstacle had been overcome. The second – and their objective – lay behind the devastated walls.

The Chaos sorcerer turned his helmeted head towards Huron. ‘You must not kill her,’ he said through the vox-bead in the Tyrant’s ear. ‘If she dies, her soul will be as good as useless to us. Do not let your barbarian horde rip the Order apart without first isolating the mark.’

A twitch of irritation showed on Huron’s face. ‘I am not completely without intellect, Dengesha.’ The fingers that were wrapped around his massive battle axe tightened visibly. The sorcerer’s face could not be seen, but Huron could sense his smirk. ‘I will be taking care of dear Sister Brigitta myself.’

‘My sincerest apologies. I did not mean to imply you were anything but knowledgeable in the ways of warp majesty, my lord.’ His sarcasm was biting and Huron turned away from the sorcerer cursing the necessity of their temporary association. It would be over soon. The Order of the Iron Rose would be obliterated and he would take his prize.

He comforted himself with the thought. In due course, his familiar would feast from a soul most worthy of its hunger.

Striding across the courtyard, Huron surveyed the damage with an approving expression. What remained of the gate was barely recognisable as any sort of portal. Broken spurs of plasteel jutted in all directions and the metal composite that had been mixed into the gate for reinforcement was little more than dust. Occasionally, more dust would fall in a pathetic clump from the walls either side of the former door.

The Red Corsairs strode forwards, warriors with a clear objective and purpose. In the eyes of the Imperium, they were renegades. But they were still Space Marines and the regimental mindset came easily to them. Until the fighting started, at least.

‘Listen to me, my Corsairs,’ said Huron across the vox. ‘When we locate the sisters, do not touch their leader. She belongs to me.’ He addressed the entire group, but knew that not all of them would truly hear him. ‘The toys we have despatched thus far have been an easy enemy and they will have sent out the word for aid. By the time that aid arrives, there will be nothing left but a smoking ruin.’

A few scattered roars of approval drew a nod from Huron. ‘What we will come up against in there will be more challenging, but do not falter. We come to take a prize that will make us even greater than we are. The Imperium of Mankind and their pathetic Corpse-Emperor will rue the day they ever named us traitor.’

There were grunts of acknowledgement across the board, some coherent, others less so. Just as his band of renegades were drawn from a vast background of different Chapters, so their levels of sanity varied. Huron cared little for the butchers amongst his followers. They served a purpose in war but when it came to more delicate matters, they were an encumbrance.

Fortunately, he had enough sane followers to keep the borderline berserkers in check.

‘Then we move with all haste to the final stage of our action here. Find the sisters. Kill those you must, but leave the canoness alive.’

Without further hesitation, the Red Corsairs streamed into the sacred Temple of the Blessed Dawn.

They rampaged through the temple without thought for preservation. Marble floors cracked and split beneath their heavy tread. Chainblades chewed through statue and carvings alike, making firewood of huge portraits of sisters and saints. Some riches were left intact. Over the years, the Red Corsairs had all developed an eye for goods that would please their lord and master for, it was said, his collection of Imperial relics was beyond compare. They would retrace their steps before they departed and gather up such treasures, along with the weapons of the fallen. For them, that was the most valuable reward.

Their plundering steps ultimately took them through the central chamber where the sisters of the Order had recently gathered. Dengesha nodded approvingly.

‘This will be a good place for the ritual,’ he said.

‘Then you remain here, sorcerer, and make whatever preparation is necessary. We will seek out Sister Brigitta and I will bring her to you personally.’ Huron ran his tongue over his metal teeth in a parody of hunger. He swung his battle axe easily and it chewed its way through a beautifully painted rendition of some long-ago battle at which the Sisters had been victorious. Its shredded remnants dangled to the ground and the memory of the great war was lost after no more than a single stroke.

The first two Red Corsairs to throw open the heavy door that led out to the courtyard were torn apart by incoming bolter fire. The battle sisters had kept their weapons trained on the exit and the moment it opened they had pulled the triggers instantly. The explosive rounds buried themselves in the armoured hides of the traitors and burst them apart in a storm of gore and ceramite shards. The bodies disintegrated messily but their sacrifice bought those that followed enough time to bring their weapons to bear and return fire. Four sisters were thrown backwards, unbalancing several more. Before they were back on their feet, the Red Corsairs had flooded into the courtyard and the fight began in earnest.

The Sisters of Battle were greater in number than the Red Corsairs and their armour afforded them a degree of protection. But they were facing an undisciplined rabble whose tactics were unpredictable at best and unfathomable at worst. The battle sisters held their position, clustered around the canoness like a sea of bronze with a copper island at their centre. They formed a circle around where she stood on the rim of a fountain, crying out orders to her warriors.

The initial firefight did not last long. At a word from the Tyrant, the Red Corsairs pressed forwards, chainblades whining, and began to cut their way through the serried ranks of women. The ring surrounding the canoness grew tighter and smaller.

The stink of ruined flesh and spent bolter rounds was strong in the air and so much smoke rose from the detonations that it choked the courtyard with a fog of bloody vapour and fyceline.

‘Courage, sisters!’ Brigitta’s voice was clear, like a bell sounding through the uproar. ‘Remember your teachings! You tread the path of righteousness. Though it be paved with broken glass, you will walk it barefoot…’

Brigitta paused in the recital as she watched Sister Anastasia’s broken body fall to the ground. A grief unlike any she had ever known before passed through her with a shudder. She summoned up every ounce of her considerable inner strength and brought her bolter to bear on the hated enemy. Her voice rose through the noise once again.

‘Though it crosses rivers of fire, we will pass over them…’

Her voice was strong and did not waver, but the strength of her armed guard was failing. Not through lack of zeal or fire; if she were to take any reward from this abysmal horror before her, it was that her beloved sisters died honourably and bravely. But it was failing through sheer loss of its numbers. What had once been a ring that had been several bodies deep now presented a barrier of barely a dozen of her sisters.

A number of the traitor Red Corsairs had been felled, but their armour, better and more intricate than that of the Battle Sisters, deflected more and protected them for longer. Brigitta realised with a sinking heart that they were probably not even dead. That their enhanced physiology would aid their recovery and that they might rise to fight another day. And she despised them for it. She loathed their continued existence. To her mind, they represented the worst kind of faithless traitors the Imperium could have conceived.

She abhorred them for tearing apart the temple, her home, the place where she had grown from a teenage girl to womanhood.

She…

…was bleeding.

Brigitta tasted, for the first time in her life, a tremor of fear. It was seasoned with the coppery taste of her own blood as she bit her lip hard enough to put her teeth through the delicate skin. The flavour of her own mortality gave her enough strength to complete her fervent prayer.

‘Though it wanders wide, the light of the Emperor guides my – our – step.’ She slammed a fresh magazine into her bolter and, letting out a screaming roar of battle rage, unleashed her full fury at the encroaching enemy.

At her feet, dead and dying sisters spilled blood and viscera across the courtyard stones. The image of their defeat burned itself onto her retinas and branded hatred on her heart. Tears of anger and terrible, terrible grief blurred her vision, but she did not – she would not – falter. Not now.

She continued to fire her bolter into the enemy without caring any longer whether she hit them or not. It became an act of sheer venomous loathing.

After a few short moments, she became aware that outside her immediate sphere of awareness the sounds of battle had ceased. Only one weapon continued to fire and that was hers. It did not detract from her focus, however, and she poured ammunition at the enemy until the last bolter shell clattered to the floor.

One of the enemy, bareheaded and terrible, moved from the pack to stand before her.

‘You are Sister Brigitta of the Order of the Iron Rose,’ he stated. It was not a question. She looked up into his inhuman face and drew in a rasping breath. She had seen unhelmed Space Marines warriors before and was used to their over-exaggerated features. But this… creature… that stood before her was so far removed from anything even remotely human that she felt, against her will, the urge to scream in incoherent contempt. A poisonous air of evil came from him and she felt sick to her stomach.

She began to quietly recite litanies of faith to herself, never once taking her gaze from this augmetic monstrosity. She neither confirmed nor denied the accusation of her identity but instead ripped the combat blade from its sheath at her side and plunged it the traitor’s throat. Blackheart sighed wearily before catching her wild lunge on the back of his claw. Then, with excruciating care, not wanting to kill her outright, he backhanded her into unconsciousness.

She was like a rag doll in his arms, limp and lifeless, and as he carried Sister Brigitta into the chamber, Huron Blackheart marvelled as he always did at the papery inefficacy of the human body. He wondered how it was they had any resilience without the enhancements that he shared with all his gene-bred brothers. Brigitta’s face where he had struck her was distorted. He had fractured her cheekbone at the very least and purple bruising was swelling up around her jaw. Her braided hair had come loose and hung freely down.

Dengesha turned to study them. He had removed his helm and Huron was struck once again by the wriggling sigils that marked the sorcerer’s face. ‘You did not kill her?’

‘She is merely unconscious. Allow me a little credit.’

‘Then lay her next to the vessel and I can begin the ritual.’ Already Dengesha had made the preparations for the rite that would bind the potent soul to the cursed vial. The green bottle lay on its side, an innocuous and inanimate object. Around the chamber, Dengesha had marked out a number of unreadable symbols, each one drawn at the point of what formed the eight-pointed star of Chaos. One each of his cabal stood at seven of the points, the top-most remaining free and evidently waiting for Dengesha’s leisure.

Huron moved forward and dumped Brigitta’s body without any ceremony on the ground where the sorcerer indicated. He noted as he did so that the sigils drawn on the floor were marked in blood; most likely from that of the dead soldiers.

‘You should step outside the borders of the mark, my lord. Once we channel the powers necessary to perform the binding, they will be potent.’

From beyond the broken walls of the temple, the distant sounds of shouting could be heard. The assistance that the temple guards had called for was finally arriving. Huron nodded to several of his warriors who moved wordlessly out of the chamber.

‘They cannot be allowed to enter this place whilst I am working. The balance of this work is delicate.’

‘My men will keep them away.’ Huron took several steps back. ‘Trust to their abilities to do that. I, however, will remain.’

‘As you wish.’

Huron Blackheart had witnessed many rituals of this kind in his life, but he had never seen one driven with such determination and single-minded focus. He watched Dengesha closely as the sorcerer moved back to take his point at the tip of the star and listened intently to the words that he recited. It did him little good, as the sorcerer spoke in some arcane tongue that Huron did not understand, though the inflection was clear.

The seven other members of the Heterodox echoed his words, one at a time until the chant was being repeated with a discordant, impossible to follow rhythm. The sound grew and swelled and all the while there was the underscore of another battle taking place beyond the temple walls.

A thick black substance, like tar from a pit, began to bubble up in the space marked out by the points of the star. It rose upwards, never spilling over the edge of its limits and coated first the bottle and then the unconscious Sister Brigitta in a film of inky blackness. Dengesha’s chant became almost musical, as though he were singing. His eyes were fevered and his expression one of pure ecstasy.

The thick, gelatinous substance became more and more viscous and at some point during its creeping encroachment, Brigitta stirred from her unconsciousness. Realising that she was being smothered, she opened her mouth to cry out. The fluid rushed into her mouth and she began to choke on it, writhing desperately on the floor as she struggled to breathe.

As soon as that happened, Dengesha stepped forward from his position and moved to stand above her. Huron watched, leaning forward ever so slightly. This was it. This was the moment. He had made countless pacts and agreements to reach this point and so had his followers. This was the point at which it would all pay off. Or the point at which it would fail.

Outside, the sounds of gunfire had stopped, but the Chaos sorcerer paid no heed.

Dengesha looked down at the wriggling human woman with a look of total contempt, then reached to take her arm firmly in his grip. He guided it to the glass vial and placed her hand upon it, wrapping his gauntlets around her tiny hands. He then spoke the only words that Huron could understand.

‘Be forever bound.’

The oily liquid began to slowly ebb away, draining until all that remained was the faintest slick on the ground. Brigitta, who was in tremendous pain and almost frozen with terror stared at the green vial, then she stared up at the sorcerer.

Then, summoning every ounce of strength and fortitude she possessed, she spat in his face. Dengesha began to laugh, a hateful, booming sound that bounced around the walls of the chamber and resonated in everyone’s vox-bead.

Then abruptly the laughter stopped and a look of utmost dread crept slowly over Dengesha’s face. His fist, which had been ready to crush Brigitta’s skull, suddenly opened out flat. His face slackened, his posture changed and he slouched suddenly as though wearied.

And Huron smiled at him.

‘What is this treachery?’ The sorcerer spun around to face the Tyrant of Badab, who stood watching him with an air of amusement. ‘What have you done, Blackheart?’

‘Ah, Dengesha. Your fate was sealed the moment you took the vial from me. You were quite right. I needed a potent soul. And my sorcerers found me one. Yours, in fact. And now, with the ritual of binding complete, your soul and the vial are united. You quite literally belong to me.’

‘This is not possible! There is no way you could have… your sorcerers are nothing compared to the glory of the Heterodox!’

‘Ah, arrogance has been the downfall of many a brother of the Adeptus Astartes over the millennia, brother. My sorcerers may not be as powerful as you and your former cabal, but they are far more cunning.’ Seemingly bored of the conversation, Huron moved around the chamber, occasionally turning over the body of a fallen soldier with his booted foot. He picked up a boltgun, empty of ammunition and dropped it back down with a clang.

Dengesha’s face was fury itself and he reached out to the powers of the warp. But none of them answered him. His black, tainted soul was no longer his to command. He looked to each of his cabal in turn and for their part, they turned from him.

‘You all knew of this,’ he stated flatly. ‘You betrayed me to this cur…’

‘Come now, Dengesha. If you seek to wound my feelings, you will have to try a lot harder than that.’ Huron stooped and picked up a meltagun. ‘My agents have been dealing with your cabal for months. They agree that their prospects with me and my Corsairs are more interesting than a lifetime of servitude under your leadership. It has been vexing, true – but I think you will agree that the ultimate reward is well worth it.’

On the ground, Sister Brigitta was listening to the exchange without understanding it. All she knew was that these two traitors were speaking such heresy as it was almost unbearable to be a party to.

Dengesha stared at Huron’s back with a look that could have killed and perhaps once, before his soul had been plucked from his body, could have done.

‘So you see, Dengesha. In a way, my promise to you is truth. Now that your Heterodox are part of my Corsairs, they will help themselves to the spoils of this world. You, however…’

The Tyrant of Badab crossed the distance between them with uncanny speed and fired the meltagun at the sorcerer. His head was vaporised and seconds later, what remained of his body crashed to the ground. Brigitta gazed up at Huron and there was a look of serene understanding on her face. Her doom was come and it was clad in the desecrated armour of the Imperium of Man.

‘My faith is my shield,’ she said, softly. The words rang hollow in her ears.

‘No,’ said Huron, equally softly as one of the claws of his hand tore through her breast and skewered her. He raised her to eye level. ‘It is not. And it never was.’

She let out a sigh as she died and slid free from his claw to the floor below. Without looking at the two corpses at his feet, Huron reached up and plucked the vial from the ground, reattaching it to his belt.

Sometimes, Huron Blackheart kept his word. But this was not one of those times. He did not care who he betrayed to reach his goals. Loyal servants of the Imperium or those who served the dark gods of Chaos. It made little difference to him. The end always justified the means.

‘Take what we need,’ he said. ‘And then we leave.’

‘It worked perfectly.’

‘Surely you did not doubt, my Lord?’ Valthex turned the vial over in his hand before handing it back to Huron.

‘The curse worked exactly as you said it would. Thanks to your efforts, my familiar now has the strength it needs to grant me the blessing of the four beyond the Maelstrom. Well done, Armenneus.’

‘I live to serve, Blood Reaver.’ Valthex dropped a low, respectful bow and Huron stalked away. Straightening himself up, the Alchemancer absently rubbed at a sigil branded into the skin of his hand.

It was not just the Tyrant who made pacts. The Patriarch would have to wait to see when he would be called upon to deliver his side of the bargain.

Hunters

Braden Campbell

Mihalik was recalling his first encounter with the devil when the wind shifted slightly, rippling the tall grass in which he and Covone were lying. They took the opportunity to move forward again. Glancing to the sky, he noted that clouds were slowly rolling in, obscuring the stars. That meant the wind would continue to pick up and the two of them would be able to cover substantial ground. If the grass stopped moving, then they would have to as well. Although the cammo cloaks they each wore would make them all but invisible, the tau sentries wore helmets with amplified vision and their perimeter drones were equipped with motion trackers. To stay completely hidden, he and Covone had to move in conjunction with their cover. When the brush moved, they moved. When the world was silent, so were they. Adapting oneself to the environment; that was the Catachan way.

The way of their enemy, on the other hand, was very different. The tau had arrived on Cytheria weeks ago, thinking it to be largely undeveloped and unpopulated; a perfect world for them to colonize. The Catachans, who for generations had used its vast grassy plains and dense, lethal jungles as training grounds, begged to differ. They mustered nearly every piece of armour they had, and threw it at the interlopers. When it was over however, the tau’s accuracy and superior range prevailed. Had the planet been occupied by a different regiment, things would have likely ended in capitulation. But this was a Catachan world. The struggle to evict the tau was devolving into a series of guerilla actions, and although such a prospect would have seemed grim to most other soldiers, it was one the Imperium’s famed jungle fighters relished; how the aliens would deal with it was the big question.

Something pulled at the leg of Mihalik’s pants. He froze and looked over his shoulder. Behind him, Covone tapped the minicomp on his wrist, and then held up a pair of fingers. Mihalik understood the gesture. They had two hours until the sun would rise. They had to be in position and ready to fire by that time, or the entire mission would be a failure. He nodded to Covone, responded with a hand signal of his own that said they were very close to their target, and continued snaking his way forward.

Throughout the night, their goal had been to reach a particular tree that stood two hundred feet inside the overgrown park. It had a wide trunk to hide behind and a large burl of roots that would make an excellent rifle rest; and, it had a car smashed into it. At some point during the tau’s occupation of the town, one of the local civilians had apparently driven his ground car up over the curb and ploughed it right into the tree. The front end had crumpled horribly and the chassis was angled sharply upwards, creating a sheltered area better than any duck blind either Mihalik or Covone could have ever built for themselves. Had the hand of some benevolent god reached down and placed the wreck there for them, it couldn’t have made a more perfect firing position.

Thirty minutes of hard crawling and they finally arrived. Their clothes were damp. The skin on their chests and elbows was raw from constant contact with the ground. Their faces and hands were covered with insect bites. They dragged themselves underneath the wreck, and rolled over on to their backs, staring up into the dark.

‘I knew what time it was,’ Mihalik hissed. They were the first words he uttered all night.

‘What?’ Covone was panting.

Mihalik didn’t know if the other man was short of breath because he was out of shape or because of the gaping wound in his chest where the tau had stabbed him earlier. A bit of both, he suspected bitterly. ‘I said, I knew what time it was. You didn’t have to stop and tell me.’

‘I just… thought I… should remind you.’

‘Well you didn’t have to. I need a spotter, not a babysitter.’ There was a moment of quiet between them before he asked Covone how he was feeling.

‘My ribs are on fire,’ he said. ‘I think… I think this wound has opened up again. My bandages are soaked.’

‘That complicates things,’ Mihalik groaned. ‘We haven’t got any more replacements. Can you hang on ‘till we’re on our way back out of town?’

‘You just worry about yourself,’ Covone growled.

Mihalik’s fuse was running as short as Covone’s. ‘I will then,’ he snapped. ‘Get me my ranging info.’

‘Don’t order me around. I know my job.’ Covone began pulling out his equipment. From a tubular case hooked to his belt, he pulled out a battered macro-lens and a short computer cable. One end he snapped into his minicomp, the other into the electronic viewer. Mihalik wondered, not for the first time, how ancient and revered these two pieces must have been. Then he focused on his own gear.

Many snipers across the Imperium swore by the long-barrelled lasgun; it had pinpoint accuracy and covered the distance from shooter to target almost instantaneously. However, its major drawback was that the searing, white-hot beam of light could be easily traced back to its source by even a casual observer. Mihalik had no intention of making things that easy for the tau, and so he had instead decided to use a bolt-action rifle and solid slugs. In his mind, bullets more than made up in reliability what they lacked in technological extravagance. For days, his rifle had been cocooned in a camouflaged, waterproof sleeve. Now, he unwrapped it carefully, attached a suppressor to the end of the muzzle, and checked the ammo feed. He had five rounds in the magazine, with six more clips on his bandoleer. It was more than enough, an orgy of munitions in fact, but he had no intention of being killed this day for lack of firing back.

The quiet of the night was soon disturbed by an explosion, far off in the distance. Mihalik and Covone both paused in their preparations and lay in frozen silence. A minute went past. A second detonation rolled through the air from the most distant corner of the town. Then a third and a fourth.

‘Paskow’, Covone whispered.

‘Give ‘em hell, brother,’ Mihalik muttered. He would have toasted the man’s success had there been anything to raise a glass with. But his canteen was long gone now, lying drained and destroyed in the hallway of a filthy hab block. He suddenly remembered how thirsty he was. Golden Throne, he thought; even Covone’s detestable homebrew would have tasted like a sweet nectar right about now.

‘This stuff is terrible,’ Mihalik said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Why does it taste minty?’

Covone shrugged and took a sip from his own tin cup. His head shook reflexively as the contents worked its way down his gullet. ‘Probably because I made it out of fermented firepine needles. It’s all I could find. You don’t like it, don’t drink it.’

Mihalik looked over his shoulder. Beyond the open tent flap he could see the rest of the camp. The jungle foliage here was not so thick as to completely block out the rain, and small waterfalls poured down through a canopy of red leaves. Catachan soldiers, some under Mihalik’s command, some under Covone’s, huddled beneath tarpaulins and waxed canvas sheets strung between the trees. The ground was a thick soup of mud and rotting leaves that clung to their boots and trouser legs. They sat quietly cleaning their weapons, or sharpening their combat knives. A few cooking fires burned low and smokeless. There was no complaining. They were jungle fighters after all, every one of them. This type of environment was where they were most at home. Still, Mihalik could clearly see that there were no sparring contests, no racist or bawdy jokes being told. The men were quiet, dour, joyless. Weeks of constant retreat, and defeat at the hands the tau were dragging morale into grim and dangerous depths. Mihalik’s included.

He turned back to Covone. ‘Oh, I’ll drink it’, he said, and poured the remaining contents of his cup down his throat in a single swig, concentrating so as to not throw it back up. ‘Beats going sober in this place.’

Covone pointed and said, ‘Here he comes. Finally.’

Outside, Catachan soldiers were arriving, streaming in from a half a dozen narrow pathways in the otherwise unbroken foliage. Their heavy boots were caked with mud; their battle fatigues were filthy and torn. Each of them wore a green armoured plate over their left shoulder, emblazoned with a white winged skull and the number XXVI. Several of them, upon entering the clearing, collapsed down to sit in the muck, lacking even the energy to stumble or crawl underneath a shelter.

Among them was a tall figure who wore a red scarf tied around his forehead, as well as a secondary one on his right bicep. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were hollow. He spoke briefly with one of Covone’s men, who by comparison looked as fit and energetic as a first-season recruit; and then, he entered into the tent.

Covone extended his hand to the newcomer. ‘Paskow,’ he sighed. ‘I was getting worried.’

‘Couldn’t be helped,’ the man replied slowly. He clasped Covone’s forearm in familiar greeting. ‘We’ve been falling back from the plains for a week now. On foot. We managed to hold the blues up as long as we could, but it cost us all our transports.’

‘Well, we sure as hell owe you one,’ Covone said. He poured a fresh cup of his homemade alcohol and offered it. ‘You bought us the time we needed to relocate up here to the mountains. Ezra, have you two ever actually met?’

Mihalik shook his head. ‘Mihalik, leader of the Catachan 51st, the Black Vipers.’

Paskow nodded. ‘Leader, Catachan 26th, the Lurking Cobras.’ He drank from the cup slowly and unflinchingly; its burning aftertaste affecting him not in the least.

Covone and Mihalik exchanged a glance, both wondering how burnt out their compatriot might be.

When he was done, Paskow exhaled slowly and said ‘The Black Vipers. Heard you took a real pounding in the initial assault wave.’

‘I lost a lot of good men, yeah,’ Mihalik muttered. He hated to recall the ease with which the xenos invaders had overrun one position after another. His sniper corps had never shirked their duty though, never wavered in their resolve. They kept on shooting enemy squad leaders and identifying important personnel right up until the last second when some alien weapon barrage engulfed them in a fiery blast.

Covone sat himself on an empty ammo crate, and motioned for Paskow to do likewise. ‘So here we are,’ he said. ‘The last remaining leaders of Cytheria’s defense force.’

‘Risky to have us all meet in one place,’ Paskow muttered. His weariness radiated out through every part of him, including his voice. ‘The tau could end us right here and now if they wanted.’

‘Risky? Stupid is more like it,’ Mihalik grumbled.

Covone spread his hands in apology. ‘I had no choice. Four days ago, the last of the satellites went down. The planetary comm lines all belong to the tau now. If we’d done this over the air, even short-range radio, they’d have able to listen in. Besides, they can’t come into the jungle. Their forces are all geared for fighting in open country.’

‘You certain of that?’ Mihalik raised his eyebrows and looked at Covone sternly. Since the day of their first arrival, he had seen the foe employ a wide variety of military hardware, most of it so advanced and alien that it hurt his brain to even try and consider it. ‘I’ve seen them hit a target with a volley of missiles launched from beyond visual range. Beyond visual range, Covone. It’s not natural.’

‘Robots, too,’ Paskow said. ‘Like a big dinner plate turned upside down, and with some kind of pulse weapon attached. Not much on their own, but they field so many of them…’ His eyes lost focus for a moment as he relived some previous disaster known only to him.

‘They’re crafty alright, I’ll give them that,’ Covone said. ‘But I think I’ve figured out how to stop them dead in their tracks.’

Paskow sat forward intently. All the depression was suddenly gone from his voice, replaced with vitriol. ‘How?’

Covone leaned in and spoke in a low voice, as if afraid that, even here, the enemy might be eavesdropping. ‘The tau have a chain of command that’s totally inflexible. Every soldier looks to his squad leader for orders and obeys them without question. Every squad leader looks to his company commander for guidance, and the commanders…’

‘Who do they answer to?’ Paskow asked eagerly.

‘That’s just it. We had no idea. For all we knew, they operated like we do, with senior officers conducting their own operations, working largely on their own initiatives. But…’

Mihalik snickered. ‘Headless snakes.’

Covone and Paskow looked at him, and after a second, he elaborated.

‘Back on Catachan, when I was just a kid, I apprenticed under this old veteran, Kirsopp. He used to say that we were headless snakes; that a Catachan army couldn’t be crippled by taking out a single, all-encompassing leader because we had none. Some ancient expression about a serpent’s head and its body.’

‘It is the smartest way to run things,’ Paskow agreed.

‘Which is why it’s so surprising that the tau don’t do it too,’ Covone smiled now and reached for a brown leather carrying bag that lay near his feet. From it, he withdrew several grainy, black-and-white picts. They had obviously been taken at a very long range, but in each of them, the central figure was a tau. He wore complicated-looking, multi-layered robes with a laughably tall collar piece that stretched up behind his head. Around his neck was a clunky medallion. He carried a thin staff in one hand that was crowned with an apparently purposeless, asymmetrical design. His face was completely alien – no discernable nose, beady little eyes, and a wide slit for a mouth.

‘Some of my men snapped these while doing long-range recon,’ Covone handed the picts to Paskow, who squinted at them intently. The alien’s bearing and attire struck some chord of familiarity within him.

‘A priest?’ he guessed.

Covone nodded. ‘They call them Ethereals. Near as we can tell, they’re the tau’s ultimate authority on this world. We take this guy out, and their whole army will drift like a rudderless swampboat.’

Mihalik looked at the other two. They were both smiling now, swept up with the promise that the war for Cytheria might actually turn in their favour with one quick stroke. Yet, he was apprehensive. He plucked the pictures from Paskow, and scrutinised them.

‘Covone,’ he said, ‘I must’ve sniped a dozen priests in my life, and not one of them whose passing caused a whole army to freeze up. Can this… guy… really be so important?’

Covone’s eyes narrowed as he regarded Mihalik. ‘Two platoons died bringing me this intelligence,’ he said coldly. ‘I trust it.’

‘Where were these taken?’ Paskow cut in.

‘Bloedel Park, in one of the civilian colony sites. It’s tau central now. Their engineering teams have put up a landing field and command post there. I guess they thought it was better to build on empty land instead of demolishing half the town.’ Covone shrugged. ‘More efficient, maybe.’

Mihalik furrowed his brow. True, using the colony’s largest open area was the fastest way for the blues to establish a principal command. On the other hand, it also meant that their most important leaders and decision makers were hemmed in on all sides by pre-existing buildings, any one of which would make excellent cover for snipers or heavy weapon teams. For a supposedly intelligent species with a highly disciplined army, it struck him as being a really stupid move.

‘What exactly are you proposing, Covone?’ Mihalik asked, though he already knew the answer.

‘That we go in and get him.’

Paskow’s thirst for revenge was suddenly tempered by caution, a trait shared by all experienced Catachans. When a man spent his entire life fighting where the environment could kill as easily as an enemy’s weapon, if not more so, he either took the time to consider everything before acting, or he died in vain. ‘This is no simple undertaking,’ he said slowly. ‘How will we even get there?’

Covone held up a finger. ‘We have exactly one Valkyrie left, stashed nearby under a mountain of cammo sheeting. It can take us to an insertion point outside the town, well beyond their anti-air defenses. If we survive, it’ll be there to ferry us out.’

‘We’ll have to infiltrate through the occupied portions of the colony site, and only the Emperor knows what kind of security they’ll have in place.’

‘That’s why it’s got to be just us three. Any larger a party will be caught for sure, but three men, three highly experienced men, with camo cloaks and essential gear only, might just be alright.’

‘What makes you think we’ll ever catch him out in the open?’ Mihalik asked Covone bitterly. ‘If this priest is so precious, what’s to say the blues don’t move him into a bunker a mile below the ground, or some such place?’

‘He gives daily sermons, out on the landing field, for all the tau to hear. Draws quite the crowd, I’m told. All about the glory of the Greater Good.’

‘The what?’

‘The Greater Good. It’s their little version of the Ecclesiarchy.’ Covone reached back down once more into his carrying bag, and withdrew a data slate. He tossed it to Mihalik, who caught it with one hand. ‘I got it from this. Xeno archives. Most of it is two hundred years old or more, but there’s a fair amount of stuff in there we can use.’

Mihalik looked up coldly. ‘You keep saying “we”. Who died and made you planetary governor?’

Covone rose to his feet. ‘If you have a better idea how to turn things around, by all means, let’s hear it.’

Mihalik wished like hell at that moment that he had an alternative plan, but he didn’t. Like all the others, he was tired of falling back, sick of being beaten by the blues. He wanted nothing more than to kill every last one of them, but Covone’s mission was a one-shot, all-or-nothing, stab in the dark based on centuries-old data and some sketchy field intelligence. It was like walking into a blind alley, and Mihalik hadn’t reached the ripe old age of thirty-six by allowing himself to be railroaded. He was a Catachan sniper, who led a regiment of other Catachan snipers. Hit and fade was the mantra he lived by, and he always made certain that he had an escape route in everything that he did.

He shook his head, and began to skim through the data slate. ‘There’s just something that bothers me about this,’ he muttered.

‘Like what?’ Paskow asked.

‘I don’t know. Something. Maybe I just don’t like having only one option.’

Covone sat back down again and started planning with Paskow as to what specific equipment they should be taking. Mihalik in the meantime, began reading the data slate in earnest. It was nearly an hour later when he finally found what he was looking for, and when he showed it to the others, they couldn’t help but agree with him.

In the hour before sunrise, they were nearly caught.

Covone was busy with his spotter’s duties: surveying the area thoroughly, identifying potential problems, and taking measurements of the wind and weather. Mihalik lay very still, listening to the various sounds beyond their hiding spot. It had been nearly an hour since they had heard the last of Paskow’s demo charges rumble through the streets like distant thunder. The colony was now deathly quiet, save for a pair of venomdoves cooing softly in the branches above them.

Covone coughed. Compared to the quiet that preceded it, the sound was like the cracking of a whip. Mihalik’s head snapped around, his eyes wide and ferocious. He saw his spotter, face down, his right arm wrapped tightly in front of his mouth and nose. Covone’s body shook with another, more muted cough. Several moments went by until he was certain the fit had passed. He pulled his arm away slowly, opened his mouth, and let a stream of mucusy blood rain out. Then he nodded to acknowledge that he was alright.

Mihalik’s eyes narrowed. He was about to whisper something when there came a sudden flapping of wings. The venomdoves had been spooked away, and not by the spasming of Covone’s punctured lung.

Together, they peeked out through the knotted roots of the tree. At first, they saw nothing; but then the clouds began to break, and in the gloomy indigo light that preceded the dawn, Covone and Mihalik could just barely make out the silhouette of a tau patrol. There were twelve of them out there, standing perfectly still in grass that came up to their shoulders. Their rifles, held at the ready, looked long and flat and lethal. Tense minutes went by, until the aliens apparently decided they hadn’t heard anything unusual after all, and continued on their way.

Mihalik slowly released the breath that he’d been holding and counted to ten. Then, he stared at Covone, who was once again draining blood from his mouth onto the ground. His fury turned to genuine concern, and he asked to see the wound.

‘It’s nothing,’ Covone hissed, and returned to his information gathering. Mihalik could hear the other man’s breathing though - raspy, gurgling, and getting worse.

Things had started out well enough. The Valkyrie had landed in a jungle clearing far outside the range of any tau defence. Paskow and Covone descended the rear ramp briskly, and took a few moments to make a final check of their gear. Mihalik walked the perimeter of the landing zone, ensuring that everything else was in place. Then, the three of them made their way to the outskirts of the colony. For as long as they remained in the jungle, they didn’t encounter a single tau. However, as soon as the trees gave way to fields of grass, it all changed.

Crouching within a thorny bush, the three men looked across a freshly ploughed field. Fifty or more humans, backs bent, were planting yellow stalks into the copper-coloured earth. Their faces looked joyless. High above them floated several of the dinner plate robots that Paskow dreaded so much. From a large speaker mounted beneath, it spoke in oddly accented Gothic.

‘Embrace the Greater Good. Do not complain about your work, but consider its benefit to all of society. There is unity between tau and man, between the higher and lower ranks, and between military work, political work, and rear service work. It is imperative to overcome anything that impairs this unity.’

‘What the hell?’ Mihalik breathed.

‘They’re enslaving the civilians,’ Paskow spat into the dirt.

Covone grunted. ‘They call it cultural assimilation.’

They skirted around the field, uncertain of whether the robots would identify them as enemy soldiers, or simply see them as three more humans in a town filled with humans. The afternoon was growing late when they finally entered the colony proper. They crept along back alleyways, their cammo cloaks making them appear as sections of crumbling brick wall or heaps of trash. Every so often they would risk looking out onto the streets, where throngs of people went about their business. As they got closer to Bloedel Park, the number of tau standing about increased.

Finally, as the shadows grew long, they crossed a parking lot filled with derelict ground cars, and slipped through a metal door set into the back of a hab block. It was dark and cool in the hallway beyond, and all three men took a minute to gather themselves. Mihalik drank deeply from his canteen. Covone tapped at his arm-mounted computer. Paskow stuck a hand into one of his deep pockets and withdrew a small bottle. He snapped the lid off using only his thumb, and dumped a cluster of four white pills into his mouth. Mihalik watched him swallow the lot.

‘Stay awake,’ Paskow said lowly. He held the bottle out.

‘Can’t,’ Mihalik said, shaking his head. ‘They make my hands shake.’

Covone looked at the two of them. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘This place is occupied. Minicomp counts three hundred life signs. But, the other side of the building faces directly onto the park.’

‘I counted five storeys from the outside,’ Paskow said as they began to walk down the hall. ‘I’m thinking the fourth floor?’

‘Should work,’ Mihalik agreed. ‘The top floor is too obvious a choice, and there’s no way we’re going up to the roof with no cover overhead.’

They climbed a stairwell littered with garbage. On every landing the three of them took note of several large posters, recently applied. One showed a tau in full combat armour, his head tilted up and away in a heroic pose that rang across all cultural lines. DO NOT FEAR was printed in blocky Imperial gothic across the top, and beneath it, THE TAU ARE YOUR FRIENDS.

‘Some friends,’ Covone said. He was pointing at a second poster that read REPORT ALL SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOUR.

They emerged on the fourth floor. The halls were empty, but from within the apartments they could hear the sounds of people preparing their evening meals. The smell of boiling cabbage in the air was oppressive. Covone pressed his ear to one of the plain, brown doors and whispered, ‘This one faces the front, but it’s occupied.’

‘Screw it,’ Mihalik kicked it down, and the three of them strode into the shabby space beyond. There was a tiny kitchen to their immediate left and past that, a single large room furnished with well-worn couches and cots. Tattered blankets served as curtains. In one corner, a family of four cowered suddenly before the intruders.

Mihalik and Covone ignored them completely and crouched down by the window. They pulled back the corner of one of the blankets and peered outside. Paskow, on the other hand, pushed back the hood of his cloak and held up his hands.

‘We’re not here for you,’ he told the family. ‘We just need some space. It’d be better if you went into the kitchen and stayed there.’

Wide-eyed and trembling, they scrambled away as they were told. Paskow joined the others.

‘Aren’t you the community hero,’ Mihalik jibbed.

Paskow didn’t so much as smile, but tightened his jaw and ground his teeth as he bit back a response.

Covone glanced at his minicomp. ‘It’s sunset now. That gives us about ten hours until the Ethereal makes an appearance,’ he said.

‘This is a good spot,’ Mihalik replied. ‘Might be a bit windy this high up, but I can compensate. Let’s get set up.’

Paskow had been carrying the heaviest bag, and he dropped it to the floor with a deep thud. Mihalik carefully took the large bundle that contained his sniper rifle from his back, and leaned it against the window frame. Covone glanced over his shoulder, then rose and walked to where the apartment door still hung open. He was in the process of closing it, when he realised that something was missing. He had just enough time to look around and ask, ‘Where’d that family go?’ before a squad of six tau soldiers barrelled in.

Things happened very quickly after that. The apartment was cramped and offered limited fields of view, but Mihalik could see Covone dive sideways into the kitchen while somewhere off to his right, Paskow opened up with his lasgun. Two of the alien soldiers ran into the main room, their long rifles blazing. Mihalik and Paskow were couched low however, and the pulsing blasts missed them entirely. The window and wall behind them, burst into shards of glass and chunks of plaster. Mihalik’s rifle was still in its waterproof cocoon. He drew his fang, and with a loud gasp, hurled the short sword-sized knife at the closest tau. It punched clean through the alien’s armoured chest plate and embedded itself up to the hilt in a fountain of blue gore.

There were more shots from Paskow, and the sound of a struggle in the kitchen, but such things were happening outside of Mihalik’s tunnel vision. He dove forward, grabbed the dead tau’s rifle, and began spraying the doorway. Through the brilliant flashes of white, he could see the remaining blues pitch forwards and die. He stood up, the xenos gun still in his hands, and then realised what he had done. He dropped the rifle with a sharp cry, and furiously wiped his hands on his pant legs. He had touched a xenos weapon. No, worse, he had actually used one. His hands felt dirtied, and his stomach heaved.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

Paskow laid a hand on his shoulder sympathetically. Occasionally, terrible things had to be endured in the course of a war.

From the kitchen came the sound of a body hitting the floor. The two men rushed around the corner to find Covone leaning against the counter top. He had a laspistol in one hand, and his fang in the other. He was panting heavily. There were two gutted tau sprawled across the cracked tile.

Paskow pointed. ‘You’re hit.’

Covone looked down at his chest. There was a knife sticking out of his lower ribs. It was long and flat, and had an ornate handle wrapped in black leather and adorned with golden studs. It looked more ceremonial than practical.

‘Aw, damn!’ Covone sagged to the floor among the bodies.

Mihalik crouched down next to him. He whipped the red scarf from his forehead, wadded it up into a ball, and stuffed it in Covone’s mouth. Their eyes met, and when Covone nodded quickly, Mihalik yanked the tau blade out in a single, fluid motion. Covone kept quiet, to his credit, and bit down hard on Mihalik’s scarf. Paskow appeared and began to dress the wound with a roll of sterile bandages.

Mihalik dropped the weapon in disgust. ‘That’s twice now,’ he gasped.

Covone spat out the scarf, and tried to make light of things. ‘Report all seditious behaviour,’ he said between gritted teeth. ‘I find those people again, it’s Catachan neckties for the lot of them.’

‘We’ll help you,’ Paskow said. He tied off the field dressing with a sharp jerk that made Covone wince. ‘I can’t believe that our own people are buying into this “Greater Good” nonsense.’

Mihalik stood and glanced at the other bodies. Each of them wore a knife similar to the one that had stabbed Covone.

‘And I’m getting tired of being right all the time,’ he said. ‘You know, when these guys don’t report in to their home base, we’re going to be up to our eyeballs in blues. We have to scrub the mission.’

Paskow stood up and crossed to the blasted window without a word. He picked up his heavy bag, and walked to the door. ‘No,’ he said, not meeting their eyes, ‘this is too important. I’ll head as far away as I can and make the biggest distraction possible. It should draw most of the patrols away so that you can do what you have to.’

‘Are you sure?’ Covone asked as he staggered back onto his feet.

Paskow opened the bag. It was packed with a variety of explosives from fist-sized frag grenades to monstrous demo charges. He smiled. ‘I’m sure.’

‘Leave us one of those,’ Mihalik said. ‘Just in case.’

Paskow handed a demo charge to Covone, then turned without another word and ran down the hallway. The two remaining men gathered up their equipment. Mihalik happily wiped his knife clean, but was enraged to find that his canteen had been hit during the firefight and was now nothing more than useless, twisted metal. He left it where it lay, and headed back down the stairs with Covone.

‘We need to find a new position,’ the wounded man panted. ‘Any ideas?’

Mihalik crossed the ground floor lobby to where the main door hung partially open. Across the empty street he could see Bloedel Park, and beyond that the curving, alien buildings of the tau. With no one to keep up a constant maintenance on Cytheria’s native plant life, the park was rapidly becoming wild. Already the grass was as high as his waist in some places. Then he saw the tree – the tree with the wide trunk; the tree with the large burl of roots; the tree with the car.

‘One,’ he replied.

Seconds later, they had dashed across the street and began crawling through the park towards the shelter beneath the wreck.

Now, as he lay there staring up at the underside of the car, with one partner puking up his lungs and the other most likely dead in the streets somewhere, Mihalik began to seriously consider that this might be the end for him.

‘Close your eyes,’ Kirsopp told him. ‘You get this stuff in them, and you’ll go blind.’

Mihalik did as he was told, and felt gruff hands smear the paste all over his brow, mouth, cheeks, and nose.

‘Emperor, this stuff reeks,’ he groaned.

‘Not to the baby devils. They love it. To them, you’ll smell like corn-fed grox steak cooked just right.’ The old man stepped back to survey his work.

Mihalik looked down at himself. He was naked from the waist up, dressed only in a pair of canvas pants and a pair of jungle boots. On every inch of his exposed skin, Kirsopp had plastered a pungent mixture of animal blood and gluey toxvine sap. It was already beginning to harden in the infernal heat of the jungle.

‘I look like a giant scab,’ he said.

His mentor gave him a withering look and said, ‘It doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t matter what you have to endure. All that matters is how effective you are.’

Mihalik lowered his eyes and gave a weak ‘Yes, sir’. He was ten years old, and Kirsopp was an ancient forty-five. It was an honour and a privilege to tutor under such an accomplished veteran, but the man had absolutely no sense of humour.

‘I didn’t hear you,’ he snapped.

‘Yes, sir!’ Mihalik barked.

Kirsopp folded his arms angrily across his chest. ‘Better,’ he growled. ‘Now, let’s go over it one last time. What’s your objective?’

Miahlik waved his arm. All around, Catachan fighters were finishing their preparations. Half were stationed up in the twisting trees, armed with a variety of rifles and heavy weapons. The rest were on the ground, hacking at the foliage with their machete-sized knives, or pouring barrels of thick, black tar all around the perimeter of the cleared area. ‘To draw the target out from hiding and into this kill zone, sir,’ he said.

‘And how will you do that?’

‘Sir, when everyone is ready, the fastest runners will go down that cleared path,’ he pointed to a break in the jungle’s vegetative wall, ‘to the cave where the devil’s nest is. They’ll have buckets of this same stuff I’m covered in, and they’ll start smearing the trees with it, making a trail that leads back here. When one of the baby devils gets a good whiff of it, it’ll come charging up, see me, and move in for the kill. That’s when all of you will light the oil, trapping it. Then the shooters can kill it.’

‘What’s your exit?’

‘I’ll climb out on a rope ladder lowered down to me by one of the senior fighters, sir.’

Kirsopp nodded with satisfaction and then, with nothing more to be said, turned and walked away. Mihalik watched his teacher scramble up a tree to a safe height. One by one, the older Catachan fighters did likewise until he was alone in the centre of the circular clearing. For days, there had been men out here preparing the ground by clearing away the brush and cutting down the undergrowth. Only one path had been left, ensuring that the gunners up in the trees would know exactly where to place their shots. Despite this however, the success of this hunt all came down to him, Mihalik.

The Catachan Devil, when fully grown, was as long as a freight train, had multiple sets of legs, huge pincer-like claws, and a gigantic barbed tail that dripped lethal poison. It was an absolute monstrosity, and worse, it lived in nests. Each nest would usually contain half a dozen fully grown adults and twice as many ‘devilspawn’. They had to be culled each season, lest the population become so great that they take over the planet, and old Kirsopp had, at some point in the distant past, decided that he might as well make use of this annual event. Every young Catachan had to thereafter endure this test of worthiness if they wanted to study under him.

It was suicide to simply attack the devilspawn where they sheltered. The adults would boil up from out of the ground and kill everything that moved. Therefore, the jungle fighters had evolved a means of luring the young devils away from their parents where they could be killed singularly. The foul mixture that Mihalik was covered in smelled sickening to adult devils, but when mixed with human sweat, proved intoxicating to the spawn. The creatures would follow the trail laid out for them, but had the uncanny ability to sense a trap. Mihalik’s job this day was to present himself as an irresistible target, a morsel so tasty that it would override the spawn’s cautionary instincts, and run headlong to its death.

If he succeeded, his bravery would be proved, and he would be gifted with a red head scarf of his own. If he died, well, it would be just another day on Catachan.

Mihalik looked back up into the trees. The other jungle fighters had vanished in the intervening seconds, camouflaging themselves seamlessly into the background. Suddenly, the ground began to rumble. Somewhere nearby, a flock of swamp herons took flight, squawking madly with fear. Then, the devilspawn appeared in the middle of the cleared path.

It was the biggest spawn that any of them could remember seeing, and afterwards they all agreed that the creature was one year shy of becoming a full adult. It focused its enormous, coal black eyes on the defenseless, half naked child in front of it. Thick drool began to fall from its clawed and tentacled mouth. It reared up, like a venomous snake might do, and then drove the entirety of its bulk at Mihalik.

The boy leapt as far to one side as he could. The monster plowed into the earth, burying its head and sending chunks of mud flying. Mihalik knew he had to stay in the circle long enough for his elders to ignite the oil. Tough as they might be, immature devils had a fear of fire, and once the barrier was set alight, the monster wouldn’t dare try to break out through the flames. He rolled up out of his dive and into a fighting crouch. A wall of fire erupted suddenly, filling the air with hellish heat and an unbearable stench. There was gunfire too, but he hardly noticed. The braided vine rope, his sole escape, dropped down from an overhanging limb. His impromptu dive however, had taken him too far away from it. The spawn was in the way, and he couldn’t get around it. He looked desperately around for one of the elders, for Kirsopp, for anyone, to come to his rescue, but there was no seeing beyond the flames. He was trapped and completely alone, and his choice was a blunt one: stay here and surely die, or climb out.

The devil pulled its massive head from out of the soil, and shook it from side to side. Clods of dirt whipped into the trees. It fixed its mad gaze on Mihalik again, and bellowed. Then it reared up just as it had before, and dove.

Mihalik dodged to his left. The abomination’s head slammed down into the ground again. Then, instead of moving to distance himself from it, Mihalik bolted straight forwards. While its face was buried in the soil, the boy ran up the creature’s back and launched himself into the air. He caught the vine rope half way up its length, and climbed hand-over-hand with all his might. Kirsopp appeared, a long piece of red cloth clenched in his meaty fist. He handed it to Mihalik.

Now that he was clear, the other Catachans were free to shoot the spawn with abandon. Mihalik took the headband, held it to his heaving chest, and listened. Below him, the devil rampaged in its cage of fire until it was finally felled.

‘There’s our boy,’ Covone whispered.

Mihalik’s wandering mind snapped back to the present. He inhaled sharply and shook his head. Twice now, the memory of his initiation day had been dredged up by his subconscious to be splattered across the forefront of his mind. He knew why, of course; understood of what it was that his instincts were trying to warn him. The tau would never be able to go into the fetid swamps and dark places his fellow Catachans were now falling back into. And, since they couldn’t take their fight to the enemy, the blues would have to draw their enemies out to more favourable ground.

‘Trapped with the devil in a circle of fire,’ he muttered.

Covone’s looked at him questioningly.

Mihalik rolled over onto his belly. ‘Forget it,’ he said as he nestled the muzzle of his rifle amidst the tree’s burly roots. He settled his cheek into the stock, and peered through the scope. The sky was lightening as the sun crept up over the horizon. ‘Let’s have a look’.

The enemy base, which at a distance looked like a tumble of featureless white blocks and domes, leapt into clarity. Covone hadn’t been exaggerating when he had called it tau central. There were nearly a dozen different buildings in various stages of construction. From the reports he’d read, he was able to identify a few of them: a low, rounded barracks, a cluster of glowing pillars that were power generators, and an arched structure with four angled towers attached to it that could only be the command centre. Of the others, he was not so sure. Three tall towers of differing heights were still being erected; their bases hidden behind a mesh of scaffolding and their tops crowned with cranes. There was also a fourth, crescent-shaped building he assumed to be some kind of massive communications array. In the middle of all this was an open courtyard, large enough to act as a landing field for a fleet of orbital dropships. It was filling up now with tau soldiers, all of them in identical suits of ochre-coloured combat armour. They were kneeling in perfect rows and columns, preparing themselves to receive whatever inspirational wisdom their leader was about to bestow on them.

‘There sure are a lot of them,’ Mihalik said.

‘Only have to kill one,’ Covone replied.

Covone began reading off the numbers and coordinates displayed on his minicomp. Mihalik adjusted his angle to match. Finally, he settled his sights on some kind of floating platform. It was round and white, with a podium moulded into the front. Behind this was a high-backed chair with over-sized arms, and seated within was the tau priest.

‘You locked on?’ Covone asked.

‘Sitting behind his flying pulpit?’

‘That’s him.’

Mihalik flicked off the weapon’s safeties with his little finger. ‘We’ll wait until he stands up,’ he said. He swallowed in a dry throat and then asked, ‘Wind speed?’

Covone glanced down to his sensory readout. ‘I read four knots, blowing from the west.’

In his cross hairs, the priest rose up from his seat, and shuffled slowly up to the pedestal. Mihalik moved his rifle imperceptibly to the east, and adjusted a fraction upwards to compensate for the way in which his bullet would drop during its long flight. ‘I’m zeroed in,’ he murmured.

‘Then let’s see if you were right,’ Covone said.

Mihalik listened to the blood rushing in his ears, and in the fractional space between one heartbeat and the next, where an exhale finishes but the next intake of breath has yet to begin, he pulled the trigger. Thanks to the suppressor, there was no flash, and no retort. The only sound was a soft chuff as the bullet leapt forward. A little more than a second later, it had flown over the tall grass and above the heads of all the assembled tau warriors, where it promptly mushroomed and bounced off the invisible forcefield that surrounded the Ethereal.

Mihalik looked over at Covone, whose face had become a pale, slack-jawed mask of disbelief. ‘I told you so,’ he said. He withdrew his gun from the tree roots and rolled out from under the smashed car. ‘Now comes the hard part. Let’s move.’

Covone rolled onto his side, stared back at him, and shook his head. He gazed down at his chest to where the bandages were stained deep red. A pool of blood had formed underneath him all the while he had been scanning and observing. ‘I’m not coming, Ezra. I won’t make it across the street, never mind the Valkyrie.’

From his leather bag, Covone pulled out the last of the demo charges. He popped the protective seal off the detonator, and placed his thumb over the button. Mihalik felt a wave of regret crash over him. He opened his mouth to say something encouraging or comforting, but Covone spoke first.

‘Don’t try to patronize me,’ he grunted. ‘You know what you have to do.’

Mihalik started back towards the street, bent low with his rifle in his hands. He constantly fought the urge to look back. Enemy soldiers would be massing on the wrecked car within seconds, and as much as he disliked Covone, the man was still a fellow Catachan. Those who wore the red scarf rarely left a brother behind.

He quickly reached the entryway to the hab block. He slipped past the still-open door, went to one of the front windows, and wiped away enough dirt with the back of his hand that he could look back out onto the park.

Cytheria’s sun had not yet crested the tops of the other buildings, and the park was a swirling mix of deep red shadows. An alarm was wailing somewhere, and scores of tau soldiers were spilling out from their base. A cloud of robot drones swirled in the air above like a swarm of robotic bees, stirred to angry life by a solitary bullet.

The demo charge erupted moments later. A massive, glowing fireball consumed Covone, the car, the tree, and more than two dozen tau who had been moving in to capture or kill the would-be assassins. Chunks of wood and twisted, burning pieces of metal rained down everywhere. The grass in the park was set alight, and the concussion wave shattered every window that faced the street. Mihalik stood unphased as a hundred jagged shards of glass sliced into his bare chest. He could have used this diversion to make good his escape, he knew, but what would that accomplish? No, he thought, it’s up to me to light the fire. He hoisted his rifle, and pressed the scope to his eye.

For a moment, there was nothing save for muffled screams and shouts in the apartments above him. The scene outside was one of destruction and shocked stillness. Then, he saw one of the blues rise up from where he had been sent reeling into the tall grass. Mihalik exhaled as he pulled the trigger, and the faceplate on the alien’s helmet folded inwards with a spray of blood and bone. His right hand flew up to the bolt even as he scanned for another target. The spent cartridge dropped to the floor, and he reloaded with an almost supernatural calm and speed. Another tau appeared only to go down again with a shot centre mass. Again, he reloaded. He found a fresh target and let a third round fly. A fourth. A fifth. He dropped the spent magazine to the floor and slapped in a fresh one. Search, acquire, fire, reload. Again. Again. Again. Relentless.

Within a minute, he had hit and killed a total of ten tau, and exhausted two of his ammunition clips. It was more than enough to get their attention.

He was turning to go when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. They weren’t lasers per se. They were more like beams of pale blue smoke, discernable only because of the way they played over the powdered glass that covered the floor of the lobby. He had no idea what they were, but it couldn’t be good. He dashed forward, diving over a couch. Behind him, a volley of small missiles detonated across the building’s façade. The door turned into splinters. Bricks and mortar tore through the room. Part of the ceiling gave way with the impact, and plaster rained down on Mihalik’s back. A searing pain tore through his left arm. He remained crouched behind the sofa, his head down, and he cursed. The missiles suggested the presence of a light artillery battery, or worse yet, a vehicle. Cheaters, he thought. This is supposed to be a contest between infantry.

Mihalik knew he couldn’t stay here. Sprawling on the floor, he began crawling away. His multiple cuts smeared themselves across the carpet leaving a trail of blood, but it couldn’t be helped. As he rounded a corner, he took a second to see why it was exactly that his arm hurt so much. With a start, he discovered that a large piece of steel window frame had impaled itself right between his radius and his ulna. He stood up, and yanked it from his flesh. A jet of blood the same colour as his headband painted a dripping curve along the wall.

He ran down a back hallway, bashed a metal fire door open with his shoulder, and emerged into a parking lot. He had only jogged a few steps when one of the tau trackers, moving at a full run, emerged from a side alley. The tau skidded to a halt, apparently surprised to encounter Mihalik outside of the building already. For the briefest of moments, the two stared at each other. Then, the alien began to raise his carbine. Mihalik, with his longer reach, swung his rifle like a club, and bashed the tau upside the head. Then he closed the distance, dropped his gun, and yanked his fang from its sheath. He swung the blade in a horizontal, decapitating arc, but at the last second, the tau blocked the attack with a forearm. Mihalik, who had assumed that the fight would be over as soon as it had begun, was taken aback, and doubly so as he was kicked fiercely in the shin. The two of them grappled for a moment longer before Mihalik was finally able to twist his opponent’s arm behind his back, and stab him through the chest. The tau started to spasm and then went limp. Mihalik withdrew the blade to find it covered in thick, cyan-coloured gore, and even though time was of the essence, he stopped to wipe it clean on the alien’s pant leg. No filthy xeno’s blood would be allowed to stain his fang.

He was off again, moving down the narrow, twisting streets of the colony. The remaining tau trackers were close behind him, of that he was certain. It was a race now, a true contest to see which species had greater skill and fortitude. Before long, he was outside the town and weaving his way through the thickening jungle. He was trying to take the most convoluted path he could think of, but his head was beginning to swim. He sagged against a tree, breathless. The cuts on his chest were minor things, but the hole in his forearm was near crippling. Blood poured from the wound. His right hand looked as if it had been dipped in red paint. He used his headscarf as a makeshift bandage, and carried on.

It was nearly noon by the time Mihalik neared the extraction point. For the rest of the morning, he had managed to catch a few signs that he was still being pursued – a snapping branch here, an alien scent on wind there. However, all was quiet now. Through the trees, he could see the Valkyrie that had ferried himself and the others in. Its rear hatch was open and looked as inviting as a mother’s embrace. He was far gone, he knew that; he was exhausted, starved, dehydrated, cut, bled out, and burned. Still, it was almost over. He stumbled out into the open and towards the transport.

Mihalik was steps from the boarding ramp when the tau energy blasts hit him. They came from all directions, striking his chest, back, arm, thigh, and head. The world vanished in a succession of white flashes, and he collapsed on the jungle floor. He was dimly aware that a portion of his left leg was now missing, but it seemed somehow inconsequential. He could hear the little aliens moving through the grass towards him, coming to either confirm the kill, or finish him off. He lay there for a moment, face down in mud, thinking to himself how perfect an ambush it had been. Then, he painstakingly raised himself up, because when this happened, he was determined to be on his feet for it.

There were five of the alien trackers standing in a rough circle around him, their weapons raised. Their armour, nothing more than a protective chest plate and reinforced gloves, was red, not ochre; the better colour to blend into this planet’s native palate. A few had black scorch marks across their combat vests that he guessed was a result of Covone’s heroic last stand. The crests of their helmets were very tapered, with a single, red eye lens that regarded him impassively. Their rifles appeared short and stubby. Mihalik nodded with subconscious approval. Light armour for greater mobility and a carbine so as not to catch on foliage or rubble. These blues obviously weren’t run of the mill soldiers; they were specialists. He’d finally found his alien counterparts.

‘Nicely done,’ he croaked. ‘I used every counter-tracking trick I know of, and you still trailed me. Outmanoeuvred me, too. You guys are good, no question. You must be the best in your army.’

One of the tau said something. To Mihalik’s ears it sounded short and choppy, like the crackling of a log in a bonfire. He didn’t speak their language and so had no idea whether he was being praised or damned. It didn’t matter regardless.

‘Take ’em!’ he shouted.

The tau all died. Some of them were shot through the chest, others in the head. Their bodies hit the ground simultaneously, and the fittingness of that made Mihalik break out into uncontrollable laughter. Unity was important to the blues, after all.

All around him, a dozen Catachan snipers were jumping down from their treetop perches. Three of them raced over to Mihalik, eased him back to the ground, and began applying aid to his wounds with medipacks and cloth bandages.

‘Did you get them all?’ Mihalik managed to ask. His fit of hysterical laughter had left as suddenly as it had come on.

‘Every one,’ the youngest of his attendants replied. ‘You led them right to us, sir. Just like you said would happen.’

Mihalik closed his eyes. The drugs were not only taking away all his pain, they were making his body a dim and distant thing. He was only half aware as his combat brethren rolled him onto a stretcher, and carried him into the Valkyrie. Then they were in the air, flying low over the canopy of the rainforest. The young attendant leaned over him to check his pulse.

‘Sir, can I ask you something?’

Mihalik’s voice was a raspy slur. ‘What is it?’

‘The blues. Will they come after us for what we did?’

‘I’m sure they’ll try. But they won’t find us. They won’t be able to get to us. We killed the best they had.’

The kid nodded, and then asked, ‘How’d you know? I mean, how did you know that the whole thing was a trap?’

Mihalik struggled to focus on the boy. He was not more a few years past initiation, Mihalik thought. His skin was still relatively free of scars, and his beard stubble was downy. He wore the red head scarf, but obviously still had much to learn.

‘It was in the files,’ Mihalik said. ‘Under military doctrine. Do you know what the tau call their battle companies?’

The young man shook his head.

‘Hunter Cadres. They see themselves as being descended from great hunters. When I read that, I knew that they were just setting out bait to catch the best of us.’

‘But you turned it around on them,’ the boy was grinning with newfound understanding. ‘You left us at the landing site to nail them when they came far enough away from their headquarters, and made bait of yourself.’

Mihalik was suddenly reminded of old Kirsopp’s words to him; that whatever he had to endure was irrelevant so long as his actions were, in the end, effective.

‘I’m used to it,’ he said coldly.

Mihalik closed his eyes and began to drift away. He would sleep for just a few hours, he told himself, and then it would be right back to work. He was the senior-most officer in the resistance now, and he had an insurgency to organise.

About the Authors

Sandy Mitchell is the author of a long-running series of Warhammer 40,000 novels about the hero of the Imperium, Commissar Ciaphas Cain. The most recent book in that series is The Greater Good, and there is also the audio drama Dead In The Water. He has written a plethora of short stories, including 'The Last Man' in the Sabbat Worlds anthology, along with several novels set in the Warhammer world. He lives and works in Cambridge.

‘Whiteout’ is Andy Clark’s first story for Black Library. Andy works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

Chris Dows is a writer and educational advisor with over twenty years’ experience in comic books, prose and non-fiction. His previous works for Black Library include ‘In the Shadow of the Emperor’, and the first Zachariah story ‘The Mouth of Chaos’. He lives in Grimsby with his wife and two children.

Mark Clapham is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Iron Guard and the short stories ‘The Siege of Fellguard’, ‘The Hour of Hell’, ‘In Hrondir’s Tomb’ and ‘Sanctified’, which appeared in the anthology Fear the Alien. He lives and works in Exeter, Devon.

Ray Harrison is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 short stories ‘Binding’, ‘The Third War’, ‘The Blooding’ and ‘Dishonoured’. She lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

David Annandale is the author of the Horus Heresy novel The Damnation of Pythos. He also writes the Yarrick series, consisting of the novella Chains of Golgotha and the novels Imperial Creed and The Pyres of Armageddon. For Space Marine Battles he has written The Death of Antagonis and Overfiend. He is a prolific writer of short fiction, including the novella Mephiston: Lord of Death and numerous short stories set in the Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 universes. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

John French has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novellas Tallarn: Executioner and The Crimson Fist, the novel Tallarn: Ironclad, and the audio dramas Templar and Warmaster. He is the author of the Ahriman series, which includes the novels Ahriman: Exile, Ahriman: Sorcerer and Ahriman: Unchanged, plus a number of related short stories collected in Ahriman: Exodus, including ‘The Dead Oracle’ and ‘Hand of Dust’. Additionally for the Warhammer 40,000 universe he has written the Space Marine Battles novella Fateweaver, plus many short stories. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

L J Goulding has written many stories for Black Library, including ‘The Lords of Borsis’, ‘Kaldor Draigo: Knight of Titan’, ‘Shield of Baal: The Word of the Silent King’ and the Space Marine Battles audio drama Mortarion’s Heart for Warhammer 40,000, and ‘The Oberwald Ripper’ and ‘The Great Maw’ for Warhammer. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

Manchester-based author Tony Ballantyne has written a number of SF novels and short stories, and has been nominated for the BSFA and Philip K Dick awards. For Black Library, he has penned the 40K short story Tower of Blood.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Betrayer and The First Heretic, as well as the novella Aurelian and the audio drama Butcher’s Nails, for the same series. He also wrote The Talon of Horus, the popular Night Lords series, the Space Marine Battles book Helsreach, the Grey Knights novel The Emperor’s Gift and numerous short stories. He lives and works in Northern Ireland.

Rob Sanders is the author of ‘The Serpent Beneath’, a novella that appeared in the New York Times bestselling Horus Heresy anthology The Primarchs. His other Black Library credits include the Warhammer 40,000 titles Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarius and Tech-Priest, Legion of the Damned, Atlas Infernal and Redemption Corps and the audio drama The Path Forsaken. He has also written the Warhammer Archaon duology, Everchosen and Lord of Chaos along with many Quick Reads for the Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in the city of Lincoln, UK.

S P Cawkwell is a freelance writer based in north-east England. Her work for Black Library includes the Silver Skulls novels The Gildar Rift and Portents, and the Architect of Fate novella, Accursed Eternity. For Warhammer, she is best known for her stories featuring the daemon princess of Khorne, Valkia the Bloody.

Ben Counter is one of Black Library’s most popular Warhammer 40,000 authors, with two Horus Heresy novels to his name – Galaxy in Flames and Battle for the Abyss. He is the author of the Soul Drinkers series and The Grey Knights Omnibus. For Space Marine Battles he has written The World Engine and Malodrax, and has turned his attention to the Space Wolves with the novella Arjac Rockfist: Anvil of Fenris and a number of short stories. He is a fanatical painter of miniatures, a pursuit which has won him his most prized possession: a prestigious Golden Demon award. He lives in Portsmouth, England.

Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Deathfire and Vulkan Lives, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio drama Censure. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, including Rebirth, the Space Marine Battles novel Damnos, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Time of Legends novel The Great Betrayal. He lives and works in Nottingham, and has a rabbit.

Author of the Path of the Dark Eldar series and the related novella The Masque of Vyle, along with the Necromunda novel Survival Instinct and a host of short stories, Andy Chambers has more than twenty years’ experience creating worlds dominated by war machines, spaceships and dangerous aliens. He lives and works in Nottingham.

Braden Campbell is the author of Shadowsun: The Last of Kiru’s Line for Black Library, as well as several short stories. He is a classical actor and playwright, and a freelance writer, particularly in the field of role playing games. Braden has enjoyed Warhammer 40,000 for nearly a decade, and remains fiercely dedicated to his dark eldar.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Cost of Command first published in 2015.
Whiteout first published in 2015.
Monolith first published in 2015.
Hollow Beginnings first published in 2015.
Dishonoured first published in 2015.
The Wreckage first published in The Black Library Anthology 2013/14 first published in 2013
The Eagle’s Talon first published as an audio drama in 2015.
The Shadow of the Beast first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 21, 2011.
Tower of Blood first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 6, 2011.
Shadow Knight first published in Black Library Live! 2009 Chapbook.
In Hrondir’s Tomb first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 20, 2012.
Necessary Evil first published in Black Library Live! 2011 Chapbook.
Action and Consequence first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 5, 2011.
Cause and Effect first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 8, 2011.
A Mug of Recaff first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 20, 2012.
Vermilion first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 17, 2012.
Irixa first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 19, 2012.
Thunder from Fenris first published as an audio drama in 2010.
The Arkunasha War first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 9, 2011.
Bitter End first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 12, 2011.
Hunters first published in Hammer and Bolter Issue: 13, 2011.

This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Summer of Reading 2015: The Full Collection © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. Summer of Reading 2015: The Full Collection, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-313-1

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.