More Warhammer 40,000 from Black Library

THE LORDS OF SILENCE
Chris Wraight

• FABIUS BILE •
Josh Reynolds
BOOK 1: PRIMOGENITOR
BOOK 2: CLONELORD
BOOK 3: MANFLAYER

HONOURBOUND
Rachel Harrison

BLOOD OF IAX
Robbie MacNiven

• FARSIGHT •
Phil Kelly
BOOK 1: CRISIS OF FAITH
BOOK 2: EMPIRE OF LIES

IMPERATOR: WRATH OF THE OMNISSIAH
Gav Thorpe

BANEBLADE
Guy Haley

SHADOWSWORD
Guy Haley

LORDS AND TYRANTS
Various authors

ON WINGS OF BLOOD
Various authors

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Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Unification

Lightning Run

Light of a Crystal Sun

Exodus

A Company of Shadows

Blood and Bone

The Battle of Blackthunder Mesa

By Your Command

Sand Lords

The Twisted Runes

Savage

The Death of Uriel Ventris

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘Lord of Lord of the Dark Millennium’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that He may never truly die.

Yet even in His deathless state, the Emperor continues His eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

UNIFICATION

Chris Wraight

Another world, falling like rotten fruit from the low branches. One by one, they all land in the gape of the Crusade’s embrace.

Vorx can’t even pronounce this one’s name properly – Oura’Nuoama, or something – it was named by aliens. These xenos have mouths like flutes. Wings too, gossamer things that catch the orange light of the swollen sun. And they have guns and particle-beams, and atmospheric ships hovering on blush-blue downdrafts as they swivel to burn the air apart.

Wings. What affectation, thinks Vorx. What decadence.

The planet will fall very soon. Its palaces of frosted glass are broken; its seas now foam with the wine-coloured blood of the slain. Heavy attack platforms squat in the world’s airs, blackened and leaking smoke. Already the terraformers are moving in from low orbit, bringing down their city-sized chem-units to sizzle the oceans away and burn out the toxins in the air.

They are only toxins, mind, for human lungs. The xenos breathed in this filth quite happily for centuries, and now the surviving ones can only watch as the Crusade fleets turn their cherished biosphere into a hostile place of charred rocks and boiled-down seas.

Their spirit is broken, thinks Vorx. Their neck is snapped.

Soon they will be a memory only, save for the technical records kept by the Mechanicum and, secretly, by himself.

Such was the threat posed by Oura’Nuoama, at least as gauged by Terra’s distant generals, that two Legions were sent to snuff it out. The first, in greater numbers, was the Death Guard, well known throughout the growing Imperium for their resistance to poison and strangeness. The second, the smaller contingent, was the Blood Angels, a more palatable choice, admired by the right people and feared by the wrong ones. Everyone on Terra loves the Blood Angels, it is believed.

Vorx, as ever, made careful study of the numbers before deployment. The Death Guard had sent its Third Great Company under Venarus Graganda, currently standing at 11,450 warriors, of which he himself was Captain of the Second Cohort, a force of 678 fighters. The Blood Angels Legion, spread out across a wider array of engagements, could only spare two Chapters, amounting to a little more than two thousand Space Marines. That could have been seen as insulting, or it could have been the best result possible under trying conditions – Vorx can guess how his primarch took it.

But they are all fighting now, all down on the surface, cracking the last of the bones under their muddy boots. The sky has turned a deep red, discoloured by the terraformers’ world-engines activating, and the Blood Angels look like dark ghosts in the nimbus. The Death Guard are everywhere, clambering up long defiles with their ivory battleplate streaked and blotched. Two kilometres to the west, where the Last City’s pinnacle rears up in smoke and flame, a tank squadron is making an impressive mess of some intricately wrought siege gates. There are a few flyers pummelling at high-ranged artillery points, but this is now, as ever, about infantry closing the noose. They advance slowly, mercilessly, letting their armour take particle-beam hits, gradually coming into range to open up with bolter and blade. There is no hurry. Slowness allows fear to breed, to spread into and cripple the enemy, so that by the time they crest the ramparts, the xenos are already half beaten.

Allies advance on Vorx’s right flank. Their armour is dark in the swirls of choking fyceline, limned with gold that glints with every new mortar starburst.

Vorx thinks this is stupid. His own battleplate is as grimy as the churned-up earth below them. He is virtually invisible against the terrain, allowing it to cake him with filth, to cover him and hide him. The Blood Angels have attempted to keep the worst of it from engulfing them. Their heraldry is still proudly distinct, picked out in inlaid bronze or painted in clear, glittering lines. They go into battle in the open, confident of repelling anything that confronts them. Perhaps that is their home world speaking – Vorx has heard it is a place of plains, of open skies, not like the misty swamps he grew up in.

Their captain is called Camanio. The two of them have exchanged few words since launching the assault, but now they are marching almost neck and neck. Vorx can see that Camanio is making assessments of his own. That is as it should be – soon the joint spearhead will be breaking through those tottering walls, and all need to know the quality of those they fight alongside.

The Blood Angel ducks fractionally, allowing a particle-beam to shriek past his right pauldron. He looses a single shot from his own weapon – a Volkite serpenta with a chased barrel – and a distant explosion confirms another kill.

‘Fine shot,’ Vorx grunts, feeling, uncharacteristically, as if some contact between them should be established.

Camanio bows as he trudges, hauling himself through the knee-deep mud and searching for the next target. Something in his gestures gives away distaste. He would rather be moving freely, charging in close, and his impatience is like a musk around him.

Vorx does not fire yet. He has his close weapon held ready – a heavy gladius, notched from repeated use and not yet re-honed by the armourers.

‘Damned stinking world,’ Camanio grunts.

Vorx had not even registered a stink, unless Camanio means the ones they brought with them – the spilled promethium, the chemical tang of the heavy weapons. They haven’t even deployed phosphex here, or the biological agents that they used to such good effect on Promada IV.

The walls inch closer, flickering with ill-aimed defensive fire. ‘It will fall soon enough,’ Vorx says, attempting to forge a link again. He does not know why he does this. It feels important, perhaps, to counter the disdain that leaks from the sons of Baal.

Any potential reply is cut off by a sudden flash of greenish light over towards the eastern flank of the assault, where a formation of bound Knights has pinned back the last remnants of the xenos’ heavy armour. All turn for a moment to look, for they know what that detonation must mean – they can taste the sour note of the teleport beacon’s warp-locus and feel the sudden drop in temperature.

The primarch is there, there, less than a kilometre away, surrounded by his Deathshroud in their hulking, frost-encrusted plate. Even at a distance, his presence is absurdly dominating, slewing the entire battle about its axis. His dun-grey cloak whirls about him as he strides into contact, gilded with the last traces of translation energy. He is tall, lean, pale, an outline of gaunt strength. Vorx finds himself pausing, absorbed, before glancing back at Camanio.

The Blood Angel is wearing his helm, and so his expression is hidden. Vorx hears the faint crackle-hum of a vox-bead in use and guesses he is saying something to his squad.

‘Magnificent,’ Vorx offers, trying a third and last time to build a bridge between them. ‘The primarch accompanies us. We are honoured indeed.’

Then Camanio turns, properly, shifting his weight onto his front foot, which sinks into the sucking mire. He comes closer. ‘My warriors are asking me, how can anyone follow that skin-and-bones wretch and call him “primarch”? I do not know what to tell them.’

Vorx does not react, stunned. Camanio is already moving again. He is advancing, pushing on towards the joint objective. His words ring in Vorx’s ears – aristocratic, the casual contempt slithering from them. For a moment, Vorx considers taking the blade to him, crashing him to the ground and wrenching those words back out from that over-proud mouth.

His warriors advance on all sides, unaware. They trudge just as they always have, uncomplaining, efficient, closing on the goal. They have the task ahead of them, one now witnessed by the primarch himself.

Skin-and-bones wretch.

Vorx moves again, anger swilling like hot oil in his veins. He picks up the pace, determined to remain close to Camanio when the walls are breached.

I do not know what to tell them.

The ignorance, Vorx thinks darkly. The ignorance.

Another world, clouded by a mist that never rises. It gets into your bones. It is as thick as blood, and pools into droplets against a frost-hard ground.

The nights are long, an age of darkness followed by too-brief days of grey shadow. Mould cakes the stone, spreading in dark spider-lines. There are no places free of the dank – the fires gutter and spit, fuelled by wet, rotten wood, coughing out more smoke than flame and making the infants huddled around them hack.

You are always aware, always, of the peaks above you. They are hidden in the milky shrouds of condensate, but their bulk and impossible height are ever present, a mental pressure that crushes and deadens, slowing movement and crippling resolve. Cold air tumbles down from the heights in steady procession, sinking into the sodden lowlands, smothering every attempt to lift the heaviness out of life.

Vorx crouches at the corner of his family holding, a crooked spike held in one skinny hand. He is shivering, and there is a steady film of moisture running down his arm. Avorn, his father, is out in the open, carrying the long scythe used for reaping the pale corn. Klev, his mother, huddles on the far side of the straw-logged yard with a broken-shafted hammer. The rest of the village has also taken position – squatting beside the low stone walls, pressed against black wooden doorframes, hunkered down in the rotting hayricks. Twenty-five, all told.

A frigid wind blows from the heights, stirring the rags and straw-totems that dot the perimeter. A skinny dog limps into the shadows, knowing what’s coming, head low and tail tucked tight between its haunches.

Sometimes Vorx whispers to himself. He recalls the names his mother taught him, the old line of the family stretching back into the past that is myth. Or he tries to rehearse the principles given to him by his father – the hours and shifts of the perilous calendar, the days one must harvest and the dates one must sow. This frozen world is brutal to those who cannot keep track of the seasons, and so the numbers of cultivation have become sacred.

His lips, cracked and cold, move silently. The third of Rethen. The seventh of Ar-Manth. All in by the thirteenth of Kanand.

He hates his weakness. The people of the settlements preach the virtues of silence and stillness. The silent are passed over by the Pale Kings. The still are missed by their searching eyes. If he were stronger, his lips would be pressed tight and motionless, his fingers would not tremble, his heart would not be drumming in his scrawny chest.

Ahead of him, beyond the dirt-sunk margins of this hardscrabble place, the air sighs. Black grass shivers, weighed down by dew and brushed by frigid currents. Vorx can see no more than a dozen metres or so into the murk. This is not a world where you expect to see anything much beyond the reach of your arms. You must labour on your feet through the fog and endure whatever trials you come across.

Greda is moving now, hoisting her heavy skirts and shuffling over to the byre. She has a cudgel in her calloused hand, and that gives Vorx a treacherous spike of optimism. Greda is a good fighter, her bones free of the marrow-rot. She is old – more than thirty years, they tell him – and that is an achievement to inspire hope.

He tries to still the shaking. He inclines his head, listening hard. It is impossible to determine what lurks in that fog – it hisses, it slithers, it sends false voices to lure you in. For a moment, he catches nothing, just the sibilant drag of the icy air, the rub of the grasses.

Then he feels it – the first faint tremor. He sees Avorn tense, and Klev cups the head of the hammer in her grey palm.

Another tremor – the soil shifts, a muffled thud rolls out of the gloom. He is sweating now, his perspiration mingling with icy condensation. He pushes back the thick cowl that they all wear, peering out at the blankness, hoping that nothing will emerge from it but knowing that something will.

When the Pale King shows itself, he can barely stifle a scream. It is huge, only loosely man-shaped and proportioned, the outsized stuff of horror-dreams, limping on two misshapen legs and clad in stiff rags. It has a long, bloodless face, drooping like thrown cream, a mouth that twists into an unbalanced kind of dewy smile. Its eyes are filmy and pupil-free, its fingers longer than Vorx’s forearm.

It slides fully into view, towering over the buildings. It seems blind, shambling aimlessly. Its lips part, and a white tongue briefly licks out, tasting the air.

Vorx starts counting again. The ninth of Tonedd. No planting in Urdh. Harvest by the second of… when? He cannot remember. Terror has gripped him like a claw. The Pale King is coming closer, its robes swinging. A carrion stench precedes it, rolling slowly across the glistening earth.

Greda is going to move. He can see her coiling into a ball. Others are making ready too, their faces tight with fear. Twenty-five – not nearly enough. They might be a hundred strong, and it would not be enough for a Pale King.

He must do his part. He must not freeze with fear. He must fight with his family and drive the terror back into the mist. If he is to die, it will not be as a coward but as a fighter. This is all that matters now.

The Pale King lurches clumsily towards them, its claws sinking deep into the mulch. Mist slews from its shoulders, and it reaches out for the nearest thatched roof.

Greda is first, bursting from her hiding place and screaming at it. The rest come with her then, men and women, boys, girls, all screaming. The Pale King does not scream back. It makes no sound at all, but smiles, smiles, smiles.

Vorx runs too. His heart feels like it is racing out of control, and if he doesn’t grip the spike hard he will drop it. He stumbles, his foot catching on a tussock and twisting. By the time he gets up the others are hacking at the Pale King, trying to slash at its huge feet. He can only watch as Greda is swatted aside, thrown bodily into the walls of the threshing barn. He can only watch as Hobol is crushed by those claws and Lurt has his chest cracked. He is too late for his father, who is driven face down into the mire by a heavy stamp. All gone in only moments, and yet still the rest of them swarm towards the same fate.

Vorx shouts, blaring out horror and fury and anguish in his cracking child’s voice. His vision is blinded with hot tears, and he slashes with the spike, snagging on a trailing line of rain-heavy fabric. The Pale King slowly twists, staring blearily down at him, and Vorx can see the deep-puckered flesh of its face, moonlight-white, bovine-stupid, heavy folds of loose skin quivering as it moves.

Vorx springs right at it, swinging wildly. That is ludicrous – he cannot reach high enough – but he leaps anyway, knowing the claws are coming for him. He screws his eyes closed. He cannot look into that face – he is a child, and the terror is so very great.

In later days, in later years, he will never remember how the next thing happened. He will not recall if he even landed a blow, or if he was kicked away and sent skidding through the mud. This part is hazy. The moment, this moment, when the balance of fate tripped over, is vague to him forever, clouded like the stagnant mists that birthed it.

But he remembers the newcomer’s face emerging from the fog, cowled just like a human’s, grey and drawn, the skin sucked tight over lean bones. Vorx is on the ground by then, his breath knocked from him, his eyes staring. The newcomer is striding into battle, crashing out of nowhere, swinging a scythe like Vorx’s father did, two-handed, back and forth.

He is huge – not as huge as the Pale King, but far greater than any mortal man, and the power in those reaping arcs is incredible. He has already wounded the Pale King, cut it open, spilling a mass of entrails over its flabby stomach. And he is not stopping – he is pressing on, driving it back, goading it. The Pale King tries to respond but it is too slow, too slack, and its smiles are ripped from it.

Vorx gets up, his lungs burning. He is bleeding, but barely feels it. The spike is still in his hand and he tries to use it, jabbing at the Pale King’s monstrous foot.

His efforts are useless, but he keeps at it, trying to drive the sharp point in. The newcomer is unbelievably fast, unbelievably strong, whirling around and sending his cloaks flying like flails. The Pale King is lowing now, blubbering, weeping blood. Impossibly, it is being killed.

Others of the settlement see this and join the attack. Suddenly, they are hunters, not fodder. They strike out, barely believing they are doing it, and the Pale King reels away, bewildered by the change.

In truth, however, none of them matter. Vorx does not matter. It is this newcomer who is doing the work. He is singlehandedly carving the monster into ribbons, using that scythe in ways Vorx has never dreamed possible. He harries it back into the fog. He cuts it apart in there, throwing out specks of blood that halt and shiver on the stones.

Eventually, the bellowing dies out. The whoosh of that great steel sickle stills. Mist closes over the scene of carnage, as if abashed by it. Vorx is on his knees, exhausted, staring into the murk. The rest of the survivors stare at one another.

Vorx begins to wonder if it has been some kind of cruel dream. He begins to wonder if the newcomer was a phantom sent from the heights, just another trick played by this world that loathes them. But then the cowled figure re-emerges, unbowed, tall as a sheaf of uncut corn. He looks barely troubled by his exertions. His hood has fallen back a little, revealing grey, smooth flesh. It is the most beautiful face Vorx has ever seen – like theirs, but as hard and clean as a stone.

The newcomer looks directly at Vorx, and the intensity in the yellow eyes makes him want to blush, or laugh, or burst into tears.

‘Bravely done,’ says the newcomer.

Vorx cannot reply. He feels as if his heart will burst.

But then he remembers the death. He had seen his father killed, and he rushes to find the body. He sees quickly that his mother is motionless, along with many others – he is an orphan now, and that is as good as a death for him too. Now the cold becomes unbearable. He looks one way, then the next, and every view sinks him further into desperation.

Vorx expects the newcomer to leave then – there is nothing to keep him here, for the settlement, having been stripped of its best workers, will likely wither long before the winter. But he does not. He remains with them, lifting the wounded from the earth and carrying them back to what remains of the shelter. Vorx hangs back, on the verge of shameful tears, not knowing what to do or where to go.

Eventually, the survivors gather in the old courtyard. Rygan, the headman, too blind and ill to fight, shuffles down to his knees before the newcomer, but is prevented by the gentle extension of a giant hand.

‘No kneeling,’ the newcomer says. ‘The time for that is long over.’ He turns to the rest of them. ‘I show you a new way. The way of endurance. You have no weapons – I will give you weapons. You have no armour – I forge armour that does not fail. You are sickened.’ He smiles, and it is chilling. ‘That, too, can be a strength.’

They are hanging on his words. His voice is strangely soft, thin like a gust of rain-frozen wind, but it is pure with conviction. Vorx has never heard a voice like it.

‘There are many gathering,’ the newcomer says. ‘Every valley is moving. They have divided you for too long, keeping you from discovering one another. Together, unbroken, you can be mightier than you know. Join me, and fear no witchery again.’

Vorx looks at the rest of them, his throat tight with hope. For a moment, he thinks they will rise up, raise their crude weapons into the drizzle and declare allegiance there and then.

But this is a beaten place, populated by beaten people. Rygan glances over at the survivors, hunched and bloody in the fog, and there is no fight left in him.

‘We thank you, lord,’ he says weakly. ‘You have our loyalty, for what remains of our lives. But the fields…’ He trails off. ‘We must build again.’

The newcomer looks down at Rygan. Then he looks at the rest of them. There is no scorn in that slender face, just appraisal, just judgement. In the end, he nods. He reaches up to his cowl and pulls the fabric back over his head.

‘The choice is made,’ he says.

Then he turns and strides back along the rutted path. As he goes, the heel of his scythe sinks deep into the slurry. It only takes a few moments for him to fade into nothingness again, sighing into that great white miasma that forever surrounds the settlement and hems it in.

Vorx watches the whole time. Of all the horror, that is almost the worst. Now the deaths mean nothing at all. Now that brief, terrible window of defiance has closed again. By the time he turns back, he can see the survivors limping over to Rygan, congratulating him. They are already talking of replanting, of rebuilding the walls that were torn down but never kept anything out even when they stood.

As he stares at the meagre crowd, a vivid certainty flashes before him, as sharp and clear as all else is muffled. He sees the settlement limping on, the vice of starvation clamping tighter around it, the ribcages becoming ever more scrawny, and a slow death coming, without honour and without resistance, albeit comforting and understandable. For they have always been weak and cannot be expected to fight, and must accept with equanimity whatever comes their way, for it is the will of the universe.

And that is the greatest horror of all. Even before he really understands what he is doing, Vorx is pushing himself back to his feet, turning, slipping in the grime and scrabbling towards the perimeter. He hears voices calling his name but does not turn back. He sees where his father’s body lies and does not return to it. He stumbles further out, through the churned fields with their black rows of barren soil and leafless trees.

It is hard to run far in that country – the mud is too thick and the air is too foul – so he marches as fast as his young legs will bear him, head down, suppressing the tears that would burst free if he thought for a moment of what he is leaving behind. He can see the deep marks of the scythe’s heel running before him, scoring out the path to follow, and he locks his mind on to it.

The way becomes hard very quickly. The ground rises and sharpens, and soon he is in country he does not know. The rocks are greasy, the wind like a knife. His clothes become leaden with moisture, and they hang slick across his shaking skin.

He cannot retain his sense of certainty for long. His feet keep moving but soon doubts crowd in, sapping his energy and draining the will from him. Still he does not look back, for he knows that if he does, he will see the last of everything comforting and familiar, and that will break him.

Head down, legs lifting. Time slows to a pain-filled crawl. His shivering becomes a shuddering, his breath becomes shallow and rapid. The ground keeps on rising, ever rising, and the air spoils into an acrid haze that stings his lips.

By the end, he is on his knees, panting like a dog. He understands the folly of his actions and the wisdom of Rygan’s, but now there is nothing to do but persevere. His palms are cut raw, his knees stripped of skin, but he keeps going.

He does not ever discover how long the newcomer was watching him before the end. There are some questions best not asked, though he thinks now it must have been many hours. By the time the figure intervenes, lifting Vorx carefully from the acid-washed rock and pressing a woollen mask doused in something herbal over his mouth and nose, he can barely see or hear. He glimpses a blurry image of that stone-hard face up close, just as before.

‘If you do not turn back, this will never end,’ he says. ‘This pain. Are you strong enough?’

Vorx takes a strained breath and feels the cut of the world’s spite in his throat.

‘Make me strong enough,’ he says.

After that, so many wonders. There are walls, made not of mouldering mud bricks but of stone hewn from the mountain’s heart. There are blades polished to a keen edge. There are plates of hardened leather, stitched together and caulked, that form a shell tough enough to turn the blunt knives of the Pale armies. In strongholds that rear up from the storm-lashed shoulders of the high peaks, masks are fashioned that siphon the worst of the poison from the air. The smiths – men and women from the valleys, now housed in these fortresses – work incessantly, stopping only for sleep and sustenance, dragged from weary indolence and imbued with an almost fanatical enthusiasm.

Vorx recovers fast. He is taken up, fed and given lodgings with other boys. They train him, hardening his muscles and turning his wiry frame into a steel-trap instrument. Most of those in the gathering armies are young. They all look much the same – hollow cheeks, concave stomachs, blackened lips and eyelids – but they get stronger the longer they stay here.

One day, being taught how to use the long harvester’s scythe in combat, he asks for the name of the newcomer, the one they are already calling the Deathlord in honour of his prowess in battle.

‘Mortarion,’ said his instructor, Flaunn, a thick-legged woman from a deep coomb on the far side of the high ranges. ‘Never let him hear you say it – it was given to him by one he hates.’

‘Why not choose another?’

‘You do not choose a name,’ she says, cuffing him. ‘It chooses you. Now prepare, or I’ll cut you at the elbows.’

So Vorx did not change his own name to mark his passage into a new life, even though it was given to him by a slaved and cowed people, and it followed him out into the stars. All those who passed the trial of the Legion after him kept their marks of subjugation as a reminder, and as a warning.

But that time is to come. For now, he is learning, soaking up knowledge and distilling it into something he can use. He picks things up fast. At first he did so to crowd out the thoughts of home from his mind, but that instinct is soon replaced by learning for its own sake. He finds that his memory is superb, and he catalogues the armouries, the inventories, the types of armour and the number of troops in every division of the Deathlord’s burgeoning army.

Mortarion himself knows things that cannot have been learned on this world, Vorx suspects. He uses terms such as ‘cohort’ and ‘maniple’ that sound strange on their lips. Vorx learns that the world has a name, Barbarus, though he does not discover where it came from and surmises that Mortarion has called it this as a result of something like contempt.

Of course, the intellectual leap involved in naming a world anything other than ‘earth’ or ‘world’ implies that there are other such places of a similar scale. There is no evidence for this, and Mortarion has not proposed any such hypothesis. But it makes the gathered people think. It makes them imagine a time when the courses of all the valleys might be known, and then charted, and then conquered. It makes them think of a time when the whole of their reality might be consolidated, locked down under the banner of the Deathlord, and where the mists will no longer harbour nightmares.

It makes them think that, one day, the shadow of the Old Night will be lifted forever. It makes them think that a new age of unity might dawn for them all.

It is not long before Vorx is fighting again, this time with proper weapons. He dons his leather armour and wears the close-fitting mask with gauze over his mouth and nose. He takes up his modified version of the harvester’s scythe, a popular choice among his comrades. The fortress gates grind open, and then he is marching in close ranks with his fellows, passing out over a high bridge under which the thin clouds boil.

Mortarion, as ever, is at their head. He leads them higher up, and even through his mask Vorx can taste the poisons here. Some of those in the army succumb as they climb and are left where they fall. This is not callous disregard – to hesitate is dangerous, and there will be little to do for them – but it does begin to affect the rest of them. They begin to see the climb as a test of strength, a way to winnow out those whose destiny does not lead them into battle, and it is a lesson that sticks.

After many hours they climb into a meadow perched high up on the northern flanks of a black-rocked cliff edge. On another world it might have been frosted with flowers, but on Barbarus the grass is grey and the soil is packed like iron. There, they discover the ones they have been hunting – gaggles of the Pale, hairless, naked, stick-thin, huddling blindly in the bilious airs with their milky eyes and pearl-white skin. They were human once, the Pale. They were living, and their blood was hot, but now their breath is dry and sour. Such things, such horrors, are created from time to time by the greater monsters that dwell in the fog, the Kings and their ilk. Who knows why they do it? A casual cruelty, perhaps. Or maybe boredom, or some morbid, alien compulsion.

Mortarion does not cry out when he sees them. He issues no orders and does not break into a run. This is the way of battle here – they advance in silence, their plans already rehearsed, their boots crushing the sedge and their blades glinting dully in the mist. The Pale make no sound either, for they are already dead and their throats are as dry as grave dust.

The fighting is an eerie experience, a press of low grunts and hard cracks, with the scythes rising and falling amid a cold, bloodless scrum. Vorx works as hard as he has ever done. He swings his blade two-handed, remembering the lessons Flaunn taught him. He kills his first Pale warrior with a deft twist of the sickle edge, ripping out its throat before it can get its white claws close to his own. It still scrapes back at him with its grotesquely long nails, but cannot penetrate his armour.

Vorx feels a sharp thrill as he slices the creature’s severed neck clean in two, a movement that makes a soft sound like parchment ripping. All those around him are edging forwards, driving the Pale back through the hissing grass, never ceding won ground, grimly eating up the terrain.

Vorx looks up briefly to see Mortarion, at the forefront as always, laying about him with his blade, hurling the scrawny Pale aside with every mighty blow. He sees him standing taller by an arm’s length than the greatest of them, indomitable and unbreakable. The mountain peaks rear up on all sides, but none of them looks as solid as he does.

Vorx does not yet know what manner of being Mortarion is. He will not discover it for many years. It does not matter. In that one glimpse he sees all that he needs to know – that the Deathlord is one of them. He has been poisoned by this world, bled by it, and still stands tall. Alone of all of them, he could rise higher into the thick acid clouds of the uttermost heights, but he remains down here, gradually giving them the means to go with him, one day. This is a choice for him, one he did not have to make. The people of the valleys had no choices, had forgotten how to even consider an alternative, but under him they are learning again.

Vorx knows then that he will follow Mortarion unto death itself. He will fight for this master wherever and whenever he is commanded to, and this shall be his only and lasting purpose. He suddenly feels as proud as he did when the Pale King was ended, only now with greater cause.

There is still much work to be done. He knows, for he has been told many times, that this labour will never end, and that one should never seek more than that, and that Barbarus is a world only for the diligent and the enduring.

So he works the scythe hard, and with every stroke, with every final death he causes, his arms grow a little stronger.

Another world, gripped by a fire that will not die for ten thousand years.

Its skies were once blue and clear, but are now a blend of greys and blacks, shot through with the sullen glow of forbidden weapons. The air is painfully thin, almost as toxic as the heights of Barbarus were, though here that comes from the chem-agents released by deliberate hands.

There have been many battlefields, but this is, and always will be, the greatest of them. No clash of arms before or since will ever compare to it, for here is the fulcrum upon which the destiny of a species is decided. All assembled know this, and so they fight with a singular fervour that will never be repeated.

Vorx looks up briefly, seeing vertiginous walls that look so much like the old mountainsides. Every inch of them is contested now, and sheets of flame dance like spectres over the dark surfaces, reflecting across adamantium polished sheer by scouring agents.

The walls will be broken soon, just as they were on Oura’Nuoama a long time ago, and after that the slaughter will intensify further. Their long journey through time and space will find its conclusion, and the dark wager struck within the void will have its wisdom either confirmed or rejected.

Vorx feels no fatigue. His body has changed already, thickening and extending. He can sense the Gifts being born within him, and he knows that if he lives to see the end of this, he will be profoundly altered in even greater ways than those that have gone before.

Soon he will join his reaper’s blade to those of his brothers who contest the great gates. But for now he is hunting, running down a scent that he has been pursuing ever since making planetfall. There is a thread in his soul, a bitter thread, one that has been snagged for too long. He strides towards the high breaches, a landscape of murder flashing around him as proscribed destructiveness detonates across every horizon.

This is an indulgence, one that he could feel some guilt for, but there are other voices to heed now, ones that seem to encourage this kind of thing. He knows that it is the god’s will, for how else could he find him, this one insignificant soul amid the teeming multitudes who have come to the Throneworld to fight?

They meet under the shadow of a fallen archway barring passage further up, and the ground at their feet is clogged with corpses and wreckage.

Camanio seems to have been expecting this – perhaps he shares something of his beloved master’s foresight. The Blood Angel looks much as he did all those years ago – the bodies of his Legion have not been bloated and augmented by Gifts, and thus they guard the halls of their despot in a state of unforgivable weakness.

They could have had all these things, had they chosen to. They could have taken the more imaginative path.

The Blood Angel lowers his sword, point first. ‘You were filth back then, too,’ he says. ‘We all knew it.’

Vorx smiles. There are no words of counter-challenge – there never are – and so they fall into combat easily, slipping down through practised modes and attitudes without a thought. They are both so very good at what they do.

But Camanio is weary. He must have been fighting without respite for weeks already, maybe longer, and even his immaculate conditioning has its limits. Vorx realises that this will be over quickly, and it is a strangely bitter thing to acknowledge.

‘If I’d known then,’ Camanio gasps, working hard, ‘I’d have slit your throat right there.’

If I’d known then. So true. That goes for them all.

Vorx acknowledges, slowly, that he is not fighting at the very peak of his powers. He watches his opponent closely – the red-and-gold armour dented and blackened – and sees how far the old finery has been ruined by this conflict. He knows what such destruction will do to the proud souls who wear the plate, and can take no pleasure in it. Suddenly, an ancient insult, uttered without thought to eternity, seems a trivial thing.

But then, far away, he glimpses the familiar blush of green. On the edge of his superlative hearing, he catches the dull drone of flies. Just as on Oura’Nuoama, just as happened in that half-forgotten time when symmetries were still seen as coincidences, the primarch is making his move. As always, Mortarion leads from the front, making his progress in stately measures. Though out of the range of his physical sight, Vorx can nevertheless picture him clearly, his great cloak swirling, his bronze armour finer than anything forged on hateful Barbarus, his gaunt frame just as dominating as it always was. Even the primarch has taken on Gifts now, and they are beyond magnificent.

‘Skin and bones,’ Vorx spits, thrusting the scythe into Camanio’s chest, breaking through the fine armour and carving into the ribs beyond.

The Blood Angel arcs, impaled on the curve of steel, his arms twitching helplessly. Somewhere close by, Mortarion is marching into the annals of history, slaying with that deliberate control unmatched by any living soul in creation.

Vorx gets closer, wanting his stench to be the last thing Camanio senses.

‘Skin and bones.’

A twist, a wrench, and the deed is done. The archway is cleared. The path beyond is open.

‘But he made me strong enough.’

Then, never hurrying, never slowing, he crosses the threshold.

LIGHTNING RUN

Peter McLean

Flight Officer Salvatoria Grant
Munitorum base Sigma
Elijan III

The thunder of the engines gave Sal life.

Her gloved hands played over the Valkyrie’s controls, caressing the age-pitted steel and brass levers as the plane throbbed with potential on the landing pad. The powerful twin engines were idling, but she knew from long experience that it would only take her to pull that lever back, push those throttles forward, stamp on this pedal, and the assault carrier would rip free of the ground and into the air with a bellow of fury like the very wrath of the Emperor.

This Valkyrie had been Sal’s plane for three years now, Terran standard. It wasn’t hers, as such, of course. It belonged to the Imperial Fleet, Segmentum Pacificus, Fourth Flotilla, First Battle Group, troopship Damocles. Through those holy lines of command, it belonged to the divine God Emperor Himself, and that was as it should be. The plane was her connection to the Emperor’s divinity, her conduit to enacting His will on whatever world she had been sent to. The machine made her whole, gave her a purpose in the galaxy – to deliver death unending, in His name.

‘Not long now,’ she whispered to the Valkyrie. She felt as though she could feel its machine-spirit’s need to be free of the ground, to fly the way it had been ordained to by the will of the Emperor. ‘He’ll be here soon, and when he comes he’ll be in a hurry. They always are. Then we can fly and Emperor willing, we can kill His enemies.’

‘You talking to yourself again, Grant?’

Second flight officer Herrion leaned into the cockpit behind her, his helmet dangling from its straps in his hand. They had been flying together for six months now and she still hadn’t learned to like the man. He was unshaven, and an unlit lho-stick dangled from his mouth in open defiance of her rules. She let her right hand fall to her side and touched her father’s ancient autopistol. She wore it at her hip on every mission, for luck and for her father’s blessing.

‘Ditch that smoke,’ she ordered.

‘Oh, come on, Grant…’

‘Emperor, help me resist the temptation to shoot this fool,’ Sal said, turning in her seat to fix Herrion with a savage glare.

There was no smoking on Sal’s plane, no way. Not only because of the regulations, although she took those seriously, but also because you could actually smell the fumes of unburned promethium welling up from the Valkyrie’s idling engines. One flame could be the end of both of them, and half the Munitorum base as well.

Herrion sighed and put his smoke away, unlit.

‘Get in and buckle up,’ Sal snapped, taking her hand off the gun. ‘When he gets here we need to go now, not once you’ve got your kit together. And put your damn helmet on. Do you think you’re some sort of mudfoot?’

Mudfoots, that was what the Navy flyers called the Astra Militarum infantry they usually ended up transporting in their Valkyries. Men and women who would nonchalantly take their helmets off and sit on them for protection against the occasional bursts of groundfire that were bound to come up through the floor of the plane sometimes. People who had never been in a crash-landing situation, in other words.

Mudfoots didn’t belong in the air, but Salvatoria Grant did. Air was her element, the same as earth and mud was theirs. Her heavy Valkyrie felt like an extension of her own body. She wondered for a moment if the bridge crew of the Damocles, their desiccated bodies hardwired into the ancient spaceframe, felt the same way. She supposed they probably did, if they could still feel anything at all.

Herrion pulled a face but he buckled his helmet on as she had told him, and took his place in the co-pilot’s seat behind her. Her two gunners were already aboard too, one at each of the side doors in the aft crew bay, where their heavy bolters protruded through the fuselage. The canopies were still up, and damp air blew into the cockpit. It smelled like it might rain later.

Elijan III was a temperate world, mostly forested on the surface but rich in deep underground promethium reserves. Sal had heard that when the wind blew from the right direction at night, the Munitorum base had reeked of promethium from the great refinery twenty miles up the river. That was before, though. Before the corruption.

Now the air only smelled of blood.

The corruption of Elijan III had come fast, and it had come hard. The vile taint of the Archenemy had spread like wildfire through the simple communities of pipemen and refinery workers, threatening to overtake all Imperial order on the world. That much Sal had learned at the Fleet briefing, at least. The rest of it, what the high command hadn’t told them, she had learned in her time on the surface since the Damocles made orbit and disgorged four regiments of Guard and a hundred Valkyries to support them. Since her plane had first touched down on Elijan III, Sal had learned more about the hideous threat they faced than she had ever wanted to know.

The simple fact was, they weren’t winning.

Oh, the Officio Prefectus would have it otherwise, of course, but Sal had eyes to see and she could think for herself. Not traits valued in the Guard, perhaps, but the Navy was different. In the Navy, you were expected to make command decisions based on the available information, to protect your plane and your passengers to the best of your ability. That meant not lying to yourself about the odds. The Munitorum base was crawling with troops, the walls manned with heavy autocannons and missile launchers, and still she thought it wouldn’t be enough.

Elijan III had all but fallen to Chaos, and there was no lying to herself about that. Some terrible, blasphemous cult had overrun the planet, harvesting its rich natural resources for themselves in their endless pursuit of death and slaughter.

Now, though, there might be hope. She had been seconded to the Munitorum base, and although no hard intel had been revealed to her, it was clear enough to Sal that something of great importance to the war effort was coming to a head.

She took a deep breath and touched the controls in front of her again, taking strength from their holy construction and the connection she felt they gave her to the Emperor’s divine will.

This control was for the nose-mounted multi-laser, those triggers would unleash her two Hellstrike missiles from their cradles under the wings. She could kill a main battle tank with those, if the Emperor willed it. She touched the triggers again, and slowly let out her breath. The plane calmed her. It was her spiritual anchor, her link to the ultimate divinity of mankind. Every shot fired was a prayer to the Emperor, every kill an offering to His glory.

She bowed her head and whispered the Emperor’s catechism of devotion.

‘Now what are you muttering about, you mad mare?’ Herrion snorted. ‘Emperor’s blood, you’re–’

‘Use His name in vain again and I really will shoot you,’ Sal snapped at him, twisting in her seat to glare at Herrion over her shoulder. She touched the pistol again. ‘Not on my plane. Shut up and– They’re here. Launch prep, right now!’

She wasn’t looking at her co-pilot any more. Her attention was out of the side of the open cockpit, where a full general of the Astra Militarum was marching stiffly towards her boarding ramp at double time, with three aides and six heavily armed troopers hurrying after him. He was the hope of Elijan III, Sal knew, even if she wasn’t privy to exactly why.

Herrion knew the art of aerial warfare well, which was the only reason she put up with him. His hands flew across the controls in front of him, running preflight checks with the practised skill that came from thousands of hours of flying time. He flicked switches, checked gauges, threw rockers, and the amber status runes on the main display turned to green in rapid succession as the twin canopies closed smoothly over their heads.

The Valkyrie shuddered with anticipation.

The crew bay intercom crackled in Sal’s helmet vox.

‘The general is aboard, pilot. Immediate dust off ordered. Proceed to Patroclus base with all haste.’

‘Aye, sir,’ Sal said.

She could only assume she was speaking to one of the general’s aides, but it didn’t really matter. She knew a command when she heard one. She flicked to the Navy channel.

‘Crew, secure doors, brace for dust off. Bolters to automatic,’ she said, and flicked back to the open channel. ‘Lock down and buckle up, sir.’

Two runes on her readout went from red to green as her gunners closed the side doors and made fast. That was it, they were ready.

‘All systems green,’ Herrion reported, his voice all business now they were working.

‘Systems green,’ she repeated.

The base channel clicked open in her ear.

‘Transport, cleared for dust off.’

‘Dust off,’ Sal replied. ‘Five by five.’

She reached out and threw a lever forwards.

Her gloved hand closed over the twin throttles and pushed them forward, and the thunder of the engines built to a piercing scream as the plane threatened to shake itself to pieces on the pad. She raised a clenched fist over her shoulder. Herrion leaned forwards for a moment, tapped his own against it. Good to go.

Sal stamped on the release pedal.

The Valkyrie hurled itself vertically into the air, the acceleration crushing her down into her padded leather flight seat until she thought her spine must surely be compacting on itself. That was the feeling of the Emperor’s will being done, by her own mortal hand. Her connection to the divine, through His holy war machine.

A tight smile crossed Sal’s face as she vectored the engines, channelling their furious power from lift into forward acceleration. The plane roared and blasted through the air with a howl of righteous fury, leaving Munitorum Sigma behind as she struck out over the thick forest below. Her head-up display layered information over her field of vision, the preset course to Patroclus base showing her an endless hololithic tunnel of well-spaced green triangles that seemed to hang in the air in front of her.

Sal adjusted her flight yoke slightly, guiding the hurtling Valkyrie smoothly through the first triangle, which blinked out of existence as she passed it. She checked airspeed, altitude, wind shear, fuel and cargo weight, and keyed the passenger band again.

‘ETA nine hours, sir,’ she said.

A new voice came on the line. A man, older than the aide by the sound of him, with a voice that spoke with the gravitas of long-accustomed command. The general himself, she thought, and straightened with pride in her seat. She was honoured to be directly addressed by one of his illustrious rank.

‘Make it eight. Can you do that for me, pilot?’

Sal looked at her readouts again, factored fuel tolerances, reheat burn durations, structural fatigue risk. Always a risk, when you pushed a plane this old to its limits. She cleared her throat.

‘Maybe, sir,’ she said. ‘But…’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘We might blow up in the air. I have the authority to tell you this, pilot, but consider yourself sworn to crimson-level secrecy – if I can get what I carry there in time, we’ve won this war. If I don’t, then it doesn’t matter if I get there at all. Every minute counts. Do it.’

‘Aye, sir,’ Sal said.

It would mean a course alteration, Sal realised. However hard she pushed the old plane, it couldn’t be done otherwise. Not on their current heading. If she dropped them ten points east though…

That meant she would be flying them over a known enemy location. She didn’t know exactly what was down there, but there was something. It was a gamble. Sal thought of the general’s words, of the grim determination in his tone, and she made her decision.

She cancelled the preset course, vectored ten points east, and keyed in the afterburners. The plane kicked her in the base of her spine as it blasted through the air.

The Emperor’s will be done. All their fates were in His hands, now and forever more.

The Valkyrie howled east over the forest on a flaming stream of afterburners, and a nine-hour estimate that became eight on their new heading, then became seven and a half. Sal hunched over the controls, milking every scrap of power from the overworked engines. She had felt the urgency in the general’s words, the desperation he had been trying to hide. Whatever his mission was, whatever he carried, it was clear it had to reach Patroclus base as soon as humanly possible.

They were flying over the enemy lines now. Great swathes of the forest were burning, where overland promethium pipelines had been ruptured in the fighting. Senseless waste and destruction, Sal thought. The vile cultists destroyed for the simple joy of watching things burn. All the same, they built as well. Already they had streaked over settlements and military bases, crude but effective looking. More than once, she had spotted tanks on the ground. Former Imperial tanks, to be sure, noble Leman Russ machines captured and corrupted by the abominations of the Archenemy. Another time, she would have been raining righteous Hellstrike fury down on them from her plane, but not now. The mission was all that mattered.

Runes were starting to flicker amber on the display as the strained Valkyrie began to complain, but Sal caressed her controls and whispered encouragement to the plane’s machine-spirit.

‘You’re no tech-priest, the machine won’t hear you,’ Herrion reminded her. ‘You’ll kill us all if you keep pushing it this hard!’

‘Shut up,’ Sal growled, and ran a reassuring hand across the yoke. ‘She can do this. She has to.’

Whether Sal’s plane could do it or not became irrelevant precisely seven seconds later, when the surface-to-air missile blew her tail off. Warning klaxons wailed as though in physical pain, and the display lit up with flashing red runes across the board.

‘Critical, critical!’ Sal shouted into the open channel. ‘Brace, brace, brace!’

Her Valkyrie was suddenly in a spinning nosedive, trailing flames as it died screaming in the sky over Elijan III. Sal fought the controls with all her might, cutting the afterburners and vectoring what was left of her engines in a desperate attempt to turn their headlong plummet into something approaching a controlled descent. There was a clearing maybe two miles away, ferrocrete runway and armoured bunkers flashing in her vision as the Valkyrie spun wildly in its death throes.

Airbase, Sal thought. Missile defences.

It had always been a gamble; Sal had known that and she had accepted it. The enemy might be insane, but they weren’t stupid. Of course they had air defences – and she had flown straight into them. Such was the Emperor’s will for her that day, it seemed.

Wind screamed in her ears over the vox-channel from the crew bay, now torn open to the rush of air. A burst of flames ripped through the cockpit behind her from a ruptured fuel line. Herrion shrieked, and Sal snatched a glance over her shoulder just in time to see him incinerated in his webbing. She slapped the big red fire suppressant switch on the console in front of her, but it was too late for him. The retardant foam sprayed uselessly across his reeking blackened corpse.

‘Anyone alive back there, brace and pray!’ Sal yelled into the vox. ‘We are landing hard!’

The first of the treetops hit them, and the Valkyrie rolled sickeningly as the great trees shattered in her wake. Sal screamed, and everything went black.

The pain hit Sal like a commissar’s bullet to the temple. She forced her eyes open, barely able to move. There was a section of twisted airframe embedded in her helmet, maybe one polymer layer away from having gone through her skull. She reached up with shaking hands, found the buckle at her throat and released herself. She was stuck fast in the wreckage, and had to squirm down in her seat to get her head out of her ruined helmet.

It had saved her life – just.

She checked her father’s autopistol was still at her belt, the three spare magazines in their leather pouches balancing its weight on her other hip, and hit the quick release that freed her from her webbing. She pitched sideways against the canopy, and only then realised that what was left of the Valkyrie was lying on its side on the forest floor. She yanked the canopy release handle, but the mechanism had been so badly crushed by the impact that it refused to move. Sal swallowed, realising she was effectively trapped in the cockpit.

She twisted in her seat and looked over her shoulder at the shattered remains of Herrion’s console, his blackened corpse still strapped tightly into the webbing behind it. His canopy release looked undamaged.

She swallowed again.

Taking a deep breath, she braced with her legs and forced herself up and over Herrion’s console, straining for the second canopy release handle. She pushed herself upwards with a grunt of effort and half fell onto the charred and foam-encrusted ruin of Herrion’s corpse. Her gloved hand tore into his stomach cavity as she put her weight on him, rupturing his half-cooked insides.

When she stopped vomiting, Sal grasped his emergency canopy release and pulled it, blowing the entire top of the cockpit clear with a sharp crack of explosive bolts. She crawled gratefully over the roasted filth of her co-pilot and out of the plane, and threw up again on the churned loam of the forest floor.

She stayed there for some time, hugging the ground and retching with a mixture of shock and horror and sheer relief. She was Emperor only knew how far behind enemy lines, but she was somehow, miraculously, alive. There was nothing she wanted to do more than run, retrace her flight path on foot and try to find her way back to the Munitorum base. Find another plane, and just fly away. She belonged in the air, not here, not in some wild forest. She touched her father’s pistol, and his words came back to her.

He had been a pilot himself, once, and he had given her his beloved sidearm on the day she came home and announced she had taken her oath and joined up with the Navy.

‘The Emperor expects every woman to do her duty, however hard it may be,’ her father had said to her that day. ‘Make Him proud of you, Salvatoria. I already am.’

‘The Emperor expects,’ she whispered.

She forced herself to her feet, made herself ignore the pain of a hundred cuts and scrapes and bruises. At least nothing seemed to be broken. She looked at her beloved Valkyrie, and wanted to weep. The whole rear section of the plane had been blasted away, and the fuselage had burst open where it had hit the ground.

One of her gunners was red paste under the wreckage.

She knew she had to try to complete the mission. Whatever the general’s purpose had been, she knew it was vital to the war effort there on Elijan III. She had to have faith in the Emperor and try, however unlikely it may seem.

Both hatches were buckled and twisted but there was a gaping hole at the back of the plane where the tail had been, and Sal hauled herself painfully up and into the stinking interior of the crew bay. It was crimson with blood, reeking of ruptured guts and promethium. The upper fuselage had sheared off and come down onto the passengers like a guillotine, bisecting four of them and taking the others’ legs off where they sat helpless in their flight webbing. They had all bled out from severed femoral arteries. The general looked up at her and smiled.

‘Hell of a landing, pilot,’ he said.

Sal almost died of fright.

In the Emperor’s name, how…?

The general’s legs were gone just below his groin, but… Sal blinked, and realised this wasn’t the first time that had happened to him. The augmetics were ruined beyond repair and even now sparks were spitting dangerously from his dull metal stumps, daring the promethium in the air to explode and obliterate the entire wreck in a roaring fireball.

‘Sir, we have to get you out of here,’ she said, reaching for him.

He shook his head and tried to laugh, and blood ran out of his mouth and over his chin.

‘My legs were augmetic, but my lungs aren’t,’ he said. ‘There’s some of your damn plane so deep in the right one I can taste the metal. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘The mission…’ Sal started.

The general nodded.

‘That’s yours now,’ he said.

He reached into his uniform jacket with his left hand, and Sal realised the entire right side of his body wasn’t working. He grimaced as he moved, and more blood ran out of his mouth and nose. He took something out of an inside pocket and held it out to her – an ornate ring, steel and brass with a gleaming gold bezel and a single clear crystal set into it.

‘Take this,’ he said. ‘Wear it, if you have to, but keep it safe and get it to Patroclus base.’

‘What?’ Sal asked, taking the offered jewellery with open bewilderment.

‘Encrypter,’ the general said, and coughed up more blood. ‘Code level vermillion. It’s got… their battle plans on it. I’m a Navy intelligencer. Get this… to Colonel Shrake at Patroclus, whatever it takes. The words are Ave Imperator, in circulum arcanus trismegistus est. Win… this war, pilot. The Emperor expects.’

Her father’s words rang in her head.

The Emperor expects every woman to do her duty.

‘Yes, sir,’ Sal said, but he was already dead.

Sal peeled off her left glove, put the ring on and pulled the glove securely back over it to keep it in place. That done, she braved Herrion’s corpse again to get back into the cockpit, and raided the emergency kit for bottled water and hard rations – and for the other thing she knew would be there, the thing every downed pilot hopes they never have to use.

She rigged the timed demolition mine to the Valkyrie and fled into the forest.

She was half a mile away when it blew. All the same she threw herself to the ground and covered her head with her hands, missing her helmet as burning debris rained down through the trees. After an explosion like that at the crash site, no one would come looking for any survivors, friend or foe. She was a ghost now, with no hope of rescue.

No pilot wanted to put themselves in that position, but it was the only way to be sure the cultists wouldn’t come to investigate the downed plane and realise there was an Imperial pilot at large in the forest. The mission was everything, now.

Sal waited until the rain of twisted metal stopped, then sat up and touched her father’s pistol. She was on foot and alone behind enemy lines, with two days’ rations, one handgun, four magazines of ammunition, and over two thousand miles to cover in somewhere around six hours. There was nothing else for it.

She needed to steal a plane.

A fast one.

The enemy airbase was easy enough to find, even in the unfamiliar forest. She only had to follow the noise. The vile cultists delighted in wanton destruction, and the engines of war that enabled it.

Planes roared down the runway and into the air. They arced around to head back the way Sal had come, towards Munitorum Sigma. She recognised them from their silhouettes as they flashed west overhead. Lightnings. She knew then that the base was doomed.

Following my trail, backtracking us, she thought. They’ve had it.

The Munitorum base had missile defences, of course, but against a flight of Lightnings? No. No, they were too fast, too powerful. It would be a massacre.

Sal crept through the thinning screen of trees towards the cultist airbase, shuddering as she passed rows of broken skulls mounted on sharp stakes. There was a single fighter left on the runway, refuelling hoses trailing from its fuselage like limp tentacles. The beautiful machine had been defiled, Sal could see now, vile runes of Chaos etched into once-sleek flanks that looked as if they had been freshly anointed with blood.

She tasted bile, to witness such desecration of the Emperor’s holy war machine.

She drew her father’s pistol.

Cultists walked the perimeter, draped in blood-red robes daubed with evil black sigils. They had lasguns in their hands, no doubt stolen the same as the Lightnings were. As the base itself had been, probably. Looking at it, Sal reasoned this had to have originally been an Imperial facility before the corruption came and claimed it. No one but Imperial engineers had ever laid a runway so perfectly.

She narrowed her eyes as she thought about it. It was an Imperial facility, and an Imperial plane sitting there in front of her. She was no fighter pilot, no, but the Imperium ran on the principle of standard patterns. And she was a Navy flyer.

How different could it be?

The Lightning’s cockpit canopy was open, and the boarding steps were still rolled up to its side. The fuel hoses were limp and flaccid, which either meant the plane was fuelled up and ready and just hadn’t been uncoupled yet, or it had been hooked up only recently and refuelling hadn’t started.

Fifty fifty on that, Sal, she told herself.

A fifty fifty chance, life or death on the flip of an Imperial Crown.

Whatever it takes, the general had said.

The Emperor expects.

She had faced worse odds.

Salvatoria Grant flicked off the safety of her father’s pistol, said a prayer to the Emperor and sprinted for the grounded Lightning.

She got six yards before the first las-shot blew a chunk out of the rockcrete in front of her.

‘Halt!’ someone shouted, their voice guttural and somehow wrong.

Sal turned and fired on pure instinct. Her father’s pistol kicked in her hand and twenty yards away a red-robed figure spun and dropped.

All hell broke loose.

Warning klaxons wailed across the airbase as someone triggered an intruder alarm, and then there was las-fire sizzling through the air all around her.

Sal fired again, missed, put her head down and ran like every enemy of mankind was on her heels.

The boarding steps were twenty yards away, then fifteen. Sal jinked and dodged, firing blindly over her shoulder as she ran as hard as she had ever run before in her life. The plane was waiting for her. The beautiful, crippled, wounded Imperial war machine, its hide so cruelly defiled with the foul sigils of the Archenemy.

The machine won’t hear you, Herrion had said, and perhaps he was right about that, but Sal felt that she could hear the machine. In her mind, she could hear it weeping with shame and fury and the burning need for revenge.

She changed magazines at a full sprint and turned at the foot of the boarding steps, the pistol braced in both hands. She blazed into the charging cultists, dropping four, five, six, until they were just too close to miss her. At the last minute, she swarmed up into the plane like a simian, wincing as she felt the impact of las-rounds against the armoured fuselage.

Imperial standardisation was one thing, but the cockpit of a single-seater Lightning fighter was nothing like that of a Valkyrie. Panic gripped her as she saw the interior of the plane had been daubed with the same hideous glyphs that marred its outer fuselage – eye watering signs of abomination. A peeled human skull had been nailed to the top of the console, and the entire interior of the cockpit was drenched in blood. The seat under her was sodden with it, and she felt it soaking disgustingly into her flight suit.

Sal screamed and smashed the skull aside with a backhanded blow of her gloved left hand, feeling the general’s ring dig into her finger with the impact. That ring was all that mattered, she reminded herself, fighting down hot vomit with every breath.

The mission, think of the mission.

She forced herself to ignore the blasphemous filth around her and think. A Lightning was an interceptor, designed to be scrambled at a moment’s notice. There had to be an emergency action function, a way to override the need for preflights and just go when the Emperor called.

A big red button, in other words.

Everything in the cockpit was red, slathered with congealing blood, making it hard to distinguish one control from another. Not that one, that was the fire suppressant toggle. That was always in the middle of the console, on every plane Sal had ever been in. If not that, then… there!

The trigger grip was so obvious she almost missed it; it was just in the wrong place compared to what she was used to. It was over her head, hanging from the bottom of the canopy so it could be grabbed as a pilot vaulted into the plane.

Las-fire whined over her head under the open canopy, forcing her head down.

Stupid, stupid! How did I miss that?

She blasted three return shots out of the cockpit with her father’s pistol, until it clicked dry. She dropped it into the footwell, and risked losing her arm as she reached up and grabbed the big red grip.

Sal pulled.

Lots of things happened at once.

The canopy slammed down so hard it would have taken her hand off at the wrist if she had been a fraction of a second slower, and she heard the violent hiss of pressure seals engaging. Something coughed behind her, then roared like a native Elijanian vhorbeast as her engines lit up. Sal swiped a gloved hand over the console, clearing away enough blood for her to see the whole display illuminated in a blaze of coloured runes. The external monitor showed her a screaming trail of jet backwash incinerating the cultists who had been pursuing her. Her hands fell to the controls: throttle and stick, not the yoke she was used to her in big Valkyrie, but not so very different to the single-seater trainers she had used in the Navy flight scholam.

The Emperor bless standardisation, she thought.

The fuelling rune was flashing amber to tell her the hoses were still attached, but the brass gauge above it read reassuringly full. Again, there was a promising looking button under the flashing rune, so Sal reached out and stabbed it with one gloved finger. The fuelling hoses blew clear with a bang, and the flashing rune turned to steady green.

The Lightning was already pointed down the runway, so all Sal had to do was disengage the landing brake and push forward on the throttles. She whispered a prayer to the Emperor and shoved them forward hard.

That was a very bad idea.

The plane shrieked and almost flipped over backwards as far too much power was unleashed all at once. Only Sal’s honed reactions enabled her to control the wildly bucking machine, and now more las-rounds were slapping against the fuselage. She engaged ground manoeuvre mode and whipped the skittish plane around on its landing gear, using the jet exhaust to sweep the surrounding area like the mother of all heavy flamers until the gunfire stopped again.

‘Gently now,’ Sal whispered, half to herself and half to the plane’s furious, tortured machine-spirit. ‘We can do this. Together, we can.’

She got the plane angled onto the runway again and this time made herself pour the power on gradually, letting the engine note build from a rumble to a growing howl as the rockcrete sped past outside the canopy. The end of the runway was coming up far too quickly for comfort.

Sal hunted the blood-slick console frantically, looking for some sign of what was wrong. It’s a short-runway launch interceptor, there must be a way to… There!

Her hand found the pull-toggle for the solid-fuel rocket assisted take-off and jerked it towards her. The resulting acceleration almost made her black out as the Lightning took off on a pillar of chemical flame, blasting into the air like a missile. The terrifying rush only lasted three or four seconds, by which time she was thousands of feet into the air with the spent rocket-fuel tank spinning silently away below her.

‘Missile lock, missile lock,’ the plane’s servitor brain announced in a curiously emotionless voice. ‘Incoming, two contacts.’

Two red contact runes were spiralling in on the head-up display now, closing with frightening speed. Sal cursed the cultist’s missile air defences and slapped the chaff and flare icons simultaneously, pushing the throttle all the way forward and finding the afterburners with a grin of triumph.

The two incoming missiles blew themselves harmlessly apart in the cloud of chaff behind her as the Lightning went supersonic with a concussive boom fit to split the sky.

The Emperor’s will be done.

Nothing could catch her now.

The base’s other Lightnings had been heading in the opposite direction, towards the Munitorum base she had come from, and even if the cultists had recalled them, they were still no faster than she was, and probably a thousand miles behind her by now. She was home free.

The Lightning flashed over the endless forest far below, eating miles at a rate her Valkyrie could never have hoped to match. Sal used the time to work up a flight plan on the console’s navigation cogitator, plotting a fresh course to Patroclus base. She was maybe two hours out, at her current speed and heading. That put her ETA well within the general’s original target.

She keyed the vox to send word ahead of her coming.

Static howled in her ears, intercut with the blasphemous ranting of one of the cultist’s heretical preachers. She tried to change the band, got nothing but more of the same. It was unintelligible gibberish, to her ears, but still the harsh, guttural words made her feel ill. Just then she was suddenly, horribly aware of the vile sigils etched into the console and daubed over the surfaces inside the cockpit, of the skull she had knocked into the footwell, where it had sunk into the pooled blood that welled around her boots. She tried not to think about how wet her back and behind and legs were, her flight suit now saturated with blood from the sodden seat.

This plane had saved her life, but it was hideously corrupted. Sal could feel the machine’s once noble spirit still fighting somewhere inside the fuselage, but it was dying under the weight of the Chaos horrors that had been inflicted on it. The vox refused to change to any other channel.

Sal shut it off, and thought about what that meant.

She was coming up fast on Patroclus base.

A Chaos-marked Lightning was coming up fast on Patroclus base, with its surrounding cordon of heavy air defences.

They’re going to shoot me out of the sky.

She shed altitude as fast as she could, bringing the Lightning as low as she dared, until she could be sure she was flying under their long-range auspex. The forested ground was a hurtling, insane blur of green at well over a thousand miles an hour and barely eight hundred feet up.

Sal’s nerve gave out in the end, and she throttled back to under the sound barrier before the shock wave of her own passage could tear the plane to pieces around her. Patroclus base was barely a hundred miles away now, and she was coming up fast on the outer ring of defences.

The plane blared a klaxon to tell her the first missile was coming at her. Sal launched more chaff and gave the throttle a blast to clear the area, dropping even lower until it seemed that the tops of the trees below were almost close enough to scrape the paint from the plane’s desecrated fuselage.

Another alert, another burst of chaff, then the countermeasures icon was flashing to tell her that she was all out. She banked hard, throwing the plane into an arc that almost stood it on a wingtip, and keyed the main armament readout into her head-up display. The plane had two wing-mounted lascannons, but the primary weapon was a ventral-mounted long-barrelled autocannon that Sal knew had a truly awe-inspiring cyclic rate of fire.

The head-up display zeroed on the incoming missile as Sal righted the plane, closing at a speed that made sweat stand out on her forehead. Her finger slipped down the stick to the trigger, sticky with blood, and she forced herself to stay calm until the four red triangles overlaid on her display locked on to the rushing blur of the missile and flashed with target lock.

She squeezed down hard.

A one-second burst threw one hundred and twenty-seven high-velocity armour-piercing rounds at the missile with a sound like a ripsaw going through rockcrete. She flew the plane straight through the resulting explosion at close to eight hundred miles an hour, and banked hard once more.

The plane shuddered violently, and the flashing red runes on the console told a grim tale of structural damage.

‘I’m Navy!’ she shouted into the vox. ‘Hold fire, you stupid mudfoots!’

The troops on the ground either couldn’t hear her, or they simply didn’t believe her. She was past the missile defences now, but there were Hydra batteries down there somewhere in the green. Several of them.

They opened up all at once, their quad-barrelled autocannons spitting an eruption of Imperial fury into her path. Sal swallowed in a dry mouth. She could climb above their effective range, of course, but not if she hoped to make a landing at Patroclus.

She had to get down there, and get down safe with the general’s secrets intact.

A burst of rounds smacked into the belly of the plane, tearing more chunks out of the light armour and taking out half her electronics. The console display died.

Whatever it takes.

‘O Emperor, forgive me,’ Sal whispered.

Win this war, pilot. The Emperor expects.

She knew she had to. Whatever the general had given her, he believed the secrets contained on the encrypted crystal in that ring could carry the whole war on Elijan III. That would save tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives. What were a few mudfoot Hydra crews, compared to that?

They were human. They were, each and every one of them, the divine sparks of the Emperor’s will. They were her comrades, her brothers and sisters in arms. They were shooting at her, yes, but only because they believed her to be an avatar of the Archenemy. They didn’t know any better.

Sal did know better, she thought as she jinked the screaming plane around yet another burst of murderous anti-aircraft fire. The tortured airframe moaned in protest, and she knew the Lightning wouldn’t survive much more of this. Not at this speed and altitude, not with the damage it had already taken. There was just no way.

She had no choice.

The Emperor expects every woman to do her duty, however hard it may be.

Sal keyed the head-up display and brought the plane around until the four triangles converged on the shape of a Hydra flak tank. There were tears in her eyes.

‘Forgive me,’ she whispered, and squeezed the trigger. ‘Emperor forgive me, for I know exactly what I do.’

The ventral-mounted autocannon blew the machine apart with a two-second burst of supersonic munitions. There couldn’t possibly have been any survivors.

‘I’m Navy!’ Sal screamed into the vox. ‘For the Emperor’s love, let me reach Patroclus base!’

The vox returned a howl of static, but now she was this far away from the cultist’s base their signal jamming seemed to be out of range. Words fizzed in her ears, hardly intelligible.

‘…ing traitor! By…’

‘No!’ Sal shouted, working the vox frequency shifter with her left hand even as she fought the stick with the other, narrowly avoiding another burst of anti-aircraft fire. ‘Listen, please! Navy Intelligence! Colonel Shrake! Get me–’

One of the Hydras traversed its four swivel-mounted weapons and raked the side of her plane, punching rounds clean through the fuselage. Sal screamed as red-hot adamantium shot through the cockpit, taking a bloody chunk out of the meat of her left shoulder as it went. Her blood splattered against the inside of the canopy, running down the pane to mingle with the tainted, corrupt fluids that already profaned the Lightning. Sal tried hard not to think about what that meant. Wind howled around her as the cockpit violently depressurised.

She overshot the Hydra but there was small-arms fire snapping at her now, and she could see a four-man heavy weapons team hurriedly setting up a missile launcher.

She was out of chaff.

No choice, Salvatoria, she told herself. There’s no choice.

The autocannon turned them into red mist against the green.

She brought the crippled plane around and zeroed in on the second Hydra battery. Her head-up display finally died.

Aiming by eye alone, Sal angled the nose of the Lightning down into a steep attack run and let rip with her ventral weapon. The Hydra erupted in a volcano of merciless fire as its magazine went up, and took its nearby Chimera munitions tender with it. Three of the Chimera crew bailed out, blazing like human torches as they died. Sal could hear their screams of agony, if only in her mind.

She hauled back on the stick and the Lightning creaked and groaned in protest as it came out of its dive, shedding chunks of metal into the air as she hauled it around and back onto course.

The vox fizzed in her ear, a new voice.

‘…intelligencer. Col… Shrake… words?’

The shooting had stopped for the moment and now Patroclus base was coming into view, the long runway waiting for her. It was lined with Hydras, and they were all pointed at her.

Sal wracked her brains for the general’s words.

‘Ave Imperator,’ she said at last, ‘in circulum arcanus trismegistus est!’

‘Hold fire. All… hold fire.’

The vox signal was getting cleaner as she began her landing approach. There was no other option now – the Lightning was finished. It was a wonder it was still in the air at all, and Sal knew that her only choices were to attempt the landing and risk getting blown to pieces by the Hydras, or simply fall apart in the sky.

She took a shaky breath and keyed the landing gear.

Nothing happened.

Was this the Emperor’s judgement, for the awful choice she had made? Was He about to smash her into the runway like a bug, in righteous retribution? No, she told herself. No, she did His work here.

His will be done.

She ripped open the emergency hatch to the left of her seat and found the crank handle. It was stiff, obviously too long since it had last been properly maintained, but it turned. Wincing with pain and effort, Sal cranked the landing gear down by hand. The wound in her shoulder howled at her as it ripped further open, the broken bones grinding together under the torn flesh, and blood streamed down her arm and into the emergency cavity until the handle was slick with it.

She gave thanks to the Emperor that she still had enough hydraulic power to lower the flaps, at least, but all the same the crippled plane hit hard and bounced. The tearing agony in her shoulder made Sal scream as her crash webbing bit savagely into it, but she found the air brake lever through greying vision and threw it forward even as she slammed the throttles into reverse thrust.

The Lightning hit the ground again and slewed sideways for a moment, threatening to roll. Sal prayed and screamed and hauled it around at the last moment, righting it in a great, stinking cloud of promethium exhaust and vaporised tyre smoke.

She throttled back to idle, sagged in her webbing and passed out.

The after-action report was difficult, to say the least.

Colonel Shrake was a woman in her early one-twenties, with short, iron-grey hair and a badly scarred face that the patch over her left eye did little to hide.

She fixed her one remaining eye on Sal and said nothing.

Sal was sitting across a table from her in a small debriefing room, her shoulder field-dressed and her left arm bound to her chest in a tight sling. It hurt like murder, but it was nothing compared to the pain in her heart.

Two large men in the heavy carapace armour of the Militarum Tempestus stood behind the colonel’s chair, matt-black hellguns in their hands.

The colonel looked down at her data-slate for a moment.

‘So, one more time,’ she said, her voice like a Fenrisian winter. ‘You are not, in fact, an intelligencer. You are a Navy rating, rank of pilot flight officer, no more than that, and yet you are possessed of a crimson-level security passphrase and the single most important intelligence artefact in this entire theatre of war.’

Sal cleared her throat. She was very thirsty, but no one had offered her anything to drink.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said.

‘You came into possession of these things after crashing the transport that carried my good friend and colleague General Gobrecht, leaving no survivors but yourself. After this you stole a Chaos-corrupted Lightning from an enemy airbase and flew here, murdering twenty-nine Imperial soldiers and destroying three valuable war machines in the process. Is that correct, Pilot Grant?’

‘That’s not–’ she started, but the colonel’s head snapped up and she glared at her until Sal’s resolve crumbled. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ she whispered, and lowered her eyes in shame.

Here it comes, Sal thought. I’m for the firing squad for sure.

‘Nonsense,’ Colonel Shrake said.

Sal looked up in sudden shock as a slow, reptilian smile crossed the colonel’s face.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Acceptable losses, pilot. They lived to serve the Emperor, and they died in service. Don’t you understand? Dying is what soldiers are for. You are a heroine of the Imperium. You’d better get used to it.’

Sal wouldn’t be leaving Elijan III on the Damocles.

She was done with Navy life, or so her handler told her. When the time came, she would depart on a sleek, fast ship belonging to the Navy’s intelligencers. What happened after that, she didn’t know. Nobody would tell her.

Elijan III was over with, anyway. The Imperial victory had been decisive, crushing and brutally fast. Single-handedly, she had made that happen. Her, Salvatoria Grant, Heroine Pilot of the Imperium.

A heroine who cried herself drunkenly to sleep in her private room in the medicae block of the barracks every night.

Her handler knocked on the door of the room where she was still supposedly convalescing from her surgery. What she was really doing, most of the time, was drinking herself into oblivion. Nobody seemed to care, so long as she got her lines right. Her handler marched into the room, and gave her a stiff salute. He was a Militarum Tempestus sergeant, and he wore full dress uniform.

‘Ma’am,’ he said smoothly, pretending not to notice the raw redness of her eyes. ‘They’re ready for you now.’

Sal nodded and stood up, swaying slightly on her boot heels. Her knuckles were white around the glass of sacra in her hand. Her sixth that morning, she thought, or maybe her seventh, but she couldn’t be sure. She never could, any more.

She was in full Navy dress herself, the starched jacket uncomfortably tight over her still-healing shoulder. They’d had to fit an augmetic joint to save her arm, in the end. It hurt all the time, every minute of the day and night. Especially the nights. Sal clung to that pain, embraced it.

Deserved it.

She gulped her sacra and put the glass unsteadily down on the low table in front of her.

It was time to face the massed ranks of the Astra Militarum again.

Time to be the heroine, again. The newest face of the Imperial propaganda machine.

Her handler reached into his uniform jacket and produced a pair of mirrored pilot’s glasses, and handed them to her without a word.

She dutifully put them on to hide her red eyes, and followed the sergeant out of the medicae block. He led her down a corridor and out onto the square where the second Guard regiment awaited her, drawn up in parade formation.

Sal missed the Navy. She missed the freedom of flight, the furious glory of aerial assault. The space to breathe that was now denied to her.

Before her latest surgery, she had attended twenty-nine military funerals, closely watched at all times by two of Shrake’s hulking Militarum Tempestus Scions.

She had sobbed like a child at every single one.

Once she had given her pre-prepared, pre-approved, heavily rehearsed speech to the assembled mudfoots and they had duly applauded and saluted and praised her in the Emperor’s name, her handler escorted her back to her room in the medicae block.

‘You should rest,’ he said.

That wasn’t a suggestion, Sal knew.

The sergeant turned on his heel and left the room, and she heard the key turn in the lock behind him. Sal poured herself a sacra and walked to the window, gazing out in despair.

It was getting dark outside now, and the barrack block’s floodlights were coming on. Not that they were needed, not any more.

Outside, on the raked gravel in front of the building where the Chimeras were parked in long lines, a huge, flickering ten-storey hologram lit up the night. It showed a young Imperial Navy pilot, taller and leaner and better-looking than Sal had ever been in her life, her hands braced on her hips as she stared into the distance with her chin raised in defiance. A caption hung in the air above it, the words fully twenty feet tall above the towering figure.

It read Salvatoria Grant, Heroine of the Imperium!

The key, turning in the door to lock her in – the newest tool of the Imperial propaganda effort.

The Militarum Tempestus troopers, never letting her out of their sight.

Twenty-nine funerals.

Salvatoria Grant sat down on her hospital bed, put her head in her hands, and she wept.

LIGHT OF A CRYSTAL SUN

Josh Reynolds

The dead alien screamed.

An impossibility, the observer felt. The dead could not scream. And yet, somehow, it did. A long, ululating cry, brittle and sharp. It rose from the crystalline shape held within the flickering confines of a specially designed sensor array, and was echoed eerily by the enslaved witches who huddled in a circle about the device. The sound scratched at the edges of the observer’s enhanced hearing, before spiralling upwards into inaudible ranges beyond comprehension.

‘Cease.’ Electro-chargers that marked the points of the sensor array fell silent, the echoes slithering through the chamber. The witches slumped, chests heaving, eyes and noses bleeding. They were all still alive – progress, in contrast to the earlier attempts. But some were not much more than that.

The observer stalked towards the circle, the ferrule of his skull-headed sceptre tapping against the rusty deck plates, the fading light of the electro-chargers playing across the worn amethyst of his battleplate and the stretched faces stitched into the folds of the flesh-coat he wore over it. The long, segmented limbs of an ancient medicae harness, tipped by a nightmarish collection of bone-saws, scalpels and syringes, loomed over his head and shoulders.

Armoured fingers caught the sweaty scalp of one of the witches and jerked the slack-jawed psyker backwards. Blank eyes stared.

‘Damnation,’ Fabius Bile growled. This was the third such failure in as many hours. Biological data gathered by his power armour’s sensors spilled across the visual feed of his helmet. The unfortunate psyker had shallow respiration, a weak pulse and no signs of neurological activity. It was not dead yet, but it would be soon enough. Thus, it was no longer of any use, save that it could be processed into raw materials.

‘This one is finished. Bring another. Quickly.’ Fabius dragged the still-breathing husk upright and flung it aside, making room for its replacement. ‘Hurry,’ he reiterated, snapping his fingers. The mutants hastened to obey. They were twisted beasts, thick of muscle and brain. Many of them bore wounds – the marks of a ritual combat fought to decide who among their number would claim the honour of assisting Pater Mutatis in this experiment. The victors attended to him, while the losers contributed their bodies to his flesh-vats, there to be broken down into their component parts. Alive or dead, his creations had their uses.

Besides which, there were always more where they came from. The mouldering corridors of his Grand Apothecarium were home to more species than the average feral world. Some were of little use, except as chattel. But others had more specialised skills. The witches occupying the circle before him, for instance.

Introducing certain genetic flaws into a small percentage of the available abhuman population had shown commendable results. His servants harvested the resulting psykers with all due diligence, and quickly segregated them. Most were repurposed, their cerebral matter extracted and processed for scientific purposes. But others were trained, their given talents honed to precision.

Unfortunately, all the precision in the world could not make up for a lack of strength. Their minds, though powerful, rapidly broke against the barriers he had commanded that they hurl themselves at. Luckily, he had more.

As the grunting mutants stripped the rest of the brain-burnt psykers from the circle, Fabius stepped closer to the array and the crystalline fragments it contained. ‘Even dead, you seek to pit your will against mine,’ he murmured. ‘Intriguing, if frustrating. Yet even the dead can be made to spill their secrets. If I wished, I could grind you into a fine powder, mix it with organic matter taken from the appropriate sources and grow a new you. I could draw you up from your essential salts, like some savage genomancer of Old Night, but there is no telling what might be lost in such a crude process.’

His hands played across the controls for the device, making alterations to the diagnostic alignment, even as the complex calculations necessary to do so flew through his mind. The array had been built to his specifications by a magos of his acquaintance, and for the fair price of a gunship’s weight in wraithbone.

It was a bulbous apparatus, resembling a hunkered chelonian, save that its shell was splayed open like the blossom of a metallic flower. Suspended above the flower was a network of diagnostic scanners and sensor-lenses. Hololithic pict-captures floated in a slow dance around this network, each pinpointing and enlarging a facet of the crystalline shape.

The shards of crystal had congealed into one echinodermic mass, each facet grinding softly against another as they floated within a modified suspensor field. The facets contained a cacophony of colours, some utterly alien to his senses. Beneath that riot of shades was a milky opacity, within which was the hint of… something. Faces, perhaps. Movement, certainly. ‘How many of you are in there, I wonder? How many minds, colliding like chunks of frozen rock in a debris field? Perhaps I should have made a more thorough study. Then, the moment was not conducive to such contemplation, was it?’

If the awareness within the shards heard him, they gave no sign. Whether due to stubborn refusal, or simple inability, he could not say. But he intended to find out.

The shards had come from an eldar craftworld called Lugganath. On the occasion of his visit, he’d had the opportunity to collect samples from the grove of crystal seers at the craftworld’s heart – trees made from the crystallised forms of the farseers who had once guided their people, located in the wraithbone core. He’d come to learn of it through his studies, and learned as well of how the farseers’ spirits were preserved in some fashion within the psych-reactive bio-circuitry that permeated such massive vessels.

The thought of it brought him a shiver of anticipation. Not immortality, but close. A perfect preservation of intellect, removing it from the vagaries of the physical. The key to his own research. The key to his salvation.

Fabius grunted and removed his helmet. The face reflected in the chrome surfaces of the sensor array was not that of a man, but a walking corpse. Of one steadily consumed from within by the fires of a blight beyond any other. A genetic cancer that reduced a healthy corpus to utter ruination in a scant few centuries.

He could feel it within him, a black weight, resting on his hearts and lungs. It gnawed at his vitals like a hungry beast. The chirurgeon attached to his back was busy pumping various opiates and chemical calmatives into his ravaged system. The medicae harness’ efforts were a medicinal firebreak against the constant pain of his dissolution.

Fabius flexed a hand, feeling the old, familiar ache in his joints. Soon, it would be time to shed this withered flesh for a new sheath. One cloned from healthy cells, awaiting only the touch of his mind to activate it. But the process of such neural transference – of trading a faltering body for a healthy one – was not without an ever-increasing risk.

It was his hope that an answer to his problem might lie within the shards he’d sampled from Lugganath. A way of devising his own infinity circuit, and preserving his intellect across bodies, without risk of the neural patterns degrading, as they inevitably would. Once his mind was safe, he could turn his thoughts back to his great work. The only work that truly mattered: the preservation of humanity.

Not humanity as it was, obviously. But as it would be, thanks to his guidance. A new mankind, capable of weathering the gathering storm.

‘But I cannot preserve them, without first preserving myself,’ he said.

‘Physician, heal thyself.’

Fabius turned. ‘Exactly, Arrian. A simple truth, echoing throughout the history of mankind. Those who have the most to offer must make every effort to preserve themselves for the good of all. As true today as it was a millennium ago.’

Arrian Zorzi was a hulking scion of what had once been the World Eaters Legion. But he had shed the blue-and-white heraldry for grey ceramite bare of any marking except the occasional blood stain, as he had shed his old loyalties for new ones. He served a new master now, and was as able an assistant as Fabius had ever had.

Like his new master, he had been an Apothecary in more innocent times. He still considered himself such, despite the collapse of his Legion’s command structure, and wore the tools of his trade proudly, including a well-maintained narthecium. A plethora of skulls, bound by chains, hung from his chest-plate, their torn cortical implants scraping softly against his armour. ‘They refuse to speak, then?’ he asked. As he spoke, he stroked the skulls, as if seeking to calm whatever spirits might reside within them.

‘With the stubborn assurance of the inanimate,’ Fabius said.

‘What now?’

‘We try again. I will have their secrets. It is only a matter of time.’

‘Perhaps it is time to render them back onto this side of the veil, Chief Apothecary.’ As always, Arrian spoke respectfully, even when pointing out what he felt was a flaw in his superior’s methodology. ‘We possess enough genetic matter to brew a stable clone. Why not put it to use?’

‘I cannot take the risk of damaging or even erasing the very information I seek. I must have that information, and so I will, whatever the cost.’ Fabius turned back to the sensor array. ‘New methods are required.’

‘A more potent breed of psyker, perhaps,’ Arrian said, as the last of the brain-burnt witches was hauled away. New ones were herded into the experimentation chamber by snarling overseers a moment later. The overseers were tall, grey things, stretched and twisted into looming nightmares. Their skewed skulls bristled with psych-dampeners and other implants designed to protect them from the abilities of their charges. They prodded the nervous psykers forwards with shock-batons and guttural curses. One of the witches began to weep, as it was forced by an overseer to sit in a gap in the circle. ‘They sense death on the air,’ the World Eater murmured, watching.

‘Something they must grow used to, if they wish to have any hope of survival in this grim age,’ Fabius said, not looking up from his fine-tuning. ‘Life is not for the weak.’

‘A stronger mind might make the difference.’

Fabius turned. ‘Elaborate.’

‘One of Magnus’ lot – this is a task for a true witch, not these pitiful slave-minds. Perhaps Ahriman, even. You have knowledge he seeks. Why not a trade?’

‘Ahzek Ahriman is a deluded fool and, worse, a rapacious magpie of the first order. He would not trade. He would seek to take, whatever his promises. And I lack the stamina for such a distraction at this stage.’ Fabius frowned. ‘Besides, there is no way of telling whether he would even acknowledge such a proposal, especially from me. I doubt he has forgiven me for that misunderstanding on Aurelian’s Folly.’

Arrian visibly winced. ‘I had forgotten.’

‘He hasn’t. No, outside help is out of the question. Nonetheless, your proposal has merit. A stronger mind is required to breach the barriers of silicate intransigence. And that mind must be mine.’ He gestured towards the back of the chamber, where an array of specialised servitors waited. One lurched into motion at his signal.

The chem-servitor trundled forwards on its mono-tread, single red eye glowing with muted excitement. It was a boxy thing, with a reinforced chassis, mounted atop a swivel-plinth. A plethora of oft-patched hoses and spliced cabling spilled from its back, to connect to the small generator unit attached to the foot-plate of the plinth. Streamers of cold fog leaked from within its bulky torso, where an ancient diagnostic analyser hummed. Fabius opened a panel set below the servitor’s gilded skull, revealing rack upon rack of chemical concoctions, set into a wheel-shaped dispenser.

‘Entheogenic compound X-7-D,’ Fabius said. The servitor’s eye flashed, and the dispenser rotated, until the selected concoction slid into the central aperture, for ease of extraction. Fabius took it. ‘A potent mixture, shown to me by the savages who inhabit one of the lesser Crone Worlds. In the right doses, it can make the mind more receptive to a variety of neural stimuli.’

‘And you intend to take it?’ Arrian sounded concerned. Fabius smiled.

‘I have done so before. Admittedly, the results were mixed, but today might conclusively prove its use as a tool of research.’ Fabius glanced at the circle of psykers, and the fragments gleaming at the centre. It was almost taunting, that gleam. An invitation. Or a warning. He shook his head, annoyed by his own fancies. While it was conceivable that there might be some residual echo of personality within them, the crystals were now likely nothing more than repositories of stored information. Information he intended to acquire.

‘Is this wise, Chief Apothecary?’

‘No,’ Fabius said simply. ‘But it must be done, and my mind is the only one I trust to see to this task properly.’ He beckoned and a mutant brought forward a brass-banded casket. Fabius deposited his sceptre into its silk-lined interior. The mutant closed the casket and scuttled backwards, bowing over its burden.

‘The risk…’ Arrian hesitated.

‘It is within acceptable parameters, Arrian. And if it proves in excess, you will be on hand to separate me from the array.’ Fabius held up the compound, noting the cloudy consistency with satisfaction. He lifted it, so that one of the chirurgeon’s manipulator-claws could grasp it. The compound was set into place within one of the many chem-dispensers that lined the outer shell of the medicae harness.

‘And how will I know when to do that?’ Arrian asked, following Fabius to the edge of the circle.

‘Use your best judgement,’ Fabius said as he stepped into the circle, and sent a mental command to the chirurgeon. Ports set into the sides of the harness’ chassis hissed open, extruding a tangle of dozens of wormlike bio-filaments.

The thin wires slithered outwards at his signal, seeking the specially prepared cerebral conduits implanted in the skull of each witch, creating a connective web within the circle. The witches groaned as one, as the bio-filaments slid into place with a series of distinctive clicks. When he was fully wired in, Fabius sent a second signal. The chirurgeon made a sound that might have been pleasure as it injected the entheogenic solution into Fabius’ bloodstream. He extended a hand towards the sensor array, as the edges of his perception began to soften and melt away into whorls and spirals of liquid light.

‘Now… Let us begin.’

The witches began to chant in guttural fashion, using the vocal techniques they’d been taught to focus their mental abilities. He’d found the strongest chains to be those of habit and ritual – psykers required both to function at peak productivity. The techniques themselves were a variant of those employed by the long-extinct warsingers of the Isstvan System. He had prowled the ancient choral conclaves in the days after Horus had ordered the purging of the Loyalists, and culled much of what he considered useful.

The chamber began to stretch and skew about him, its angles oscillating in a dissonant fashion. Flat planes became curves, and curves rolled up in on themselves, as the hues and textures of reality bled into one another. Fabius focused his expanding perceptions on the crystal fragments. He pressed his palms together and tried to clear his mind of all nonessential thought, using the Prosperine meditation techniques he had learned in better days, from absent friends.

The lights of the sensor array reflected from the fragments with kaleidoscopic ferocity, casting splinters of pale colour across his vision. His breathing fell into a rhythm as time slowed and the world corkscrewed into a maelstrom of flickering motes. The slight creak of his battleplate became an enduring whine, the whisper of the chirurgeon became a shriek, and his breath thundered through him as he exhaled one last time. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he was elsewhere.

The light was the first thing he noticed. Light, everywhere. It invaded his perceptions, and his mind reeled momentarily before his will reasserted itself. When he could see past the glare, he found himself in familiar surroundings. ‘Lugganath,’ he murmured. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. A memory, carved from crystal. The swooping tiers and graceful towers, winding walkways and domed gardens of a craftworld were all as he remembered. A crystal world, from its skies to the wraithbone beneath his feet.

He stood on an immense causeway, before the towering portal that he knew led to the heart of the craftworld, and the grove of seers. The way before him was encrusted with shuddering mounds of crystal that resonated with the wailing of the wind. Above him was a false sun of vast fragments. The immensity moved against itself, filling the air with an omnipresent throb.

Beneath that itching pulse, he could hear the soft murmuring of the witches in the back of his head. Their voices rose and fell alongside the throbbing clamour of the crystal sun, somehow keeping its pulsations in check, as he’d hoped. The tatters of the eldar consciousnesses were likely not fully self-aware, but that made them no less dangerous. A flash of colour stretching across a nearby wall caught his eye. He turned swiftly and saw a familiar face.

He looked up at the wall of crystal rising before him and saw his reflection stretched across the facets. He wore no helmet. His face was fuller and unscarred. A thick mane of silvery hair was pulled back from his pointed features and bound tight in a single, coiling lock. His eyes were clear, and free of the all-too-familiar burst blood vessels and the yellowish tinge of unshakeable illness.

He was whole. Healthy.

Fabius looked down at himself. His mouldering flesh-coat and battered ceramite was gone, replaced by pearlescent white-and-amethyst battleplate, marked with the winged Cadacus. Instead of his grisly sceptre, he held a chainsword. He gazed down the length of the blade, recognising the delicate letters etched into the housing. He gave it an experimental sweep and felt the old familiar growl of its vibration. He had left it buried in the torso of one of the Khan’s sons, in the final days of the Terran siege.

‘A lie,’ he murmured. ‘Just like this place.’ But it was his lie, rather than theirs. The way he had once been. ‘The way I will be again, when I have what I need.’

His words echoed through the crystal world, and everything trembled slightly. He looked up and saw the enormous shards of the sun flex. Something had heard him. He looked towards the end of the causeway, where the grove of crystal seers waited. The answers he sought would no doubt be hidden there. Even as the thought occurred to him, the fluctuations of the crystal sun grew more evident. A sudden rush of noise, as of the shouting of many voices, buffeted him.

In the surface of crystal, he saw vague shapes take form. Memories, perhaps, or dreams. Fragments of life and death, dancing across the skewed walls and walkways like projected pict-feeds. Few of them made any sense, as if two or more separate events or recollections had been merged into one confusing tangle. Others were more recognisable – he saw scenes of hearth and home, as the eldar judged such things, and the distorted shapes of warriors of the Emperor’s Children, as they laid waste to a world old before man had first sailed the stars.

And with every projected desecration, the shudders of the false sun above grew more pronounced. A phantom wind rose up from the depths of the artificial world, carrying with it a million voices. The wind tugged at him, as if ethereal claws sought to sink themselves in his armour. The murmur of his witches was growing strained and frantic. Their strength was faltering. And as their voices failed, those that rode the wind grew louder and more distinct.

They cast words at him like stones, cursing him and trying to distract him. Malign figures, dragged bodily from eldar myth and legend, formed in the crystal walls around him – gorgon-like shapes of impossible beauty, wielding blades of starlight, strove in vain to free themselves. Grinning faces, carved into support columns, cackled wildly and roared out jests in some unknowable dialect.

‘If this is the best you can do, you may as well surrender now.’

At his words, the quaking mounds of crystal about him split, disgorging lean shapes. They resembled eldar warriors, save that they were crystal, rather than flesh. Colours swirled across their surface, darkening and then fading. The wind tore at him. He lifted his chainsword. ‘Stand aside,’ he said.

The wind ripped his words to shreds, and cast the echoes back at him. The sun seemed to draw closer to him, swelling to fill the sky. There were the hints of vast, twisted faces within its shifting planes. He heard a witch scream in agony, and a bright, white-hot pulse of sympathetic pain shot through him. He grimaced and shook his head to clear it. The strain was proving too much for his creations. Another flaw in need of correction.

‘Fine, then. You will reveal to me your secrets, whatever barriers you throw up in my path.’ Fabius revved the chainsword for emphasis. ‘I wage a war of survival, old ghosts – and you are already dead. There is no contest.’

The crystal automatons sprang forwards, moving with shimmering grace. Fabius spat a curse and lunged to meet them. He swept the chainsword out, and crystal shards pelted his battleplate. He bulled through their ranks, shielding his face with his free hand as best he could. More warrior-shapes ascended from the splintering ground and flung themselves at him, seeking to drag him down through sheer weight of numbers. He lashed out with hands and feet, smashing them aside, trampling some and simply flinging others from his path.

He reached the doors a moment later, and he crashed into them bodily. They slammed open and came apart with a sound like shattering glass. He staggered, momentarily off balance. Behind him, the broken doors flowed back into shape with a shrill clatter.

The chamber was as he had last seen it – a grove of crystal trees, stretching towards a domed roof. Immense columns of delicate design rose along the walls, like the ribcage of some great beast, and esoteric statuary occupied the recessed alcoves between them. The heads of the statues turned towards him, their unseeing eyes flashing with cold light.

Vast, vague shapes crouched within the walls, floor and ceiling of the chamber, glaring at him. They were at once images and reflections, not physical, but their presence was undeniable. They paced through the facets of the chamber, like shadows slipping from wall to wall, with the turning of the light.

Fabius met their glares with one of his own. ‘I was wrong. You are still aware somehow, aren’t you? Even broken and separate from the whole, your consciousnesses yet persist. As mine will persist, when you have been made to give up your secrets.’

Great mouths, stretched and wide, moved in soundless demands. The weight of their minds pressed down on his from all sides. For a moment, he felt as ancient man must have felt with his back to a fire, facing the beasts beyond. Then, with a sneer, he spread his arms. ‘Growl all you like. I will have what I wish from you, one way or another.’

He heard the crashing roar again, and felt a palpitation run through the crystal beneath his feet. Instinctively, his grip on his chainsword tightened. The weapon was not really there – it was but an extension of his idealisation – but it provided some small comfort. ‘Have I angered you? Good. Maybe now you will listen. Show yourselves, and end this farce. You are dead, and I have bound you to my will. Acquiesce – or I shall tear this dream apart and take what I need, as I did before.’ He advanced towards the trees, chainsword raised. The trees were the key, he thought. The knowledge was there, within them as it had been in the real world, and he would carve it out.

A bellow of rage shivered through the grove. Distorted, alien faces thrust towards him, as if seen through an alembic. He felt the weight of dozens of minds, all focusing on him with sudden clarity. His boast had cut through their madness. False trees twisted around, branches stretching to impossible lengths as if to throttle him. The walls bent inwards, bulging with monstrous growths.

An instant later, the chamber cracked open like an egg, and the walls fell away, revealing the false sun above. He was thrown at the shifting facets of the immensity. The craftworld grew wild around him. It was as if the whole edifice were in the process of being crumpled up. Tiers and balconies bent upwards and then fell towards him. Gaping cracks ran through the floor beneath his feet and the bowing walls, and jagged fangs of crystal surged through them.

Fabius staggered, his head in his hands, trying to block out the noise. It overwhelmed him, eating away at his certainties and senses. As he staggered, the floor began to splinter, and shards shot upwards to spin about him with ever-increasing speed.

The whirlwind enveloped him, piercing his flesh and armour with ease. He howled in pain, and he heard the witches howl with him. He wondered if they could feel his pain, as he felt theirs. Their shrieks seemed to indicate that such was the case. He felt the embedded pieces wriggle themselves deeper and the voices of the dead bellowed in his ears. Invisible claws plucked at his mind, stripping layers away to dig into the core of him. Memories were torn to shreds, as knowledge was wrung from him. He had come to prise secrets from the dead, not lose his own.

Desperate, he flung himself backwards, out of the whirlwind. He fell heavily, blood seeping from his ravaged face. The whirlwind contracted, taking on a roughly humanoid shape in the false light of the crystal sun that loomed above. He forced himself up and swung his chainsword at it. A glittering claw of shards caught the blade and stopped the blow. Its strength was immense, and as he strained against it, the chainsword lost its solidity, becoming crystal. It shattered in his grip and the disparate pieces joined the conglomerate mass.

Fabius reeled. He glanced up and saw that the sun had become an amalgamation of alien faces, twisted in expressions of rage and grief. They spoke in voices like thunder, and as the echoes swept over him, the crystal homunculus seemed to expand. It grew and spread, sprouting arms, legs, torsos, but remaining a singular entity. Many bodies, with one head of innumerable fragments, that shone like a bejewelled diadem. Many feet thudded down in a single step, as many hands reached for him. As the sun screamed alien curses, the construct it had conjured lumbered after him.

He avoided the construct’s clutches, but only barely. Fingers grazed his armour, and where they touched, crystals sprouted and crumbled. He retreated, losing pieces of his battleplate the entire way. His head throbbed with the babble of dying witches, and as if from far away, he could hear the dim murmur of Arrian’s voice. He pushed it aside, trying to focus. Spears of crystal thrust out at him from all directions, blocking his retreat.

He was hemmed in. Trapped. Perhaps that had always been their intent. They had drawn him in, just as their kin had on Lugganath. Then, too, he had been blinded by his desires. The construct lunged for him again. Crystal claws tore into the flesh of his face, gripping him. He howled in agony as striations of crystal slid through him. He punched at it, trying to break himself loose, as it pulled him closer. Images wavered across its many torsos and limbs. He ignored them, not wanting to see.

Fabius wrenched himself out of the construct’s clutches and lurched back, sweeping crystals from his ruined armour. He felt blood filling his battleplate, and the old pain was lurking in the back of his mind. The witches’ voices were fading. Not much time now. Never enough time. He had to break free of the trap, turn it back on them.

The construct screamed, many voices issuing through a single, too-wide mouth. As before, the voices crashed against him, threatening to cast him back, to impale him on the crystals that stretched hungrily about him. But he was ready this time. This was a place of the mind, and his mind was stronger than theirs. It had to be.

Fabius met their spite with his own. Their hate, with his hate. A millennium of cancerous rancour spilled from him, and congealed in his waiting hand. A familiar sceptre topped by a gleaming brass skull was suddenly in his hand. They had constructed this place for themselves, and he would take it away from them, piece by piece, shard by shard.

The construct lurched towards him, and he struck the groping paw. It exploded, and the crystal walls around him trembled. Another claw shattered. Then a leg. A torso. It retreated, wailing. He stalked after it, lashing out to smash away at the crystal cage around him. ‘You think you are inviolate? Invincible, in the light of your crystal sun? Such arrogance is what cost your people a way of life. As it will cost you now.’

The air was filled with glittering debris. Walls emerged before Fabius, and he smashed them. The floor bucked, and he broke it apart. The world roiled about him, and he attacked without care. He tore himself a path, and saw the crystal-thing ahead, losing bits of itself as it stumbled along a projecting balcony.

It whirled, sweeping out dozens of arms. He broke them apart. The air stank of burning meat, and the light was fading. The crystal tiers and domes of Lugganath were gone, replaced by ruin, as far as the eye could see. Wherever he looked, a broken city rose or fell towards him. The construct grew taller, and its shimmering skull met the base of the sun, spearing into it, merging with it. The crystal sun blazed with cold fire, only it was no longer a sun, but the head of the construct itself. It spread its arms and drew the craftworld about itself like a cloak. Colours spilled out of the world and away, leaving only the absence of everything behind.

It was a giant, now, with a sun for a head, and a cloak made of millions of memories, at once the whole of the world and an extension of it. It crouched above him, looking down with millions of eyes, screaming at him with millions of mouths. It raised a glittering talon, as if to crush him. He hefted his sceptre. ‘I will not be denied by such pale echoes as you. I have come too far, endured too much – I will not!’

The smell of burning meat was almost overwhelming now, and it ate away at everything else like acid. Cracks ran through every crystal, and the air was a solid throb of pain. Fabius felt as if he were moving in slow motion, as the sceptre snapped out, aimed at the centre of the vast claw that descended towards him.

And then, there was light.

Fabius staggered, his hearts thudding with an arrhythmic beat. His eyes were filled with blood, his ears ringing. The chirurgeon was shrieking in his head. He spat bile and wheeled about, hands flexing emptily. ‘What–?’ he croaked.

The witches were dead, consumed from within, as if by a fire. They slumped in their circle, a blackened ring of toadstools. The sensor array was weeping sparks and the suspensor field was shaking. Arrian stood nearby, blade drawn. It took Fabius a moment to realise that the World Eater had sliced through the filaments connecting him to the witches.

Fabius sagged, and Arrian caught him. ‘What did you do?’ Fabius hissed. Brief blooms of pain ran up and down inside him. His hands trembled like those of some withered ancient. He felt sick. Weak.

‘I used my best judgement,’ Arrian said. ‘When the witches started burning, I took it as a sign that all was not well.’

Fabius blinked blood from his eyes and pushed away from his assistant. He forced himself to stand, and turned to look at the crystal fragments. They pulsed faintly, their light diminished. He was not the only one who had been weakened. He spat and wiped blood from his face. He glanced at Arrian. ‘You did well.’

Arrian nodded. ‘What now?’

Fabius turned back to the sensor array. ‘We try again.’

Arrian hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’

Fabius didn’t look at him. ‘Bring me more witches. We will try again. And again, and again, until I have what I need. I must.’

He coughed and tasted blood in his throat. His head ached, and he could feel phantom claws digging into his mind, tearing away memories and hard-won knowledge. Pain rose in him, and he forced it back. This body still had time. It would endure long enough.

It had to.

‘We will try again,’ he repeated.

Whatever the cost.

EXODUS

Steve Lyons

There was fresh fruit in the governor’s palace.

It lay in a bowl on a glass-topped table in the tiled reception area, each piece a ripe, unblemished specimen.

The soldier had never seen such perfect fruit. He had never set foot in the governor’s palace before. Arch Teilloch was a private in the Home Guard, as his forefathers had been before him. At twenty-four years old, he had known no other life save this one of discipline and duty. He was here to escort a high-ranking clerk out of the building.

The clerk was attended by numerous serfs carrying cases and pushing trolleys laden with crates. These were filled with data-slates, upon which vital records were preserved. The cases bulged with fine clothes or clinked with glittering trinkets, though the clerk seemed more protective of the latter.

Teilloch’s squad, four-strong, encircled their venerable charge. Their booted footsteps rang off mosaic tiles to echo around flickering chandeliers. For all the urgent activity, Teilloch was struck by how peaceful this place was. The air was artificially clean and cool. Few people spoke, and only in reverent whispers. Not even the tremor he felt through the soles of his boots could disturb the pervading calm. The foundations of the palace were sturdy enough to absorb it.

The travails of the past few months felt a long way away.

Then, Teilloch stepped through a door – and the smoke, grit, heat and noise of the outside world struck him in the face.

The sky was a bloody shade of red, shot through with sooty plumes from many fires across the city. A fleet of groundcars sat with engines rumbling, exhaust pipes pumping out more fumes. Beyond these, an angry mob strained against a line of Home Guard troopers in orange and blue.

It was the job of Teilloch’s squad to get their clerk to a car. On Corporal Barnard’s orders, the four of them went ahead, descending a short, metallic staircase. On their helmets and flak jackets, they bore the impacts of eggs, bottles and other crude missiles. Teilloch could not understand the protestors. ‘Have we not all suffered enough,’ he complained to his nearest comrade, ‘without turning on each other?’

Another bottle, half-filled with promethium with a smouldering fuse, sailed past his left ear. He saw it too late to duck and was lucky it hadn’t been better aimed. The bottle burst harmlessly against the wall. Troopers tried to fight their way towards the bomber, but the crowd closed ranks against them. A scrawny-looking private found himself dragged under, punched and kicked.

Another, stronger tremor stole Teilloch’s footing. He stumbled down the last of the steps, turning an ankle under him.

Some protestors, thrown by the quake, had burst through the Home Guard line. The soldiers responded, as trained, with lethal force. Teilloch heard the cracks of a dozen autoguns as Private Alvado – an older and more muscular man than he – helped him up. His ankle throbbed but wasn’t broken.

They bundled their charge into his vehicle and slammed the door behind him. Barnard ordered his squad to stand sentry as the serfs loaded up their master’s luggage. Teilloch was glad that he had never earned his stripes. The crowd was louder and more defiant than ever. He felt as if their howls might split open his head. He wouldn’t have known what to do, had he not had orders to follow.

Standing rigid, he closed his eyes for a moment. He tried to recall the cool peace of the governor’s palace, but already it felt like a dream of another world. He could not imagine fruit growing here.

This was his home: a world badly wounded, crying out in pain and despair. A world, Arch Teilloch feared, that was entering its death throes.

Katraxis was doomed.

No one was saying it yet, at least in public, but Ven Mikkelson had little doubt of it. The Second Tyrannic War was over – but tendrils of the defeated Hive Fleet Kraken survived. One of them, lashing out vengefully, had struck this planet.

The industrial part of the city was quiet, though vandals and looters had recently passed this way. Obscene graffiti, some of it blasphemous, defaced factorum walls. Glass crunched beneath the boots of a quintet of Imperial Guardsmen as they marched in double-time along the desolate streets. They were members of the Valhallan 132nd regiment. Ice Warriors, they called themselves, famed for their tenacity against overwhelming odds.

They were running away.

Konrad Ven Mikkelson, their sergeant, felt sick at the thought of it. The decision had not been his to make, of course, but this hardly made defeat taste any less bitter, as his disgruntled men kept reminding him.

A voice crackled in his ear, requiring his location. He gave his coordinates and the voice sounded again: ‘You’re too far out, sergeant. The dropships are leaving at fourteen-hundred hours relative. They can’t wait for you.’

‘We’ll be there,’ he mumbled through his thick beard.

They were cutting it fine – his own fault, he knew. There had been too many distractions. He had needed to know that, at least, he had fought as long and as hard as he could. To his men, he barked, ‘Pick up the pace.’

He could hear a commotion ahead of them. Another distraction? People were running towards them, fleeing in terror. Some of them, seeing the Valhallans’ heavy greatcoats, rushed to them with pleas on their lips. They jabbered over each other, but one word came through extremely clearly.

‘Xenos,’ Guardsman Vilhelm repeated, his face twisting into a sneer. He hefted his lasgun, set his jaw and started forward.

Ven Mikkelson stopped him. ‘No.’

‘But, sergeant, it sounds like another–’

‘I said no.’

They had come in sight of a small temple. Like other devotional buildings, it was packed to bursting point, with a crowd yet straining at the doors. Among them, fighting had broken out. Ven Mikkelson couldn’t make out any details, but guessed what had happened.

There were xenos on this world that looked like men.

It was thought that they had been here for decades, even centuries, adapting, evolving. They had wormed their way into the heart of this society – far deeper than anyone had supposed. The Ice Warriors had been rooting them out for weeks, destroying scores of them. It hadn’t been enough.

Another infiltrator, it seemed, had revealed itself. Or been exposed. Or an innocent man had been accused: someone bald and heavyset, most likely, as that was how the infiltrators tended to look.

‘We need to find a vehicle,’ said Ven Mikkelson. He led his squad towards a side street, leaving the problem behind. ‘Take your hands off me!’ he bellowed at a desperate woman who tried to hold him back.

From the melee behind them rose a dreadful raucous shriek. ‘Sergeant!’ Vilhelm protested. ‘Surely no man could have made that–’

‘Ignore it.’ He had to force himself to speak the words. ‘What good would slaying one more monster do? Those people would only fall prey to the next one or the next. Or be broken by earthquakes, fried by solar flares, drowned by tidal waves. Or…’ He left other, worse possibilities unspoken. ‘We have our orders. We are to do nothing for them.’

‘The hive ship is on its way,’ agreed Guardsman Bullski morosely, ‘and we must be gone before it comes.’

Vilhelm said nothing, still chafing against his sergeant’s decision. He was young, and hadn’t yet learned to temper his idealism with pragmatism.

As fearsome as the men-like xenos were, they were only the scouts of a much larger, more terrible force – now mere hours away. These Ice Warriors knew what most of the natives did not: that a cold calculation of Katraxis’ worth had been made and no further resources would be spared to save it. The tyranids would have it.

More screams – very human-sounding screams – pursued the running soldiers like accusing spectres. Ven Mikkelson hardened himself against them. ‘Keep going,’ he commanded. ‘We can say a prayer later for those who have perished today. It may be that they are the lucky ones.’

‘It is my duty to inform you that we face a terrible threat.’

The message was being broadcast on all frequencies. It boomed out of speakers on those street corner posts that hadn’t been torn down and smashed. It rattled in the comm-bead in Private Arch Teilloch’s helmet.

‘Most of you know that xenos have been unearthed among us. Unfortunately, they have signalled to more of their deplorable kind.’

Teilloch rode near the head of a slow-moving convoy on a Chimera’s hull. More troopers clung likewise to the vehicle or marched alongside it. The Home Guard had rarely put on such a show of strength. As they ploughed along the jammed streets, however, the mood of the protestors being herded aside grew uglier.

‘The tyranids are coming. It is their approach that has caused – somehow, through some sorcerous means – our recent manifold disasters.’

Teilloch knew the voice of Governor Strawhagen, of course. Glancing back along the convoy, he could see the governor’s groundcar. It was sleek and silver, grander than the other vehicles, with blacked-out windows. Imperial flags fluttered proudly from each side of its hood.

He had never yet seen his world’s commander-in-chief in the flesh. He might not have been chosen for his personal escort detail, but he felt honoured even to be this close to him.

‘I am assured, however, that mankind has met these abominations before – and triumphed gloriously over them.’

‘Then stay and fight!’ yelled someone, and the crowd roared its agreement. More cans and bottles were hurled, most glancing off the silver car’s ceramite plating. Teilloch looked out across a sea of angry faces, screaming and spitting insults. ‘Deserter!’ was the favourite among them.

‘We are relocating key personnel to other worlds – as a purely precautionary measure. The vital work of governance must not be interrupted.’

Katraxis Port came into view. Its control towers and fuel pylons scratched the broiling sky. A ship was rising on a cloud of fire. Teilloch squinted up at it. ‘Is that an Astra Militarum transporter?’ muttered Private Alvado, beside him. ‘Where do you think they’re going?’

‘That is not for us to question,’ Teilloch rebuked him automatically. He pretended that the same question hadn’t occurred to him, too.

The crowd here was denser than ever. People strained against the port’s perimeter fences. When they saw the convoy approaching, they eagerly switched their attentions to it, crowding around the leading vehicles. They placed their hands on the Chimera as if thinking to hold it back.

Teilloch yelled at them to clear the way. One haggard-looking woman refused to do so. ‘What about us?’ she wailed at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘What about my children? What will happen to them?’ Teilloch was relieved that he didn’t have to answer her. He repeated his instruction, with an additional push for emphasis. The tearful woman spat in his face.

Teilloch shot her in the shoulder.

It was a reflex action; he hadn’t even thought about it. She reeled back, looking as surprised as he felt. She clasped her hands to her wound, blood welling between her fingers. He told himself not to feel guilty. He could have aimed for her heart. He would have been within his rights.

Other troopers were already following his lead. They pumped bullets into the baying mob, aiming for the troublemakers, not always successfully. Some people, trying to escape, were thrust back into the line of fire by those behind them. The Chimera’s guns were pressed into service too – just its lasguns for now, and only sparingly because of the troopers in their way.

‘Civilians.’ Above the gunfire and screaming and engine drones, Teilloch heard Alvado’s breathy voice. ‘We’re shooting civilians.’

‘Law-breakers,’ he retorted. ‘They were warned to stay off the streets. In wartime, disobedience amounts to treason.’

He spotted a young man amid the throng, hefting another bottle bomb. He snapped up his rifle and squeezed off another shot. He aimed for the shoulder again, but missed. A fountain of blood exploded from the bomber’s neck. He dropped his bottle, and promethium slopped from it and ignited. The flames caused panic as they caught hold of the bomber and leapt to others around him.

The governor was still speaking, with a calmness that was admirable in the circumstances. His voice was drowned out, in Teilloch’s ear, by an urgent vox from a Home Guard senior officer. Strawhagen’s groundcar was under attack.

A section of the crowd had surged forward and surrounded it. They were fighting its defenders hand-to-hand, denying them the use of their weapons. They were rocking the car on its axels, threatening to overturn it. Teilloch tried, but couldn’t get to them. There were too many rioters in his way.

Someone snatched a gun from an overwhelmed trooper. He fired bullets into the silver car’s windshield until it shattered. Rioters swarmed over the groundcar’s hood. They plucked the terrified driver, in his neat black uniform and cap, out of his seat. They bloodied him and cast him aside.

Two rioters wriggled into the car. A moment later, they leapt out through its doors, looking more aggrieved than ever – Teilloch couldn’t tell why. Another moment after that, they were dead, as the Home Guard began to re-establish control.

In the meantime, the rest of the convoy had ground onwards. Other vehicles containing other dignitaries – one of them Teilloch’s venerable clerk – had made it through the spaceport gates.

‘I ask for your patience in the days and weeks ahead.’

With the doors of the governor’s groundcar standing open, now Teilloch could see straight through it.

‘The road ahead of us will surely be long and difficult. I have faith, however, that the Emperor will guide us and protect us. Praise be to the Emperor!’

The car was empty.

Ven Mikkelson had found an abandoned vehicle: a groundcar with a crumpled fender, but Vilhelm had managed to get it started.

The Ice Warriors drove for half a kilometre, then entered a residential district. Here, it seemed that every towering hab-block around them had disgorged its tenants onto the streets. The mood, so far, was more despairing than angry. Still, shell-shocked civilians in their way slowed them to walking pace. Some were howling, weeping, praying fervently. Others hammered on the groundcar’s windows, begging for hope that its occupants did not have to offer them.

They came upon a tanker, overturned, blocking their way, in a spreading pool of volatile promethium. ‘I could try to squeeze past it on the footpath,’ suggested Vilhelm, but he sounded doubtful. ‘Otherwise, we’ll have to back up and find another way around.’

Ven Mikkelson glanced over his shoulder. The crowd had closed in behind them again. He shook his head. ‘Kill the engine,’ he ordered. ‘Everyone out. From here on, we’re back on foot.’

He checked the city map on his data-slate. By his reckoning, they still had time to make their rendezvous – just. ‘We’ve been to this area before,’ he said, recalling a recent xenos hunt. ‘I know a shortcut we can take.’

He consulted his compass and led his squad back the way they had come, brushing off the wretched beggars in their path. He ducked into a winding alleyway between two buildings. Emerging from the far end, he was greeted by a scene of devastation.

A week ago, there had been a powerful earthquake here. It had toppled several hab-blocks, which in turn had crashed into their neighbours. It had taken days for the dust to settle completely. A hundred city blocks had been razed to the ground. The loss of life had been incalculable.

The Ice Warriors picked their way across the rubble. It shifted treacherously beneath their heavy boots, exposing dusty, rigid, mutilated corpses. There were areas like this across the planet, of course – and worse. They had all heard reports of a whole city to the east, washed away by tsunamis.

‘All this destruction,’ Guardsman Bullski lamented, ‘before the invaders have even made planetary orbit.’

They could make better progress now, at least. The disaster area was virtually deserted, but for a few sallow-eyed mourners. The tumult of the crowd behind these soldiers faded, and an eerie near-silence enveloped them. A light wind whipped about the Ice Warriors’ ears. It tasted of ash, but its cooling effect was welcome.

A jagged shape rose gradually before them: a half-demolished cathedral, clearly more robust than the structures that had once surrounded it. Gilded oak doors had been torn from their hinges and shredded. The Ice Warriors passed through a creaking archway. They clambered over the shattered remains of marble pillars.

Ven Mikkelson halted his squad. ‘Did anyone else hear that?’

His four men answered in the negative. The sergeant swept his surroundings with narrowed eyes. Two sides of the cathedral were open to the elements. From the other two, the skeletons of blown-out windows glowered down at him.

Perhaps he had imagined the scrape of a footstep. Perhaps it had been the sound of debris settling, or a foretaste of another quake.

Ven Mikkelson’s instincts, honed by thirty years’ experience, told him otherwise. He could see nowhere for a lurker to hide, however. He signalled his squad to proceed, cautiously, along the path of the cathedral’s nave.

As they neared the point where an altar must have stood, Vilhelm stooped to examine something underfoot. He teased a battered brass plate out of the rubble and brandished it proudly. It wasn’t the material value of the artefact that pleased him. ‘Look,’ he crowed. ‘The outline of the Imperial aquila, etched into the metal. It’s a sign! The Emperor is with us, even here, even–’

From nowhere, a monster pounced.

Guardsman Vilhelm heard it at the last possible instant and half-twisted, so its vicious claws raked across his side. His attacker was giant; a hideous bug-like thing with six bristling limbs and a carapace. A pair of clawed, multi-jointed limbs thrust forward from its shoulder blades. Disgusting feeding tentacles hung from the creature’s maw, dripping saliva. A barbed tail twitched behind its back. Ven Mikkelson had seen some horrors in his time, but none like this.

Was this what a tyranid looked like?

Its scaly hide was changing from grey to fiery red. ‘It was camouflaged,’ he warned his comrades, ‘hiding in plain sight against the rubble. Don’t take your eyes off it.’

Vilhelm groaned as he scrambled away from the xenos. The rest of the squad advanced upon it, blasting it with their lasguns. ‘That’s right,’ Ven Mikkelson encouraged them, ‘keep it busy.’

The creature was torn between pursuing its wounded prey or defending itself. It hissed as it rounded on Ven Mikkelson, and sprang at him with a flex of its powerful hind legs. He tried to leap out of its way, but debris shifted and he crashed to his hands and knees instead.

He had a fraction of a second to contemplate his certain death – before realising that he hadn’t been the xenos’ target at all. It had darted between him and his surprised comrades and, in the time it took their gazes to follow it, had disappeared again.

‘There!’ cried Bullski. ‘It’s over there!’ He pointed the way with a volley of lasbeams, which pulverised stone and chased away shadows. ‘I could have sworn I saw…’ the guardsman muttered, disappointed.

‘Form up around Vilhelm,’ Ven Mikkelson ordered. His injured comrade had hauled himself onto his knees, but was too weak to stand. The other four Ice Warriors encircled him protectively, facing outwards.

Ven Mikkelson thought he heard something – a claw scraping? – from beside the surviving archway. He shot a beam that way and was rewarded by a screech and a flurry of movement. ‘I see it!’ he yelled. He had picked out a pair of beady yellow eyes, and could make out the shape of a head and segmented body around them.

‘I see it!’

The shout came almost simultaneously with the sergeant’s own, from Bullski, directly behind him. At first, he assumed that his comrade was seeing things again. Another lasbeam volley, however, was greeted by a familiar sound, making the skin on Ven Mikkelson’s neck prickle. The screech of the tyranid creature.

‘There are two of them!’

The governor’s flagship was leaving.

Teilloch had not seen Strawhagen boarding. Presumably, few people had. ‘Some trick they pulled back there,’ Alvado muttered to him, ‘diverting the mob, while their target sneaks away unnoticed.’

‘You’d rather the governor had been killed?’

Alvado shrugged. ‘I’m sure the greater good was served. It just doesn’t seem very… well, honourable. Tell me I’m wrong again.’

‘That is not for us to judge,’ said Teilloch stiffly. ‘We still have a job to do.’

No sooner had the flagship left its pad – its polished hull reflecting the red of the sky until it seemed to be aflame – than a larger, less elegant and far grimier vessel replaced it. As it did so, speakers crackled with the governor’s voice again: ‘The Emperor has blessed us in our time of need, once more. He has sent a merchant fleet to convey many more of us – hundreds of thousands – to safety.’

More grimy freighters were dropping into the spaceport, filling it with choking smoke. Teilloch felt his spirits lifting at the sight of them. ‘You see?’ he breathed. ‘No one has been abandoned.’ The crowd straining at the gates and fences saw it too, and it only made them more determined to break through.

Corporal Barnard was only a metre away from Teilloch, but had to switch to vox to be heard. His squad and three others, having fought their way into the port, had been detailed to man a side gate. ‘We’re to start letting people through at once, to board the freighters – just a few hundred to begin with.’

‘Which people?’ asked Teilloch. ‘Is there a list–?’

The corporal shook his head. ‘No time for that. We want people under thirty-five, make an intelligent guess – and as many women as men. Fit, healthy subjects only. The slightest sign of infirmity or disease, anyone overweight or under-height, leave them behind. Most crucially, we need to weed out the heretics and worse. You all know what I mean.’

Corporal Barnard unbolted the gate and eased it open, while fifteen troopers braced themselves for the ensuing flood. A desperate tide of humanity swelled towards them, their only thought to reach the escape ships beyond them. Teilloch tried to remember the criteria for letting them pass – under thirty-five, fit, healthy – but he had only seconds to assess each person coming at him.

‘How do we tell a heretic on sight, anyway?’ Alvado grumbled, beside him. ‘They don’t all have dark sigils tattooed on their faces.’

‘Look into their eyes,’ suggested Teilloch. ‘I’ve heard you can tell an infiltrator that way.’ He wasn’t sure how, in fact – but anyone who wouldn’t meet his gaze, he assumed to be guilty of something. He waved a steady stream of hopefuls past him – but the crowd of those held back began to mount. They couldn’t get back out through the gates, so many just pushed forwards again.

A man of fifty years or so, with the weather-beaten skin of an outdoors labourer, refused to take no for an answer. ‘I have served the Emperor faithfully all my life,’ he yelled in Teilloch’s face. ‘I deserve to be saved.’ Teilloch tried to repel him with reason, then threats, to no avail. In frustration, finally, he clubbed the malcontent with the butt of his weapon.

The man reeled momentarily. He flew at Teilloch, face twisted in rage, bleeding from a head wound. His callused hands clawed at Teilloch’s throat – until, suddenly, he stiffened. The strength drained out of his body and he collapsed. It took Teilloch a moment to realise that Corporal Barnard had shot his attacker in the back.

‘No time to waste on troublemakers,’ Barnard’s voice growled in Teilloch’s ear. He nodded, accepting the admonishment, and willed himself to be stronger. The next person to argue with him – a woman hacking up phlegm, evidently very ill – backed down when he levelled his autogun at her.

His fellows were holding back the hordes with bayonet and stock, and it wasn’t long before the first bullet was fired, followed swiftly by more. Only Private Alvado hadn’t drawn his weapon. ‘They’re fighting for their lives,’ he lamented. ‘They know if they can’t get aboard one of these ships, they’ll be left here to die.’

‘Left here to fight, you mean,’ said Teilloch.

‘Then why are they taking men of fighting age?’

Teilloch thought about that, then wished he hadn’t. ‘It is not for us to question–’

‘They’re taking the people they need,’ said Alvado, ‘to start again.’

The words echoed in Teilloch’s head as he dealt with a fraught-looking young couple, who were clinging to each other. ‘Stand apart,’ he ordered them. As he had suspected, the man was unsteady on his feet.

‘He had an accident in the factorum,’ the woman pleaded, ‘but he’s healing. The medicae said he’d be able to walk again in just a few–’

‘You can pass,’ said Teilloch tersely. ‘He can’t.’

‘I can’t,’ the woman cried. ‘I can’t leave him. You can’t separate us.’

Teilloch bit his lip in frustration. No time to waste on trouble-makers. ‘Stay with him, then. Your choice,’ he said, turning away.

‘No!’ The woman yanked on Teilloch’s tunic, demanding his attention. He rounded on her, irritated, and pumped a bullet into her husband’s stomach. ‘You can pass,’ he repeated, pointing the woman towards the waiting freighters.

She gaped at him, stunned. Then, to his discomfort, she let out a distraught howl. The woman dropped to her knees and wept over her husband as his blood soaked into the ground.

He would have died anyway, Teilloch insisted to himself. He was in no state to fight the invading force. This way was more merciful. I had no choice. They shouldn’t have pushed me to it. They should have followed orders.

He felt Alvado’s elbow in his ribs and turned. Following his comrade’s gaze, he caught his breath. A cluster of new arrivals was pushing its way through the open main gates. There were six of them: colossal armoured figures, gleaming blue, white and gold. They marched with a confident, even arrogant, swagger, forcing others to scuttle out of their way or be crushed.

Space Marines. They had come to Katraxis almost a week ago, to bolster the off-world forces already present. The governor’s bulletins had been full of praise for their strength, their dedication, their achievements – full of renewed hope. Teilloch had prayed each morning to set his unworthy eyes upon them.

‘They’ve come to help us,’ he breathed. Even from this distance, he could feel their palpable presence, and it sent a thrill through him.

Alvado shook his head. ‘No. They’re pulling out.’

Corporal Barnard was shouting through a hailer: ‘That’s it. That’s all we can take for now.’ Four troopers were struggling to close the gate again.

‘There will be more ships.’ Barnard repeated the promise many times, to little avail. He was drowned out by the anguish of people who had almost touched salvation only for it to be snatched from them. They didn’t believe Barnard. They didn’t believe anything they were told any longer. Even Teilloch was beginning to have doubts.

‘Even if there are more ships,’ Alvado pointed out, ‘it can never be enough.’ The population of Katraxis numbered in the tens of billions. Against that, ‘hundreds of thousands’ suddenly felt like a very small number.

‘Stand your ground,’ Ven Mikkelson ordered his squad.

They had no choice. If they abandoned the wounded Vilhelm, the xenos would tear him apart. Or they will tear the rest of us apart to get to him, Ven Mikkelson thought.

He switched his lasgun to full-auto and strafed the ground in front of him. He couldn’t tell if he had hurt his near-invisible target, but at least he was keeping it at bay. Though not for much longer – his power pack was running low.

The xenos reappeared suddenly, flying at him with a curdling screech. Ven Mikkelson braced himself, praying that the point of his bayonet could find a vital organ. Not before its claws found his throat, he suspected.

Then a jet-engine roar filled his ears. Something bright and blue flashed before his eyes and struck the ground like a meteorite, somewhere to his left. The debris upon which he stood lurched with the impact, felling two of his comrades, almost bowling him over too – and, thank the Emperor, throwing his attacker off-balance.

The xenos’ hind claws scrabbled to regain purchase. Ven Mikkelson aimed a shot at its head, only searing its protective carapace. Three more impacts followed, all around him, until even he lost his footing. He fell atop his sprawling comrades, with every attempt to disentangle himself only digging him deeper into the rubble.

A more triumphant screech, and the xenos loomed over him, twice his height and many times his bulk. Slobber from its feeding tentacles spattered Ven Mikkelson’s cheek. He heard another mechanical roar – a deeper one, throatier – and suddenly the creature had no head. An instant later, its disgusting, segmented body collapsed on top of him.

He fought his way out from under it, spitting at the stink of its blood.

He could have hoped to make a more dignified impression on his saviour. The Space Marine, a member of the much-storied Ultramarines chapter, a sergeant by his markings, glowered down at his slighter counterpart. The jump pack on his back was still smouldering. He had stilled his chainsword and was picking chunks of xenos gristle from between its teeth.

‘Lictors,’ he grunted. ‘Not the first we have dealt with today.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ven Mikkelson, through gritted teeth. ‘But there were two of them. The other–’

A fusillade of bolter fire interrupted him. The Ultramarine’s battle-brothers had unearthed the second xenos. Trying to flee, it found itself surrounded. They closed around the creature, hemming it in. It spat and screeched and lashed out with its claws as its body was riddled with explosive bolts – until, finally, there was simply too little of it left to keep on living.

The four Space Marines regrouped. ‘My auspex is reading no more life signs,’ one of them reported. Two had livid silver scratches across the chest-plates of their power armour. Ven Mikkelson grimaced at the thought of what the lictor’s claws might have done to his less-protected flesh.

‘Why are you still here?’ demanded the Ultramarines sergeant. ‘Did you not get the order to pull out?’

‘Our extraction point is an airstrip eight kilometres north of here.’

‘We are headed for Katraxis Port,’ said the Ultramarine. ‘We have no time to spare. We must be leaving now.’

‘Yes, of course,’ agreed Ven Mikkelson. So much for the hope that his squad would have an escort for the rest of their journey, he thought. Still, they stopped to save our lives – which is more than we have been doing. We would only have slowed them down, anyway.

The Space Marines fired their jump packs again. They leapt away over the cathedral’s front half-wall and out of sight. Ven Mikkelson turned back to his fellow Ice Warriors. They were doing what they could for Vilhelm, expending the contents of their medi-kits on his wounds. It didn’t look good, though.

They had unbuttoned Vilhelm’s greatcoat and removed his fur hat, yet his face was bathed in sweat. His breathing was ragged. His flak armour was shredded and sticky with blood. He saw his sergeant and tried – but failed – to catch up to him.

‘Leave me,’ Guardsman Vilhelm pleaded.

‘You don’t get out of duty that easy,’ said Ven Mikkelson gruffly. There’s still a chance, he thought, if we could get him to the troopship’s medicae ward.

‘Never make it, sergeant,’ Vilhelm insisted, between painful wheezes. ‘Never make it to… extraction point if… me slowing you down, and I… Don’t let me be responsible for…’

Ven Mikkelson waved the others aside. He crouched in front of Vilhelm. He looked so very young. But then, they always did. Sweat had plastered his straw-coloured hair to his head. Ven Mikkelson looked into Vilhelm’s eyes and saw the light in them already fading. He had been here so many times before. It was still the most difficult of all his duties.

With a sudden burst of strength, Vilhelm gripped his sergeant’s hand. ‘Do something for me… please. I don’t want to lie here, helpless… for another bug to find me. Rather end it… cleanly.’

Ven Mikkelson nodded. He had heard such requests before.

His squad gathered around their fallen comrade, to pray over him. Ven Mikkelson said a prayer to the Emperor too, for the strength to administer His mercy. He changed his power pack and took a deep breath. He levelled his weapon at his loyal comrade’s head.

The side gate had been reopened.

They were letting more people through. Some were tearfully grateful for their reprieve, reminding Teilloch of his noble purpose. The number of angry rejects was mounting, however – as was the number intent on making trouble. Couldn’t they see that they were slowing the process down, risking more lives?

Bodies were piling up on the plascrete flagstones.

He heard a sudden burst of gunfire.

A civilian had snatched an autogun and was madly blasting it in all directions. He shot down a trooper who tried to take the weapon off him. As Teilloch started forward, a bullet pinged off his helmet. He couldn’t bring his own weapon to bear through the panicking crowd. Other troopers were closer than he was, anyway. The shooter performed a grotesque dance of agony, as their slugs ripped through his body.

The incident was over in seconds – long enough for some to see an opportunity and take it. A dozen people, then a dozen more, broke through the cordon and raced for the landing pads, with still more straining to follow their lead. ‘Hold them back!’ yelled Corporal Barnard. ‘Hold them–’ He was choked off as the next wave of desperate humanity swept him off his feet.

Teilloch shot two of the charging civilians. Law-breakers, he told himself. Even Alvado resorted to deadly force as a fiery-eyed labourer came at him with a makeshift cudgel. In self-defence, he thrust his bayonet through his attacker’s throat. ‘I enlisted to protect these people, not slaughter them,’ he protested loudly, wiping blood off his face with a sleeve. ‘We are doing the xenos’ work for them.’

Teilloch was tiring of his comrade’s complaints. Most of all, it bothered him that he never knew how to refute them. ‘They were warned,’ he grunted.

‘You can’t blame them for being afraid and angry. You can’t blame them for fighting to survive.’ When all this was over, Teilloch decided, he would report Alvado to Corporal Barnard.

When all this is over…

It had been an unguarded thought, but it filled him with sickening dread. He swallowed and focused on the present, on his duty. It wasn’t his responsibility to think about the future – the looming, terrifying future.

A pair of Space Marines had waded into the fray, heading towards the port. Their weapons were more efficient, more deadly, than those of Home Guard issue. They spat out red-hot bolts that burst on impact, punching bloody holes through their luckless targets. Teilloch averted his gaze from the carnage. Disobedience amounts to treason. The crowd was faltering, losing heart, but still he had to stand firm against them. They would seize upon the slightest sign of weakness.

‘Why shouldn’t we survive, for that matter?’

He turned to Alvado. He was sizing up the nearest idling freighter, its embarkation ramp only a few hundred steps away and his eyes were now decisive, determined. He took a deep breath and announced, ‘I’m taking my chance. How about you, Arch? You coming with me? Do you want to live?’

Teilloch’s throat had seized up. Alvado glanced at him and must have seen that he wouldn’t get an answer. With a shrug, he broke away from him. He had picked his moment well, because the Space Marines’ backs were turned to him. No one else paid Alvado any heed. His uniform would deflect suspicion, at least for the first part of his escape. He was already stripping off his Home Guard colours for the second.

Teilloch opened a vox-channel to Corporal Barnard.

‘It’s Trooper Alvado,’ he reported. His throat was still dry. His tongue felt too large in his mouth, but what choice did he have? ‘He has… He… The pressure was too much for him, corporal. He’s deserted his post and is–’

‘Then you know your duty, Teilloch,’ Barnard said tersely, and broke the connection. It was only what he had expected to hear – but he had needed to hear it.

He raised his gun and squinted along its barrel. Alvado had reached the bottom of the landing ramp. For a fraction of a second, he paused and glanced over his shoulder, and his face, afraid but hopeful, was framed in Teilloch’s sights.

Teilloch held his breath and squeezed his trigger.

The city was shaking itself to pieces.

The Ice Warriors had kept moving as long as they could – even through the warning tremors that had robbed them of their footing again and again. Ven Mikkelson’s legs, from the knees down, were a mass of cuts and bruises. Still, they had made up lost time and were barely a kilometre from their destination.

They had been so close. Now, they huddled beneath another cathedral archway, feeling helpless and resentful in the grip of forces stronger than they were.

‘Sergeant,’ ventured Bullski, ‘couldn’t we try–?’ Before the question could be asked, another building disintegrated, not two blocks away from them. The dust cloud of its passing rolled over them, setting them to coughing and spluttering.

Ven Mikkelson waited fretfully, as long as he dared. Then he moved his squad out again, though the ground had not yet completely settled. Almost immediately, a battered groundcar came bouncing towards them, forcing them to dive for cover once more.

He voxed the waiting rescue ship. At least, he hoped it was still waiting. ‘Could you possibly hold out a little longer?’

‘That’s a negative, sergeant. Another quake that strong, and we–’

‘I know.’ He prayed he would get a chance to fight again. ‘But we’re five minutes away from you – less than five.’

A short pause ensued. Then, ‘We’ll wait as long as we can.’

Ven Mikkelson relayed the news to his three comrades. Hope spurred the Ice Warriors, battered and exhausted though they were, to renewed efforts. They ran as if all the horrors of the warp were on their tails.

A heavy flagpole, wrenched from an office building, struck Bullski across his broad shoulders. An inch higher and it would have cracked his skull. The Imperial standard would have made an ironic shroud for him. He refused to let the incident slow him down, ploughing on, teeth gritted with pain.

They raced past burning buildings, overturned vehicles and broken bodies strewn across fresh heaps of settling rubble. Ven Mikkelson’s lungs were in spasm. His uniform, designed for far colder climes than this, had never felt so stifling. Sweat poured from beneath his hat and his cheeks were on fire. With every step, it seemed that his feet grew heavier and harder to lift.

Then, one of his comrades murmured, ‘Thank the Emperor!’

He lifted his head, rubbed sweat from his eyes and saw it too: the sweetest sight he had ever beheld. The airstrip lay ahead of them and, squatting on a landing pad was a single, long, angular ship. The Devourer’s nose cone was closed, its engines running, but its passenger ramp was still down. A squad of Ice Warriors formed a cordon across its foot, holding back a small, fractious crowd.

Ven Mikkelson pushed his way through the mob, ignoring their protesting howls. ‘Why?’ someone yelled, belligerently. ‘Why do you get to live, and not us?’ He staggered up the ramp, light-headed. He made sure that his comrades had boarded, then stumbled into the blessedly cool embrace of the Devourer’s belly himself. The sentry squad was right behind him; their sergeant fired three shots to discourage anyone from trying to follow them.

The ramp was already retracting, blotting out the crimson daylight. They could feel the deck plates shuddering as the old ship gathered itself for takeoff. Ven Mikkelson mouthed a thankful prayer to the Emperor. He peeled off his hat and rested his feverish brow against a nearby viewport, feeling the accusing eyes of his comrades on his back.

‘A trained soldier – any one of us – is worth more to the Imperium than an admin clerk or a labourer,’ he snarled. ‘And this is their world, after all. They are the ones who overlooked what was happening in their midst until it was too late. We fought for them. We fought as long and as hard as we could. We leave their fate in the Emperor’s hands, now. We have nothing to regret.’

Through the armourglass circle, he saw the airstrip dropping away. The crowd of would-be refugees had been scattered and some burned by the Devourer’s exhaust blast, but they were picking themselves up and screaming futilely, even throwing rocks at the escaping vessel. In the centre of it all, Ven Mikkelson saw a child – no more than four years old – sitting alone, crying and, despite his admonishments, he could not wrench his eyes away from the viewport.

He watched until he could no longer make out individuals, only dark shapes swarming across the shattered city, without purpose, without hope. He kept on watching, even after black clouds closed like curtains beneath him and rendered the people, the city and Katraxis itself invisible to him.

A spaceport fence had come down.

The mob that had been pushing, pulling, tearing at it whooped as they trampled broken wire into the dirt. Their jubilation didn’t last long. The fence had stood between them and their desperate hopes, so had become a focal point for their anger. Now, as they swarmed around the spaceport buildings, they saw the landing pads, all of them, standing empty. Their efforts had been futile.

The truth was beginning to dawn on Teilloch too: that no more rescue ships were coming. He should have known when the Space Marines left, he thought. He should have known that Alvado had been right all along. Even the Emperor’s Angels have turned their backs on Katraxis!

More fights were beginning to break out. A trooper scolded a group for blaspheming in their grief, and they set about him with their fists. Teilloch should have assisted, but others had beaten him to it and the situation was only escalating. Anyway, he felt too numb. He had grown accustomed to the roars of spaceship engines. With these gone, he felt a blanket of silence settle over him. The prevailing condition around the port, among civilians and soldiers alike, was shellshock. He couldn’t look at the bodies strewn about him. He especially couldn’t bear to see the faces of his own victims – a one-time friend among them.

Corporal Barnard had wandered away from his squad. Teilloch spotted him sitting on the ground, knees drawn up to his chest, head buried in his arms. He could see no Home Guard officers, no one to give him fresh instructions. There had been plenty around a few minutes ago – where had they all gone?

Who would tell him what to do now?

‘My people. My friends. I thank you for your continued understanding in these difficult times.’ Governor Strawhagen’s voice burst over Teilloch’s comm-bead once more. ‘The Emperor has asked much of us, as is His right – but our faith in Him has been amply rewarded.’

He sounded reassuringly close. Teilloch found himself scouring the red sky, as if he might see the governor’s flagship hovering over him protectively. Others were doing the same, lifting their heads in hope again, but only for a moment.

‘Be assured that the xenos will never take Katraxis. Yes, they have dealt us a grievous blow indeed, but for that they are fated to suffer the Emperor’s vengeance. Imperial war ships have been despatched. The tyranids will soon descend upon this world – our bright, precious world – to find their victory a pyrrhic one. Katraxis will be destroyed, to ensure the–’

The rest of the message was drowned out by howls of fury. Teilloch himself felt his stomach turning over, his knees weakening.

Exterminatus. He remembered the word from old newsreels. The destruction of a world that had become irreversibly contaminated. His heart had swelled at the thought of the Emperor’s torpedoes, consuming and purifying the unclean – xenos, mutants, heretics – in their amassed legions. He had never imagined that he might burn alongside them.

Strawhagen was still straining to be heard, telling him – telling those tens of billions of loyal subjects left behind – why they should welcome this great mercy. He concluded with a prayer to the Emperor, during which his voice broke up as his ship moved out of vox range.

What do I do now? Arch Teilloch had never asked that question before. He had always known his duty. He had always had orders to follow. The masses would surely resume their rioting once their situation sank in. Should he try to impose order? For what purpose? Should he try to protect them? How could he?

Whatever he did, he couldn’t change their fate. Nor his own.

Some of his comrades had reached the same conclusion. They were throwing down their weapons, stripping off their orange and blue uniforms. Some did so angrily, stamping on their helmets in protest at being betrayed. Others did so out of fear. Teilloch suddenly realised that his colours might make him a target, marking him out as a symbol of that very betrayal.

He began to unbutton his tunic, but stopped himself. Who am I without it? He had never had to ask that question either. He feared what the answer might be. Teilloch had lived a lifetime of devotion. Could he really turn his back on all that, in these final few hours? What would it say about the worth of his life if he did?

He had one other option – one way to silence those questions, to quell his doubts and fears. Some might consider it a sin, but how could it be, when he was doomed already? He had seen the Emperor’s mercy being granted to others…

Teilloch turned his autogun around. He nuzzled the end of its long barrel underneath his chin. He closed his eyes.

‘What in the warp kept you?’

The Devourer had itself been devoured by an orbiting troopship. Ven Mikkelson’s captain stood waiting for him in the cavernous hangar bay. The sergeant snapped his aching muscles to attention and saluted. ‘My apologies, sir. We encountered… complications en route.’

The captain’s scowl softened a little. ‘A tyranid ambush, I hear?’

‘That’s right, sir. I’ll submit a full report.’

‘Within the hour, sergeant.’

He had planned to head straight to his bunk, in his tiny cabin. Instead, Ven Mikkelson trudged after his comrades to the mess hall. Usually, when the Ice Warriors returned from a mission, the mood in the hall was boisterous. In contrast, today, it was subdued and bitter.

He didn’t feel like eating. He sat in a corner with his back to the room. He nursed a mug of tanna tea and stared at a blank data-slate. He tried to find horrific enough descriptors for the monsters in the ruined cathedral – the lictors. The only thing he could picture was Vilhelm’s eyes as his life’s light faded from them and he felt frustrated that he couldn’t avenge that lost life.

He became aware of shutters sliding over the viewports. The troopship was about to leave the Katraxis system. Not a moment too soon for his liking. Ven Mikkelson braced himself for the jump into warpspace.

The next thing he knew, he was catapulted from his seat, dowsed in steaming tanna. As he scrambled to his feet, a wave of dizziness crashed over him and his stomach churned. Around him, his comrades were picking themselves up too. The mess hall looked as if it had been turned upside-down and shaken.

Something was badly wrong. Ven Mikkelson looked at the shuttered ports. He knew the perils of the warp, of course, but his many journeys through it had perhaps inured him to them. Had his luck run out at last?

He was a passenger on this ship, not a crew member – the same as his comrades. They could do little but wait for orders and perhaps pray. At last, vox-speakers flared to life. A voice instructed all aircrew to man their vessels. This caused an immediate stir. ‘What’s happening?’ many troopers demanded to know. Some put their pleas to Ven Mikkelson himself. ‘Are we under attack?’

Next, they heard from the troopship’s naval captain. ‘We are having a few problems. Our enginseers are working on it, but they say… and this comes from our Navigator too… it may be that warpspace is somehow closed to us.’

More minutes crawled by. The younger troopers became ever more agitated. They paced the room, speculating about a range of dreadful fates and picking arguments with each other over anything and everything. The more seasoned Ven Mikkelson simply righted his chair and sat again. His data-slate was cracked across the screen. He suspected he would never write that report now, anyway.

Colonel Ztanlev, commander of the 132nd regiment, strode into the mess hall. Immediately, he found himself surrounded by impatient Guardsmen, and had to call for order before he could deliver his briefing. ‘This is the situation as it has been explained to me,’ he began.

‘The xenos have broadcast a signal – a psychic signal – to disrupt the warp itself. We have lost communications, and of course our warp engines are useless to us. By the Emperor’s grace, ours is the only ship affected. Our Valhallan fellows jumped before the signal was sent. So too did the rescue ships and the Adeptus Astartes’ strike cruiser. I regret to say, however–’

And there they were: the words for which Ven Mikkelson had waited but prayed not to hear.

‘–that the xenos fleet has caught up to us.’ Whatever Ztanlev said next, it was drowned out by questioning voices. Demanding silence once again, he continued. ‘Our auspex reveals a great behemoth of a vessel, an unholy fusion of mechanical and biological matter. Thank the Emperor, he has protected our senses from this abomination.’ The warp shutters were still down. The threat without seemed somehow distant, disconnected from Ven Mikkelson’s reality. For decades, this ship, always filled with good comrades, had been his only home, his sanctuary.

‘We have two options. The first is to run, which would be futile. Even if we were fast enough, we lack the fuel – and indeed the provisions – to reach the next system on sub-light engines.’ If anything, this was an understatement.

‘Our second option,’ the colonel continued, ‘is to do as the men of Valhalla have always done. Make no mistake, we are one ship against many, and the hive ship alone is perhaps twenty times our size. The odds against us are overwhelming, but we have the Emperor behind us, while our enemies have only His abiding scorn.

‘By chance or by fate, we are directly facing the enemy. Our weapons are unlikely to have much effect upon it, but we will fire them anyway. Our Devourers and Vulture gunships will distract the hive ship’s escorts, while we–’

A fresh round of protests erupted. In the midst of the clamour, Trooper Bullski found Ven Mikkelson and clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. ‘This is our fault,’ he growled. ‘We delayed the rescue ship, and because we did…’ Ven Mikkelson couldn’t answer him, couldn’t face his comrade’s accusing glare. The guilt that had been gnawing at his insides had grown to paralyse his vocal chords.

‘The enginseers will set our engines to overload,’ persisted Colonel Ztanlev. ‘We intend to ram the hive ship and smash right through its hull. With the Emperor’s blessing, we may start some chain reaction to bring that bloated monster down – in which case, Katraxis will be spared the xenos blight and our regiment’s name will be legend. I ask you, my comrades, my friends, to join with me as we pray for such a glorious outcome. For the Emperor!’

‘For the Emperor!’ The response from the assembled Ice Warriors was somewhat muted. Still, it was expected, and they provided it obediently – all of them but for Sergeant Konrad Ven Mikkelson.

He felt the deck plates rattling beneath his feet. He heard the pitch of the engines increasing as they picked up speed. Bullski is right, he thought numbly. Better that we hadn’t made it to the extraction point at all. Better that our comrades had left, on time, without us. Better that we had stopped outside the temple to help.

At least, then, we would have died for something…

They were smashing the city.

As if it hadn’t endured enough. A furious, unreasoning mob was now shattering any remaining windows, kicking down doors, battering abandoned vehicles with sticks and shovels. They were stoking fires inside the creaking shells of once-thriving businesses and governmental offices.

There were preachers on every street corner, proclaiming the Emperor’s word, which varied from one of them to the next. Some exhorted their fellows to rein in their aggression, to spend their final hours in contemplation and prayer instead. Others encouraged more violence: ‘If the xenos are to take this world, if only for an hour, then let them take its ruins.’

Some people were looting shops and even churches, fighting over torn clothes, battered hololith projectors and tarnished candlesticks. Teilloch couldn’t imagine the tyranids wanting such things. Others binged on stolen food and liquor, or – this, he could better understand – sought to arm themselves.

He had left Katraxis Port, to wander the streets in a daze. He realised that his feet, by habit, were taking him home. For what purpose? He hadn’t seen his hab in weeks. He didn’t know if the quakes had left it standing.

He still wore his orange-and-blue uniform, still carried his autogun. He hadn’t been able to pull the trigger. He didn’t know if that made him strong or weak. Was it faith that kept him alive, he asked himself, or cowardice?

A horrified scream and a pointed finger drew his gaze upwards. He saw lights in the red sky, shining fuzzily through the pollution. One huge light in particular – pulsing in a way that he found indescribably hateful, making his eyes water to look at it – was surrounded by scores of lesser glows. So, this is it, he thought.

Something else was up there too: another light, brighter, whiter and purer than the others. It streaked towards the darker lights, and Teilloch’s breath caught in his throat. ‘It’s a ship,’ a young man beside him gasped. ‘An Imperial warship. They’re still fighting for us up there. That has to be it.’

Teilloch had thought he had seen the last of hope. It returned now, riding the tail of that blazing comet. It was headed directly for the hateful, pulsing light – whose smaller brethren moved to intercept the white light, too slowly.

The lights collided, and Teilloch let out a cheer. He wasn’t the only one. Though the rioting continued, there were scores of people like him – beaten soldiers and traumatised civilians – who had fallen still and silent, just gaping up at the display in the sky. Then, the bold white light flared triumphantly, and died; and hope drained from their upturned faces. The pulsing, hateful, sickly light burned on, as if nothing had happened.

Teilloch looked at his gun, his useless gun, clutched in his sweaty hands. He looked down at his uniform, its bold colours. Perhaps nothing really had happened up there, but even so. These colours stood for something, didn’t they? He had to act now, he thought, before he lost his audience. He hopped up onto a cracked podium, which against all odds still hosted a proud bronze statue, and pointed to the sky.

‘Listen! I don’t know who they were,’ he announced, ‘the heroes aboard that ship, but they have reminded me of something I shouldn’t have forgotten. That I, that you, that all of us, belong to the Imperium of Man. And while our Emperor sits upon the Golden Throne, we are never defeated.’

It was working. They were turning their faces towards him. Teilloch ignored his heart’s hammering. He let the words tumble out of him. ‘So, let our enemies come, and we shall do as our kind has done for forty millennia. We shall fight them to our very last breaths. We shall defend this precious world of ours. For every square foot of Katraxis that the xenos take, let them pay a price in blood.’

Something caught around his ankle: an Imperial flag, dirty and torn. He recalled that the governor’s groundcar had passed this way. He picked up the tattered piece of cloth and waved it proudly. ‘Are you with me?’ he demanded of the crowd. ‘Are you with the God-Emperor of Mankind?’

Some of them shouted that they were, waving weapons and fists – not many, but it was a start, and the sentiment was already spreading.

Then, suddenly, there were more gasps and cries, drawing Teilloch’s eyes skyward once more. The clouds had drawn in and it was beginning to rain, thick and heavy.

Except the closer the dark droplets fell, the more evident it became that it wasn’t rain. They were far too large; as large as birds; as large as people? It suddenly occurred to Teilloch that the droplets might be bombs. ‘Get down!’ he screamed.

He dived from his pedestal as a bomb careened towards him. It ploughed through the effigy of the Imperial hero above him, which was reduced, at last, to bronze-plated matchsticks. It smashed through a warehouse wall and lay steaming in the wreckage.

Teilloch lifted his head gingerly. A deathly silence had fallen, or perhaps his ears had been deadened. There had been no explosion. As dust from the object’s landing cleared, he discerned more details of it. Its casing was mottled, greenish-purple – plant matter? It was shaped like a teardrop and, yes, it was larger than a man.

The casing had cracked open and there was something inside it, something indescribably awful. Teilloch glimpsed snapping claws, a twitching tail and a glistening, segmented wormlike body, thrashing to get out. Not bombs, he realised with a creeping sense of horror, but pods!

‘They’re here! The xenos are here!’

He had meant to bellow the words, as a rallying cry, but they came out in a deathly whisper. Sounds crashed in around him again. People were yelling and screaming and running, but some – the bravest few, the most faithful – were brandishing weapons, as Teilloch had bade them, preparing to defend themselves.

He recalled Alvado’s words: ‘I enlisted to protect these people.’ Teilloch had lost sight of that, forgetting the value of each individual life – but he could see clearly now. He checked that his autogun was loaded. Arch Teilloch prepared to fight with his people, for his world.

He was ready to do his duty.

A COMPANY OF SHADOWS

Rachel Harrison

The city falls away to the thunder of turbojets. Shattered buildings recede. The smell of smoke is stolen by the cold wind as it buffets the Valkyrie gunship.

Commissar Severina Raine holds on to the frame of the side door as it rattles under her hand. Other gunships lift off and move away, grey metal rising to meet the grey sky. In the distance, a pall of dust rises into the air, indicating where the Antari tank companies are rolling towards the edge of the city. A mass retreat that stings more than the las-burn across her shoulder.

‘Silver two away.’

The voice comes over the vox, but she can see the speaker in the distance. It’s Andren Fel. The storm trooper captain is braced in the side door of another Valkyrie that goes out of sight behind a slumped habitation block. Raine can hear the whisper of hellgun fire behind his words.

‘The fastest route,’ she says, speaking up over the wind. ‘Through the Maw.’

There’s a noise like vox distortion. Raine knows it’s Andren laughing.

‘Through the Maw,’ he says. ‘Aye, commissar.’

The Maw marks the edge of Gholl’s primary city, Caulder’s Reach, where the metal spires of the city end and the stone ones of the mountain ranges begin. The peaks punch upwards, the wind howling around and between them like the breath of a beast. The ravines go deep and dark. That’s why her Antari soldiers have taken to calling it the Maw. A dangerous name, for a dangerous place.

‘The Maw?’

Raine turns away from the side door at the voice. Saleen Mayir is strapped in across the troop compartment. Her bright yellow cloak stands out against the gunmetal and olive. She clings to her harness with white-knuckled hands, her fingernails filed to sharp points.

‘It is completely under enemy control,’ Mayir shouts over the roar of the engines.

Raine moves along the Valkyrie’s troop compartment and lowers herself into a seat opposite Mayir. As she locks her restraint harness in place, the Valkyrie judders. There’s a split second of weightlessness, then a loud rattle as the gunship drops a few metres. It knocks the breath out of Raine, but she keeps her hands steady, her face impassive.

‘It is,’ Raine says. ‘As is Caulder’s Reach, now, Tacticae Principal.’

Mayir narrows her eyes. In the dim light, Raine sees the flash of bionics. Good ones, almost invisible. Priceless.

‘The plan for the city defence was sound,’ she says. Her accent is clipped and precise. ‘If the regiments had been up to the task of holding it, then we would not be having this conversation.’

Sergeant Daven Wyck starts laughing. It’s an ugly sound. He’s not sitting, not restrained like the rest of his six-strong squad. Instead he has his arm looped through the grab-netting on the wall of the Valkyrie. He’s flexing his bloody, blackened fingers. There’s soot and filth in his fair hair.

‘Three Antari souls spent for you,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Three of my Wyldfolk just to get you out of the city. Seems a poor trade.’

Raine doesn’t get up or move her hand towards her gun or sword. She just looks at him.

‘Enough,’ she says.

He rolls his fingers into fists, but he doesn’t challenge her. Nor do the rest of his squad. They all know better.

What they don’t know is that this time a part of Raine agrees with him.

‘Antari,’ Mayir says, looking at Wyck. ‘Splinter camouflage. Icon of the crossed rifles against a circle of thorns. The Eleventh Rifles, am I correct?’

Wyck stares at her, his fists still curled.

‘Yes, Tacticae Principal.’

The way he says her title falls just short of open disdain.

Saleen Mayir smiles, thin-lipped.

‘And upon meeting, how disappointing you are.’

Raine sees Wyck open his mouth to speak, but he never gets the chance to. There’s a sudden loud blare. The impact alarm. The pilot, Kain, shouts something over the internal vox. Raine picks out the word missiles.

‘Brace!’

Raine’s voice is drowned out by a colossal explosion that shakes the Valkyrie. Shakes the Antari. Shakes Raine’s eyes in her head. There’s a second boom and the gunship starts to spin. The internal vox goes live with more shouts from the cockpit. There’s another moment of weightlessness, and the Valkyrie drops again, this time much more than a few metres. Raine’s stomach lurches. The engines scream. Tacticae Principal Mayir screams too. Through the open side door, Raine sees dark stone, then sky, then stone, then sky. Spinning coils of thick, dark smoke. Her vision tunnels as G-forces press against her.

Then something strikes Raine on the side of the head, and there’s nothing at all.

Daven Wyck snaps awake and realises he’s looking up at the sky, and that it looks strange. Blurry. He blinks hard and his eyelids gum together. His fingers are locked tight around the stock of his gun, but he can’t raise it. There’s a ringing in his ears. Under that, the howl of the wind. He can’t think where he is. Can’t think straight at all.

There was an explosion. Heat and light and noise. Screams.

A memory surfaces. A Chimera transport, torn apart by a land mine. Blood on his face. Not his own blood, but everyone else’s. Staggering out of the wreck and into the jungle, forgotten by death.

But then Wyck blinks again. There’s no jungle here, just jagged peaks of dark stone. The Chimera, all those deaths, they were a long time ago on Cawter. He hadn’t been a sergeant then. He hadn’t been anything much at all.

He manages to drag himself into a sitting position. There’s debris heaped around him. Grey metal on the grey stone. It takes him a moment or two to realise he’s looking at parts of a Valkyrie gunship.

Parts of their Valkyrie gunship.

The memory of the crash comes back in pieces. He hadn’t been secured, just holding on to the grab-netting. He’d lost his grip. Fallen clear of the gunship as it dug a furrow across the mountainside. Wyck looks down at his left arm and sees it loose and awkward, the shoulder dropped. Dislocated.

‘Mists alive,’ he says, his voice hoarse.

It’s not because his shoulder hurts, though it does. Like a bastard. It’s because for the second time in his life, he should definitely be dead and isn’t. Forgotten by death, again.

Wyck lets his rifle hang by the strap and lifts his injured arm, holding it out like Lye had shown him once. He takes hold of his bad wrist with his good hand, takes three quick breaths, then pushes against it slowly. It makes him whine through his teeth. His vision bursts with spots of light, then there’s a pop as the joint reseats itself. He counts to ten until his vision clears and the nausea fades, flexing his fingers and feeling the way his nerves jolt in his injured arm.

‘Okay,’ he says, though there’s nobody around to hear it.

Wyck puts his good hand out and gets to his feet. Once he’s standing, he can see just how dead he should be.

He’s standing on an outcropping jutting from one of the Maw’s jagged teeth. The gunship’s carcass lies about one hundred metres away from him, just clear from the edge. He can’t see the nose of the Valkyrie at all, just the remains of the troop compartment, torn open like a ration tin. Around the wreckage, fires burn on slicks of fuel. Wyck can’t see any of his Wyldfolk. No grey-green camouflage. No bodies. He realises they were all strapped down, and that they probably still are. The damned commissar and Mayir, too.

Wyck starts towards the remains of the Valkyrie, the wind tugging at his fatigues. His broken ribs shift and grind together, and he slips on the scree, nearly falling.

No good. No good at all.

Wyck searches the pouches at his belt, one after the other. The first two vials are cracked and empty, but the third is good. He holds it up to the light. A stubby capsule of glass with a dark liquid inside. On the end, there’s an injector. He rolls back his fatigues and presses it against his arm.

Another dose so soon after the first is risky. Stupid, even. He flexes his numb fingers and his vision swims. Everything is distant. Muffled. Blurry.

No good, Wyck thinks, and he thumbs the injector.

There’s a gentle hiss. A bite from the needle he barely feels. Then there’s something else. Something familiar.

The crack of lasgun fire.

Wyck drops and rolls and the las-bolt skims him instead of punching clean through. The shot came from one of two Sighted hiding among the rocks higher up the slope. They have grey-and-blue armour, like the stone around them, and storm goggles for the wind. Wyck brings his gun up and fires, forcing them to duck back behind those rocks, then gets to his feet and runs towards them. The Sighted panic-fire at him. Another bolt grazes him. He barely feels it. The stimms are kicking in. Everything is growing sharp. All edges. He hears them shout in their own tongue. Wyck shoots the legs out from under one of them. The other starts to run. He catches him and knocks him to the ground. Hears bones snap. More snapping as he breaks the Sighted’s neck. The other one is still shouting. Shouting into a vox-set. Wyck takes the knife from the dead one and uses it on the one still living until the shouting stops. Until there’s blood all over his face and his hands and his fatigues. Red and rich and strong with the stink of iron. He blinks, then spits. Drops the knife. His heart is thundering, and the Sighted is so very still.

‘Mists alive,’ he says again.

Commissar Raine often dreams of flames. Of the sky alight. Of screams she cannot escape. Usually, upon waking, those dreams fade, but not this time.

This time, the flames follow her.

Raine tries to get up, and realises she can’t. That she’s strapped down, or more precisely, strapped up. The troop compartment of the Valkyrie is on its side, and she’s hanging in her restraints, suspended halfway up the wall. Raine looks to her left. Trooper Dayn is dead in his harness, his neck broken. The two seats to her right are gone altogether, along with their occupants. Below Raine, on the opposite side of the compartment, a heavy, twisted bar of metal pins Tacticae Principal Mayir and the rest of the Antari in their seats.

‘Mayir!’ Raine shouts, trying to release her restraint harness.

The Tacticae Principal stirs, but she doesn’t reply. Her face is a mask of blood. Raine gets an answer from Yulia Crys instead. She has her arms locked against the metal bar, trying to keep it from crushing her chest. Crys is strong, broad in the shoulders and chest, but the bar is heavy and she’s weak from the smoke and the crash.

‘Need a little help, commissar,’ she shouts, hoarse.

Beside Crys, Yevi and Nial are unmoving. Raine can’t tell if they are alive or dead.

‘Hold strong,’ Raine says.

Raine pulls at her harness, trying to free the locking mechanism one-handed while holding on to the grab-netting with the other. On the third try, it gives. The harness retracts, and Raine is left hanging from the netting. She half-climbs, half-slides down until she reaches Mayir and the Antari. The heat of the flames beats at her and takes her breath away. Raine is dizzy from the smoke and from whatever knocked her out. The skin pulls tight on the right side of her face when she blinks.

‘It’s like Drast,’ Crys says. ‘The way the fire roars.’

She is bleeding from several deep cuts in her face. More scars for someone already so scarred.

‘We survived Drast,’ Raine says. ‘We will survive this.’

The metal is hot to the touch, but Raine doesn’t flinch. She takes hold of the bar and starts to pull as Crys pushes from the other side. It moves, but not enough. There’s a loud crack from Raine’s left and the flames bloom hungrily. For an instant she is as paralysed as she is in her dreams, but then Raine pulls on the bar again with all of her weight. Crys pushes from the other side with a yell of effort and it finally moves clear. Clear enough for Raine to drag Mayir free. For Crys to slide out of the gap and pull the unconscious Nial from his seat. She tries to free Yevi, but his harness has run in the heat and fused. Yevi’s skin has run too. Under the roar of the flames, there’s a creaking. A hissing. A line of flame shoots across the ceiling.

‘The fuel lines!’ Raine shouts. ‘Leave him!’

Crys pulls on the harness one more time, but it doesn’t give. She lets go with a pained sound, then grabs Nial and runs. Raine is right beside her with Mayir, so she hears her clearly, saying the same words over and over.

‘No fate,’ Crys is saying. ‘It’s no fate.’

Wyck sees Crys run clear of the Valkyrie, dragging Nial with her. Raine’s there too, and Mayir. The Tacticae Principal is white as fog and covered in blood. She staggers and collapses. Raine is bleeding too, from a deep head wound. Her eyes go wide when she spots him.

‘Wyck!’

Her accent twists the sound of his name.

‘Where are the rest?’ he says.

Raine grabs his arm, halting his run.

‘Where are the rest?’ Wyck shouts it at her this time.

Raine’s answer is to grab him and push him to the ground as an explosion engulfs the wreckage. Raine shields her face. Wyck doesn’t. He lets the heat sting his skin and the light dazzle him. Somewhere, under the bellow of the flames, he swears he hears a scream. Then the flames retreat and the wind blows the smoke clear. What’s left looks like blackened bones. Wyck gets to his feet. The way the stimms make everything sharp means he sees what’s in among the bones, too.

‘Wyck,’ Raine says.

He looks at her. At her inscrutable dark eyes and the pale scars that stand out against her skin. At her greatcoat and her sash and the pistol she holds, her finger never far from the trigger. He wonders if she even notices the deaths, or if they cut out that part when they made her.

‘We need to move,’ she says.

Those words make him stop wondering.

Raine turns and walks away. She pulls Mayir to her feet and shouts for Crys to get up. Wyck is about to follow her when he notices something at his feet, glinting in the dirt. He stoops down and picks it up. It’s a coloured gemstone, red like a bead of blood. There’s a crude aquila scratched into the surface. Wyck’s seen it plenty of times, because Yevi used to roll it in his hands before a fight.

He used to say it was lucky.

Wyck lets out a slow breath, then pitches the stone hard and high over the edge of the cliff and into the Maw.

‘How many?’ Raine asks.

Mayir is groaning as Raine packs the wound in her stomach. Something punched into the Tacticae Principal during the crash and cut her deep. Very deep. The dressing floods red immediately, soaking through to Raine’s hands.

‘Two,’ Wyck says. ‘Scouts, by their gear. More will be coming.’

It doesn’t give them long. Certainly not long enough for real field treatment. Raine unclasps her sash and takes it off, then winds it around the Tacticae Principal’s waist over the top of the dressing. When she pulls it tight, Mayir cries out.

‘They will kill you,’ Mayir mumbles. ‘They will kill you, and they will take me.’

‘They will not take you,’ Raine says. ‘I will not allow it.’

Mayir shakes her head. Her artificial eyes are still crystal clear, but she can’t seem to keep them locked on Raine.

‘They have taken dozens,’ she says. ‘Those of value. They are never seen again.’

A good deal of that is true. The Sighted have taken many prisoners, all of some value to the Imperial war machine. It’s why High Command wanted Mayir out of Caulder’s Reach. For the things she knows. It’s the last part that isn’t quite true. Raine heard that General Lorin’s ruined corpse was displayed at the head of the Sighted armoured column when they came to retake Caulder’s Reach. His value, it seems, was in spreading fear. It has certainly worked on Saleen Mayir. The Tacticae Principal is shaking, flinching at every distant sound.

‘Get me out of here,’ Mayir says. ‘I will make sure you are rewarded for it. I have influence. Anything you want.’

There’s no trace of the Tacticae Principal’s haughty manner now it’s her own blood being spilt. Now she’s just desperate to stay alive. It makes Saleen Mayir weak, and if there is one quality that Raine cannot abide, it is weakness.

‘Duty is its own reward,’ she says.

Raine looks over at Crys. She’s crouched over the vox-set Wyck took from the Sighted scouts, broadcasting a repeat emergency message in Antari battle-cant. Nial is sitting beside her with his back against a rock, conscious now. His face is a mess, his nose broken and his chin cut open to the bone. Most of his teeth got knocked out in the crash. He’s got his lasgun raised, though, watching the mountain paths.

‘Anything?’ Raine says.

Crys shakes her head.

‘Unless you count static, commissar. I think we need to go higher to get a clear signal.’ There’s a pause. A frown. ‘Unless it’s because there’s nobody around to answer.’

It’s Raine’s turn to shake her head. The Sighted might have put them on the back foot, but defeat is unthinkable.

‘Keep at it,’ she says. ‘We will go higher, as you say. They will hear us.’

Raine puts her hands under Mayir’s arms and pulls her to her feet. The Tacticae Principal cries out in pain. She has to lean against the cliff face to stay upright. Her face is pale and Raine can hear her bionic eyes struggling to focus.

Raine knows Mayir won’t be able to run, or fight.

I have influence, Mayir had said. Anything you want.

She won’t hold strong either. She’ll break for the Sighted, if she thinks it’ll save her life.

Raine takes off her greatcoat and starts to pull off her gloves.

‘What are you doing?’ Wyck says.

Raine looks him in the eyes. His pupils are blown, swallowing up the grey. It looks like a concussion, but Raine knows better.

‘We cannot outrun the Sighted with Mayir,’ she says. ‘And we cannot let them take her.’ She takes off her peaked cap. The wind bites without it. ‘But if they take me instead, then you have a chance of getting Mayir back to High Command. Of fulfilling our duty.’

Wyck stares at her.

‘They will kill you,’ he says flatly.

The idea doesn’t particularly seem to trouble him.

‘They might,’ Raine says. ‘But first they will take me where they have taken the other prisoners.’

He blinks. ‘The Sighted stronghold.’

She nods. ‘And then you will know where it is, and so will High Command.’

‘How?’ Wyck says. ‘Nobody has managed to track them back to that place. They disappear into the mountains like water into the earth.’

Raine puts her hand in the pocket of her greatcoat and takes out her timepiece. It is still intact, even after the crash. The only damage is the crack that’s been there since the day she got it. Since the day it was left in an unmarked box at the scholam on Gloam where she was trained.

‘Take this,’ she says. ‘Find Zane, and give it only to her. She will know how to find me.’

Wyck frowns, but he takes the timepiece. Raine watches it go into one of the pouches at his belt. She feels hollow, like she’s missing a part. Not one of the Antari has ever held that timepiece. Not even Andren Fel, though she trusts the storm trooper captain with her life.

And Raine knows with absolute certainty that she cannot say the same about Daven Wyck.

Above the Valkyrie crash site, the path flattens out. Tall, hardy trees grow clumped together, creaking in the high, cold wind. The ground underfoot is a mess of curled roots and loose scree. Wyck keeps his gun raised and places his feet carefully. Every noise is deafening. The cracks in the bark look like shadowed smiles. He thinks about Antar. The forests of his home world are thick, dark tangles of thorns and rich green leaves where fog curls underfoot. The sort of place where you lose your way. Where things with teeth wait in the darkness. A place of stories and superstition. His squad is named for one of those stories, for the wicked spirits of the forest who cut trespassers deep. He should feel at ease among the trees, but he doesn’t, because this time he is the trespasser.

It’s the timepiece, too, making him wary. It weighs heavily on him, sitting in the next pouch along from where he keeps his last vial of stimms. A part of Wyck swears he can hear it ticking, like a heartbeat carried with him.

Wyck stops, spotting something between the trees. A barely glimpsed movement. It’s the Sighted. He can’t say how long they’ve been watching, but he hopes it’s not long enough for them to know that Raine isn’t Mayir. That the Tacticae Principal is actually hiding with Crys and Nial, up in the cliffs.

Wyck raises his hand and Raine moves up beside him. He barely hears her tread. She has Mayir’s bloodied yellow cloak thrown around her shoulders. He thought that would make her look less like a commissar, but it doesn’t. It’s not the uniform that makes Severina Raine what she is.

Raine sees what he sees. She slowly raises her pistol.

And the forest lights with gunfire.

A las-bolt hits the trunk of the tree to Raine’s left. Splinters hit her, followed by the smell of scorched wood. The Sighted are everywhere. All around them. Bellowed words in their gutteral tongue carry to her. It takes her a moment to understand them.

We have the one! the voice is calling. We have the one!

The rest of the Sighted take up the cry until the forest rings with it.

Raine looks at Wyck. ‘Get Mayir out of here,’ she says. ‘As I said.’

It seems a long moment before he nods. A moment filled with the snap of las-fire and the splintering of wood.

‘As you said,’ he says.

Raine sets off running towards the Sighted. The chant is interrupted by a rolling wave of cheers and shouts. She brings up her pistol, firing twice. Two of them are knocked onto their backs. Blood mists the air and stains the pale bark of the trees. A las-bolt grazes her leg. Another her shoulder. It should burn, but all she feels is cold. The feeling spreads along her limbs until she cannot run anymore. Around her, frost is spreading up the trunks of the trees. Weight presses down on Raine from nowhere, and she is forced to her knees. Her vision dazzles.

A figure steps into view. Raine sees bloody, bare feet and a long feathered cloak that snags on tree roots. She looks up. A man stands over her, his lips tweaked up in a smile. Her face is reflected a dozen times in the cut gemstones where his eyes should be.

‘The one,’ he says, in Gothic this time.

Then he closes his fist, and darkness takes her.

Wyck sits by the body of the Sighted scout with his back against one of the pale trees, wiping the blade of his knife on his fatigues. They aren’t green and grey anymore. They are every shade of red, from scarlet to rust. Blood on blood. The Sighted is a mess that Wyck can’t quite remember making. He just remembers the feeling. Bright and vital. It’s one of the only things that make him feel like that.

That, and the stimms.

In his other hand, he holds Raine’s timepiece. It keeps drawing his eye. Brass and bone, marked with a seal he doesn’t know. Beautifully made. There’s a word scratched into the back of the case clumsily, as if by hand. A name, he thinks. Lucia.

Wyck gets to his feet. His arms and legs ache from running and fighting and his lip is split from where the Sighted scout punched him. He walks over to where the trees spill off the cliff. The Maw stretches away below, deep and dark. Wyck holds Raine’s timepiece out over the edge by the chain. The wind snags at it, spinning it. The name engraved on the back flashes in the light.

He could drop it. Tell Crys and Nial that Raine is dead. They could call in a Valkyrie and fly out of the Maw. The Sighted would kill her for real, and he would be done with Commissar Severina Raine and the way she hangs over him like a spectre of death. Like the black hound of shadow from the old stories, come to kill those that fate forgot to take.

He looks at the timepiece hanging there and wills his shaking hand to open, but his fingers don’t move.

He doesn’t care about Raine’s blood on his hands. She’s not Antari. She’s not one of them. She’s an outsider, and he knows for a fact that she wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in him. He’s seen her do it to better men.

But he still can’t drop it.

If she dies here, she’ll be replaced by another. The spectre will follow him in a different form. At least with Raine, like with the forests of home, death would wear a familiar face. She’d owe him too, whether she liked it or not. Maybe she’d even stop looking at him so closely.

Then there is the name scratched into the brass of the watch.

Lucia.

It proves that there’s still a part of her that cares about something. Wyck feels the barest pull of a smile.

Because something that the commissar cares about is something that he can use.

The Valkyrie gunship sets down on the flat plateau at the heart of the Maw amid a squall of dust. The turbojets cycle down and fall silent, then there’s a thud as the ramp drops. Six Antari soldiers disembark. The rest of Wyck’s Wyldfolk. The ones that were lucky enough to be on the other Valkyrie out of Caulder’s Reach. They are followed by five more in black and grey with snarling faces painted on their masks. Andren Fel and his Duskhounds. High Command sent Lye, too. Wyck points the medic straight to where Mayir is sitting. Lye will patch Mayir up as best she can and then accompany her back to High Command. Wyck’s eyes go back to the gunship as the last figure sets foot on the ramp. Lydia Zane. The psyker’s pale face turns to Wyck immediately and he tightens his grip on his gun.

‘This is all?’ Crys says. ‘We go after the Sighted with this?’

Wyck nods. The response from High Command when they finally connected via the vox-set had been clear. With the Sighted taking back the primary city, there are no more guns to spare. The Antari are to follow Raine’s trail alone. If they find her and the Sighted stronghold – and the Lord-General had put a lot of emphasis on that if – then they will have four hours to retrieve her and any of the other high-value prisoners and do as much damage to the Sighted as possible.

After that, the site will be bombarded from orbit, whether the Antari are still in there or not.

‘About time,’ Wyck says, as his squad gather to him in loose ranks.

Crys and Nial join the others, exchanging handshakes and softly spoken words.

‘You look a mess, Dav,’ Awd says.

Wyck chose Gereth Awd as a second when he had to split the unit because he was one of the longest-serving Wyldfolk still standing. One that he can trust, mostly because Awd owes him several times over.

‘You mean I look like I’ve been doing something, instead of sitting on my arse.’

Awd grins, but then he’s always grinning. The burn scars don’t allow for anything else. He’s as much of a mess as Wyck, his camouflage peeled back to grey and his knuckles split open to the bone. He’s covered in ash and filth from using the flamer slung across his chest.

Awd’s eyes soften. It’s the way to tell he’s being serious.

‘So we’re it,’ he says. ‘What’s left of the Wyldfolk.’

Wyck nods. He thinks back to throwing Yevi’s luckstone into the Maw. ‘We will cut them twice as badly as they’ve done us,’ he says. ‘For every death.’

The two of them clasp wrists.

‘For every death,’ Awd says.

‘Wyck.’

Lydia Zane’s voice tugs at him like snagging claws against his mind.

‘Take the others and keep watch,’ Wyck says to Awd.

Awd does as he’s told and Wyck turns to face Lydia Zane. He still hasn’t grown used to the loss of her grey Antari eyes and the silver bionics that replace them. He always hated looking the psyker in the eyes before, but now it’s even worse. It feels like she can see more of him, somehow. Andren Fel stands beside Zane. The Duskhound’s armour is black and grey but for the plating on his forearms. Red, to mark him as captain.

‘Raine gave you something I can use to find her,’ Zane says. ‘To track the shape of her soul.’

Wyck takes the timepiece out of the pouch at his belt and holds it out so that Zane can see it. There’s a shift in Andren Fel, the barest movement of his fingers on the stock of his hellgun.

‘The commissar gave that to you,’ he says.

The Duskhound sounds like he doesn’t believe it for a moment. Wyck expects it from him. Fel follows Raine around like a shadow. He might as well not be Antari at all.

‘Freely,’ Wyck says. ‘Said to let nobody else touch it but Zane.’

Fel’s face is hidden behind that Duskhound mask, but Wyck can tell he’s angry and can’t help feeling a little pleased about it. It doesn’t last. A creeping unease pushes up in its place. More snagging at his mind.

‘He is speaking the truth,’ Zane says. Then she smiles. ‘This time.’

Wyck spits on the ground at her feet. His mind burns where hers brushed against it. He tries not to think about what she might have lifted from it.

‘Do that again and I will cut you for it. That’s the truth.’

Lydia Zane laughs. ‘I would love for you to try.’

Wyck curls his fists. He wants to hit her, or better, shoot her. He won’t do either, though, and she knows it.

He’s too afraid of her for that.

‘Do your damned spell,’ he says, and throws the timepiece at her.

Zane catches it easily in her gloved fingers. ‘It is not a spell,’ she says. ‘It is a sensing.’

Wyck doesn’t see the distinction, and he doesn’t much care, either.

‘How does it work?’ Fel asks.

Zane removes one of her gloves.

‘Our souls echo inside the things that we carry, especially those that we carry close.’

She holds the timepiece by the chain.

‘Once I have that echo, the shape of a soul, I can find it again.’

‘Like a hound with a scent,’ Fel says.

Zane nods. ‘Just so.’

She lowers the timepiece into her hand. Wyck keeps his finger on the trigger of his rifle. He can see Fel doing the same. The moment that the brass casing touches Zane’s skin, the temperature around them drops like a stone.

‘Oh,’ Zane says.

‘What?’ Wyck and Fel say in the same instant.

Zane doesn’t look up, focused entirely on the timepiece. Wyck can hear her silver eyes focusing with a soft hiss.

‘The soul-echo is strong,’ she says, her breath misting in the air.

‘You can use it to find her?’ Fel asks.

Zane nods. Wyck watches as a single, impossible tear slides down her cheek. It freezes against her skin. He wonders exactly what Zane saw when she touched the watch. What in the name of the Throne could make a woman like Lydia Zane cry?

‘What is it?’ Fel says, his finger still on the trigger of his gun.

Zane brushes the ice from her cheek. ‘Nothing of concern,’ she says. ‘Follow me.’

Raine sits on a hard wooden stool, her elbows resting on the table in front of her. Outside, the wind howls. The air feels damp, even through the canvas of her command tent. On the table sits her bolt pistol. It’s properly and carefully disassembled in the way she was taught to do it at the schola progenium. A place for each part. Each part in its place. Her masters had said that she would find that maxim true of all things in her duties as a commissar. Raine sometimes wonders if her masters ever considered what happens when a part goes missing.

When it cannot be replaced.

‘So, a story then?’

Raine glances up at Andren Fel. He is sitting opposite her, also resting his elbows on the table. His arms are a dark patchwork of tattoos. Shadowy hounds and water wraiths and loops of pointed thorns. As the hanging lantern overhead swings, they seem to move.

‘It’s my turn?’ Raine says.

He nods.

‘What story do you want to hear?’ she asks.

‘What about that timepiece you carry? Tell me about that.’

Raine pushes a slender brush into the barrel of the pistol to scrub away the foulings. ‘We don’t know each other well enough for that.’

‘Don’t we?’

Raine thinks about the ways they have come to know each other. About their scars and stories. It’s not enough. Not for that.

‘No,’ she says, and begins to thread the barrel back onto the pistol’s receiver.

‘It was made on Darpex,’ Andren says. ‘And that’s where you come from too, isn’t it?’

‘I thought you wanted me to tell this story,’ she says. ‘But it seems you already know it.’

‘Just what I’ve heard.’

‘Darpex doesn’t matter,’ she says, though it does. ‘I was made on Gloam when I was taken into the scholam. When I was shaped into what I am now. Where I was born, who I was before that, those things scarcely matter and you know it.’

Andren smiles at her. It’s a smile that doesn’t sit easily on his face, as if it’s not his. ‘I’m not sure I’d say so,’ he says. ‘Not if I was born to parents like yours.’

A chill runs through Raine that she has trouble concealing. ‘You are overstepping, captain.’

The wind picks up outside the tent. Rain thrashes the canvas.

‘Lord-General Militant Thema Raine,’ he says. ‘Your mother’s is a name to live up to.’

He tilts his head.

‘But your father, not so much. It must gall you to bear his blood.’

He smiles again, too wide.

‘A coward’s blood,’ he says.

The words aren’t his. He’d never speak to her like that. His voice is all wrong too, distorted like a bad recording. Or a voice you might hear in a dream. Raine catches sight of the surface of the table. The tin cup at her elbow. They are both textureless and indistinct.

Coated with frost.

‘This is not real,’ she says.

Andren laughs, and that settles it. She knows that laugh well enough to know when it is wrong.

‘What are you talking about?’ he says.

Raine shakes her head and her vision smears, edge to edge. She fumbles with the final parts of the pistol, her fingers cold and slow.

‘This is not real,’ she says again. ‘And neither are you.’

She raises her rebuilt pistol and points it at his face. Right between his grey Antari eyes. Her hands are shaking and her heart is beating out of time.

‘This is a lie,’ she says.

He holds up his hands, scarred and tattooed. His eyes go wide. ‘Severina,’ he says. ‘Don’t.’

Her pistol booms and Andren falls backwards. His blood hits her face. The wind goes from a howl to a scream that rips the tent to shreds. Turns the table to splinters. Raine squeezes her eyes closed and keeps her hands tight on her pistol as the world falls apart.

When she opens them again, it’s to a completely different place.

The floor is stone, shot through with glimmering silver veins. Fat drops of blood sit there on the surface of it. Another drop falls from her nose to join it as she watches. The air is cold and carries a strange smell, like old flowers. Raine is on her knees, her hands chained in front of her through a loop driven into the floor of the cave. When she tries to move, she realises that the same chain binds her feet. Raine raises her head with effort and finds herself looking once again into the gory gemstone eyes of the man from the forest.

He smiles.

‘So strong,’ he says. His accent is strange. He is not of Gholl. ‘Your mind is a cage, Severina Raine.’

He knows her name. Of course he does. He’s been inside her mind. Raine’s stomach turns. She can still feel the cold metal grip of her pistol in her hands. The way Andren’s blood spattered her face. She cannot help but let slip a wordless noise of rage.

The man stands up and turns his back on her, making the feathers of his cloak stir. They are in a cave that stretches up and away, the ceiling lost to darkness. Crystal stalagmites stand sentry around a central dais. There’s a pattern carved into it that stings Raine’s eyes when she looks at it. The man treads across it, his feet leaving bloody prints that disappear almost immediately, swallowed up by the stone.

‘Won’t you ask my name?’ he says. ‘I know yours.’

She spits on the ground, trying to rid herself of the taste of roses. ‘Traitors have no names. They are just that. Traitors.’

The man sighs.

‘Come, now,’ he says. ‘There is a great power in names. You know that is true, Severina Raine of Darpex, then of Gloam. You who chose to keep your mother’s name, and not your father’s.’

Raine’s limbs shake with the need to get to her feet and kill him. The need to take back her secrets and her self from the traitor with the gemstone eyes.

‘I am Arcadius Verastus,’ the man says. ‘Ninth of nine.’

His robes are plain and dark. No insignia, save for the silver chain around his neck on which hangs a charm in the shape of a feather. Nothing to tell her what he is, beyond the name and the title he has given himself.

Ninth of nine.

The number prickles at Raine’s skin.

‘Whatever it is that you want, you will not get it from me,’ she says. ‘I will tell you nothing.’

Verastus smiles patiently.

‘Oh, I know,’ he says. ‘But then I do not need you to. I already know all about you. I know that you allowed yourself to be captured in place of Saleen Mayir and that you pinned your hopes of rescue on a man who hates you.’

Raine’s throat tightens.

‘You thought we wanted Mayir,’ Verastus says. ‘But she is a mundane creature. Plenty of blood on those hands, but no real value. Only small boons are granted in exchange for those like her.’

He takes a couple of steps towards her. The stone drinks his footprints.

‘You think value and you think of rank. Of medals and pins and petty little things.’ He crouches down in front of her. ‘True value is in potential. In the way the fates tremble at a soul’s touch. As they do with yours.’

The smell of old flowers is coming from him. Sweet and rotting, all at once.

‘It was always you,’ he says. ‘In my waking dreams you fell from the sky on wings of fire. By the light of your soul, the flames seemed plain and dim.’

He lifts his hand as if he might touch her face, stopping just short. Pressure begins to build behind Raine’s eyes.

‘The things you have done. The things you would do, given the chance. You are a fatemaker, Severina Raine, and my lord will give great things in trade for your soul.’

Raine keeps her head up, though her vision is running at the edges. ‘So much faith in false promises,’ she says. ‘You will die, and so will your lord.’

Verastus rocks back on his heels and he laughs. It’s a dry rasp, like claws on stone.

‘My lord will die? Oh, please.’

His too-wide grin grows wider.

‘You cannot kill a god.’

Before the Valkyrie takes off, Wyck takes Nuria Lye aside, away from the others, where the roar of the gunship’s engines keeps their words between the two of them.

‘No,’ she says, before he even asks anything.

‘Nuria. You owe me.’

It’s true. For lots of things, just like with Awd, and if there’s one thing Wyck knows, it’s the value of a debt.

‘You’re chasing death,’ she says. ‘By rights the amount you take should have killed you already.’

‘You make it sound like you care.’

Lye looks furious. For a second he thinks she might hit him. He almost wants her to.

‘About you?’ she says. ‘I don’t. Not a damn bit. I care about what you’ll do to the regiment. To our reputation.’

Wyck can’t see the truth like Lydia Zane can, but he knows Lye still cares. It’s why she always gives in, in the end.

‘You say I’m chasing death,’ he says. ‘But I’m not. It’s chasing me, and it has been since Cawter. You know that.’

She runs her hand through her shock of red hair. ‘I should report you,’ she says.

‘Then they’ll put a bullet in you as surely as me,’ he says. ‘And nobody wins but death.’

Nuria Lye lets out a long, slow breath. She reaches into the pouch at her belt, takes out three vials and presses them into his hand.

‘Enough to get it done,’ she says. ‘And then no more.’

He closes his hand around the vials. It’s what she says every time, and it’s never true.

‘As you say,’ he says. ‘Just enough, then no more.’

‘A god,’ Raine says in disbelief. ‘You are not just a traitor – you are a madman. A heretic. There is only one god, Him on Earth.’

‘That is what they tell you, isn’t it? From the day you are born it is driven into you over and over again. I suppose you heard it many times at the schola progenium.’ Verastus pauses, and there’s a flicker in his face. ‘I know I did.’

Raine’s limbs flood cold, as if she’s been dropped into ice water. She wonders what he was before he took those lies into his heart. Before he gave up his eyes for gemstones.

‘Do not bother to voice the question,’ Verastus says, answering her thoughts. ‘It’s like you said – what we were before scarcely matters, does it?’

Raine pulls at her restraints at the sound of her own words coming from his liar’s mouth, but she can’t reach him. Can’t silence him.

‘You are so blind,’ he says. ‘Shuttered and closed.’

He turns his outstretched hand and the pain in her head dials up.

‘Let’s see if we can change that, shall we?’

The world frays, tearing away like cloth, until Raine stands with Verastus in a wide-open space. Pockmarked grey stone stretches away on all sides, bordered by fortified walls that reach up to the sky. It looks like a parade ground. Snow falls silently. Where it hits Raine’s skin, it burns.

She tries to hurl herself at Verastus, to hurt him, even if it’s only in this world of dreams, but her limbs refuse her. She stays locked in place, breathing hard through her teeth.

‘Always fighting,’ he says. ‘But then, that is what they made you for.’

The huge stone doors on the far side of the parade ground open with a rumble. Figures file in through them in formation. A company of shadows.

‘I said that you were a fatemaker,’ Verastus says. ‘And these are the fates you have made.’

Raine sees Yevi, his skin running like wax. She sees Tevar Lun, his honest face shattered from her bolt pistol round. She sees Varn, holes punched through him wide enough to see through. Dayn and Ludi and Selk and dozens and dozens more Antari. Then there are the others that came before, from every war on every front. A muddle of fatigues and battledress and robes. Then last of all, slight figures in soft-soled shoes and scholam clothes.

‘This is your revelation,’ Raine says. ‘You show me the dead as if you expect me to flinch from them. To feel guilt or shame. I am a commissar. Death is my companion, and delivering it is my duty.’

Verastus looks at her sidelong.

‘Pretty words,’ he says. ‘But this is not everything that I have to show you.’

Wyck exhales a slow breath as he watches the Sighted scouts come into the clearing through the crosshairs of his rifle. His fingers twitch by the trigger. Heat rushes in his head. Whatever Lye gave him, it worked. But then, he did take two doses.

Enough to get it done, just like she said.

It’s an effort not to drop from the tree he’s hiding in and chase them down. Throne, he wants to move and fight and hurt them. But he can’t, because they need to do it quietly. He has to wait for them to come close. Just like with the other patrols they’ve silenced on their path deep into the Maw.

The Sighted are talking in their own tongue. Wyck knows a few words. The sort of words you pick up during a war.

Guard, or protect. Seek, or watch.

Then that last word.

Keep. Not keep as you would a possession. Keep like a castle.

The stronghold.

They are on the right path. Zane’s witch-sense is working.

There’s a snap of twigs from between the trees. The Sighted fall silent, and their rifles come up. The one with the sword at his hip gestures and the group splits. Six keep coming towards Wyck and the Wyldfolk, including the one with the vox-set on her back. Five go back in a ragged spread towards where the Duskhounds wait in shadow.

Wyck’s ears ring with their footsteps. His mouth is dry. His heart loud.

They have to get closer. Into the circle.

The circle is Crys and Awd and the rest of his Wyldfolk, waiting among the trees and the scrub and the standing stones. Waiting for the circle to close, for when they can coil around the Sighted like briars and not let go until they’ve bled them.

They have to get closer.

The Sighted with the vox-set turns, her face settling in Wyck’s sights.

He holds his breath.

And they step into the circle.

Wyck fires his rifle, and the Sighted with the vox-set drops with a yelp and a spiral of smoke. There’s a shout from the one with the sword at his hip. He draws it, lurching forward into the trip line that Crys has set. There is a series of low pops and fire bursts in a circle around the Sighted. More shouting. Another word Wyck knows.

Kill.

Wyck drops from the tree, right on top of the scout leader with the sword, knocking him to the ground. That pretty sword is useless when your attacker has got a knife between your ribs. Blood makes his hand slick. The Sighted claws at his face and throat. Wyck twists the knife. More blood. The clawing stops.

The ambush has become a melee, with the Sighted fighting back like cornered wolves. There’s shouting and cursing. Thrashing, desperate movement. Flashes of las-fire and motes of flame. To Wyck, it all seems to be happening so very slowly. He sees Crys put one of the Sighted down with a punch to the throat. Another of them goes to stick one of their black-bladed knives in her back. Wyck gets between them because he’s faster. Faster than he’s ever been. He breaks the Sighted’s knife arm, then hits him with the butt of his rifle, shattering the glass of the Sighted’s goggles and most of the face underneath. Teeth and blood and bone. He turns to face another of the Sighted, hits him too, then puts a las-bolt in him. Sweat and oil and smoke. Wyck’s heart is loud. So loud. A shadow moves in his peripheral vision. He snaps around, with his ears ringing and his heart beating like a rolling drum.

And realises with an instant to spare that he’s pointing his rifle at Andren Fel. His fingers twitch. It’s a conscious and deliberate effort to lower his gun.

‘It’s done,’ Fel says slowly.

Or maybe it’s not slowly. Wyck can’t really tell. He looks around at the Sighted, slumped and still. Silent. His Wyldfolk are watching him. So are the Duskhounds. He tries to ignore the burning in his limbs and the prickling against his mind. The thunder of his heart.

‘We cut them,’ Wyck says absently.

Fel tilts his head. ‘They cut you, that’s for sure.’

Wyck feels it then, a distant stinging. The cut goes right across his throat, just shallow enough not to open it all the way.

‘We should keep moving,’ he says, his voice hoarse.

‘There is not much further to go.’

Zane stands at the edge of the clearing, just beyond where the circle of fire is burning low. Her pale face is like a moonstone in the dim light. She has never looked so much like a bad spirit.

‘Follow me,’ she says. ‘To the mouth of the Maw.’

Verastus waves his hand and the scene kaleidoscopes before Raine’s eyes.

‘I said that your value is in your potential,’ he says. ‘In the fates you might make. The tremors you send singing through the futures.’

There’s a flicker like the changing of a vid-reel, and Verastus places his hand on Raine’s shoulder.

Raine sees Gloam aflame, the hives toppling to be swallowed by the sea. The sky splits with lightning and the sound of screams.

She sees rows and rows of Antari dead, draped in cloaks of forest-drab. Each one bears the single wound of execution.

She sees Lord-General Militant Serek lying dead from a single bolt pistol round, his blood spreading across a floor of white marble to touch Raine’s boots.

She sees Daven Wyck, coming at her wild-eyed, blood up from the stimms. He puts a knife in her chest, too fast to stop.

She sees Lydia Zane, alight with psychic fire that burns until even her bones are gone.

Last of all, she sees Andren Fel, standing with his back against cold grey stone, facing down a firing squad for crimes committed in her name.

‘Tricks and lies,’ Raine manages to say.

Verastus ignores her. His grip on her shoulder tightens.

‘And then there are the fates that made you,’ he says.

The scene changes again. Raine sees her mother, decorated in bright regimental dress. Her father, decorated with blood from the executioner’s bullet that killed him.

There’s one more figure. One that steals the air from Raine’s lungs.

Her sister.

‘Lucia.’

Raine can’t help saying the name. It claws free of her throat on its own. Her heart missteps, going out of time. She coughs up blood.

Verastus sighs. His smile is beatific.

‘I thought you should see it,’ he says. ‘Your value.’

Raine looks at the heretic leader through blinking, bleary eyes. ‘No,’ she says, the words coming as agonised whispers. ‘This is not my value.’

And with a scream of effort, she locks her hands around his throat.

Verastus struggles, but Raine hangs on, her vision dazzling and her mind alight. The world around them shatters and all of the fates blow away like smoke. Reality reasserts itself, all traces of the waking dream gone, save for the pain and the burning in her mind.

Arcadius Verastus looks down at her. He wipes the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. Psycho-stigmatic bruises mark his throat.

‘You know,’ he says, his voice hoarse, ‘it really will be a pleasure to kill you, Severina Raine.’

Wyck and the Antari follow Lydia Zane to the cliff’s edge. She stands there for a moment, buffeted by the wind. The cliff is open and exposed, and it makes Wyck uneasy.

‘You said it was close,’ he says. ‘Where is it?’

Zane turns to look at him. She looks pulled thin, like an animal skin set to cure. ‘It is close,’ she says. ‘Can you not see it?’

Wyck curls his fists. ‘No, I can’t see it, because there is nothing here to see. Now stop with your damned witch-words and start making sense.’

Zane laughs. ‘Follow me,’ she says.

Then she steps off the cliff.

Wyck’s hammering heart skips a beat, but Zane doesn’t fall. She doesn’t scream. She just disappears completely, as if the wind took her.

‘Emperor’s bloody wounds,’ says Crys. ‘Now what?’

Wyck scowls. He’s just worked out why he feels so uneasy, and it’s not because they’re exposed. It’s because there’s more witchcraft here, and it’s powerful. He spits on the ground at his feet.

‘We follow her,’ he says, and he takes a step forward.

It’s like pushing through a waterfall, all noise and cold for a moment, and then it’s behind him and he’s standing on a ridge looking down on the mouth of the Maw. The Sighted stronghold. It’s a deep, dark hollow cut into the rock, big enough to take the height of a scout titan, fortified with void shielding and gun emplacements. Floodlights make a circle of light in front of the entrance, painting hard black shadows on the ground from the groups of Sighted guarding it.

‘Well,’ Andren Fel says. ‘This isn’t going to be easy.’

For once, Wyck finds himself agreeing with the Duskhound. ‘We can’t fight our way in,’ he says. ‘Not through that.’

Zane shakes her head. There’s frost patterning her shorn scalp. ‘We will not have to. I can hide us, just as they hide this place.’

‘Just like that?’ Wyck says flatly.

Zane’s brow furrows. ‘Nothing is done just like that. I will not just be hiding us from soldiers, but from those who see like I do. It will tax me.’

‘But you can do it?’ Fel asks.

‘If we are fast,’ Zane says, with a humourless smile. ‘And lucky.’

Wyck looks down at the mounted guns and the low, tracked vehicles and the deep dark mouth of the Maw, and he suppresses a shudder. It’s not the thought of running towards his death – it’s the thought of trusting Lydia Zane to hide him from it. But then again, he doesn’t have a whole lot of choice about either.

And he’s been slipping past death for a long while now without it catching hold.

‘Do it,’ Wyck says. ‘Let’s end this.’

The Antari pass into the mouth of the Maw, invisible and silent. The world as seen through Zane’s projected glamour runs like wet paint. Sound is muted and distant. They pass under the gun emplacements. By the vehicles and patrols. Wyck keeps his rifle levelled. His hands are clammy on the stock and the trigger. It would only take a second. One lapse in Zane’s concentration, and the Sighted will have them. They’ll be torn to shreds. It is cold inside the glamour, and getting colder with every passing second. The rasp of Zane’s breathing is like a blunt blade on a whetstone.

As the tunnels go deeper into the mountain, they narrow. There are Sighted everywhere, as if they’ve been called to muster. Wyck watches them through Zane’s glamour and realises muster is the wrong word. They are all laughing, grinning. Some are singing.

It’s a celebration.

‘This is bad,’ he whispers.

Zane nods. ‘There is a darkness at the heart of this place,’ she slurs. ‘It grows. Every moment.’

She stops walking so suddenly that Wyck nearly slams right into her.

‘Do you hear that?’ Zane asks.

‘What?’ Wyck hisses.

She turns and looks at him. There are trails of blood running from her bionic eyes. It freezes on her skin. Wyck fights the urge to run from her.

‘It sounds like wings,’ Zane says. ‘Like beating wings.’

The glamour flickers. Wyck smells the cold air of the cave for an instant. He hears a lot of things, but not the sound of wings.

‘Feathers,’ Zane murmurs. ‘Black wings and talons. They follow like shadows.’

The glamour flickers again, for longer this time. A group of Sighted who just passed in the other direction halt. They stop their singing and one of them looks back and frowns.

‘Fix her, sarge,’ Crys says in a warning voice.

Fix her. As if there’s any fixing something like Lydia Zane. Something wicked and broken and wrong.

‘Stop,’ he says to Zane. ‘It’s in your damned head.’

‘Shadows,’ Zane says, louder now, her voice hoarse. ‘Like shadows at my back!’

She starts clawing at her face, her arms, fighting something he cannot see. Her nails cut bloody furrows in her skin. Wyck does the only thing he can think to do.

He drives the butt of his rifle into her face.

Zane stumbles and falls to one knee. She is mumbling witch-words and drooling clots of blood onto the ground.

‘Don’t you break,’ Wyck hisses at her. ‘Not now.’

The glamour flickers again. Wyck grits his teeth and drops to his knee beside her, then grabs her by the arm.

For less than a heartbeat, Wyck hears the wings of birds. Sees them, too. A black, heaving cloud of them flapping and crying and tearing with their talons, all pulling to a point that’s so dark you could never hope to see through it.

He lets go, his fingers burning with cold and his heart singing with fear. Zane’s head snaps up and she locks her false silver eyes onto him.

Just enough, and then no more.

Wyck’s mind burns with her voice.

Give me the vial.

She knows. She saw him, like he saw her. He should never have touched her.

Give. Me. The. Vial.

It’s his last one, but he can’t deny her. She won’t let him. He reaches into the pouch at his belt and puts it in her hand in such a way that the others won’t see. Zane presses the injector against the inside of her arm. Wyck hears the hiss as it bites, and misses the rush of it.

‘We need to move,’ Andren Fel says.

The Sighted are right near the edge of Zane’s projection, their guns up and their voices loud and wary.

‘Get up,’ Wyck whispers to Zane.

She’s shaking. More blood on the stone.

‘Let it hit you,’ he hisses. ‘And get up.’

Zane’s hands curl hard. She exhales a ragged breath, then gets to her feet. She glances at the Sighted through the smeared-glass edge of the glamour, and they freeze in place and start murmuring and shaking. Another word Wyck knows. A cousin to the other one.

Death.

The Sighted drop their guns. Their eyes roll back and they shake and bleed from their noses and ears. As one, they stagger back the way they came, impelled. Zane is running with sweat that freezes instantly on her skin. There are open wounds on her arms and face and throat, some from her own nails and some that look as though they were opened by talons.

‘Now, we move,’ she whispers.

One by one, the Sighted bring their prisoners and chain them at specific points around the central circle of stone. Around the symbol that makes Raine’s stomach turn. The symbol on which Arcadius Verastus now stands, arms outstretched. He casts off his cloak of feathers to reveal words burned into his skin. More push up like new scars even as Raine watches, turning black in seconds. His gemstone eyes flicker as if caught by candlelight.

There are those among the prisoners that Raine knows. One is Antari. Captain Karin Sun, of Gold Company. Then there is regimental advisor Haran Yale. Beside him, Delvaren Kharadesh, the firstborn son of Gholl’s most powerful noble house. Then there are others who she does not know. Non-military. Two are dressed in the robes of acolytes. One in the vestments of a priest. One in worker’s gear. The last of all is a pale man dressed in ragged clothes. He is old and young all at once with black shadows under his sunken eyes. Cables hang from his scalp, disconnected and severed. A psyker, unchained.

He’s the first to have his eyes taken.

One of the Sighted does it, while the psyker screams. It’s a long howl that tapers off slowly, replaced by words murmured through his teeth.

‘Dark. Dark. Dark.’

The Sighted cuts the psyker’s throat in one smooth motion. The murmuring becomes a gargle, then stops altogether. The psyker slumps forward and his blood begins to flow along the channel carved into the floor, towards that central symbol. Towards Verastus.

The woman in the worker’s gear takes up the screaming. Kharadesh begs, shouting for clemency, that he has money, power. Secrets. It reminds Raine of Mayir.

I have influence. Anything you want.

Raine doesn’t scream. Doesn’t beg. She focuses her burning, hurting mind and pulls at her bonds. At the scholam they tested her many times by binding her feet and hands and blindfolding her. They would leave her in the lower levels and wait for them to flood with ice-cold ocean water. It was a test, to see if she would panic or give up.

Raine has never done either.

The chain won’t break and nor will the loop. It has been hammered into the stone long enough for fingers of lichen to wrap around it. Raine looks down at her hands. They will break, long before the chain or the loop. She knows from experience.

The Sighted is taking the eyes of the priest now. The man doesn’t scream; he only prays loudly and forcefully until the Sighted silences him with a punch that snaps his head back. Another body falls. More blood flows into the centre of the room. Smoke begins to rise from the words painted on Verastus’ skin. The feathers of his cloak stir.

Raine pushes against the thumb of her left hand until she hears a snap as it dislocates. Pain blinds her for an instant. She looks at Verastus, but he is catatonic. Shimmering. The Sighted pays her no mind either.

He is busy with Haran Yale.

The regimental advisor doesn’t make a sound. Somehow it’s worse than the screaming. Verastus is alight now. No, not alight. It’s an unlight that streams from him. From everything but his glittering eyes.

The chains binding her slacken, just barely. Raine wriggles her feet, loosening them further.

One of the acolytes dies in a noisy, messy thrashing. More blood, more feathers. Verastus’ cloak encircles him like folding wings. His hands curl like talons. The air in the cave is cold and howling, carrying flakes of ice with it.

Raine is next around the circle. Next to have her eyes taken. Despite her focus and her fury, she is afraid. Her heart is loud. She thinks of Lydia Zane, who lost her own eyes on Drast. About the mess of those dark sockets.

The Sighted pads across the stone in front of her.

‘Severina Raine,’ he says. ‘It is time to make your fate.’

She looks up at him, at the knife with which he means to cut her.

‘Yes, it is,’ she says, pulling free of her bonds.

Raine’s legs are numb and her head sings with pain, but she throws herself at the Sighted and knocks him flat on his back. The knife goes skidding across the stone circle. Raine puts her knee on the Sighted’s throat, drives her fist into his face, once, twice. His nose bursts. His lip splits. On the third swing, her arm freezes and locks, the Sighted struggling beneath her. On the dais, Verastus throws up his hand, and Raine is pulled towards him. He catches her by the throat, his arm trailing darkness.

‘Always fighting,’ he says in a twinned, echoing voice. ‘Even when you have no hope.’

Raine can barely take a breath. The claw of his hand closes tighter.

‘There is always hope, if you have faith,’ she rasps.

‘You speak to me of faith as if I do not understand it.’

Raine’s vision tunnels until Verastus fills it. ‘Because you don’t,’ she says. ‘You will die. Your lord will die. Your lies will die.’

Arcadius Verastus laughs loudly.

‘No,’ he says. ‘You will die, but first I must take those eyes of yours.’

Verastus raises his other hand. His skin is iridescent and the fingers are tipped with talons. They get so close to her eyes that they go out of focus. Raine struggles and kicks and thrashes.

Then she hears a sound, echoing and strange, but familiar.

It’s a voice.

Lydia Zane’s voice.

We have you, commissar.

It’s Raine’s turn to laugh. Verastus freezes, and Raine realises he can hear Zane as clearly as she can.

‘They are–’ he begins.

Verastus never gets to finish. Wounds open up across his face, scattering Raine with his black, oily blood. He staggers back and drops her. Raine falls hard, the impact knocking the air from her lungs and crashing her teeth together. She looks around through half-lidded eyes to see Lydia Zane stepping up to join her at the circle’s edge, her arm outstretched. Her skin covered with wounds and glittering with frost. Wyck is with her, along with what’s left of the Wyldfolk. Five more, clad in shadow grey. The Duskhounds, and Andren Fel. Their lasguns light the cave as they put down the Sighted who have begun to flood the room.

Raine drags herself to her feet, her body alight with pain from head to toe. She pushes her dislocated thumb back into its joint and takes the heavy laspistol that Andren Fel gives to her, holding it in her right hand. Her good hand.

‘What are you?’ Lydia Zane says to Verastus, taking a step forward. ‘Theta? Zeta, perhaps. Is that why you need to seek strength elsewhere?’

Arcadius Verastus seems to fold light around him. His cloak flutters. He raises a taloned hand, the action staggered and stuttering as Zane works to deny him.

‘I am blessed,’ he says in his doubled voice. ‘By true gods. By the fates.’

Lydia Zane smiles a wolf’s smile. Blood runs in a thick stripe from her nose and down her chin.

‘What a mighty creature you must be,’ she says. ‘But I am Epsilon.’

She raises her hand. More wounds open across his arms, his throat.

‘I am Antari.’

She lifts him from his feet.

‘And I deny your liar gods.’

Zane throws her hands out. There’s a thunderclap of pressure. The snapping of bones. Verastus is hurled through the air, trailing blood and feathers. He lands in a crumpled heap and goes still. Raine takes a step forward, her pistol raised.

‘Is he dead?’ Wyck says.

Raine opens her mouth to speak, but Verastus answers for her. He regains his feet with a clicking and resetting of bones, those words on his skin glowing with bright blue light.

‘Enough,’ he says, and the unreal becomes real.

Wyck doesn’t see the cult leader anymore. He sees something that floods him with fear and makes him want to run. It’s a great black hound, trailing smoke and shadow, locked onto him with red crystal eyes. Its growl is the thunder of guns. It’s just like the old Antari story. The one that Fel’s storm troopers took for their name. It’s a duskhound. It’s death.

And it’s coming right for him.

Wyck fumbles his rifle and takes a couple of steps backwards. The firing mechanism is locked, and his fingers are clumsy and slow and the hound is so close. He drops the rifle, letting it swing from the strap. Gets his hand on his blade.

And out of fear and fury, Daven Wyck tries to cut death.

The knife snags. Cold blood runs over his fingers. The hound howls, and it flickers and changes, all except for those red crystal eyes. Its true shape is a man in a feathered cloak, with painted words on his skin. Wyck brings the knife around again, but he’s too slow. He sees the cult leader’s gemstone eyes flash and there’s an impact that knocks the air out of his lungs and his feet out from under him. He sees the silvered stone of the cave rush up to meet him, then he hits it hard, and sees nothing more.

Verastus tears through the Wyldfolk towards Raine. He’s flickering and changing, becoming nightmare shapes or vanishing altogether with a turn of that feathered cloak. She can’t draw sight on him. The Antari are staggered and shouting, all seeing their own fears. Verastus opens Nial’s throat with a swipe of his clawed hand. Breaks Awd’s bones with another boom of pressure. Puts Crys on her back, bleeding. Andren Fel shouts warding words, somehow keeping his feet the first time Verastus hits him. The second blow splinters his carapace armour and shatters his mask. He falls silent. Falls to his knees. Raine levels her pistol. She can barely hold it steady as Verastus tears his way towards her. She fires once. Twice. Feathers and oil-black blood burst from him, but he doesn’t stop. He reaches for her, his hands outstretched. Raine sees herself reflected a dozen times in his gory gemstone eyes. But then Arcadius Verastus slows. Stops. Snarls through his teeth. Frost crawls over his skin as Lydia Zane staggers forward, breathing hard through bloody lips.

‘Do it,’ Zane says. ‘Kill him.’

Raine presses the barrel of her pistol against Verastus’ forehead. ‘It seems your false god did not see fit to show you your own fate,’ she says.

Arcadius Verastus, Ninth of Nine, smiles slowly. ‘Of course he did. He shows me all fates. All truths. In my dreams I have seen you standing there, with your brightly burning soul. In this fate, you shoot me and I die.’

‘Then you always knew you would fail.’

Verastus shakes his head. Frost glitters on the hard angles of his gemstone eyes. ‘Death is not failure,’ he says. ‘You know this, Severina Raine of Darpex then Gloam. Bastard child of a coward and a queen. Death always has a purpose, so give me mine. Shoot me, kill me, and know that you go on making fates by the will of my lord.’

It’s the way he says it. Her name. Her home. Her family. The way he aligns her so assuredly with his false god. Raine cannot stand it. She fires the pistol and keeps firing until there is not even a trace of his gemstone eyes left. When the magazine is empty and smoke coils from the barrel, she sees feathers scudding across the floor of the cave. One brushes the toe of her boot.

Death is not a failure, echoes the voice of Arcadius Verastus.

With Verastus dead, the Sighted break like springtime ice. Some keep fighting. Most flee. A few try to surrender, pleading that they were tricked. Manipulated. All of them get a swift death. It’s a mercy that they hardly deserve.

Wyck only lost Nial in the stone circle. The rest of the Wyldfolk are hurt, bleeding and broken, but they’re alive enough to run with Zane protecting them. The psyker is at the limits of her strength, pale and muttering about feathers and shadows at her back. Raine sticks by her, that borrowed pistol at the ready. Andren Fel and his Duskhounds carry the rest of the prisoners between them, defending them from those Sighted who still have the will to fight. Wyck stumbles and staggers but he doesn’t stop running. He’ll be damned if he’s going to survive cutting death itself just to have High Command bring the mountain down on top of him.

They clear the mouth of the Maw and run out into the cold air. It’s fully dark, the sky lit with stars. Wyck’s legs burn and ache and it’s agony to breathe with all of those broken ribs, but he’s still among the first to hit the top of the ridge. To look back and see the star that grows brighter than the others.

‘Get down!’

His words are stolen as the orbital lance spears down into the mountainside. Wyck throws himself to the ground alongside the others and squeezes his eyes shut, but there’s still a moment when his world is light and pressure and heat. When it fades, there’s nothing left of the mouth, just the Maw. It has opened wide, massive, broken pieces of stone sliding down into it to be swallowed whole. For a moment, Wyck could swear he sees red crystal eyes in that darkness.

‘You would think that would silence it,’ Zane says. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

Wyck looks at her. At the way she draws her robes close with her thin fingers hooked like claws. At her open wounds and the dried blood and the way her silver eyes seem to see deep into the Maw.

‘What?’ he says.

Zane starts to laugh, and Wyck thinks that she really is wicked and broken and wrong. Maybe more so than before.

‘On your feet. This whole area could collapse.’

Raine’s voice makes Wyck flinch. The commissar is a wreck, covered in blood, both hers and the cult leader’s. Her hands are skinned and bruised and her wrists are swollen from the restraints. Her braids are a matted tangle, her clothes tattered. Despite all of that, her eyes are clear and sharp. It is, after all, not the uniform that makes Raine a commissar.

But now he knows that’s not all there is to her. He knows about that timepiece. That it made Lydia Zane cry even with her false eyes and her broken soul. He knows about the name carved into the brass.

Lucia.

Now he just has to figure out how to use it.

Raine takes her seat at the table opposite Lydia Zane. She puts the thick parchment file down. Her pen and ink. Raine opens the file and flips through the pages until she reaches an empty form.

‘Post-mission debrief,’ she says, loud and clear for the vox-recorder. ‘Operation one hundred and sixty-two. The infiltration and destruction of the Sighted stronghold in the Caulder mountain range on Gholl.’

She uncaps her pen and dips it into the ink.

‘Name and rank,’ Raine says.

Zane doesn’t shift in her chair. Her silver eyes are focused on the surface of the table. Her hands are knitted in her lap. Lye has cleaned the blood off her and stitched her wounds, but it only serves to make her look as though she has been brought up from the mortuary tent. Silver cables run from the ports in her scalp to the psy-reader on the table. She is locked to her seat by the collar bolted at her neck. It is studded with sedative injectors, primed to fire.

‘Lydia Zane,’ she says. ‘Primaris psyker. Graded Epsilon. Eleventh Antari Rifles.’

The psy-reader starts to push out parchment, marking gentle spikes onto the paper with an auto-quill. Raine holds her own pen ready. Ink beads on the point.

‘Where were you born?’ she asks.

Zane still doesn’t shift. ‘On Antar,’ she says. ‘On the western coastline, in a settlement on the cliffs overlooking the sea.’

More gentle spikes track on the reader. Raine writes down Zane’s words verbatim. She keeps every transcript. Compares and contrasts them. Checks for inconsistencies that might point to a problem.

‘What did it look like?’ Raine asks, though she knows. She has asked this question many times.

‘The cliffs were grey,’ Zane says. ‘The sea was grey, too. They say that is why our eyes are grey, because they took their colour from the sea and the stones, but that is just a story like so many others.’

‘And were there storms?’ Raine asks.

‘Storms,’ Zane says. ‘Yes. Especially in the winter months. Rain and hail, but the sea never froze. You cannot freeze so much water.’

Raine scratches the answer onto the form. ‘And in yourself? Are there storms?’

Zane scratches at the stitched wound on her forearm. ‘Storms,’ she says again, still looking at that same spot on the table.

The psy-reader scratches too. The spikes climb a little steeper. Blood bubbles up under Zane’s fingernails.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Not storms. Just thoughts. Stories. Shadows.’

The spikes on the psy-feed grow steeper still. A mountain range, etched in black ink. Just like the Maw.

‘Shadows?’ Raine says. ‘What do you mean?’

Zane finally looks up from that spot on the table. ‘Dark spaces in my head, made from the things that I have done. Nothing more.’

‘What sort of things?’ Raine asks.

A wan smile grows on Zane’s face. ‘Everything,’ she says. ‘Every action casts a shadow, for good or for ill.’

Raine looks to the feed as the psy-reader’s auto-quill goes back to painting shallow spikes. Even the steepest it has captured are still within the acceptable range. She waits for a few heartbeats, thinking about her own shadows, paraded before her by Verastus in the cave beneath the Maw.

‘Will that be all, commissar?’ Zane asks.

Raine watches for a moment more, but the peaks stay shallow and even. The auto-quill doesn’t twitch, and now neither does Zane. She is still again, not worrying at her wounds.

‘That will be all,’ Raine says. ‘For today.’

Raine’s debriefing duties on her return to the Antari staging grounds take hours, and the weather has turned when she finally arrives back at her command tent. Raine pauses for a moment upon entering, listening to the way the rain lashes the canvas. She walks over to the table and picks up the tin cup. It is stamped with a Departmento Munitorum mark and chipped around the rim, cool to the touch. It feels real. Raine lets out a slow breath and puts the cup back down.

Her uniform awaits her on the table. Her medals, greatcoat and gloves. Her peaked hat. They have been carefully folded, but they still bear tatters and bloodstains. She puts on her gloves first, then her coat. Her hat last of all. The weight of the coat, the creak of the gloves. The borrowed pistol in the holster at her hip. It’s all a comfort. A restorative act more so than any amount of pain medication or rest. Not that there’s time for rest. She has their new deployment orders sitting in her pocket. There is always another fight. Another war. Another duty, unfinished.

Raine puts her hand into the inner pocket of her coat and her fingers close around cool brass. Ticking burrs against her hand. There’s no damage to the timepiece, except for that crack it already had. Raine can’t quite believe it. She turns it over in her hand and runs her thumb over the engraved letters of her sister’s name. Remembers how she made those shapes with the point of a pocket knife, and why.

What about that timepiece you carry? Tell me about that.

Raine turns at the sound of Andren Fel’s voice, but there is no sign of the Duskhound. No sign of anyone at all, just the howl of the wind and the lashing of the rain against the tent’s canvas.

BLOOD AND BONE

Robbie MacNiven

Before…

Mystas was lost, and the only thing left for Kastor to do was fight and die.

‘They come here to be purged!’ the Chaplain shouted, his words amplified by his skull helm’s vox-vocalisers. ‘End their vile existence, my brothers! Extend these shores with their xenos dead! Dam the rivers with their corpses! Swell the seas with their foul ichor!’

From atop the ramparts of Pelegron Bay’s command bunker, Kastor could see the world ending. The distance, once a beautiful oceanic vista of clear waters and cloudless skies, was now choked with a reddish haze of spores, the heavens black and broiling, riven with purple lightning. Great tendrils were just visible through the haze, questing down ponderously from the torn skies towards the ocean’s surface, their vast maws beginning to drain Mystas dry.

The shoreline was even bleaker. The defensive works, bunkers and redoubts that had once bristled atop the dune banks and shingle, were now overrun, lost beneath a chittering tide of seething alien beasts, the rockcrete and flesh of defences and defenders now indiscriminate fodder for the ripper swarms beginning to emerge from the discoloured ocean brine.

‘Salve, I am inbound,’ crackled the voice of Captain Demeter over the vox. ‘Hold your position.’

‘Leave me, brother-captain,’ Kastor snarled as he reloaded his Absolver bolt pistol. ‘Extract the rest of the company.’

‘That is not your decision to make, Chaplain,’ Demeter barked. ‘Hold firm.’

Any further exchange was lost as another wave of tyranids hit the bunker’s base. They came crashing like the rising tide up and over the outer breastworks, trampling the bodies of their own slaughtered kindred and the Mystas Guard who had held so bravely for so long. They slammed into the ramp of mangled xenos dead that had built up over the last few hours, and began to scale the slope of carapace and leathery, ichor-stained flesh. They were a formless, indistinguishable mass of organic blades and bio-weaponry, hundreds of rows of fangs and black eyes glittering in the early twilight, an irresistible alien triumph.

‘Cleanse and burn!’ Kastor roared, opening fire. A combat team from Squad Valorious, Brothers Cassians, Vito, Albanius, Dynator and Cypran, were with him, the crash-click of their bolt rifles joining that of his Absolver. They were all that was left of the Imperial resistance at Pelegron Bay, the only ones not yet dead or evacuated.

‘More kills for Valorious,’ Albanius growled over the vox. ‘More than any other in the brotherhood now!’

‘Think not of your own glory,’ Kastor admonished with a snarl, firing without thinking, letting his visor’s targeting reticules pick individual creatures from the morass and link via his auto-senses to the servos in his arm and gauntlet. Every round from the Ultramarines Primaris struck home, yet with the enemy at such a rapidly closing range, and with so many to hit, the need for marksmanship was non-existent. Kastor’s spirit soared as he saw alien carapaces and flesh-sacs burst amidst gristly splatters of verdant green ichor, those killed or maimed by the explosive bolts crushed immediately in the feral stampede.

How quickly he had come to despise these creatures, these pathetic bio-slaves. Even without the hypno-induction and mind shearing, the combat lectures and the Reclusiam’s sermon-briefings on the Chapter’s glorious legacy, he was convinced he would have despised them anyway. They were flesh-eating puppets, being bent to devour everything that was good and clean and holy by the will of their unknowable master. Kastor would not simply deny them. He would butcher every single one of them.

Suddenly, his bolt pistol clicked empty. He mag-locked it and quickly ignited his crozius arcanum, Salve Imperator, as the xenos closed the last few yards and leapt the corpse-strewn parapets through the bolt-fire of the Intercessors.

‘Courage and honour!’ Kastor roared. ‘By the time darkness falls here we shall be with the Emperor in His glory!’ Lightning wreathed the spiked golden skull of his war mace, the crozius thundering down like a righteous judgement on the skull of the first xenoform to reach the bunker’s rooftop. The hormagaunt’s distended cranium crumpled in a shower of stinking grey matter and splintered chitin. He reversed the stroke even as the beast went down, its momentum sending it clattering off the Chaplain’s bone-plated breastplate.

Beside him, Squad Valorious had also been reduced to their close combat weapons, having no time to reload. Kastor realised he was instinctively snarling the Oath of Retribution as he led them in the killing, great swings of Salve Imperator launching the broken remains of the xenos swarm-beasts back off the parapets into the morass crowding below.

But their advantage did not last for long. Soon, the colossal leader-creatures were upon them. Kastor mounted the corpse-littered parapet and met them as the beasts scaled their minions’ eviscerated remains. The tyranid warriors towered over the Primaris, their ululating shrieks and the skull-itching invasion of their hive-presence coordinating the smaller creatures around them.

It had started to rain, a deluge mixed in with vile alien spore-pods that clogged and choked the Ultramarines’ vent tabs and armour grilles. Kastor knocked aside the claws of the first alien warrior to crack his crozius against its exoskeleton, splitting the torso. The creature showed no sign of pain or injury, raking the claws of its secondary limbs against Kastor’s gorget and breastplate, gouging the ceramite down to its plasteel under-layer.

‘Die, slave-beast,’ Kastor spat. He slammed his right pauldron forwards inside the creature’s guard, unbalancing it. It jabbed down with its chitin blades, scoring deep grooves in his backpack and shoulder plate, but Kastor struck the wound in its side with a clenched gauntlet, further splintering its carapace amidst a flood of stinking green ichor. The thing went back further, lost its footing and tumbled down into its kindred with a sickening crunch.

The Ultramarine had no time to recover. Another tyranid warrior lunged for him, moving faster than seemed possible for a beast of such size. Kastor brushed aside the first of its talon-limbs, but couldn’t avoid the second. It struck him between two of the stylised ribs encasing his black breastplate. He grunted at the sudden pain that spiked through his torso as it crunched through the ceramite and plasteel, then flesh and bone.

‘Brother-Chaplain!’ The shout came from Brother Cassians, the closest Intercessor. The blood-splattered Ultramarine had drawn his gladius, and now he came barrelling in from Kastor’s left. His short sword slashed a silver arc through the air and into the xenos’ limb, slicing bone and shattering the chitin blade that was lodged in Kastor’s breastplate. More ichor sprayed the two Primaris as Cassians grappled with the thing’s secondary limbs, the alien’s serrated maw yawning as it tried to rip open the Ultramarine’s helmet.

Kastor smashed down Salve once more, breaking the warrior’s skull. He swallowed, and realised there was blood in his mouth. Warning signs burst across his visor, and his vitae markers started blinking. The pain in his chest was a dull, deep ache. Cassians was bellowing something over the external vox, but his Lyman’s Ear appeared to be malfunctioning. All he could hear was a keening shriek.

Another xenos had mounted the breach, and this one bore different bio-weapons. Cassians was just turning to face it when he was struck head-on by a thick gout of acid, sprayed from the contracting orifice of its organic mesh-rifle. The Ultramarine stumbled back, dripping helm to boot in thick, viscous alien liquid that steamed as it ate relentlessly though his blue armour. Kastor tried to shout a warning, but blood choked him, splattering the inside of his helm and making him gasp painfully for breath.

Cassians’ screams filled the vox as the acid found flesh, then bone. Dynator and Vito came together to try to shield him, gladius and chainsword drawn, but Kastor knew it was all pointless. His own vitae signs were fluctuating rapidly now as aliens pressed in from every side, and he realised the chitin blade wedged in his chest had likely scored and lodged up against one of his twin hearts.

He also realised that the keening sound wasn’t a hearing malfunction. It was the noise of vectoring flight engines. A hail of bolt-rounds followed, distracting him from thoughts of his own mortality. The xenos immediately around him went down with hideous shrieks and crunching noises, and the Chaplain became aware of a heavy vibration shaking through the sodden air. He half turned in the press of twitching, dying tyranids, as a great shadow fell across the last defenders of Pelegron Bay.

Sicarius had arrived. The Overlord gunship was vast, a glorious example of the power of the Primaris, a lord of the skies. It descended like a cruciform fortress, the alien rain pouring harmlessly from its great, sloped plates and sizzling around its engine block. Its cannons and servitor-manned close protection systems were laying down a curtain of fire around the Ultramarines beneath, clearing the roof of the bunker and turning the xenos swarming towards them into a carpet of churned meat. The prow entrance hatch, set beneath the glassy, aquiline cockpit section, dropped forwards amidst the jagged mass of alien dead.

‘Recover Cassians! Get him to safety,’ Kastor barked at the rest of the combat squad, swallowing blood. Cassians himself was on his knees, trying to claw away the pervasive acid that had pockmarked most of his upper body. Kastor turned back to the swarm as Dynator began to haul the Intercessor towards Sicarius’ waiting hold.

‘You will all burn, xenos scum,’ the Chaplain snarled, spitting blood at the tyranids as they came on amidst the rain and bolter fire, heedless of their own butchered dead. ‘If not on this world, then the next.’

His crozius smashed aside another hormagaunt, its blades rebounding impotently from his power armour. The tyranid warrior behind it used its twitching body for a shield as its powerful hind legs drove it into Kastor. Before the Chaplain could recover it brought its claw-limbs raking across his helmet. His head was slammed to one side, and fresh pain shot through his skull. He tasted blood again, thick and cloying, and realised his visor display had blinked from existence.

Primaris, like all Adeptus Astartes, were almost impossible to stun. The Chaplain recovered immediately from what would have been a death blow for a mortal, swinging his mace up in a cracking underarm strike that slammed into the jaw of the tyranid and nearly ripped its head from its body. It was only as Kastor made to follow up that he stumbled.

The thing was still alive. Its neck was bent horribly to one side, but as the sudden pain of his injuries struck him it snatched his head with its lower limbs. The tyranid warrior dug its talons into the gouges already ripped in Kastor’s skull helm. He screamed as the helmet cracked and split, and the talons raked into the flesh of the right side of his face, barely missing his eye. Blood was blinding him and clogging in the back of his throat as he lashed out instinctively, the motion sending fresh pain through his chest. The shattered talon was still embedded there. With every passing second he felt more as though his primary heart was on the verge of rupturing. His breathing quickened, and he felt fresh, frenzied energy fill his limbs as his body, built only for war, flooded with another dose of combat stimms, driving him to keep on killing even as his vital signs began to fail.

He was going to die. The realisation made him angrier. There were still xenos to kill.

His blows broke the xenos trying to gouge and tear his head off. Though half-blinded by blood, he split its head and shattered its broken neck, Salve pounding down repeatedly as Kastor was driven into a bloodied, pain-fuelled frenzy.

‘Brother-Chaplain, back,’ commanded a voice in his ear. It was Captain Demeter. The order was accompanied by a gout of heat as flames washed past him, coming close to igniting his drenched vestments. The burning promethium caught more onrushing xenos in its spill, and the reek of sizzling alien meat filled the rain-slashed air as they ignited, their shrieks lost in the thunder of bolters and the scream of Sicarius’ engines.

‘Cassians,’ Kastor managed to grunt, hoping his helmet’s vox was still functioning.

‘He is within the hold. Now back, before I drag you myself.’

The Chaplain realised that there were battle-brothers either side of him now, not the Intercessors of Squad Valorious but the heavily armoured Aggressors of Squad Tiro, clad in their thick Gravis plates. Their flamestorm gauntlets created an inferno across the bunker’s roof, immolating the xenos attempting to get at the retreating Ultramarines. Still they came on though, even with their chitin splitting and their flesh sloughing off in the heat. Pain and death meant nothing to them. Their only desire was to feed.

Kastor’s wrath redoubled, and he took a step back towards the swarm. A fist on his pauldron arrested the motion, and he half turned to find Captain Demeter beside him, expression inscrutable behind his white helm.

‘On board the Overlord, now,’ the captain snapped. Finally, Kastor obeyed, the blood choking in his throat stifling any retort. The sudden change in pace made him stumble. Strength abandoned him as he tried to pass the captain, and his legs buckled, only his armour’s servos keeping him partially upright. He felt ceramite scrape against ceramite as one of Squad Valorious, he didn’t know who, caught him. His vision was all red now, red with hatred, red with blood, the two the only constants as his thoughts started to wander.

Someone mag-locked something to his armour as he was half dragged on board Sicarius. He realised it was an apothecarion priority tag.

‘Say your prayers and hold fast, Chaplain,’ he heard Demeter shout over the hydraulics of the door hatch. ‘You will be with Helix again soon.’

Polixis’ duty demanded that he leave his blood-brother to die.

The Apothecary’s diagnostor helmet linked with the vitae signs of half a dozen of his battle-brothers was currently reading Kastor as only the second highest-risk patient within the Spear of Macragge’s medicae bay. The first was Brother Cassians. The Intercessor had been struck head-on by a great gout of xenos bio-acid. It had seared away the holy plasteel and ceramite of his Mark X power armour, and eaten its way through his flesh and into the very circuits of his black carapace. The skin of his torso was now a grey, liquid slurry, clinging to his fused ribcage, bubbling like some vile daemon’s brew.

‘The mark three,’ Polixis said, voice clicking crisply from his helmet’s vocaliser grille. He extended one gauntlet without looking and received the scalpel he’d requested from one of the white shift-clad medicae serfs manning the bay.

During his studies, when he had first joined the apothecarion, Polixis had read that it was common for human combat medics to refuse treatment for more fatally injured patients when there were those who could more readily be saved. Such a luxury was rare for a Space Marine, especially a Primaris. There was very little that, if not immediately fatal, could not be recovered from. That meant treating all equally. And that meant that Chaplain Kastor, with one heart scarred by a chitin blade still embedded in his torso, and most of the right side of his face laid open by a set of talons, would have to wait.

Polixis gripped his surgical blades a little tighter, freeing Cassians’ melted flesh from the muscle and bone beneath with long, practised slices. The patient was clearly trying to be silent, but a low, agonised moan escaped from between his clenched teeth. Polixis worked with expert speed and precision, the stink of liquidised meat enough to make several of the human serfs stumble into one of the ancillary blocks to vomit. He had to be fast, for everyone’s sakes.

‘Picter scope,’ he demanded, taking the tool without looking and sliding it into one of the black carapace ports he’d cleared of dead tissue. Around him, the Spear of Macragge’s medicae bay reflected its master: spartan, sterile, ordered, rows of surgical slabs beneath moveable clusters of operating lumens ranked alongside tool trays, stimm and salve cabinets, washing plinths and blinking vitae monitors. There were four other Adeptus Astartes arrayed on operating tables besides Cassians and Kastor, all of them less seriously injured, all being seen to by Polixis’ human medicae assistants. Most of the humans were experienced practitioners in their own right, but none could match the genhanced speed and precision of a fully inducted member of the Chapter’s apothecarion.

‘The primarch and the Emperor have blessed you, Brother Cassians,’ Polixis said as he checked the scope, linked now with his diagnostor display. ‘The xenos acid was not able to work its way through your bone marrow. If the shock of your wound does not kill you, you will live to fight once more.’

‘You have my thanks, brother,’ Cassians managed to snarl from between clenched teeth, and Polixis noticed the Primaris’ huge fists had bent the metal edge of the operating slab with a shaking, white-knuckle hold. ‘But I pray, see to Salve now.’

‘Not until my work here is done,’ Polixis answered brusquely. He received a canister of synthskin from one of the serfs, Juris, and applied it to the area of raw muscle that had once been Cassians’ upper torso. After a few tense moments it took, bonding with the flesh of the Ultramarine, providing a first protective layer while the tissue healed and recovered from the depredations of the xenos acid.

‘Outer dermal layer,’ the Apothecary ordered, receiving another canister, this one a tougher exo-application. He applied it to the initial raw coating, noting as he did that Cassians’ vitae signs were slowly stabilising. His pained moans had ceased and his grip on the slab was no longer the crushing death-grasp of a Primaris whose Belisarian Furnace was in danger of being triggered by imminent death.

It was time to move on.

‘Juris, take over here,’ he ordered, making way for the medicae serf. ‘Once the outer dermal plast hardens sufficiently, keep it clean and attend to any blistering. Maintain two doses of revotal, and a shot of ambulum if you deem it necessary. I leave it to your discretion. Clear?’

‘Yes, Apothecary,’ Juris said, hurrying to ready the heavy syringes Polixis had specified.

He moved to the nearest ambulatory stand and ran his white gauntlets beneath the flow of counterseptic water, trying not to rush, trying to maintain his usual detachment, watching as the foamy spray clawed away thick, grey globules of Cassians’ melted flesh. Normally a thorough cleansing between emergency treatments would not have been necessary. Primaris were untroubled by the dangers of common infections and dirtied wounds but dealing with those injured by the Great Devourer was another matter. The primarch alone knew what microscopic horrors tyranid bio-acid contained.

He finished the washing cycle and moved along the ward to the next bay, drawing back the operating screen. Artema, the Spear of Macragge’s primary chirurgeon-serf, had been monitoring the Chaplain while his blood brother worked on the other patients. She had already removed his broken skull helm and undone the clasps of his breastplate, before administering stabilising stimm shots through his armour’s injection ports. Polixis acknowledged her as he moved past the rigged lumens and vitae monitor, coming to stand beside his brother.

There he lay, Chaplain Kastor of the Dioskuri. He had been placed atop the surgical slab like a funerary statue, still armoured bar his helm, a snapped length of chitin protruding from his chest. His face was as bone-white as the stylised ribcage encasing his breastplate. The features, so familiar to Polixis, were now marred by three great, bloody slashes, thick with congealed blood, that ran down the right side of his head, raw and glistening.

The Chaplain’s eyes were open but unseeing. He looked like a corpse, until they moved, fixing on Polixis. Though the Apothecary’s own eyes were hidden behind the ruby lenses of his white helm, he knew the Chaplain was recalling their similarities. Both brothers shared the same pallid gaze, soft grey, like a sea fog. Kastor told him their mother had claimed his were harder, more like stone. Polixis, apparently, had the kinder eyes of the two. He could only take his word for it.

‘Cassians?’ the Chaplain said as Polixis moved to his side.

‘Stabilising,’ the Apothecary replied, his voice terse. ‘I believe he will live, though his suffering is great.’

‘Pain is a path to righteousness,’ Kastor replied, the words coming by rote. There was no pain in them, despite the mangling of his face or the length of chitin still embedded in his chest. Polixis inserted a prognosticator into his left tasset port, taking a more detailed reading of his vitae signs. They weren’t good.

‘Remain still, Salve,’ he said as he triggered the small chainblade attached to the narthecium encasing his left wrist. The surgical buzz filled the ward, and Kastor grunted, rolling his eyes in an exasperated fashion.

‘Wise as ever, dear Helix. I was just about to rise up and return to the front line.’

‘There isn’t a front line, not any more,’ Polixis said without a hint of humour, his tone bitter. ‘Mystas is lost, and the Spear of Macragge is bound for a jump into warp space. We are expected to translate within the hour.’

To his surprise the Chaplain didn’t greet the ill news with zealous anger. Polixis applied the chainblade to the base of the chitin spike in his chest, where it had punched through Kastor’s buckled breastplate. The alien blade had nicked the Chaplain’s primary heart and was still wedged up against it. Simply ripping it free would likely rupture a carotid, at the very least. Instead, Polixis severed the alien material, the chainblade’s carbon alloy sawing through the bony substance. He deactivated it when the final piece came away, and passed the severed length to Artema for incineration.

‘There are five giants in the collective square,’ Kastor said abruptly. Polixis, reaching for his plasma node as the Chaplain spoke, paused.

‘Five giants in the square,’ Kastor repeated. His eyes had glazed over, and he was no longer looking at Polixis but up into the brilliant light of the medicae lumen above the operating slab. ‘All armoured in blue.’

Polixis finished uncoupling the plasma node latched to his backpack and linked it through the port in Kastor’s left vambrace. He triggered the inbuilt transfusion pack, the plastek of the node turning crimson as it injected fresh blood flow into the wounded Primaris.

‘I am not afraid of them, though I know I should be,’ Kastor went on, as though no longer aware of his surroundings. Polixis realised that he had probably entered the semi-catatonica, an early phase of the sus-an membrane’s regenerative state. It was not a good sign. Beyond the triggering of his Belisarian Furnace, there was no surer indication that he was slipping away. He had to operate faster.

‘Are they brothers of the Chapter?’ he asked as he injected a coag-stimm via his multisyringe in through the Chaplain’s tasset. It was always best to engage a speaker on the edge of a sus-an reaction, to keep their mental state engaged. As he spoke, he noticed his own heartbeats being monitored on his visor. They were reaching a rate more commonly associated with a combat situation, rather than performing surgery. He grimaced.

‘They are Ultramarines,’ Kastor confirmed. ‘The champions from the stories.’

Polixis carefully levered Kastor’s unclasped breastplate away, murmuring the Rite of Contrition to the armour’s spirit as he did so. There was no time for further benedictions. He exposed his brother’s black carapace, and the shard of chitin embedded in the Chaplain’s chest.

‘Mark three, and have the mark two ready,’ the Apothecary ordered, taking the scalpel Artema offered him. He made incisions around the puncture wound, then exchanged the scalpel for a broad-bladed surgical knife. Grip firm, he cut through the thick musculature and sinew-cables of his brother’s chest on either side of the chitin shard, piercing the black carapace after applying his servo-enhanced strength to it.

He was about to call for a pair of flesh hooks when he realised Artema was already proffering them to him. That was why she was the Fulminata’s chief human chirurgeon. He took them with a wordless nod and dug them into the deep incisions he had carved, keeping the skin and muscle peeled away from the Chaplain’s bone-plate.

‘They try to stop me from seeing them,’ Kastor said. It was surreal, hearing his voice speaking slowly and calmly, even as Polixis’ blades and hooks carved him open. The Apothecary forced the uncomfortable dissonance from his mind, taking a bone saw from Artema and speaking once more to his brother.

‘Why?’

‘They say they need me here.’

Polixis triggered the saw. Its buzz, not unlike that of the narthecium’s chainblade, rose shrilly as the Apothecary applied it to the bared bone either side of the stub of chitin. It scythed through the remaining scraps of Kastor’s muscle and bit deep, its adamantium teeth slowly but surely chewing through the fused ribs of the Primaris.

‘I’m going anyway,’ Kastor said, a hint of anger colouring his voice. ‘You can’t stop me.’

‘You’re going nowhere,’ Polixis said with a grunt as he finished carving through his younger brother’s chest. He withdrew the saw blade carefully and spoke to Artema.

‘I am going to remove the shard. Take it to the incineration crucible immediately.’

‘Yes, Apothecary,’ Artema said, expression unreadable behind her surgical mask. Polixis reached towards the remains of the chitin blade, now at the centre of the incisions he had made. He would have preferred to use a picter scope to assess the exact angle, and just how flush it was with his brother’s main heart, but there was no time. The Chaplain had gone silent.

Polixis grasped the shard with the bloodied tips of his gauntlet and pulled. The chitin, loosened in the bone by his earlier work, came away cleanly. Blood welled and jetted from the wound as he passed the wicked shard to Artema, who placed it immediately onto the surgical tray of a chrome-plated medicae servitor, to be taken for incineration in the bay’s crucible unit.

‘Auto-cauteriser,’ Polixis said urgently, taking the tool and leaning forwards over the now-gaping chest wound. He probed it carefully, letting his diagnostor array assist in his assessment. The flesh of Kastor’s main heart pulsed before his eyes, labouring as it haemorrhaged from a wound to the right ventricle. The carotids were intact, however. The alien blade had nicked the heart’s tough musculature, but not completely ruptured it.

Polixis set to work with the cauteriser nub, the air abruptly filling with the stink of burning flesh. The vitae monitor next to the operating slab and the prognosticator still inserted into Kastor’s leg had both begun to chime and flash with warnings, and more danger indicators burst across Polixis’ visor display. He blink-deleted them, focusing on his work. He was doing everything he could.

Throughout it all, Kastor had remained still and silent. His eyes were still open. For a few seconds, as he checked that the cauterisation was clean and leaned back from his bloody work, Polixis was afraid the monitor signs were incorrect, and that his brother had passed. But then Kastor spoke again.

‘Sometimes I think about how I forced you to be here, brother. I do not regret it. But I wonder what life you would have had on Iax without me.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Polixis asked, glancing at the monitor, then once more at the wound, watching for the telltale signs of cardiac arrest or failure. The Chaplain’s secondary heart was beating at an unsustainable rate, working to account for the near-failure of its twin.

‘Was I not just speaking of it?’ Kastor replied. Polixis realised that his younger brother’s eyes had refocused, and he was looking at him once more. The realisation startled the Apothecary.

‘You were speaking from memory?’ he said uncertainly.

‘You must remember when the Chapter first came to our home. Those giants from legend, leading the trials of the Iaxian summer, seeking new recruits for the glory of Guilliman and the Emperor.’

‘You know I do not recall things as readily as you, little brother,’ Polixis said quietly, glad that his helmet was hiding his scowl. He had misdiagnosed him, he now realised. He hadn’t been on the edge of the sus-an regression, hadn’t even been in a state of semi-catatonia. He’d simply been recalling memories of their shared childhood on Iax, memories Polixis’ indoctrination had long ago erased. For whatever reason, Kastor’s mind hadn’t shared the same fate during the induction processes.

‘You held me back,’ Kastor said, voice incredulous as Polixis’ lack of recollection became apparent. ‘You and father. Then, when I swore I would go no matter what, you said you would go with me. You swore an oath to father you would keep me safe.’

Polixis realised that, despite the wounds still disfiguring his face, Kastor was smiling. The expression sent a chill through the Apothecary.

‘I… I do not remember,’ he repeated quietly. ‘That time is lost to me, Salve. As is Iax.’

‘It should not be,’ Kastor said firmly, the smile melting away. ‘Not while one of us still lives.’

To that, Polixis did not have an answer. He checked the monitor again, noting the stabilisation of Kastor’s vitaes. The surgery was holding.

‘Stitch and bind the main wound,’ he said to Artema, who had stood silent throughout the exchange. ‘And attend to the Brother-Chaplain’s facial injuries. I fear they will mark you permanently, brother.’

‘They will remind me of my duty,’ the Chaplain said. ‘Of my limitations and my failings. They will teach me humility. Those are valuable lessons.’

As Artema set to work on Kastor’s bared chest, Polixis turned towards the ambulatory stand once more, eager to wash his brother’s blood from his hands. He paused, however, looking back down at Kastor.

‘You know an Apothecary takes his oaths seriously, little brother. Regardless of when they were made.’

‘I would expect nothing less.’

‘I will protect you.’

‘You still think I need protecting?’ Kastor asked, his smile returning, even as Artema removed the flesh hooks and began to sew the Primaris’ tough muscle tissue back together.

‘From where I’m standing, yes, it looks like you do.’

Kastor snorted, failing to disguise a wince as the movement jarred his open wound. ‘Still trying to hold me back, brother.’

‘Still at your side, for as long as either of us draws breath,’ Polixis answered. ‘Now rest, brother. And when I return, perhaps you can tell me more of home.’

‘I should like that, Helix.’

Polixis cleaned his gauntlets and moved on to the next battle-brother.

THE BATTLE OF BLACKTHUNDER MESA

Phil Kelly

THE FISTS OF DAL’RYU

DAL’RYU TRANSMOTIVE TERMINUS
T’AU SEPT WORLD DAL’YTH PRIME

‘Do you realise these weapons will get us all killed?’

‘If that is the correct course, then so be it.’ Commander Bravestorm made a cutting motion with the blade of his hand as he cast an admonishing glance at Shas’vre Furuja. Just like her to undermine what little morale they had left.

Bravestorm looked askance at the munitions pod that had finally arrived in the terminus dome, then at Commander Farsight’s clearance sigil blinking red upon its hex screen. The pod was large enough to contain a Crisis battlesuit with room to spare, but if anything its cargo was even more lethal.

‘It contains a sacrifice for the Greater Good,’ said Udakoa, the big warrior lacing his thick fingers in the sign of the Tau’va. ‘The humans have no concept of such dedication. They will not expect so bold a course.’

‘The same could be said of our caste mates,’ replied Furuja. ‘Honoured Shadowsun withdrew her teams several decs ago. There is no shame in spending our lives elsewhere, against more realistic odds.’

The thunder of heavy munitions boomed in the distance as the Imperial artillery pounded another of Dal’ryu’s domes to rubble. They had fired indiscriminately for days now. How could a species so wasteful, so inefficient in the ways of war, possibly prevail?

And yet, upon Dal’yth, the Imperium was doing just that.

Bravestorm frowned. Perhaps Furuja was right. There was something ominous about the white pod in their midst, its low hum of potential energy audible under the rumble of distant war. The thing was sleek with smooth panels and curves, a little like a transmotive carriage in miniature. A typical example of the earth caste’s aesthetic, it was as if its very minimalism hinted at the lethality inside.

‘No. In staying behind, we are already committed to this strike,’ said Bravestorm. ‘This is not a discussion.’ He made the sign of the impeccable kill, and touched the hilt of his bonding knife by way of reinforcement.

‘With respect, commander, you are not thinking clearly,’ Furuja continued. ‘Aping the Imperial mindset will end in disaster. These brutes do not fight with the mind, only the fist. You cannot expect us to do the same.’

‘Are we truly supposed to punch these tanks?’ asked Aae’sho, her beautiful eyes wide as she walked out from behind the weapons pod.

‘Be still, Furuja.’ Bravestorm’s tone brooked no argument, the rigid set to his shoulders sending a clear message. ‘You set a poor precedent.’

The commander knew full well how counter-intuitive the weaponry in the pod seemed. He and Farsight had sketched out the commission themselves. Prototypes, optimised for extreme close range. Bravestorm had asked after just such a development from the genius O’Vesa not twelve rotaa ago, and here they were.

The devices were thuggish, almost human in their conceptual design. Now the time had come to put the things into use, Bravestorm felt excitement mingling with uncertainty and an awkward sense of shame.

Perhaps Shadowsun was right. Farsight’s obsession with close-quarters warfare, known to his students as the Way of the Short Blade, was risky in the extreme. But if it worked…

Bravestorm shook his head, and turned to face his team. ‘You will never earn honorific names with a conventional approach to warfare,’ he said, smiling ruefully as he ran a finger along the pod’s length. ‘If these things embody sacrifice, so be it. It will be Lhas’rhen’na, that of shattered jade, made for the Greater Good.’

‘I shall earn a new name in time,’ said Furuja, ‘it is my destiny.’

Aae’sho raised her brows in mild disdain. ‘Not soon.’

Furuja shot her a stabbing glare in return. ‘They shall call me Twinblade one day,’ she said archly. ‘And not because some naysayer teammate is lucky enough to call me batch-twin.’

‘“Nai-sai-er”,’ said Bravestorm carefully, the syllables unfamiliar. ‘I do not know this word.’

‘It is a term for an individual who perpetrates negativity as a character trait,’ said Furuja, her tone blithe and matter-of-fact.

Bravestorm’s olfactory chasm wrinkled in distaste. What a typically human concept, for an individual to be known for undermining his fellows as a matter of course. No t’au could ever truly be accused of such a thing, but if the word fitted anyone, it better fit Furuja’s personality than Aae’sho’s. Still, even he knew better than to voice that sentiment out loud.

The thunder of artillery rumbled in the distance. It was growing quieter with each passing hour as it moved away from their position. The time to move out from their improvised command centre was encroaching.

It was a peculiar trend amongst younger t’au to adopt the terms of the gue’vesa – those Imperials who had seen the light of the T’au Empire and worked towards the Tau’va, or ‘Greater Good’ as it was known in the water caste’s parlance. Of late, even some warriors of the fire caste had begun to use Imperial words, ostensibly to improve their understanding of the human mindset.

The habit had the tang of fashion about it. It had always sat ill with Bravestorm, and his fellow commander, the traditionalist Sha’vastos, despised the very idea. After all, these were the same terms used by the unenlightened savages that had invaded Dal’yth Prime in a storm of brute force. The same creatures that had fashioned the walking tomb Bravestorm had faced on Gel’bryn’s transmotive sidings, and the crippled, hateful thing inside its life-support cocoon. It had leaked blood-streaked fluids from its burst sac of milky liquid and coiled wires, spitting its fury even as it died.

Humans. Already he had learned to condemn them.

‘Twinblade – isn’t that what you hope to be called, Furuja?’ said Udakoa, bringing Bravestorm back from his painful reverie. ‘Twinfist would be just as fitting. My lower jaw still aches from Gel’bryn.’

Bulkily built to the point of risking expulsion from the fire caste, Udakoa had too soft a heart in Bravestorm’s estimation. He had become ever fonder of Furuja since his ta’lissera bonding with Commander Bravestorm’s XV8 Crisis team. The big warrior’s ribald sense of humour had made several water caste diplomats cringe in the past and resulted in a Vior’lan standoff more than once.

‘Two of these systems could be a formidable loadout,’ said Commander Sha’rell, the veteran leaning back against the open plexus hatch of his bright blue XV8. The suit’s camo circuits had been damaged at Gel’bryn, and Sha’rell had kept it that way since his promotion as a badge of honour. It had been a rallying point ever since. ‘“If you are to be in dagger’s reach,”’ he quoted from the code of fire, “‘you must ensure that the first strike is enough.”’

‘Do we have to use them, then?’ asked Aae’sho, brushing a stray strand of her scalp lock back into place with a practised twist. ‘I thought Tro’ari Shendu had declared them sub-optimal? Or are we to grace the screens in promotion of their capability?’

‘Have you not graced them enough, Aae’sho?’ said Tro’ari Shendu, checking over the weapons pod with a fire caste data-wand. ‘Would your admirers think less of you for using such bulky tools?’

Bravestorm stood up to his full height, impressive even for one of the fire caste, and set his shoulders.

‘Enough. We will be using these prototype systems within the cycle. We have tried a conventional retaliation cadre approach on three occasions, and been forced to withdraw each time.’

None of the assembled fire caste met his gaze. There was no shame in retreat to a t’au, provided it conserved resources, but in truth they had very little of those left.

‘We are almost out of ammunition,’ continued Bravestorm, ‘and Commander Shadowsun has already cut off resupply as a waste of resources. This is the only method I can see left to us – to step inside their reach.’

‘Just as the wrestler Ba’tan stepped inside the reach of the swordswoman Mesme,’ said Udakoa, his fleshy cheeks crinkling as he smiled sidelong at Aae’sho, ‘and bore her to the ground.’

‘Something like that, yes,’ said Bravestorm.

‘Technically speaking, closing within conventional range parameters could be a very effective tactic,’ said Tro’ari Shendu.

Several of the t’au made the right-chopping-left sign that signified the Broken Sword.

‘The situation worsens further in Dal’ryu,’ continued Bravestorm, ‘though the water caste coverage dissembles it as ever. We remain here by choice, and we will make a difference before we yield to the withdrawal order. Faithful Oe-saya, please attend us and relay your findings before resuming your patrol.’

The flat, broad disc of a drone aide moved in from the periphery of the transmotive terminus and hovered in close, its limited holo array purring softly as it projected an airborne visual.

The bombed-out domes of the youth training complex showed the hexagonal learning nodes beneath, each hemispherical centre like a smashed eggshell with its jagged edges and cracked walls. Only a few of the ochre and beige domes, in places blended into one another to form larger buildings, were still intact. The rest were smoking black craters.

Inside the cracked domes were the barely recognisable ruins of learning chambers, communion halls and even dwelling cells ranged around the outside. Movement could be seen inside some of them. Not all of the students had made it out before the transmotive network had been disabled by artillery fire.

An infographic appeared to the side of the footage, relating the mounting death toll with stark and shocking objectivity. Bravestorm zoomed in by bringing together his index fingers and slowly widening the gap between them. The drone Oe-saya blipped an affirmative in response, and the footage focused on the scattered, burned bodies of t’au student diplomats.

The silence that stretched between the battlesuit teams was profound.

‘If we do not act swiftly,’ said Bravestorm, ‘there will be no one left to save.’

The commander stepped over to the weapons pod and brushed his fingers over its authority sensor. It hissed open, a burst of chill air emanating from within, to expose twelve oversized gauntlets packed in shaped cellfoam.

Each clenched fist was fully as large as a fire warrior curled in a foetal ball, gold lights winking near each wrist mounting to show the prototypes were at full charge.

Bravestorm tapped the air above the revelation panel. A sheet of glowing light unfolded like a paper sculpture unmade in front of him until a stylised holo of an earth caste weapons scientist appeared. The instructional holo made the sign of the Tau’va in respect, simplified schematics flickering around it.

Onager gauntlets, O’Vesa had called them. Devices of immense power. To those who used them, thought Bravestorm, almost certainly a death sentence.

THE KILLING BLOW

BLACKTHUNDER MESA, NEAR DAL’RYU
T’AU SEPT WORLD DAL’YTH PRIME

The Manta Guardian’s Strike slid gracefully through the purple clouds of the Dal’yth sunset. The missile destroyer was large enough to carry an entire hunter cadre to war, and despite its great size, at cruising altitude its engines were little louder than those of a Sun Shark bomber.

Better yet, its electronic signature was masked by extensive dampener suites. Three times had Commanders Bravestorm and Sha’rell used the Strike to attack from a vertical vector, and three times they had landed the first blow without the Imperial tank companies having the slightest chance to parry.

It was what came after that posed the problem.

A wide view of the landscape beneath the Manta, relayed from its ventral cameras to the ten Crisis battlesuits within its modified hold, showed the infamous Blackthunder Mesa. So high its rugged clifftops had a weather system unto themselves, the ridge overlooked the Dal’ryu settlement and the hexagonal system of transmotive rails that linked it to the conurbations beyond.

It had once been a popular pastime amongst Dal’ryu’s youths to hike to the top of the mesa and watch the sun set over the domes. Now, its ridge was host only to spent shells and rotting corpses lousy with indigo maggots.

Since the Imperial invasion had begun, the mesa had been littered with the broken bodies of those t’au who had defended it. Many of the cadavers had since been ground beneath the tracks of the squat, badly camouflaged lumps of metal that the Imperials used as their main-line tanks.

Bravestorm felt his mouth twist in bitter disapproval as the Manta’s scanners penetrated the cloud cover to relay long-range scans to his command-and-control suite. The vehicles atop the ridge were not true fighting machines, but brutish demolitions engines, inelegant even in comparison to the earth caste’s building-levellers.

Each of the Imperial battle tanks was dark green and olive drab. It was a colouration appropriate enough for a verdant world, perhaps, but worse than useless against the mauves and purples of Dal’yth’s plains.

‘Is that supposed to be camouflage?’ said Tro’ari Shendu. The tactician’s tone was that of a rifleman being charged by a distant adversary wielding nothing more than a sharp stick.

‘Another sign of Imperial arrogance,’ said Bravestorm. ‘That is one of their many flaws. Laziness of the mind, and a habit of underestimating their enemy.’ He paused, deep in thought. ‘It will lead to their downfall.’

‘Some might say there is good reason for their pride,’ said Furuja. Bravestorm blipped across the crossed-forearms sign of censure and opened a single communion link. ‘Keep those thoughts to a closed link, if you must express them,’ he said. ‘The ethereal caste has a way of hearing such sentiments.’

He signed off before she could respond, but a small voice in Bravestorm’s mind admitted she had a point. There were literally hundreds of armoured targets down there on the ridge.

He cued up the Manta’s analysis, spooling through direct to his link. Eight hundred and eleven war vehicles in total had fought their way to the top of the outcrop, despite the battlesuit teams Bravestorm had led to stop them in the early stages of the invasion.

Far too many for them to engage effectively, even if the Imperials had no infantry support to speak of.

Bravestorm blink-clicked a hostiles filter and scanned anxiously for signs of the squat, bipedal Dreadnoughts the Imperials used as heavy battlesuit analogues. He breathed a slow sigh when he found nothing that matched his recorded readings.

The walking war engines were formidable indeed; he had learned that the hard way at Gel’bryn. Even if he overcame another such an adversary, he was not sure if he could stomach the spectacle of the thing laid open in defeat, the shrunken and limbless near-corpse inside staring up at him with a mixture of impotent loathing and undiluted hatred.

That sight still swam into his thoughts at least once per dark-time dec, its cursing words stuck fast in his mind.

Die in pain, foreign worm-thing.

Bravestorm put the memory from his mind and forced himself to focus on the enemy disposition below. The vast majority of the vehicles were the thick, cannon-turreted battle tanks the water caste’s gue’vesa informants called Leman Russ – given the unusual terminology, Bravestorm assumed the model was named after the machine’s inventor in a typical display of gue’la vainglory. The things were grouped in squadrons of nine, each with a command tank marked out by ostentatious heraldry and command-link aerials.

Those on the outside of each echelon had far longer barrels than the others, the tanks known as Vanquishers. Those at the fore were Demolishers, their stubby barrels so wide a human could have slept inside one.

The artillery pieces ranged on the far side of the fissure that split the mesa were little more than canted, long-barrelled guns on tracks. It was these Basilisk squadrons that were hurling solid shot munitions into the farthest training domes. Though formidable at long range, their efficacy at close fire was so poor Bravestorm had effectively discounted them from his calculations. He had already assigned the Manta the duty of neutralising them as the Crisis suits took on the Leman Russ battle tanks.

‘This time we will forsake the purely vertical strike for the Shadowsun mask,’ said Bravestorm. ‘I have patched across the relevant data suite.’

‘Commander?’ said Aae’sho. ‘I have not studied this. What is the core concept?’

‘Each gue’la tank has a predictable and limited arc of effect. Much like a plains tortoise, the Imperial vehicle is hampered by its own focus on defence. By extrapolating and overlapping their fields of fire, we can ascertain the zones where it is safest to land, and work from there. Look for the gold wedges on your top-down display, and position yourself inside at all times. I shall take point, and make myself an obvious target.’

His team sent symbols of assent, each initiating their command suites accordingly.

As the Strike moved in, its hex-linked informationals showed that the blackened wrecks at the rear of the vehicle echelon – those that Bravestorm and Sha’rell had taken down with their previous assaults – had not been salvaged, nor even cleared out of the theatre of war, but simply left there to rust. A small flame of pride burned in Bravestorm’s heart at the sight. His team had taken a heavy toll in destroying them, and withdrawn only because their suits were running low on ammunition and energy charge.

This time, in theory at least, that concern would not be a problem.

The low, threatening hum of the onager gauntlets filled the Strike’s passenger bay. Many of Bravestorm’s fellow warriors flexed the broad digits of the unfamiliar weapons systems, the motions of dextrous fingers inside their control cocoons aped by the XV8s’ giant electrified fists.

Some amongst them were eager to test the new systems in a live-fire environment – Bravestorm included. His gamble would determine whether ten of the Dal’ythan fire caste’s brightest and best would live or die, and he was anxious to tip the balance in his favour. More than that, their strike would seal the fate of those from the youth academies yet to evacuate, and likely make a difference to morale across the entire war effort.

It had to work. It had to.

‘Location arrival in twenty microdecs,’ said their air caste pilot, a coolly competent battlefield specialist who had earned the name Trueflight. ‘Preparing debarkation sequence.’

‘My thanks, Trueflight,’ said Bravestorm. ‘Team, make your final preparations.’

‘Not long until our fates are met, commander,’ blipped Furuja to Bravestorm on a personal communion link. ‘With next to no training in this weapon system, I do not feel confident.’

‘Just channel all that doubt and anger into violence,’ said Bravestorm. ‘We’ve seen you do it before.’

This time it was Furuja who shut off the communion link.

The rear portal of the Manta destroyer chimed loudly, and a sliver of violet sunlight lanced through its primary door as it slid open. One by one the Crisis teams of Bravestorm and Sha’rell, racked on the dual internal rails of the customised Manta’s lower passenger deck, ejected from the craft’s rear.

Bravestorm’s iridium-skinned XV8-02 prototype was first out, as ever. His onager gauntlet’s hex informational flared brightly next to those of his shield generator, plasma rifle and flamer. Magnetic impulsors pushed his battlesuit clear of the gunship’s engines in a single smooth shunt.

His team ejected behind him in quick succession, and Sha’rell followed close behind with Loa’thon, On’st, Bel’uatta and Adha’varnatel forming up in skyfall pattern around their commander’s sky-blue battlesuit. Their distribution was textbook, each XV8 dropping down through the clouds and firing its jets to ensure maximum group cohesion.

Visible far below through the thin veils of water vapour was Blackthunder Mesa, a jagged cliff with an edge that wound like a serpent towards the indigo plains below. Its foremost edge was clustered with enemy tanks, from this distance looking like a swarm of beetle-backed insects all gathered to stare at the training academies of Dal’ryu beyond.

Bravestorm was about to send the gold icon of a successful aerial deployment when a hail of large-calibre flak rounds detonated close by. Illuminated by the halo of his own undampened shield generator, Bravestorm had likely been the target, but it was Shas’vre Loa’thon who took the brunt. The impacts tore at his battlesuit in an explosion so powerful it was startling even with Bravestorm’s audio dampeners on combat mode. The shock wave sent Sha’rell spinning away in a gout of black smoke.

More flak came up an instant later. Bravestorm’s shield generator flared as it took a glancing impact, and Loa’thon himself was hit by a stray wedge of shrapnel. Blood trailed from his plexus hatch like a crimson ribbon. The stricken battlesuit tumbled into a patch of cloud.

‘Disperse!’ shouted Bravestorm, zooming in on the quadruple muzzle flare of what looked like anti-aircraft guns far below. He eye-flicked new vectors of attack onto the central hex-screen, each aimed in one of the gold triangles where the Imperial flak tanks could not find them.

Bravestorm tucked his XV8-02’s limbs in close, streamlining his suit so that its feet formed the tip of an arrowhead. He eye-flicked trajectories for Furuja and Udakoa to match his descent, sending Aae’sho and Tro’ari Shendu on a parallel vector of attack.

Now more of the Imperials were taking the bait. An insistent warning chime of incoming fire rang out in his control cocoon. He dived forwards sharply, his XV8-02 pivoting forwards and bringing its shield round even as high-velocity rounds exploded against its force field. Fire blossomed around him, a flaming disc of energy revealed by the tremendous impacts.

Bravestorm could feel each shell’s aftershock rattle him in his cocoon. His shield generator readout flickered from gold to bronze in a matter of seconds, already a third depleted. Still, the hammering shells were held at bay – and Furuja and Udakoa behind him had been kept safe.

Bravestorm plummeted through the last thin veil of cloud to see the flak tanks below, their quad-barrelled cannons raised high. He sent a volley of plasma bolts diagonally down at the rear of the closest tank as it tracked its guns around. The burning blue parcels of energy cut into the legs of one gunner and the hip of another. They tumbled away into the dirt.

A sharp boost from his thrust/vector suite, and Bravestorm shot towards the next flak tank. His flamer system chimed as its rangefinder ticked into gold, and he sent a lance of superheated fire to wash across the open gunnery platform at the vehicle’s rear. The humans manning the tank flailed, limbs blackening in the conflagration.

The commander was already past. He hit the third tank like a hurled spear, swinging a wild haymaker punch with the onager gauntlet at full energy discharge.

The prototype weapon hit the quad-barrelled weapons turret so hard the entire structure, despite being twice the size of an XV8, was ripped away with a scream of tortured metal.

Bravestorm grinned widely as a trio of bolts spat from his plasma rifle. A microdec later a whirling storm of fire and shrapnel engulfed the tank and the t’au commander alike as its ammunition feed cooked off.

He staggered heavily backwards from the detonation, alerts bleeping and caution indicators flaring on the holographic doppelganger of his damage control suite. Bravestorm felt a spike of hot aggression mingle with relief. His iridium Crisis suit had ridden out the explosion with little more than a layer of synth paint stripped from its exterior.

All around Bravestorm the brutish human crews of the anti-air tanks were shouting, waving their arms and barking in their guttural tongue. Weapons turrets swivelled towards him, desperate to draw a bead. He crouched low. A storm of solid shot ammunition whipped overhead, enough to rip a Razorshark fighter to chunks of scrap metal. But the tank’s guns had not been designed for close engagements, and not a single round struck his battlesuit’s armour.

To the right, a quad-barrelled mortar tank was accelerating towards him. Its engines roared.

His soul alight with the fire of battle, Bravestorm roared back.

Leaning in his XV8-02, the commander charged straight forwards to meet the tank headlong. It loomed closer, a slab of dull green. At the last moment he leapt and brought his onager gauntlet down hard, smashing into the tank’s glacis. With the vehicle’s momentum meeting the blow, the fist struck hard enough to lift the tank’s rear several feet into the air.

Bravestorm aimed his next punch right at the vision slit. There was a moment of hard resistance from the gauntlet’s neural relay as his fist ploughed straight through the tank’s hull, its thick metal shell giving in sharp triangular segments that caved inwards. Bravestorm extended his fingers sharply, reaching for the crew member inside, and was rewarded with a piercing scream as the driver was impaled on his gauntlet’s thumb.

There was a loud clank of metal, and a shouting gue’la trooper emerged from the vehicle’s top hatch, seizing the pintle weapon system and sending a volley of low-calibre bullets pinging from Bravestorm’s iridium battlesuit. The gue’la’s face was twisted and animalistic, his mouth a red-black hole surrounded by discoloured teeth and coarse hair.

The commander ripped his gauntlet free in a spray of blood, his shoulder-mounted weapon system spearing the gunner through the chest with a bolt from his plasma rifle.

Good riddance, thought Bravestorm. The galaxy is a cleaner place for his death.

Ducking down behind the glacis of the flak tank, Bravestorm took stock of the situation. Already Sha’rell had taken down another of the graceless vehicles, his dual flamers sending out a blast so fierce it turned the gunners at the rear to flailing effigies of blackened flesh.

One of the burning humans launched himself at Sha’rell’s battlesuit, clinging to the shoulder as the commander landed and took cover. Sha’rell shrugged him free, pivoting round to stamp him into the dust.

Udakoa landed nearby with an earth-shaking crunch. He had been eager to adopt the new weapons system; so eager that with Sha’rell’s permission he had taken two gauntlets in order to replace both his primary systems. He stormed forwards, placed both of his fists under the nearest flak tank, and braced for a moment.

‘Udakoa,’ said Bravestorm, ‘you’re not–’

His words were cut off as Udakoa lifted the Imperial tank high enough to put his shoulder under it, the metal buckling where the onager gauntlets’ thick fingers bit into the hull. Udakoa straightened suddenly with a thrust from his jet pack, flipping the tank onto its side and spilling the crew into the dirt beyond.

One of the crew got his leg trapped beneath the tank’s superstructure, and started screaming like a wounded kroot ape. The other rolled with the momentum, scrabbling a pistol from his hip holster and squeezing off a bolt of ruby energy. Udakoa walked into the shot, the blast scorching his plexus hatch but doing no real damage. He backhanded the fallen human so hard the top half of his body was mangled into a featureless ruin.

Udakoa chuckled over the cadrenet. ‘My compliments to O’Vesa when you see him next.’

‘Just stay in the densest areas,’ called Bravestorm. ‘It is the only way we will survive this.’

Udakoa blipped a golden sign of assent before striding towards another Imperial tank. Its quadruple cannons tracked around to draw a bead on him. That one was dangerously close to overconfidence, thought Bravestorm, and here it would likely get him killed.

The commander sent a volley of plasma shots winging over that burned a hand’s breadth from one of the quad-cannons’ ammo cases – just like the idiotic Imperials to mount their ammunition on a vehicle’s exterior. He shifted his aim, and was rewarded by a series of sharp explosions as the shells of two of the cannons cooked off. The other two pointed straight at Udakoa as the shas’vre burst into a run.

He was still nowhere near close enough.

‘Furuja!’ shouted Bravestorm.

‘Engaging.’

Dropping down from above she came, slicing through one of the flak tank’s barrels with a beam from her fusion blaster even as Aae’sho grabbed the other with her onager gauntlet. The young warrior squeezed it so hard the metal cylinder twisted at a strange angle, then came clean away in her fist.

Furuja spun fast on the spot in her XV8 – something Bravestorm had only ever seen his comrade Commander Brightsword pull off – and slashed her fusion blaster beam across the gunners at the rear, bisecting them both with one sweep of superheated energy. Aae’sho hurled the barrel of the gun sidelong, the improvised projectile taking out two more crew on a nearby flak tank.

Only then did Udakoa hit the tank like a charging rhinoceros, fists pounding the front to mangled scrap metal.

‘This is most cathartic,’ he shouted over the cadrenet.

‘It’s already dead, lackwit,’ said Furuja, already boosting away to land on a nearby tank that was slowly reversing to get a better bead on them. Udakoa clambered atop his target and grabbed hold of its frontal shield, tearing it free and hurling it in what seemed to be her direction. Furuja leaned to one side, and the torn slab of metal sent a knot of tank crew that had been advancing upon her scattering for cover.

‘Watch your aim!’ shouted Furuja over the cadrenet.

‘She is right,’ said Bravestorm. ‘That was too close.’

‘I would offer contrition,’ said Udakoa, ‘but it worked.’

Bravestorm’s command-and-control suite bipped loudly, and he flicked an eye towards the distribution array. There was a tank squadron converging on their position, unaware that Sha’rell and his team were sprinting around behind them to initiate a swift mont’ka strike.

The first of the tanks spat twin tongues of fire from its barrel as it took a shot. Bravestorm was forced to kneel behind his shield generator as the crashing impact was obliterated in a storm of energy. It had depleted the weapon system’s reserve once more; now its metallospectrum was the colour of cold steel. A few more of those and it would be the charcoal black of death.

There was a thunderous roar from Bravestorm’s left flank. He glanced at his suite to see Shas’vre On’st blasted backwards, ripped limb from limb with his plasma rifle spinning into the middle distance.

A massive, blunt-muzzled super-heavy war engine was crunching its way across the mesa’s ridge, three times the size of the Leman Russ tanks around them. Bravestorm called up his directional audio, narrowed its scope to a thin beam and pointed it at the tank’s turret. As he suspected, he heard the whine of capacitors as the giant laser cannon atop it reached full charge.

‘It readies to fire again!’

Sha’rell leapt, his jet pack giving him enough lift to send him soaring in a long parabola, and landed atop the tank. He stuck the nozzle of his right-hand flamer right in the vision slit and squeezed off a long burst.

Flames burst from vents and barrels as a raging inferno filled the interior. The screams of two crewmen filtered over the XV8-02’s sensors, rendered reedy and thin by their incarceration in that white-hot furnace. Bravestorm grimaced. That was a bad way to die, even for a gue’la.

Somehow, the super-heavy still ground on, tracking around to take a bead on Bravestorm’s team. Its cannon roared once more. This time Bel’uatta took the brunt, the thick laser beam blasting her Crisis suit to molten slurry and killing her in an instant.

‘Break left!’ he shouted. ‘Get behind it!’

Sha’rell had already leaped to the rear of the tank, Aae’sho with him. From his new vantage point Bravestorm watched Aae’sho grab hold of the rear hatch of the tank and brace herself before ripping it wide open, mangling a massive slab of its hull with a screech of protesting metal.

‘Get clear!’ shouted Sha’rell, pushing her battlesuit roughly away. Aae’sho stumbled back, stunned, before jetting away to join Furuja as she engaged a Demolisher squadron at point-blank range.

Bravestorm watched in disbelief as Sha’rell grabbed the mangled rear of the tank and forced it open even wider, half climbing inside with his flamers billowing out an inferno all around him.

‘No,’ he said, ‘Sha’rell, you must–’

A titanic explosion stole his words, blasting the giant tank to a tangle of smoking black metal in a detonation so massive the nearest three Leman Russ were consumed in the firestorm. Of Sha’rell, there was no sign.

Lhas’rhen’na. The sacrifice of shattered jade.

A distant boom from the west. Then another, a few microdecs afterwards.

Bravestorm’s command-and-control suite pinged an alert at the third. These were not detonations, not gunfire, but seismic events, each like a miniature earthquake.

They were coming from the north-east, to the east of Dal’ryu. A fourth boom, then a fifth, close behind. Like the drumbeat of some ancient god’s funerary procession.

Fighting the urge to climb a wrecked tank and take the high ground, Bravestorm darted right, backhanding his onager gauntlet into a trundling tank as it drove in close to sideswipe him. The vehicle’s track came away, and it veered with the impact, overcompensating only to slam into another that was attempting to cut him off. Ahead of the stricken tanks was a channel, a gap down the endless ranks of lumpen vehicles. Along it, Bravestorm could see the edge of the mesa and the field of violet grassland beyond.

Two massively built behemoths loomed down there, bipedal war machines so big they made the Leman Russ tanks look like cleaner-drones hovering at the heels of a Broadside.

Imperial Warlord Titans.

The monstrous Warlord Titans were already legend upon Dal’yth. They were known as god-machines to the gue’vesa who had spoken of them, and Bravestorm could see why. Bipedal, the approaching war engines were vast mockeries of the Hero’s Mantle. They had been built by a race that respected only raw power, with none of the earth caste’s thought for grace, manoeuvrability, speed – or practicality, for that matter. These war engines were crippled by their own immensity. They could not fight effectively in a city, a forest, nor any built up area at all.

But on the open plain, engaging an elevated target, they would be in their element. The nearest, ahead of its companion by some four hundred metres, had honorific banners fluttering from the long-barrelled cannon that formed its right arm.

‘Do you see those things, commander?’ asked Furuja.

‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘They disturb me too. But only elite warriors could pilot those things, and Farsight himself has said the gue’ron’sha have their own barbaric code of honour. Such souls would not fire on valued troops.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Even the critically wounded Imperials are forced to fight on. Here, amongst the ranks of its allies, we will be protected from its fury.’

‘Then thank the Tau’va we followed your course and stuck close, commander,’ said Udakoa.

The ground-shaking booms of the nearest Titan’s footfalls were growing louder as it changed heading to approach the ridge directly, its inexorable approach leading it closer with every earth-shaking footfall. Flocks of Dal’ythan ground-gulls were startled from their burrows, white specks flitting against the giant cliff of metal advancing upon the mesa’s edge.

There was menace in its hunched posture, its gait and the dull glow of the eyes set into its massive, blunt head. It was stamping forwards like a Fio’taun executioner weighed down by his own honour blade.

Upon its shoulders it bore massive missile launcher housings, each the size of a small building. A payload devised to level cities, and likely with a single volley. The giant’s entire right arm was a cannon in form, long and tapering at the end in the manner of some vast laser weapon. The left was a gauntlet of colossal size, its ironwork talons articulated and crackling with ropes of electrical discharge.

Bravestorm saw the Titan’s guns turn until they were pointing right at his team. The tip of its primary gun barrel grew to such brightness that his blacksun filter overlaid a polarised cut-out.

‘We should run,’ said Udakoa, tension straining his words.

‘Have faith,’ replied Furuja. ‘Even these gue’la would not fire on their own kind.’

‘I am not so sure,’ said Udakoa.

‘Do not give into fear,’ said Bravestorm. ‘They are not that stupid. I give you the word of my honour. We are safe here. Remain in close formation.’

The barrel of the titanic machine’s laser arm glowed even brighter. At the same time a payload of missiles launched from its shoulders, arcing down towards them like a flock of killer raptors plunging in for the kill.

‘Into cover!’ shouted Aae’sho.

The world erupted into searing light.

Bravestorm was hurled back, his battlesuit flipping end over end as it was suddenly blown like a leaf on a gale. He slammed into the broad flank of an Imperial battle tank, and the impact knocked out a handful of teeth. Choking on his own vital fluid, he spat blood. Pain wracked every nerve. His head felt like it had split open, as if struck by an axe in each temple. The stench of cooked meat filled the control cocoon; the scent of his own flesh, charred to dark ruin.

Realisation sent fresh waves of pain, his stunned and reeling mind fighting against an animal sense of panic. Death was near. A cold shroud of fear and guilt wrapped around Bravestorm’s spine. The Titan had fired indiscriminately.

The gamble had failed, and they were as good as dead.

He had to concentrate. The others relied on him.

Agony consumed him as Bravestorm forced himself to focus, manually punching the stimulant injector. Needles pricked the nape of his neck, but he barely felt them. It was a system intended to provide a boost in times of extreme duress, not to revive a warrior who had been charred from scalp to heel. Nonetheless the salving fluids flowing through his system brought a measure of cool relief against the white-hot pain.

As the commander’s vision cleared he could see a streak of light at his flank. There was a ragged wound torn in the side of the suit. Hot air seared in, spiking the pain in his right flank still further. An old hairline split in the battlesuit’s iridium plating, a caulk-sealed wound from a bolt-round at Gel’bryn’s transmotive sidings, had been ripped into a gaping fissure. Now the XV8-02’s systems were flickering, glitching manically as they attempted to cope with the vast trauma they had sustained.

The entire control suite suddenly cut out, and darkness swallowed him. Slowly his vision adjusted to the bio-luminescent glow that formed his XV8-02’s emergency lighting.

Bravestorm felt the acid of his stomachs scarring the inside of his throat. Nothing remained of the cadrenet link to his team; every hex was dark. Only a few lights winked on the interior panels. The commander frowned and shut the system down manually before initiating it once more.

A thunderous footfall came from half-a-mile distant, terrifyingly close. Panic threatened to consume him like a primal tide. He had to escape.

The iridium Crisis suit restarted a microdec later, its display hexes unfolding one after another until his command suite was fully functional once more. The sub-screens that reflected his comrades were all the flat black colouration of the void.

Aae’sho. Furuja. Adha’varnatel. Tro’ari Shendu. Udakoa. All dead.

All obliterated in a single, blinding moment.

The team’s hexes folded back in on themselves, leaving only the symbol of the Greater Good.

There was a ground-shaking, seismic boom. This time it was louder, so close Bravestorm could feel it through his torn and blackened battlesuit.

Then another, and then a third.

Patient. Unstoppable. Terrifying.

The despair and pain consuming the commander’s mind were pushed down by a fierce desire for revenge. It was a sudden, intense pressure that crushed his intent into a single point, like a thousand burning coals compressed all at once into a diamond blade.

He alone had survived. The experimental iridium alloy of his modified XV8-02 was the only thing that had come between him and brutal annihilation. His guilt would drive that blade into the enemy, or burn him up completely.

Bravestorm slid his targeting lock aperture to maximum as his command suite reinstated. The ground was the sky, and the sky the ground; it came to him that his battlesuit was upside down; that he was at the edge of a massive crater. Ranged around him were the wrecks of dozens of Imperial tanks, scattered around the edge of a wide, steaming circle strewn with the disembodied remains of Crisis battlesuits and mangled Imperial vehicles. His sensor vanes panned around to full panoramic; behind him were the wrecks of a dozen more. An inferno roared still, bubbling paint on the flanks of those vehicles at the edge of the crater hastening to move from the Titan’s crosshairs.

The pain and doubt came back for a moment, unwilling to be sidelined so easily. Against such horrific force, such merciless disregard for the life of ally as well as enemy, how could any sane mind prevail?

Then the diamond blade in Bravestorm’s mind cut through the fug of confusion and guilt, parting the clouds to reveal the cold and stark answer.

With rage.

The commander felt an unnatural tingle, intensifying to send crashing waves of pain across his nervous system before the stimulant injector numbed them to a dull ache. The Imperial engine’s power field, invisible but potent nonetheless, had washed over him.

The beast was within a stone’s throw, and it was readying for the kill.

Bravestorm felt white blossoms of raw pain blind him for a moment as he twisted in his control cocoon, but his scrabbling black claw found the indent of the defence override nonetheless. He channelled the last of the battlesuit’s energy from recovery protocols into attack parameters, pressing his fingers in the deep-set nodes until every iota of available energy was channelled into the XV8-02’s thrust/vector suite.

His command-and-control suite was on backup, still hazed and glitching with its retinal scanner controls out, but it was operative at least on manual. His ranged weapon systems were out completely. The guns themselves had melted into drooping, molten fingers of metal, rendered useless by the Titan’s devastating assault.

Bravestorm leaned hard and sent a burst of thrust from his repulsor jet pack’s left vent, rocking his fallen machine until it toppled over to one side with a crash. He moved one arm experimentally, the blackened flesh splitting open to show a delta of red cracks, and the XV8-02 followed suit.

Above him, the Titan loomed. He could see its vastness blot out the Dal’ythan sun through the gaping wound in his flank.

Slowly, agonisingly, Bravestorm pushed himself onto his front, then onto all fours. Fires still crackled across his battlesuit’s back, and he manually silenced the alarms with stabs of a finger that was more blackened bone than flesh.

Another crushing, heart-stopping impact. There it was, raising a massive foot over the smoking ruins of his team as if it were about to stamp them from history altogether.

‘No!’ he shouted, his throat on fire. ‘You will fight me alone.’

The commander boosted upwards, his onager gauntlet leaving trails of crackling electricity behind it as his jet pack array flared on maximum. The Titan filled his vision, a giant of metal and hatred, cold and inviolable next to the embers of the t’au attack.

The repulsor jet pack’s twin columns of energy carried him higher, past the heraldic armour plates of the war machine’s armoured legs, then the swivelling gimbals of its hips and the turntable of its waist. Faster he flew, angling his flight. He aimed straight for the jutting, gargoyle-like head unit that held the war machine’s crew, and rerouted all power to his gauntlet.

This close, within its reach, the giant could not bring its mighty guns to bear. Its hubris, its haste to snuff out all resistance from its fallen prey, would be its doom.

The onager gauntlet arced towards the Titan in a haymaker sweep, striking not at the armoured head but at the underside of its throat. In a long, tearing gouge Bravestorm ripped away thick ropes of armoured cabling. Oily fluids drizzled from the giant machine’s neck in a crackling storm of electricity and red-hot sparks.

The commander felt his blow slam into a giant pipeline, standing proud like a tendon. He grabbed hold, rerouting power to the jet pack’s thrust, and closed his grip. Turning upside down, he placed his battlesuit’s feet on the underside of the Titan’s head and pulled as hard as he could.

With an agonised scream of tortured metal the pipeline gave way, milk-white fluids gouting across the XV8-02 and splashing into the control cocoon through the gaping wound in its front.

Bravestorm shouted in triumph as the Crisis battlesuit fell away, its energies spent. A moment later he saw the Titan’s own gauntlet, massive enough to crush the XV8-02, swing in towards him.

The giant’s fist swatted him like a bloodwasp.

The commander felt gravity release its grip for a moment before he crashed heavily into a missile crater, his iridium battlesuit as mangled as the XV8s of his dead comrades around him.

With a last effort, Bravestorm craned his neck and squinted through the fissure in the suit’s front, intent on one last glimpse. The Titan was turning away, fluids still drizzling from its neck. In the skies behind it he saw the distinctive triangular shape of a Manta missile destroyer, two more cresting the horizon beyond.

Then the ground around him trembled once more, and not only at the pace of the vast war effigy. The armoured company that had claimed Blackthunder Mesa was on the move, redeploying from their exposed position at some unseen command.

As consciousness began to slip away, Bravestorm felt a dull throb of relief. The Way of the Short Blade had proved successful, in a way. By forcing the Imperials to redeploy, they at least achieved Lhas’rhen’na.

Farsight would be proud.

‘That one looks largely recoverable,’ said Fio’vre Dala’dao, pointing to the fallen XV8-02. Around him, his earth caste teammates picked through the blackened wreckage of Blackthunder Mesa. ‘Incredible fortune,’ said Dala’dao. ‘Mark it as a priority for rescue, please, Oe-shirudo. We do not have long.’

The worker drone at the recovery team leader’s shoulder slid forwards, casting a markerlight across the fallen iridium suit’s torn flank. Its beam illuminated a withered, blackened form inside, clawing at nothing and wheezing feebly as it clung to life.

A light lanced Bravestorm’s consciousness like a spear. He was adrift upon a dreamlike sea of red and black, the ocean of pain threatening to rise up over his head. Somehow he was clinging to a disc of white, the sign of his salvation, keeping him afloat. But it was shrinking, diminishing with every moment. Some distant part of his brain equated it with his emergency bio-support.

Always the last system to go, it was nonetheless running out.

Swimming towards him through the agony were hairy, gangle-limbed creatures with pig-like eyes and gnashing, bloodstained teeth.

Gue’la, revealed to him in their true form.

The beasts were swarming. Their competitive nature, their selfish lust for violent gratification, saw them tearing at one another in their haste to be the first to sink their teeth into his flesh. But none of them could quite scrabble its way atop the edges of the white disc.

The paradoxes of mankind’s nature hit him like a hailstorm as the creatures fought one another for the kill. How could a species so advanced in the art of conquest be so self-defeating? Why would those so individually strong make their communality so weak? How could they ever defeat those who had given body and soul to the Tau’va? These creatures had no conception of the Greater Good. They would wastefully kill their own kind in order to promote their individual interests. How then could they be so successful?

One of the gue’la monsters surged forwards, pushing down on its nearby kin. It seemed to Bravestorm that one of its pack-mates had started to drown beneath its claws, but the callous act gave the beast support enough to clamber onto the disc holding the commander afloat. Slowly the floating white circle began to break apart.

Then, staring into that creature’s porcine, red eyes, Bravestorm saw the answer.

Humanity had its own twisted conception of the Greater Good, though its individual components did not realise it. A concept that involved killing every threat against its race, no matter the cost.

Like a hive of insects, Humanity cared little if a hundred warriors died, so long as the multitude overall survived. The gue’la would go to any lengths, fire upon one another gladly to ensure their species’ propagation. It was as callous as it was effective.

More and more gue’la creatures clambered over the disc of white towards him. The waters of painful revelation reached up to cover Bravestorm’s mouth, filling his lungs and bearing him down into the blackness.

A voice floated through the vision of pain.

‘Remarkable,’ it said in a perfect Dal’ythan T’au dialect. ‘He is alive. Gather the lifter drones. We will recover the whole suit, Fio’vre, and convey it to the laboratories to save what we can.’

Bravestorm struggled to comprehend the words, but the gue’la terrors closing in on him robbed them of meaning.

‘I will replenish the battlesuit’s injector array in the meantime, and petition O’Vesa to prepare a life support suite for the fallen hero’s arrival.’

‘He bought time enough to save the training facilities, came a second voice. ‘The water caste would never forgive us if he died.’

A needle of cold fear pierced Bravestorm’s heart.

‘Knowing honoured O’Vesa’s love of a challenge,’ replied the first voice, ‘he could well fight on for many kai’rotaa to come. Though with burns these deep, he will never leave his battlesuit again.’

Bravestorm frowned for a moment before understanding filled his mind, and a cold terror mingled with white-hot rage.

This was not over.

BY YOUR COMMAND

Gav Thorpe

+resetsoullogistics+imprintcorticalvalueset+setuserdefinitiontoundra+rebootfromstart+

{Awaken this dormant spirit of destruction.}

+calibrateaggressionmetrics+inloadtargetingdata+revisetargetingdata+rebootfromstart+

{Give life unto this shell.}

+inloadrunicadjustment//:parameter4+restartlodestoneprotocols+inceptdatasmithlogin+

{Look upon your servants and grant them the boon of your warrior.}

+activate+acknowledge+alpha-6-terror+

{Destroy the unfaithful. Secure the Casus Belli. Protect the faithful.}

+Respond, Alpha unit.+

Cogitators buzzed into a semblance of life, accepting the designation as the first of its maniple to be awoken.

[Alpha 6-Terror online]

Dim light seeped through the visual sensory circuits of the kastelan, blurring into recognisable shapes. A ceiling, crossed by parallel coolant pipes that dripped condensation. Metal walls inscribed with the twelve-toothed cog of the Cult Metalica. The figure of Datasmith Undra, garbed in hooded white robes, censer hanging from a chain in one mechanical hand and the rod of initiation clasped in an articulated claw. Focusing on the face within the hood, Alpha 6-Terror skimmed through a selection of spectrum filters until the bionic visage of the datasmith came into view. Multifaceted eyes regarded the kastelan from within a cluster of shifting ceramic scales, which slid into an approximation of a satisfied smile.

‘Bless the Omnissiah,’ declared the tech-priest.

Five other kastelans waited dormant behind Undra, their broad, tall frames dwarfing the tech-priest. Each was a duplicate – rounded plates and barrel chests painted white, marked with the symbols of the maniple. Arming servitors attached gun-limbs and shoulder-mounted heavy weaponry to the forms yet to be awoken. Alpha 6-Terror felt the input links of its own limbs and raised two massive hands. A cortical impulse activated the power field within, enclosing the fists with a sheen of blue energy. Another artificial nerve-twitch brought the shoulder-mount phosphor blaster online. A sense analogous to satisfaction permeated the kastelan’s programme as the first large calibre round clanked into the breach.

[Weapons active. Mission parameters detected. Destroy. Secure. Protect.]

Alpha 6-Terror waited for Datasmith Undra to perform the rituals of awakening on the other battle robots. Sensory banks continued to analyse the robot’s surroundings, creating an impression of the shrine-chamber and the environment further afield. As they synchronised with the archive storage of the kastelan, auditory inputs filtered out the regular noises – the hiss of the servitors’ pneumatics, the vibration of the Imperator Titan’s power system, the clump of Datasmith Undra’s tread across the plascrete deck.

An echo of sharp retorts and a growl of chain weapons slipped through the kastelan’s processors. They were accompanied by vocalisations of humans – and human-analogues – in anger and distress.

[Battle is ongoing.]

‘Yes, Alpha 6-Terror, the Casus Belli is under attack.’

The kastelan listened for five more seconds, analysing the sounds of conflict with the aid of its auditory archives. Fresh datastreams cut through its programming, seeking to fill in the gaps left by the mission inload.

[Auditory pickups detect boltgun fire. Boltguns are not standard issue for the skitarii or auxilia of the Casus Belli. Boltguns are standard issue armaments of the Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes. Adeptus Astartes are not part of the standard crew complement of the Casus Belli.]

‘Yes, Alpha 6-Terror, we are being assaulted by Heretic Astartes. Check your deployment datalog for context.’

The kastelan accessed the information that had been installed as part of the awakening ceremony. Within, it discovered that the Imperator Titan Casus Belli, to whose defence the maniple was currently assigned, had been deployed with a supporting battle group to the planet Nicomedua. The Nicomeduans had rebelled against the wisdom of the Omnissiah, including a large proportion of their tech-priests and other members of the Cult Mechanicus that served them. The Imperator was currently embattled whilst eliminating a fortress-city known as Az Khalak. By gunship, renegade Space Marines allied to the hereteks had boarded the akropoliz – the massive superstructure atop the Titan’s shoulders that housed garrison chambers and a great part of the Imperator’s arsenal.

Among the din of battle, Alpha 6-Terror picked up wildly oscillating sounds that scaled up and down the audio spectrum, passing above and below even the kastelan’s detectable range.

[Systems detect unknown sonic weapons. Capabilities unknown.]

‘There are several types, highly customised. Multi-functional. Penetrative effects for certain wavelength projections have been estimated to a value equivalent to autocannon armour-piercing shells. Be wary of them.’

Alpha 6-Terror appended a warning sub-routine to the sound file it had created.

[Specify wavelengths.]

The datasmith squawked a pulse of binaric that in-loaded to the kastelan’s artificial consciousness. Delving into the contents of the data-packet, the robot decoded the high-pitched sonic attack that had been identified as the most damaging to armoured targets. It overlaid the data onto its warning systems so that it would know when one of the anti-armour pulses was being fired nearby.

The kastelan reviewed its motor and cogitation systems while Datasmith Undra finished activating the other robots. Every system seemed in good repair and responding within expected parameters.

[Mission and combat context fully established. Battle readiness now at one hundred per cent.]

‘Wait for the rest of the maniple, Alpha 6-Terror.’

[Battle readiness is at one hundred per cent. The enemy are slaying servants of the Omnissiah. Castigation of the foe is delayed.]

‘And you will be destroyed if you try to face them alone. They are Space Marines, Alpha 6-Terror. Set your peril quotients to their highest value.’

The kastelan did as commanded. It remained silent as the other warriors of the maniple regained consciousness and vocalised their readiness for battle. When all six were awake, Datasmith Undra had them assemble in a line facing the broad door of their storage chamber next to the cybernetika shrine.

‘Check authorisations,’ he told them.

Alpha 6-Terror ran its command protocols to verify the datasmith’s authority. The maniple replied near simultaneously.

[Datasmith Undra is in command.]

‘Confirm mission fundamentals.’

[Destroy. Secure. Protect.]

Alpha 6-Terror’s strategic programming was rudimentary, conveying enough knowledge of the local battlesphere and participants to avoid a major detrimental incident but nothing more. The kastelan knew from residual noospheric awareness that the maniple had been deployed to intercept a squad of Heretic Astartes that was moving to reinforce the main attack against the Imperator’s akropoliz atrium where ingress to the command and engineering decks was possible. Telemetric data informed the robot that the maniple advanced along two parallel lines – two kastelans through the starboard armoury corridor and the remaining four via the broader transit gallery that ran alongside.

From just behind the robots, noospheric pulses from Datasmith Undra kept them advancing like the digital goads of a swineherd, nudging a kastelan forward if a pulse of incoming data distracted or delayed it. From the datasmith’s fleeting contacts Alpha 6-Terror gathered that the intent was to contact the enemy squad from two directions simultaneously. Alpha 6-Terror and the three other kastelans in the main group would engage initially and the remaining two robots would attack from behind the embattled enemy from their flanking position.

The soundsphere was intense, the corridor walls reverberating with the noise of bolt detonations and crack of arc rifles. Danger assessment routines idled at the lack of sonic weaponry close by – bolters were primarily an anti-personnel armament and posed little threat to the battlehide of a kastelan. Proximity calculations from the light flickering against the mural-covered wall ahead indicated the fighting was just a few metres away, around the next junction. A skitarii clad in a white coat staggered backwards into view. Blood spray from a wound in the soldier’s arm signified arterial damage.

Another bolt struck the skitarii, exploding within the chest cavity. The injury was instantly fatal, almost cutting the soldier in half with its violence. Alpha 6-Terror’s aggression value grew as it monitored the corpse flopping bloodily to the floor. The kastelan quickened the pace of its strides, power to the legs amplified by the activation of a retaliation programme.

The noosphere hummed with the datasmith’s increased presence.

Undra [maniple broadcast / imperative] : >Maintain coherency. Attack as a single unit.<

Alpha 6-Terror slowed, reined in by the datasmith’s intervention.

Heat sensors detected four sources close at hand, all of them too high to be human forms.

Zeta 6-Terror: >Powered armour signatures detected.< [theory] >All non-Heretic Astartes combatants non-functional.<

Alpha 6-Terror [affirmative]

Undra [affirmative / imperative]: >Battlesphere is clear of faithful personnel. Engage slaughter mode. The Machine-God demands restitution. Leave no survivors.<

Maniple Relay: >Destroy. Secure. Protect.<

An explosion of white paint flecks and metal splinters engulfed Alpha 6-Terror a second before its systems parsed the visual and auditory inputs of enemy pounding into view, the muzzles of their bolters alight.

+impactsdetected+initialisedamageassessment+surfacedamage-detected+appraisal=negligible+

The Space Marines moved too fast to accurately track, forcing Alpha 6-terror to rely on trajectory-prognostication equations to direct the fire of its phosphor blaster. Flaming shells joined its fusillade from the kastelans to either side, filling the junction with burning projectiles. The targets were gone even as phosphor immolated across the far wall, setting the corridor ablaze from floor to ceiling.

Reviewing the last split-second engagement, Alpha 6-Terror archived a vision of a tall, broad figure clad in garishly painted power armour. The helm was crested with a line of glinting spikes, a cloak of brightly patterned hide from an unidentified xenos species flowing around the backpack. The second combatant was likewise adorned with ostentatious battleplate, his helmet sculpted into a screaming, monstrous face. A flutter of electronic signals excited Alpha 6-Terror’s neural analogues.

[Enemy detected! Destroy! Secure! Protect!]

The other kastelans echoed the call, mechanised voices resounding with their thunderous footfalls and the crackle of flames. The maniple pushed on, splitting their fire arcs to either side.

Alpha-Epsilon 6-Terror: >Right flank monitored.<

Beta-Zeta 6-Terror: >Left flank monitored.<

Undra: >The enemy are trapped. Expedite their termination.<

Schematic analysis showed that there was no route past the kastelans, or their companions in the adjoining passageway. Alpha 6-Terror broke into a lumbering run, reaching the junction a few strides ahead of the rest of the maniple. A hail of bolter fire met the kastelan, cracking against its battlehide.

+impactsdetected+initialisedamageassessment+surfacedamage-detected+appraisal=negligible+

+initiatecounterfire+

The phosphor blaster barked rounds into the closest renegade to the left as Alpha 6-Terror lumbered around the corridor junction. Flaming bullets shattered the Space Marine’s ablative pauldron, scattering chunks of charred ceramite. The weight of fire forced him back, shell after shell slamming into the exposed armour layer beneath.

Another threw himself forward, wielding a red-edged power sword. The blade bit into Alpha 6-Terror’s arm raised to ward away the blow, its crackling energy wave slicing down to the sub-systems within the structure of the limb.

+impactsdetected+initialisedamageassessment+internalrightarm-damagedetected+appraisal=non-critical+redundancysystemactivated+

Alpha 6-Terror punched with its other hand but the Space Marine was already ducking beneath the blow. The fist slammed into the wall with a burst of crackling power, leaving a crater in the plastered ferrocrete.

+impactsdetected+initialisedamageassessment+internalleftlegdamagedetected+appraisal=acute/temporary+

The kastelan stepped back to give itself more room to attack once more, bringing a bulky forearm down onto the backpack of the Space Marine as he tried to dodge again, dragging his blade free of the gash it had cut into the robot’s thigh armour. Even the superhuman body and reinforced battleplate was insufficient guard against the raw strength of the kastelan. The backpack sheared away from the rest of the armour, staggering the Space Marine against the wall. Alpha 6-Terror’s other fist drove directly into the faceplate of the renegade, driving the crested helm into the wall. Ceramite cracked. As did the bone within.

The snarl of powerfists and roar of phosphor blasters engulfed the junction as the other kastelans charged past.

+threatlevelsignificant+targetsurvivaldataunknown+ensuretermination+

Alpha 6-Terror buried its fingers into the remnants of the Space Marine’s skull and dragged the bloody mess across the wall. With its other hand gripping the plastron of the war-plate, the kastelan ripped free the remains, bringing a portion of severed spine away with the head.

+enemylifesignszero+

Releasing its grip, Alpha 6-Terror turned. Target identifiers danced across the swirl of bulky figures on the opposite side of the junction.

Undra [alert][alert][alert]

The signal sent a thrum of urgent cogitations crackling through Alpha 6-Terror, shunting aside secondary datastreams to focus the kastelan’s attention. For a split second the robot hesitated, unsure what to do.

The emergency transmission from the datasmith started to fade. With empathic threat signals ripping like panic through its systems, Alpha 6-Terror scoured the corridor with every sensor, seeking the tech-priest. It located a body slumped against the wall behind Beta 6-Terror, the marks of a chainblade raked across sternum and abdomen. Glittering scales spotted with red littered the deck around the tech-priest.

A sense of damning mission failure trembled the kastelan’s processes until it detected a faint flicker of life signs.

Undra [alert][alert][threat][terminal]

Through the press of armoured combatants the kastelan’s visual systems detected one of the two surviving Heretic Astartes raising a bolt pistol. The weapon was not directed at the robot bearing down upon the squad leader but aimed at the wounded datasmith.

+commanderterminalevent+extremeintervention+

Alpha 6-Terror shouldered aside Zeta 6-Terror and hurled itself towards Datasmith Undra. It crashed heavily into the wall beside the afflicted tech-priest, a flare of warnings coursing through its system from the impact.

Alpha 6-Terror called out to the rest of the maniple as it lunged.

>Destroy!<

Bolts sparked against the battlehide of its back, monitoring systems following their progress from the lower lumbar region to the left shoulder. Converging phosphor rounds from the rest of the maniple seemed to pick up the Space Marine and hurl him down the corridor, trailing fire like a meteor. The fusillade was continued by Delta 6-Terror and Gamma 6-Terror arriving from the opposite direction. Their fist-mounted blasters glowed hot with discharge as they continued to pound shells into the broken remains of the Space Marine, advancing steadily as they did so.

Undra [alert / terminal / threat / sanctuary]

Alpha 6-Terror manoeuvred its form to shield the datasmith from further harm while Zeta 6-Terror tore apart the last heretic with its powerfists.

Undra [alert]: >Preservation inload.<

The gunfire had ceased, allowing Alpha 6-Terror to straighten. Pieces of bolter shrapnel and broken battlehide cascaded from its back. Metallic fingers scratched at the kastelan’s leg and it focused its visual surveyors on the datasmith. The tech-priest’s life signs were almost below detection and falling swiftly.

[Pulse rate below optimal survival levels. Brain activity diminished. Blood loss irrevocable.]

It noticed that the lower part of the face had been destroyed by the blow that had rent open Datasmith Undra’s torso. The tech-priest could not speak, each attempt ending only in a froth of blood from the savaged mandible.

Undra [alert / imperative /emphasis ]: >Preservation inload.<

Beta 6-Terror: >Datasmith is experiencing near-terminal event.<

Zeta 6-Terror [correction]: > Datasmith is experiencing terminal event not yet concluded.<

Beta 6-Terror [affirmative]

Delta 6-Terror: >Mission parameter remains. Destroy. Secure. Protect.<

The kastelans turned away, but the clink of metal on metal drew Alpha 6-Terror back to the dying tech-priest. Blood and gelatinous lubricant spilt from the grievous wound as Datasmith Undra heaved himself after the robot.

Undra [alert / imperative]: >Preservation inload.< [Emphasis] >Protect.<

Cogitators whirred as Alpha 6-Terror assimilated the change in data. Understanding trickled across its circuits and it deactivated a powerfist, extending the hand down towards the datasmith. A dataport clicked open between the chunky fingers. A mechadendrite tipped with a dataspike slithered from underneath Datasmith Undra’s robes, worming its way up the outstretched arm to Alpha 6-Terror’s hand. The robot stooped, bringing the dataport closer.

With a wheeze, the tech-priest summoned enough strength for a final effort. The dataspike rose like a serpent about to strike and then darted towards the kastelan’s fist, fitting into the dataport with a soft click.

+initiatepreservationinload+undraidentitymatrixinloaded+undrapoly-formatinloaded+undrasecdonarydatainload+undraarchivestorage-inload+

The digital essence of the tech-priest flowed like electricity through cables, flooding every part of the robot’s artificial nervous system. Datastreams slipped alongside engagement protocols and defensive posture equations, nestling roots into logic circuits like fast-growing vines. So great was the accumulation of data that had been Undra that it required all of Alpha 6-Terror’s primary system space simply to store it. Temporary programmes cycled into dormancy to divert processor power so that some animus could return to the spirit of Datasmith Undra.

{I persevere!}

[Integrated noospheric communication. Query?]

{My soul is within your body, Alpha 6-Terror. You have no noospheric broadcast system so I must communicate via your internal systems.}

[Knowledge input accepted. Continuing with primary battle objectives. Destroy. Secure. Protect.]

{No! You must protect me, even in post-material form.}

[Protect. Yes. Datasmith Undra is protected within my systems and battlehide.]

{You need to return to the Orphic banks of the metempsykoza so that my animus can be made safe while a new material form is created.}

[Protect.]

{The Space Marines are between us and the metempsykoza. I need you to lead the maniple back to the shrine chamber.}

[Command input accepted.]

Alpha 6-Terror started after its companions who had moved back into the main arterial corridor seeking fresh foes. The kastelan detected the pulse of recalibrating sensors, sweeping the vicinity for life signs, gunfire and other indicators of hostile presence.

Alpha 6-Terror [imperative]: >Protect. Datasmith Undra has inloaded his animus to my systems. The maniple must return to the shrine chamber.]

Beta-Gamma-Delta-Epsilon-Zeta 6-Terror [negative]

Alpha 6-Terror [imperative]: >Datasmith Undra commands that we return to the shrine chamber.<

Beta-Gamma-Delta-Epsilon 6-Terror [nominate]: >Zeta 6-Terror focal.<

Zeta 6-Terror: >Noospheric authorisation required. Current command parameters are to destroy, secure and protect.<

Alpha 6-Terror: >Noospheric authorisation impossible.< [emphasis] <We must protect Datasmith Undra.<

Zeta 6-Terror [negative]: >Primary mission is to destroy. Secondary mission is to secure. Tertiary mission is to protect. Active enemies detected in the vicinity. Destruction protocols must be followed.<

The other kastelans turned away and stomped down the corridor, heading in the direction of the sound of gunfire. Alpha 6-Terror watched them go, lacking the means to change their dominant command.

[Maniple re-task attempt failed.]

{You did what you could, Alpha 6-Terror. There appears to be no immediate threat in the area. We should wait here for reinforcement.}

[Negative. Last strategic update demonstrates enemy making progress towards the shrine chamber. If it falls, the metempsykoza ports will be denied. Protection requires that the shrine chamber is secured. Securing the shrine chamber requires potential occupying foes to be destroyed. Protocols restored. Protect. Secure. Destroy.]

Having resolved the programme conflict, Alpha 6-Terror identified the shortest route back to the shrine chamber. It took them directly across the floor of the atrium, past some of the thickest fighting.

{You must avoid all potential threats! Destruction of you is the death of me. Avoid conflict when and where possible, Alpha 6-Terror.}

[Combat parameter input accepted.]

+aggressionvaluezeroed+tacticalawareness=cautionary+reevaluate-objectiveroute+

Charting a more circumspect course across the akropoliz, Alpha 6-Terror plotted a path underneath the main battery and down a secondary access corridor.

[Impossible to predict all enemy movements. Probability of enemy encounters rated as high, Datasmith Undra.]

{Then let us pray to the Omnissiah to guide our steps and your weapons.}

+initiatefaithmode+machinegodconnect+uploadpetition+

Incoming threat warnings almost overloaded Alpha 6-Terror’s tactical protocols. Raking volleys of fire from two Space Marines holding a chamber ahead combined with the thrum of an autocannon pounding shells into the kastelan’s flank from a gallery across the broad hall.

It was an empty skitarii drill chamber, large enough for thirty soldiers to practise their close-quarters techniques. The broad floor was broken by mock buildings and low obstacles, the walls lined with empty weapons racks and open lockers. The schematic of the akropoliz informed Alpha 6-Terror that the door ahead where the Heretic Astartes held out led to an annex just above the shrine chamber. A functioning conveyor within the antechamber could take them down to the lower deck.

They were almost at the objective.

+damageassessment+appraisal=armourcriticallydegraded+

{You must seek cover, Alpha 6-Terror.}

The robot’s self-preservation routines were sparse, and entirely unsuited to the role of protecting the digital spirit now housed within its artificial body. It loosed a short burst of fire from the phosphor blaster, forcing the renegades back through the door by which they had entered. At the same time, the kastelan turned and strode beneath the roof of a plascrete house, sheltered briefly from the ire of the heavy gunner. A fresh fusillade rocked the flimsy roof, several projectiles punching holes in the mock tiles to slam into the metal-sheeted floor.

+ammunitionwarning+phosphorblasterammunitionlevelsdepleted+requestreload+

There were no supply servitors to hand. No tech-priests either. The few faithful combatants they had encountered had either died shortly after, or been moving to other parts of the akropoliz.

The nearness of the mission objective set off a cascade of routines that heightened the kastelan’s aggression values. Abandoning any notion of a defensive posture, the robot burst through the wall of the fake dwelling, firing the last score of rounds from the phosphor blaster at the Space Marine on the gallery above. The welter of fire cracked open his breastplate, toppling him backwards into the wall as Alpha 6-Terror broke into a lumbering run.

Rather than be trapped in the smaller antechamber, the last two renegades broke into the drill hall, the fire of their bolters hammering at the broken leg armour of the kastelan in an attempt to bring down the mechanical behemoth. Splitting to either side, they used their speed to circle around the charging automaton, keeping well out of range of its devastating fists.

{Secure! Protect!}

Datasmith Undra’s urging intercepted Alpha 6-Terror’s assault programme just as the kastelan was about to veer towards one of the Space Marines. Reminded of its principle duty, the robot ploughed on, ignoring the bolts striking sparks from its back as it plunged through the door.

+damageassessment+appraisal=functionaldorsalloss=systemfailure-imminent+

The fresh peril warnings brought the kastelan to a halt just inside the antechamber, turning thicker armour towards the precise bursts of fire that chased it through the door. Cracks lengthened across the armourplas of its surveyor dome, threatening to shatter the cover and expose the sensor devices within.

It raised its hands, improvising a shield with the energy field that crackled around its powerfists. More bolt detonations engulfed the doorway with yellow flames and showers of razor-edged metal.

The firing ceased.

Alpha 6-Terror left its hands covering its sensor dome, expecting the fusillade to recommence. A routine energy spike through the robot’s auditory sensor units detected the thud of metal on the stone behind. Unable to turn its visual sensors for a positive identification, Alpha 6-Terror tried to deduce the nature of the newcomer with heat and sound probes. The datasmith gave voice to the returning signals, sharing the same cortex pathways that transmitted them to the kastelan’s neural centre.

{Large, heat source, radioactive cell. Power surge!}

[Space Marine]

Alpha 6-Terror stumbled and turned, ungainly in its haste to face the new threat. A blaze of shells streamed past, out through the door. Simultaneously, the kastelan registered the impact of solid shot on Heretic Astartes power armour and the towering form that occupied most of the antechamber. It stood high on four jointed legs, several combat blades gleaming on limbs from its underside while a twin-barrelled serpentine and a rotary heavy stubber flanked an insectoid head.

A pulse of noospheric power shook the kastelan, far stronger than anything from Datasmith Undra. Instantly authority-recognition circuits quivered under the identifier pulse of Magos Dominus Exasas, overall commander of the defence force of the Casus Belli.

Phosphor shells from the serpentine joined the next heavy stubber fusillade, and among their roar the Magos Dominus reached out a noospheric contact.

Exasas: >Enemy forces are converging on the akropoliz atrium. All defence elements are required to resist the attack< [inquiry]>Why are you not with your maniple, Alpha 6-Terror?<

Alpha 6-Terror: >I am conveying the spirit of Datasmith Undra to the metempsykoza following emergency preservation inloading.<

Exasas [affirmative]

The huge battle-form advanced, revealing a squad of skitarii behind coming out of the conveyor. The Magos Dominus strode into the drill hall without further comment, the skitarii following swiftly. Alpha 6-Terror watched them dash across the hall and exit at the far end, their commander following a few seconds later.

The departure of the Magos Dominus left an absence in the noospheric conductors of the kastelan, approximating sadness.

[I am needed elsewhere. Destroy. Secure. Protect.]

{You are built to last beyond one battle, Alpha 6-Terror. Your task is to sustain me for future service to the Machine-God.}

The kastelan considered this.

[What is the consequence of failure?]

{I do not understand the question, Alpha 6-Terror.}

[If I should fail to reach the metempsykoza, what will be the consequences?]

{My machine-spirit will not be replaced in a new form and I will die.}

[What does it mean to die?]

{Death. To be dead. The cessation of physical activity.}

[You have already ceased physical activity. Are you dead?]

{The cessation of physical activity and conscious thought.}

Alpha 6-Terror turned away from the door, lining up to enter the conveyor on the other side of the small chamber. Even as its visual sensors focused on the open cage, impaired by the cracked dome and a visible static of other damaged systems, crackling audio senses detected an unfamiliar noise. It was a low drone that started to rise in pitch and volume.

Rotating its upper half back towards the doorway, Alpha 6-Terror spied one of the Heretic Astartes on the balcony where earlier the autocannon-armed renegade had stood. The warrior’s armour was even more outlandish than that of his deceased companions, sporting extravagant fluted vanes from its backpack, a spiralling horn adorning the forehead of his helm.

The weapon the warrior carried matched nothing in Alpha 6-Terror’s databanks, being somewhat like a lascannon held in an underslung position, but with far more cables, grilles and a grotesque leering faze for a muzzle. The air around the Space Marine throbbed with bass notes beneath detection range, sending pulses of plaster dust dancing in complex sworls across the renegade’s garish war-plate.

As the sonic signature started to fluctuate, the changing pitch triggered a databank activation. Replaying the sound imparted by Datasmith Undra during the awakening was a ninety-four per cent match.

Correlations poured into the self-security protocols, alerting Alpha 6-Terror to the presence of an armour-piercing weapon. Too late, the robot tried to take evasive action, stepping back from the door just as the Heretek’s weapon reached activation intensity.

Overlapping sonic waves smashed into the kastelan like a physical projectile, punching through the robot’s upper-right thorax armour.

+damageassessment+appraisal=criticalmultiplesystemsfailure=shut-downimminent+

Preservation routines coruscated through the robot’s artificial thoughts but power loss to the lower torso rendered it immobile as the Space Marine aimed another shot. Convoluted sound waves rippled across the hall again, ripping away Alpha 6-Terror’s left arm. The power field within the detached fist left a gouge across the floor where it skidded.

Damage alerts were now a constant flashing through the kastelan, a digital shriek that almost overwhelmed all effort at cogitation. Shutting down tertiary systems, Alpha 6-Terror boosted power to the primary cogitators, giving itself enough presence of mind to fall out of the way as another destructive burst of sound erupted into the antechamber.

Through the cacophony of echoes resounding through the hall the kastelan detected a short, sharper noise of gunfire. Through flares of multi-coloured sparks that flitted across the visual interpreters of its dome, it locked onto the vague humanoid shapes at the other end of the drill hall.

{Praise the Omnissiah, the skitarii have returned!}

The tech-priest’s assessment was correct. Concerted weapons fire from the Omnissiah’s soldiers drove the Space Marine back from the gallery. Their Alpha signalled for them to withdraw, perhaps seeking a route to the upper level to hunt down their elusive enemy.

[Motive sources compromised, Datasmith Undra. Unable to reach the shrine chamber.]

Alpha 6-Terror tried again to divert energy to its legs but there was no feedback at all. The shot that had lanced through its upper torso had severed the main conduits between its cortical systems and the rest of its armoured body. It was, for the time being, paralysed.

+damageassessment+appraisal=corticallifesupportciritical=organic-death=300seconds+

The robot was, in very real terms, dying. Though its body was built by the genius of the Omnissiah’s servants, its essence was housed in an organic cortex deep within its armoured frame. From this stemmed all of its thoughts and in the cells was contained the robot’s soul.

[Total system failure is imminent, Datasmith Undra. I have… failed.]

The incumbent tech-priest did not respond.

[I have a question, Datasmith Undra.]

{Ask your question, Alpha 6-Terror.}

[What is death?]

{I told you before, it is the cessation of physical activity and consciousness.}

[When I am dormant between awakenings I am neither physically active nor conscious. Am I dead during those periods?]

{You cannot remember it but there is physical activity in your cortical stem during dormancy. Enough neurons are kept active to constitute life.}

[I still do not understand death. What is the consequence of death?]

{The cessation of physical interaction and mental capacity. Only your soul will continue.}

[How? Without cortical cells to contain it, how does a soul continue?]

{We are all part of the Cosmic Engine, Alpha 6-Terror. We continue within the works of the Machine-God.}

Alpha 6-Terror tried to comprehend this but one by one its cogitator banks failed, its defensive systems attempting to conserve power for the cortical life support web. Extraneous sensor suites ended, bringing silence and darkness. Eventually even the kinaesthetic circuits and self-awareness modules would fail and Alpha 6-Terror would no longer recognise itself as an entity.

Determined to understand the consequence of its failure, the kastelan mustered enough power to override its standard shutdown sequence, stubbornly clinging to conscious reasoning at the expense of exterior awareness. It was left in a cocoon of sensory nothingness with only the thoughts of its master to intrude upon its cogitations.

[How can the dead sustain the great work? How will we remain part of the Cosmic Engine?]

{A good question, Alpha 6-Terror. Spiritual inertia is the answer. Each of us during our life creates movement in the Cosmic Engine, setting into motion consequences. As a legacy of the movement other interactions are initiated, other relationships made possible, a cascade effect that can travel the length and breadth of the Cosmic Engine for eternity. Our existence is energy, Alpha 6-Terror, the particles of our form only temporarily assembled in their current configuration. Form is temporary, soul is permanent. The enemies you slew today will no longer threaten the Cosmic Engine with their perversions. Their destruction has saved the lives of other servants of the Omnissiah to go on and create works in the name of the Machine-God. The Cosmic Engine continues to turn because of your efforts, because of the legacy of your actions.}

[Yet I have failed in the mission to protect.]

{You have. It is a truth that life always ends in a last failure, for even the greatest magos sustained for thousands of years cannot outrun the entropy of existence forever. All things end, and all lives cease with defeat at the hands of mortality. That is why soul is greater than flesh and intellect.}

Alpha 6-Terror wanted to respond but its language processors failed. It was left with only vague coherence for several seconds, and then knew nothing.

The crackle of externally induced activity pulsed through the cortical stem of Alpha 6-Terror. A melange of sound, colour and sensation swirled together, their suddenness initiating a sequence of alarm signals that threatened to overload the newly resuscitated systems.

{Are you aware, Alpha 6-Terror?}

The kastelan could not answer, unsure of the logic process that had brought it to the question.

{I can sense your cortical acuity, Alpha 6-Terror.}

[I cannot move.]

{You do not have physical control. Your motor systems have been slaved to my command.}

Alpha 6-Terror tried to run diagnostic procedures but there was no response from any of its regulatory processors.

[Full systems failure. Explain.]

{You saved me, Alpha 6-Terror. Before suffering total shutdown you diverted some of your energy to maintain my digital matrix in your systems. With the last of your power you tried to sustain me. And you succeeded. You accomplished the mission. While we both suffered sensory death, the skitarii returned and conveyed us to the shrine chamber.}

[The ex-load of your digital presence has not yet occurred.]

{It cannot, Alpha 6-Terror. In preserving my soul patterns in your systems you imprinted me onto your neural and cortical circuitry. There is no process that will remove me without wiping out your higher functioning state.}

[I… do not understand.]

The very concept of a self-contained identity caused logic loops within Alpha 6-Terror’s cogitations. That it could self-reference was a novelty that was hard to process.

{If I leave this form, your spirit pattern will cease to exist. You will suffer perma-death.}

Once again the idea of self forced its way through any logical analysis. The thought of continuation without the guidance of Datasmith Undra required a dramatic dedication of cogitating power. The simplest process became hard to undertake, all systems diverted to the singular analysis of an existence without the datasmith. The cascading negative reactions had to be halted.

[I… am secondary to your survival.]

{Your sacrifice is not required, Alpha 6-Terror. Our body will be upgraded with relevant noospheric systems so that I can continue to operate as datasmith to the maniple. You will not control any motor functions unless my soul pattern is somehow incapacitated, but your spirit will live on within me, as I live within your form.}

[Indivisible.]

{Yes, Alpha 6-Terror. The Cosmic Engine turns and we shall continue upon it together.}

[By your command.]

SAND LORDS

Peter McLean

Captain Amareo Thrax
The deep deserts
Marbas II
Now

The Chimera was dying.

Thrax could sense it from his position in the open turret of his command tank. He could smell the reek of over-burned promethium that told him the tracked carrier’s fuel injection system was shot, could hear the grinding of the rear differential that made it clear there wasn’t any point in even attempting a field repair. It was dying, and soon it would be as lost as the rest of his armoured column was.

When it finally expired, that would leave him the one Leman Russ he rode in, and two surviving Chimeras. Not a good outcome from an armoured recon force that had started out twenty-eight vehicles strong. All the same, he gave thanks. That any of them had got out at all spoke of the Emperor’s blessing on the Tallarn 236th Sand Lords, and the grim wisdom of the colonel’s plan.

Thrax turned his face to the pitiless sky of Marbas II. The sun beat down like the Emperor’s wrath, scouring everything beneath its glare. All around was scorched sand, wind-whipped dunes and distant plumes of smoke rising from the ruined vehicles Thrax had left behind him. Marbas II was a baking, blasted wasteland of dust and misery. It felt like home to the men and women of the Tallarn 236th, but even they couldn’t live without shade or water. There was none of the first to be had, and they were getting dangerously low on the second.

‘Another reason why we lived underground on Tallarn,’ Thrax muttered to himself.

He pulled his shemagh, the traditional tribal headscarf worn by every Tallarn desert raider, tighter over his nose and mouth. It did little to shut out the promethium reek of the dying Chimera, but at least it kept the flying dust out his face as the Leman Russ ground up over a dune and down the far side, its tracks kicking up sand dervishes in its wake.

‘I’m losing her, captain,’ a voice cracked in his vox-bead. That was Duf’adar Al-Rabbam, who had the controls of the ailing Chimera. ‘Every rune on my screen is red. She’s not going to make it more than another mile.’

Thrax could only nod to himself, and accept the Emperor’s will.

‘So be it,’ he said. ‘We’ll stop in the next depression. Decamp your men into the other two Chimeras.’

‘But…’

‘I realise that the loss of your holy war machine pains you, Al-Rabbam,’ he said, ‘but there’s nothing to be done. The machine-spirit gave its all in the flight from Iblis Amrargh. We all did.’

Behind them, the howling started again.

Then

Iblis Amrargh.

A backwater Imperial shrine city overrun with orks, ransacked and all but destroyed by the foul xenos.

The sole reason the Sand Lords were on Marbas II at all.

They had stormed down the desert highway in a column twenty-eight strong, sixteen Leman Russ main battle tanks and twelve Chimeras full of murderous infantry to follow in their wake and mop up any remaining opposition after the armour had reaped its terrible corpse harvest. They came to reclaim the khalig of the great fallen Tallarn hero, General Al-Fallan, taken as a trophy in battle by the orks. The sword was a symbol of the general’s leadership, an inspirational relic of his heroism even in death. Reclaim the khalig, that was the rallying cry that drove Thrax’s men and women into battle against the xenos horde. That was what he had told them they were there for.

It was even partly true.

Captain Amareo Thrax had been standing up on his seat in the open turret of his command tank, Rage of Tallarn, his own khalig – three feet of wickedly curved, gold-chased steel – clutched in his fist. It had a pommel in the shape of a lion’s head and a cutting edge a single molecule thick, the blade catching the sunlight and calling for blood in the Emperor’s name.

Iblis Amrargh was ahead of them, the dust-choked road into the city closed by a rough, handmade barricade of old promethium drums, barbed wire and salvaged flakboard. Shots blasted from behind the obstruction, but Thrax ignored them as they impacted harmlessly against the hull of his tank. The swarm of gretchin manning the barricade lacked heavy weapons, and their resistance was pitiful. A shot screamed past his head and he ignored that too, laughing with contempt. They were nothing in the face of the Divine Emperor’s holy war machines.

He raised his khalig and brought it sharply down to signal the tank charge.

‘For the Emperor!’ Thrax bellowed, and his tank’s cannon roared and demolished the crude barricade with a single shot.

It exploded in a cloud of shrapnel and smoke and bloody body parts, and the crude guns of the enemy fell silent. Rage of Tallarn ground over what was left, pulping bodies under its churning treads. The column followed, spreading out in a litter-strewn square with their turrets traversed to cover all the angles.

Iblis Amrargh was a ruined place where now-derelict Imperial buildings sweltered endlessly under the merciless sun. The orks had stripped and scavenged everything worth having, and left the rest to collapse. The only structure of any note was the mighty cathedral that reared above the centre of the city, its vast, twisted gothic spire stabbing into the wide blue sky. That was their objective, some three miles deep into the city.

‘Set course for the cathedral,’ Thrax said into the vox. ‘There the xenos have made their stronghold, and that is where we shall find the khalig of General Al-Fallan.’

Thrax took an auspex bearing then formed up his column again, leading them down a wide but rubble-strewn thoroughfare between crumbling buildings. They took a turn and were met with another crudely made barrier constructed from rusty scrap metal and old chunks of broken armourglass. There was a heavy autocannon of some kind concealed behind it, snarling and spitting rounds from a flickering cone of muzzle flash.

Shots rattled against the hulls of the lead tanks, chipping flakes from their paint.

Ork voices bellowed primitive gibberish from behind their roaring weapon.

They were xenos filth, Thrax reflected, nothing more than beasts in the eye of the divine God-Emperor. They deserved no mercy, and from the Tallarn guns they would receive nothing but death eternal.

‘Gorebrakah Urlakk!’ the orks bellowed. ‘Gorebrakah Urlakk!’

The very name made Thrax’s guts twist. The ork warboss was well known amongst the ranks of the Astra Militarum, but still, hearing its name shouted with such reverence felt like a blasphemy. Thrax’s hatred for the xenos beasts reached new heights, and he raised his khalig once more.

The Tallarn tanks went through the fortification like a chainsword through rotten meat.

The air was thick with the smoke of discharging cannons and promethium exhaust, and the screams of dying animals. It was music to Thrax’s ears.

Now

Al-Rabbam’s Chimera finally died halfway down the last dune before the designated changeover point at the bottom of the depression.

There was no tearing explosion, no awful grinding shriek of seized gears. It just surrendered and died, a pathetic wreck in the choking desert sands.

Thrax turned in his turret and looked over his shoulder, glaring at the failed machine through his heavily tinted wind goggles. He raised a hand to further shade his eyes, cursing under his breath as it started to tremble once more. The constant howling had shredded his nerves to breaking point, and now the sight of the motionless Chimera moved him to anger. He clenched his fist, partly in rage and partly to hide the shaking of his hand.

To have come so far, only to fail now.

It was useless.

Weak.

Unacceptable.

‘Al-Rabbam!’ he voxed angrily. ‘Your machine has stopped.’

‘I told you, captain,’ the other man said. ‘It’s had it. There’s nothing more I can do.’

Thrax wanted to spit in disgust, but that would have been a waste of moisture. He had imposed full water discipline three days ago, and if nothing else he had to lead by example. In the deep desert you wasted nothing, spit and urine included. Any and all moisture could be reprocessed by the reclamation filters in the machines. It wasn’t good but it was better than nothing, and it could be hoarded in preparation for the worst tests the Emperor had to throw at them. It could be drunk, if the need arose. There was one thing every Tallarn desert raider knew: if it was a choice between drinking your own urine or dying, you drink deeply and thank the Emperor for the richness of His bounty.

‘Get the men out,’ Thrax snapped. ‘Vehicle transfer, right now. Then mine it to blow. We leave nothing for the enemy who follows us. Nothing.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Al-Rabbam growled back through the vox, but his voice was full of bitter resentment.

Of course it was. The men were all bitter, after what had happened.

Bitter, and terrified.

Then

Iblis Amrargh was a killing place.

The Sand Lords lowered their dozer blades and rolled through the blasted remains of the pitiful barricade, the tracks of their holy war machines clanking as they ground on into the city. Resistance was heavy but ineffectual, small-arms fire rattling uselessly off their armour. The tanks’ sponson-mounted heavy bolters tore into the surrounding buildings, pulverising walls and collapsing archways into clouds of grit and dust, silencing the ork gunners as the column rolled uncaring past their positions and onwards towards the looming bulk of the cathedral.

They swept out into another square, crunching over rubble as they went. Thrax’s lip curled with contempt as he saw how the orks had defiled this once great Imperial city. Their crude runes were daubed on walls, and there were obvious signs of them fighting amongst themselves. One day they would wipe each other out, Emperor willing, Thrax thought, reassuring himself of the ultimate superiority of the Imperium over these bestial savages.

And even over the greatest foe, who Thrax alone knew lay waiting for them in the deep tunnels far beneath the cathedral ahead. There, too, they were ultimately superior.

They had to be, surely?

Of course they were. There could be no room for doubt, no chinks in his steadfast armour of faith.

His faith in the Emperor was strong, and the Emperor protected the faithful.

Until they reached that desecrated, once holy monument, they were free to kill and kill and kill again in the Emperor’s name. Afterwards, Thrax was all too aware, it might be a different matter. All he could do was put his faith in the will of the Emperor and in his colonel’s plan, and do his duty.

Yes, there would be sacrifices, Thrax understood that, and he regretted it. His troops, his whole company, were like family to him, but still the Emperor expected him to do his duty. No war was won without cost, and it was the very purpose of the Astra Militarum to die in His name and His service.

‘His will be done,’ Thrax murmured to himself. ‘They will find their reward when they stand at the Emperor’s side.’

They crunched ever onwards, grinding over anything and everything that lay in their path, as was their divine right. The armoured column was unstoppable, a manifestation of the Emperor’s iron will even in this forsaken place. Nothing could stand before them. Nothing could…

The plasma blast vaporised Chimera Four, Desert Stormer, and every man in it before Captain Thrax even knew what was happening.

‘Return fire!’ he bellowed into the all-hands vox, spittle flying from his lips in his outraged fury. That had been Al-Nasir’s machine, and Al-Nasir had served under Thrax for eight Terran-standard years. For him to be taken so suddenly, without even the chance to go down fighting, was a bitter blow indeed.

Tank turrets traversed, hunting targets, but there was no movement to be seen. The plasma cannon could have been discharged from absolutely anywhere.

Everything looked the same, the dust-clogged streets and sun-baked buildings of Iblis Amrargh blending into a single despoiled vista of filth and hatred. There was no one in sight.

‘Shoot anything!’ Thrax screamed.

Weapons roared, the main cannons of the mighty Leman Russ battle tanks and the hull-mounted heavy bolters of the Chimeras. Buildings exploded in the face of the tanks’ fury, were chewed down by the sustained fire of the Chimeras.

The air filled with choking dust, with fire and the screams of the gretchin.

Thrax pulled the lever that dropped his command chair down into the turret of his tank, letting the hatch cover clang down above him and seal with a hiss of equalising pressure. The green light of the command vehicle’s interior washed over him.

‘Orders, sir?’ his driver, Trooper Kallan, asked, looking back over her shoulder at him.

They were Astra Militarum. What else was there?

‘Charge!’ Thrax roared.

Rage of Tallarn ripped forward, its wide tracks tearing chunks out of the road beneath it as it bellowed across the square with the column following in its wake. Thrax had his eye to the auspex, tracking heat signatures across the swarm of panicked xenos life that filled the crumbling buildings.

There was no sign of the plasma cannon, no residual thermal trace to tell him where the shot had come from. It was mobile, then, no doubt vehicle-mounted, and already gone. Any one of those life signs could be the heavy weapon’s spotter, but there was no way to tell which one. That made the solution simple.

Kill them all.

He put his eye to the auspex, green runes spiralling around the view in three dimensions as the wondrous machine factored compass-pattern analogues over the tank’s current heading, cross-referenced against elevation and wind shear.

‘Two point eight by nine two at five elevation,’ he told the gun layer. ‘High explosive.’

‘Sir,’ she said, working the crank as the loader heaved the heavy shell into the breech and slammed it shut behind him.

‘Ready, sir,’ the loader called out.

Thrax squinted into the auspex, gauging movement patterns. That cluster of heat signals – were they the regrouping orks of the plasma cannon crew, or just fleeing gretchin?

He cared not, they were xenos abominations one and all.

‘Fire!’

The gun roared, the breech kicking back with a bang and expelling the spent shell casing into the catch hopper with a reek of scorched brass and spent fyceline.

‘Load!’ Thrax ordered. ‘High explosive!’

The loader bent to his work, the sweat-slick muscles of his bare back flexing as he heaved the huge shell up and into the open breech. He clanged it shut with a grunt of satisfaction, and the layer grinned as she worked her crank.

‘Stay resolute!’ Thrax shouted into the vox-horn. ‘Did our noble General Al-Fallan falter before the xenos horde on Grennak? He did not! Even impaled with his own blade, he remained defiant to the last breath! In the general’s name and for his memory, fire!’

The building in front of them shattered as the huge shell tore into it, the core of high explosive detonating with the force of a hundred krak grenades. Dust washed over the tank in a huge cloud, blinding the entire column of vehicles behind it.

Answering fire slammed into their flanks, stubber rounds bouncing impotently off their heavy armour. There was no more plasma fire.

‘Make for the cathedral,’ Thrax ordered his tank commanders over the vox. ‘That’s what we’re here for. Reclaim the khalig! By fire group, break and advance. Forward, in the Emperor’s name!’

The column split with textbook precision, executing manoeuvres practised over and over again in the barren wastes of Tallarn itself. Thrax had three tanks and three Chimeras behind him, standard fire group pattern for a sweep-and-kill raid. He was going to run this operation by the book for as long as he could.

Now

‘Get aboard!’ Thrax shouted into his vox, watching the men and women from Al-Rabbam’s crippled Chimera jostle to find places in the other two remaining vehicles.

The simple fact was, there wasn’t enough space.

The dead Chimera was pouring thick, greasy smoke out of its engine vents now, and everyone had disembarked, but the other two carriers had been mostly full to start with anyway. They ended up with six infantry troopers behind them on foot, following in the dust-wake of the machines as they lurched and bucked over the dunes.

Towards the firebase.

Towards salvation.

Behind them, the abandoned Chimera exploded with a roar as the demolition mine detonated and blew it to shrapnel.

Those on foot fell gradually further and further behind.

Then

It didn’t go by the book.

For the book did not have a section on being vaporised by a plasma cannon.

Worthless, filthy creatures like gretchin shouldn’t have had a plasma weapon, and Thrax hadn’t expected any of the big orks to be around on the surface even if they did. Surely they would still be in the deep catacombs beneath the cathedral, too far below the surface for an orbital bombardment to reach them, gloating over their victory and dividing the spoils of General Al-Fallan’s army. The colonel’s briefing had told him to expect light infantry resistance until they reached the cathedral, nothing more than that. By the time the second tank went up in a flare of molten ceramite and purple lightning, Captain Thrax had to admit that perhaps that was so much wishful thinking. Orks were famous scavengers and thieves, after all, and it came to him then that perhaps the plasma weapon was one of those spoils. It sickened him to think of noble Imperial technology in the foul hands of the xenos, but such were the dishonourable abominations they faced. He regrouped his unit into a single column again, figuring there was better safety in numbers while the source of the murderous nuclear fire remained unknown.

‘Infantry, drop and disperse,’ he ordered into the vox. ‘Lieutenant Marhara, sweep your men through the advance positions. Find that cannon!’

‘Yes, sir,’ Marhara replied through his vox-bead.

The Chimeras halted in a defensive circle, their heavy bolters providing covering fire as they disgorged the infantry platoons into the city. Men ran doubled over, their long-barrelled lasguns held at the hip and their shemaghs flowing in the wind.

A heavy stubber opened up from somewhere, stitching a line of impact craters across the dust-choked road towards the running men. Two troopers dropped in sprays of blood as the hidden gunner found its range. The muzzle flash showed as a bright flare in Thrax’s auspex, coming from a high window almost directly ahead.

‘Zero point eight by zero one at nine elevation,’ Thrax snapped to his layer. ‘Fire!’

The gun roared, and the upper floor of the building exploded violently. The stubber fell silent. The loader grunted as he slammed a fresh shell home into the smoking breech.

Kill them all.

While they still could.

‘Form up,’ Thrax snarled into the vox. ‘Follow the infantry. Forward!’

The foot-soldiers were invisible now, the natural-born guerrilla troops of the Tallarn infantry already swarming through the maze of alleys and buildings ahead of the armoured column. A row of decrepit habs blew out in front of them as krak grenades made short work of the enemy resistance.

‘Clear,’ a voice crackled over the vox. ‘Column, proceed six eight by three. Advancing.’

‘Acknowledged,’ Thrax replied.

That was Duf’adar Al-Maddon, lead duf’adar of Alpha Platoon and one of the fiercest women Thrax had ever met. Company legend had it that Al-Maddon had been the youngest of her tribe ever to complete the sacred Trial of the Sands. For thirty days and thirty nights she had survived in the deep desert alone, with nothing but her knife and a canteen of water. When it was done she had not only returned to her people alive and well, but as tribute she had brought them the head of a huge sand raptor she had killed in single combat. There was strong magic in a sand raptor, the magic of the desert night, and that was a feat to tell tales of. She had been only eleven years old at the time, Terran standard. That was the company legend, and Thrax could well believe it.

‘Heavy activity ahead,’ Al-Maddon voxed back a few minutes later. ‘Recommend extreme caution. These aren’t gretchin.’

Thrax frowned. If what the colonel had told him was true, and he had no reason to doubt it, then the inner circle of orks at least would have access to the very best equipment and weapons they could ask for. Even including a plasma cannon, it seemed.

‘Anti-tank mines?’ he asked.

‘Hard to say, sir,’ Al-Maddon replied. ‘Perhaps–’

Her voice was cut off by a sudden burst of las-fire, followed by an explosion. Curses and screams crackled across the already distorted vox-link, Al-Maddon’s voice shouting orders over the confusion of gunfire and the roars of orks.

‘All units, activate your frag assault launchers,’ Thrax ordered his column. ‘Forward!’

Close urban battlefields were the very worst places for tanks to fight.

Tanks are designed to charge head-on into the enemy, to manoeuvre on open ground and use their speed and armour to the best advantage. Wedged into narrow streets like those of Iblis Amrargh, Thrax knew they were relatively easy prey for expendable troops like gretchin with krak grenades who were willing or forced to chance almost certain death to get close to the weak points where turrets joined hulls. Frag assault launchers helped level that terrain in the tankers’ favour. Thrax had insisted on them being fitted to his tanks for this mission, as well as the mighty dozer blades for clearing rubble, barricades and corpses.

They were halfway down the narrow street, closing on Al-Maddon’s last known position, when warning runes flashed up on the periphery of Thrax’s auspex. Orks, swarming up out of holes in the ground and charging the tanks with guns and grenades clutched in their huge paws. He reached out and slapped the frag assault launcher rune on his display.

Explosive fragmentation charges detonated along the sides of his tank’s track guards, blowing a barrage of shrapnel out in a great fan like the blast from a huge shot-cannon.

Red mist and strings of bright gore splattered the cratered walls to either side of the tank where the greenskins had been.

‘Forward,’ he snarled.

Now

The men and women on foot following the trail of the last tank and the two surviving Chimeras lived almost until nightfall.

That was when it caught up with them for the first time.

Thrax grit his teeth in rage as he heard the bellowing and howling behind them, now mingled with the first human screams. He could only close his ears to the shrieks as his exposed troops were martyred in the Emperor’s name.

‘Traverse turret!’ he roared at his layer. ‘Six point zero by nine one at zero elevation, fire!’

Thrax gave the order on pure instinct, realising its futility even as he spoke.

They were out of shells, and had been for some time.

‘I’m still out,’ his loader said. ‘I’ve got nothing left, sir.’

Thrax cursed, watching helplessly through the auspex as the horror that followed them tore his troops limb from limb.

‘Quickly, while it’s occupied with the bodies,’ he voxed to the other two remaining vehicles under his command. ‘Full speed, forward! Run!’

It pained him to his soul to leave them to die, but he had to do his duty above all else. His company, his family, had given their all for this mission, and he couldn’t let it fail now. He had to remain strong, to lead by example however ruthless it made him look. His remaining troops had to keep their faith in him, and in the mission, just a little longer. When it was done, then and only then would he allow himself to weep.

They churned on into the desert twilight, taking the chance their fallen comrades had bought with their lives.

Then

The resistance didn’t get really heavy until they were within sight of the cathedral. They were running low on frag charges by then, and at least three of the Chimeras were out of heavy bolter ammunition. Still, Thrax thought, they had left a bloody smear of carnage behind them for the last three miles. They re-embarked the infantry onto the Chimeras for the final assault.

The column was approaching the wide, open plaza before the rearing bulk of the cathedral when that thrice-damned plasma cannon opened up again and tore his rearguard into molten shreds.

‘Fire!’ he ordered. ‘Fire! Fire!’

The tanks opened up with wild abandon. In the absence of a firm target fix they were shooting in all directions at anything and everything, bringing buildings down in huge clouds of dust and rubble. A discharging plasma cannon should have lit up like a flare on Thrax’s auspex, but there was just… nothing. It was like being shot at by an atomic ghost.

It was like magic.

‘Why can’t we see it?’ Kallan shouted from her steering pit, cursing as the tank jolted over a mound of rubble. ‘I thought orks were too stupid to hide a plasma cannon from an Imperial auspex!’

Dammit, it was magic, some foul xenos sorcery, and that tested Thrax’s resolve more than any number of mortal foes could ever have hoped to do. Thrax didn’t fear men, however many of them there were. He trusted his machine and he trusted his troops and his training and the protection of the divine God-Emperor to see him through against the enemies of mankind, but he couldn’t fight magic. He refused to admit that in front of the troops, however. Mention magic and there would be panic.

‘Perhaps we have underestimated them,’ Thrax said grimly. ‘Gorebrakah didn’t rise so high amongst the xenos beasts by being a fool.’

He charged what was left of the column out of the deathtrap maze of streets and onto the plaza, and a second plasma beam struck down from the heights of the cathedral and turned number four tank into a miniature sun.

‘Armour-piercing!’ Thrax ordered. ‘For the general! For the khalig! Fire!’

The tank’s gun spat holy death into the heavens, the shaped charge of the armour-piercing round cutting its way through the sandstone walls of the cathedral and blowing a fountain of molten rock into the air high above them.

‘Armour-piercing, load!’

Purple light ripped down once more, and a Chimera went up with a howl of superheated air and dying human torment.

‘Fire!’

The tank kicked and roared again, and now the other Leman Russ units in Thrax’s column had found his mark and were also belching stone-burning armour-piercing rounds into the sky. The twisted spire of the cathedral finally began to sag and melt, and the plasma cannon fell silent at last as lava streamed down the flying buttresses of the once holy building like molten tears.

Thrax clenched his teeth in rage. He was destroying a magnificent monument to the Emperor. Curse them! Curse the foul xenos beasts that had so defiled this holy place and forced him to such extremes. If he could burn every ork in the galaxy he would gladly do so, and count himself blessed to give his life for the privilege of doing it in the Emperor’s name.

‘Forward,’ Thrax snarled, all too aware that the other murderous weapon was still at large somewhere behind them in the poisoned rat runs of Iblis Amrargh.

The great doors of the cathedral were fully thirty feet high and twenty wide, more than large enough to drive a tank through. Thrax put another armour-piercing shell through them, blowing the priceless, thousand-year-old carved hardwood into cinders, then did just that.

There was a prize inside, a prize and a great xenos evil, and the Astra Militarum were coming for them both.

In the Emperor’s name.

The tank bellowed down the knave of the cathedral and into a cavernous central chamber, the vaulted stone ceiling lost in the gloom above. Sunlight slanted down through high stained-glass windows, catching motes of ancient dust floating in the air. The armoured vehicles despoiled the space in seconds, their tracks tearing up the inlaid mosaic marble floor while their engines belched promethium fumes into the incense-scented air.

Thrax threw back his hatch and elevated his command chair, taking a great breath of exhaust smoke and fyceline. It smelled like victory.

The profaned high altar was on the far side of the vast chamber, half a mile or more away. The huge gold aquila had been smashed aside and the great stone slab of the altar daubed with foul ork glyphs, but even from his tank Thrax could see the colonel’s prize flashing in the light of the Chimeras’ search beams.

The khalig of General Al-Fallan.

A talisman so powerful, so glorious, he would have been prepared to risk his entire company to retrieve it even without the colonel’s plan. Gorebrakah himself had slain the great and noble General Al-Fallan back on Grennak, disembowelling him with his own blade. Thrax would not, could not, allow the last blood shed with that storied weapon to be the general’s own. No, it must be reclaimed, and used in the service of the Emperor once more. It must be. The honour of Tallarn depended on it.

Even so, there was more to this mission than just the khalig. The colonel and the high command above him played a long game, and of all their company only Thrax knew what it was.

Now

The second time it caught up with them, they ran away.

Thrax knew it stuck in the throats of his brave, proud warriors to flee rather than fight, but what else could they do? With no tank ammunition left, they had no choice. Bolters alone wouldn’t touch the horror that followed them.

They heard it coming, its howls and the grinding of its gears drowning out even the roar of their own machines as it bellowed in fury behind them, its voice echoing in the still desert night.

‘Forward!’ Thrax shouted into the vox, kicking Kallan to force every ounce of power she could out of Rage of Tallarn’s labouring engines. ‘On, on!’

‘Sir,’ Al-Maddon’s voice crackled across the vox from her place in Chimera Two, ‘we should turn and fight!’

‘We can’t fight that, duf’adar,’ Thrax said, his voice almost gentle for once.

He understood her concern. She was a true-blood warrior of Tallarn; of course she wanted to fight it. She was also, he realised, too naïve to rise any higher in the command structure than she already had. Sometimes, Thrax reflected, a commander has to acknowledge when something is simply impossible. Killing the thing behind them with only sponson-mounted heavy bolters and two Chimeras full of infantry was utterly impossible.

Trust the colonel, he told himself. Trust the plan.

Trust in the Emperor, and pray.

Then

‘Forward,’ Thrax said. ‘Slowly, now. There could be traps.’

Slowly might help an experienced tank driver spot a weak area in the floor and avoid a deadfall, but it doesn’t spot a concealed melta bomb.

Tank Six, Blood of the Eagle, went up like an inferno, and the flying molten slag of its dying burned straight through Chimera Nine, Sand’s Wrath, and killed the entire complement of infantry and crew it was carrying as superheated overpressure blew the machine apart.

Thrax swore fluently into the vox and ordered a full halt. They were maybe halfway between the entrance and the altar. They hadn’t seen a living thing since they breached the cathedral, and yet he was already down two more vehicles.

‘Infantry, disembark,’ he ordered. ‘Full dispersal, maximum caution. I want this whole place swept for more traps.’

He watched them pour out of the remaining Chimeras, then after a moment, he grabbed a mobile vox-bead and stuffed it into his ear, and climbed out of his turret to join them, his khalig in one hand and his precious bolt pistol in the other.

‘Sir!’ his layer exclaimed, but he ignored her and slithered down the side of the tank’s turret and onto the track guards, then swung his legs over and jumped onto the cracked and torn ruin of the ornate marble floor below.

The khalig was the prize. It was the lure. It was…

The chamber flashed with purple light, followed by the shriek and searing heat of a plasma cannon discharging. Thrax threw himself to the ground with the infantry troops as he saw the hindmost tank of his column evaporate, then the next. Something behind them howled with a killing fury, its awful voice reverberating around the vast chamber as it advanced through the swirling clouds of dust and molten metal. It had a huge, defiled plasma weapon clutched in its fists. The slanting shafts of light from the high windows caught the enormous bulk of its shoulders and illuminated tusks fully two feet long that jutted from its massive jaw.

It was the biggest ork Thrax had ever seen in his life, encased in heavy armour and spitting murderous hatred with every step it took.

Simple, animal fear swept over Thrax at the sight of the monster. Humankind seemed so frail in the face of something so huge, so primal and savage. How could he hope to fight something like that? He cursed himself for his weakness, grasped for his faith in the Emperor and clung to it in sudden desperation. The Emperor protects the faithful, he told himself.

The ork charged, bellowing, into the nave, the plasma weapon in its hands belching death that consumed another Leman Russ in an expanding ball of superheated nuclear destruction.

Stay resolute, Thrax screamed at himself. Embrace the burden of command and lead by example or the company will break.

‘Kill it!’ Thrax roared into his vox. ‘All units, target and obliterate! In the Emperor’s Name! Kill!’

Now

Gorebrakah Urlakk forced himself forward one step at a time, kicking up plumes of rock and sand from beneath his gnarled, armoured feet. Only three of them were left now, less than the many they had been. Gore dripped from his power klaws as he stomped across the dunes.

‘Iz mine!’ he bellowed into the desert night, his voice howling from the scavenged vox-amplifier built into his carapace. ‘My shiniez! My Waaaagh!’

Rage drove him. Rage, and the need to reclaim what was his. How would he look, otherwise? He would look weak. He would be challenged. He would be challenged many, many times, until he had slain all his top boyz. Where would that get him? No. Better this way. Take it back.

Take back what was his.

Rage drove him.

Every stomp, every bellow, made him angrier.

Every step brought him closer to the running-away machines that had stolen what was his.

Every stomp brought him closer to the blade.

He would have it back.

It was his.

It was the greatest treasure he had.

That, and the rage.

Then

The whole column turned their weapons on the monstrous ork at once, armour-piercing and high explosive shells slamming into it from so many directions at once that it simply disappeared in a fountain of vaporised blood and molten armour.

An awful silence fell, broken only by the sound of the shattered plasma cannon, blown straight out of the xenos creature’s hands in the initial barrage, falling back to earth and clattering loudly across the marble floor of the inner chamber.

‘It can’t be that easy,’ Lieutenant Marhara said over the vox.

‘Nothing ever is,’ Thrax said. ‘I believe this was the one that was stalking us through the city, but there was a second plasma weapon, firing from the heights of the spire. That, I think, is our true foe. It must have crawled out of the deep catacombs to attack us from the heights.’

‘We blew up the spire.’

Thrax nodded.

‘We did,’ he said, ‘but no battle worth fighting is ever won so easily. There is another. The warboss that the gretchin call Gorebrakah Urlakk is still at large somewhere in this cathedral. It’s been hiding in the depths, out of the Navy’s reach, but I believe we have drawn it out into open battle.’

‘So what do we do, captain?’

‘We follow our orders, lieutenant. We take the khalig from the altar and turn and burn for our own lines as though the very Archenemy himself were behind us!’

Which, Emperor willing, he may well be, Thrax thought to himself.

At least, that was the colonel’s plan. The fact that they had managed to destroy a single ork that powerful was little short of a miracle; Thrax was under no illusion that they could hope to do it again, not with a world-conquering warboss like Gorebrakah Urlakk.

‘Go,’ he said.

Lieutenant Marhara and his platoon raced forwards across the great expanse of unbroken marble towards the altar, leapfrogging by squads with their long-barrelled lasguns held tight to their shoulders, each advance covering the next as it raced past them.

It was all going to plan now, Thrax thought. They would execute the mission objectives as the colonel had set them.

The floor began to tremble beneath him.

‘Defence pattern!’ he bellowed, but he was too late.

They came up out of the deep catacombs in a green tide, baying and slavering with primitive guns and huge spiked knives in their hands. He saw Lieutenant Marhara slashed in half through the abdomen and spine, spraying blood and offal across the floor as he fell into two perfectly sliced halves. Another trooper was hit through the side of her helmet, the multilayered polymer armour bisected easily by a blade with an ork’s enormous strength behind it, the weapon cutting a clean line through the skull and brain beneath.

‘I don’t f–’ she said over the vox, even as the top of her head was still spinning away into the air.

She swayed on her feet, a look of astonishment still on her face even as the light of the Emperor’s mercy left her eyes. She reached up with one hand, touched the back of her head, her mouth falling open in shock as she realised what had happened.

She fell with a wet thud.

And she was gone.

Las-shots screamed across the cathedral as the Tallarn infantry fought back.

‘Waaaagh!’ something bellowed from the heights.

War indeed. The heavy bolters on the vehicles exploded into life and blew orks to pieces all around them, strafing back and forth and chewing through their ranks until there was gore splattered across the ground thick enough to wade in. Thrax rolled and lifted his bolt pistol, firing in the direction the voice had come from. The weapon roared in his hand, the recoil jarring his wrist even as the holy bolt tore upwards and exploded in the stonework somewhere far overhead, showering chips of marble into the air.

The voice replied with some guttural snarl Thrax didn’t understand, but its mocking laughter made him clench his teeth with hatred.

Xenos abomination!

Something began to hiss.

Thrax turned, looking around as his infantry came up into firing positions all around him, dripping with ork blood. There was a mighty bang as reinforced plasteel blast shutters slammed down at the end of the nave, where the carved wooden doors had been, sealing them inside the cathedral.

Orks burst up out of the catacombs once more, and the hiss of ignition jets was replaced with a mighty whuuumph as their flamers ignited.

One of the troopers, the one nearest the altar, was consumed by a belch of reeking promethium fire. He shrieked as he burned, arms flailing in unspeakable agony. The flesh cooked from his face until Thrax could see the skull beneath, screaming in torment.

‘Flamers!’ Thrax shouted.

They returned fire, having to grab for respirators as the choking smoke of burning human flesh threatened to overcome them. Thrax and his troops laid down a withering counter-attack with their long-barrelled lasguns, but nonetheless the merciless flamers took four victims. They died screaming in unimaginable pain, giving their lives for the Emperor in one of the hardest ways there was. The stench of their tortured dying filled the once holy space, desecrating it further until Thrax was all but insensible with rage.

The voice boomed out of the ceiling, out of the impenetrable darkness above, ranting in the angry, guttural gibberish that passed for language amongst the vile xenos.

Thrax swore into the sweaty confines of his respirator and fired again, wasting precious bolt-rounds to blow chunks out of the stone overhead. Hatred fuelled him, but bore no fruit.

More angry laughter echoed around the vast chamber, making Thrax feel sick and unclean in equal measure.

‘Form up,’ he snarled into his vox. ‘Forward!’

Again he drove the column forward, on foot now, the colonel’s briefing ringing in his ears.

‘Take the khalig. Nothing else matters,’ the colonel had told him. ‘Take the khalig, and Gorebrakah Urlakk will follow. He will have to, or lose face with his horde. Make him follow into my reach, Thrax. Nothing else matters at all.’

We don’t matter, Thrax realised. Nothing did, compared with the chance to take down an ork warboss as great as Gorebrakah Urlakk. We’re just lives, and the Emperor has those to spend in abundance.

So be it.

He had lived his whole life in the Emperor’s service. It would be an honour to die in it too.

‘Forward!’

The infantry sweep was three-quarters of the way across the great marble plain of the inner chamber, the remaining armour churning up the tiles as it followed in their wake. That was when the second melta bomb went off.

There was no warning, no clue as to what set it off. There was nothing but twenty men and women in full combat order, highly trained and highly disciplined and well equipped, and then there was a sunfire flash of obliteration and the reek of superheated flesh and boiled blood and burning bone, and they were gone.

They were just gone.

Thrax turned and blasted his bolt pistol into the darkness again, hunting his foe.

Hideous, guttural laughter echoed throughout the vast chamber.

‘Did dat ’urt?’ the monstrosity mocked, in a travesty of Low Gothic.

Thrax roared and emptied his bolt pistol in the direction of the voice in a hammering blast of full auto. ‘All armoured units, on my target. Fire!’

The remaining Leman Russ tanks traversed their barrels to where Thrax’s bolt-rounds were slamming into the far-above ceiling, and opened fire with a thunder like the Emperor’s own fury. The stone blew apart in a pounding rain of destruction, and something fell from the heights above to come crashing down amongst the infantry as the ground was shot out from under it.

It was clad head to toe in something like home-made Terminator armour, a massive powered exoskeleton with piston-enhanced metal limbs that vented greasy steam as it moved. He had seen the like only once before, on Grennak, when the blessed Adeptus Astartes had finally turned the tide of battle. At the time he’d had no idea what glorious avatar of the Emperor’s wrath he beheld, but the colonel had explained it to him later, after their final victory. Thrax knew well what an honour it had been to witness such a thing. This monstrosity though… this was different, a xenos perversion of that holy majesty. One arm ended in a huge, hideous steel claw, while the other held the plasma cannon.

‘Like me armour?’ it snarled in its broken Gothic, and its claw lashed out and bisected three troopers with a single snap. Their blood misted the air as they fell. ‘Good, innit?’

Thrax sheathed his khalig and slammed a fresh magazine into his bolt pistol, dropped to one knee with it braced in both hands and blasted four rounds into the monstrosity’s soot-stained breast-plate.

‘Infantry, reclaim the khalig!’ he yelled into his vox. ‘Armour, kill!’

He charged for the altar with the infantry, dodging a swing of the abomination’s claw that would have disembowelled him with a stroke. He turned and blasted a double burst of shots at it, but they pinged uselessly off its impossibly thick armour.

‘Reclaim the khalig!’ he shouted again, as another of his tanks was lost to the purple fury of the armoured warboss’ plasma cannon.

He couldn’t stand against that. He could only run.

Al-Maddon suddenly whooped in triumph, and Thrax looked up to see her swinging from the desecrated altar with General Al-Fallon’s khalig clutched in her hand.

‘Here!’ he shouted, and she wound back her arm and threw it to him.

Thrax caught the khalig with the skill of a born Tallarn blade-warrior, and his eyes widened as he saw yet more orks bounding up the steps from the catacombs.

‘Down!’ he screamed.

Al-Maddon made it down in time, but she was the only one of her squad who did: a wall of heavy-calibre explosive rounds from the ork guns slaughtered all those who were still standing.

Behind them, the tank cannons roared.

The warboss staggered as the high explosive rounds blew chunks out of the ground around it, howling and spitting guttural obscenities and return fire from its plasma cannon.

Another tank died in a flash of atomic purple flame even as the Chimera’s bolters scythed down the fresh horde of orks.

‘Armour-piercing!’ Thrax yelled into his vox, still a tank commander in his heart even if his boots were on the ground at the time. ‘Target the centre of mass, coordinated fire. Kill it!’

The remaining Leman Russ tanks blasted their last armour-piercing rounds into the warboss all at once, blowing it apart at the middle.

It thrashed on the ground, torso and legs separated by six feet of gore-slick marble.

Thrax approached it slowly, the weight of the general’s khalig clutched in his hand. It seemed that the colonel’s plan had been unnecessary after all.

‘And so General Al-Fallan is avenged at last,’ he snarled. ‘With the very weapon you slew him with, Gorebrakah Urlakk, I now end you!’

The monstrosity looked up at him with dimming eyes and grunted through its massive tusks.

‘I ain’t da boss,’ it said, and laughed a pained laugh that made blood stream down its chin and neck. ‘I’z… just… one of ’is boyz! I was… ’is top boy! What you fink of dat?’

Thrax frowned down at the dying monster for a moment, then he lifted the general’s khalig and severed its great head from its shoulders with a single savage blow of the monomolecular blade.

‘That’s what I think,’ he said.

He stood looking down at the corpse for a long time, the khalig dripping in his hand. If this monster was not Gorebrakah Urlakk, then…

The floor of the cathedral exploded in a cloud of dust and splintered stone as something huge and terrible tore its way up out of the deep catacombs, and then their world began to end.

Iblis Amrargh was a dying place.

Now

Gorebrakah Urlakk was in a furious rage as he tore the trakk-waggon apart. His massive power klaw rent and ripped, shredding armour and flesh alike as he reached into the crippled machine, clutched the soft bodies of the infantry inside and squeezed until they burst.

They were shooting him, but it didn’t even hurt.

Nothing hurt him, not in his armour it didn’t. It had cost him many teef, but Gorebrakah got the best. He always got the best. He had the best mekboyz, and he had the best armour.

Better than Mega Armour.

Better than a Deff Dread.

He was the boss, and his Waaaagh! was unstoppable. No one could stop him ’cos he was the boss!

He looked up for a moment as the last tank ran away with the last trakk-waggon following it like some runt. That tank that had his shiniez in it.

There were three of the little soldiers still alive in the ruptured belly of the trakk-waggon, grovelling before him and screaming with fear, their minds broken by his strength.

Gorebrakah Urlakk decided he would take his time with them.

Then

Captain Thrax sprinted for his tank, the general’s precious khalig still clutched in his hand.

Every human instinct screamed Run!

A wave of terror emanated from the monstrosity before him, turning his bowels to water. Nothing could stand before that. The thing that should not live.

The ground shook as it took a step forward, belching smoke from its chimneys. The massive cannon that made up one of its four arms roared and blew a tank to pieces even as Thrax fled for the scant safety of his own machine.

‘Run!’ he screamed into his vox, his head splitting with the noise of the ork warlord’s clanking, smoking onslaught. ‘For the love of the Emperor, run!’

He hauled himself up into Rage of Tallarn and slammed the hatch cover down, Kallan already throwing the machine around in a tight turn that gouged great chunks out of the marble floor under its tracks. The plasteel blast shutters loomed ahead as the tank tore down the nave towards them.

‘Armour-piercing!’ Thrax ordered. ‘Zero by zero at zero, fire!’

The cannon roared and their last shell blew a molten hole through the thick plasteel barriers seconds before the tank smashed headlong into them. Kallan put her faith in the Emperor and charged straight into the inferno of the explosion, driven as much by sheer terror as any sense of tactical awareness.

The sides of the tank screamed against the torn wreckage of the blast shutters, and then they were through and running with the remnants of the column behind them.

The monstrosity that was Gorebrakah Urlakk unleashed a storm of fire from the twin-linked heavy weapons in its third arm, shredding those unfortunate troopers attempting to flee on foot. Thrax could only watch the auspex in horror as the monstrosity reached out with its power claw and tore the back off a Chimera, the heavy flamer that tipped its fourth arm washing the inside of the vehicle with screaming death.

‘Run!’

Now

They fled across the desert in the light of the rising sun.

One tank, one Chimera.

All that was left of Thrax’s once mighty river of armour.

‘The colonel protects,’ Thrax whispered to himself, twitching in his command seat and unaware in his terror of how close he skirted heresy with those words. ‘For the colonel. For the Emperor. Run. Run.’

They had shut down all vox-channels. Gorebrakah Urlakk was so close now that its constant amplified howling and ranting had driven the Chimera’s vox-operator insane with fear. Thrax had heard Duf’adar Al-Maddon shouting at the man to close the hatch, that running on foot would do him no good. Eventually, she had been forced to do her duty and shoot the man for attempted desertion. Thrax had ordered the vox switched off after that, before the panic could spread.

‘Fuel’s so low, fuel’s so low,’ Kallan whimpered, bent over her levers as she coaxed more speed from the overworked Leman Russ. ‘I’ll bleed. I’ll bleed for the fuel tanks if I have to. Run it on blood. Run it on pain.’

‘Keep it together, Kallan,’ Thrax urged her.

He couldn’t shoot his own driver, however ragged her sanity had become. Without her they were all dead, and the mission lost. In the gun bay behind her, the loader was whimpering in a corner, curled up in a ball of terror with his hands over his head. It didn’t matter.

They had no ammunition anyway.

Thrax wiped sweat-slick hands on his combat trousers, cursing the wasted moisture.

Hold on to that thought, he told himself. Combat discipline. Water discipline. Normal things. Real things. Hold on!

He clung to his sanity by his fingernails, forcing himself to recite the Tallarn water ritual over and over in his head. Anything to shut out the endless howls of rage and madness that followed them across the desert. Anything to not have to think about what the horror behind them was doing to the crew of the lost Chimera.

Filthy xenos abomination.

Below Thrax’s command seat his gun layer took out her autopistol, stuffed the barrel into her mouth, and blew her brains out rather than be taken alive. Blood and bone fragments splattered against the inside of the hull behind her as the noise of the shot reverberated around the interior of the tank.

Thrax cursed at her dishonourable action and consulted the auspex, watching as the blue line of the target area slowly crawled closer. Two miles now, no more. Almost there, almost there…

‘Hard as you can, Kallan,’ he urged his driver. ‘We’re nearly there.’

‘It’s closing, sir, I can feel it!’

Thrax could only nod. The blinking red rune that represented Gorebrakah Urlakk was gaining on them again, and his sole remaining Chimera was starting to lag behind. Thrax grit his teeth and keyed the vox.

Howls of rage and fury washed over the frequency, stabbing into his mind like rusty knives.

‘Al-Maddon!’ he roared over the horrifying noise of the ork warlord. ‘What’s wrong? You’re slowing down!’

‘Nothing’s wrong, sir,’ the duf’adar said. ‘I’ve worked it out, that’s all. What that blue line on the auspex means. It’s a range delimiter, isn’t it? I know what you’re doing, and you won’t make it. We won’t make it. Not unless something slows it down.’

Thrax swallowed hard.

‘Al-Maddon…’ he started, but she cut him off.

‘No, sir. The mission is everything. That… that thing has to die!’

‘Yes,’ Thrax said at last. ‘Emperor go with you.’

Behind his tank, Al-Maddon’s Chimera made a tight turn and charged at Gorebrakah Urlakk.

‘I’ll see you get a medal for this,’ Thrax whispered, but the vox was dead in his hand.

Gorebrakah Urlakk watched the trakk-waggon turn. He raised his cannon, then thought better of it.

Why rush?

He flexed his power klaw in anticipation. This was going to be fun.

He waited for the trakk-waggon’s big shoota to open up on him, looking forward to the storm of the impacts against his carapace so he could show he was so hard that they didn’t even hurt, but nothing happened. He was still waiting when the bellowing vehicle ploughed headlong into him at full speed.

The impact knocked him off his feet, stomped him down into the sand hard enough to raise a great plume of dust high into the desert sky. His klaw smashed upward through the trakk-waggon’s undercarriage as though he were gutting a squig, ripping the drivetrain away with a rending shriek of tortured metal. He punched up further, into the crew bay, pulping soft little bodies by the handful. A woman appeared in his blood-splattered field of view. She looked hard enough to be one of his top boyz, to be a proper nob. Blood streamed from her ears and nose and mouth even as she threw herself at him. She had an entire bandolier of stikk bombs wrapped around her.

The explosion lit up the auspex behind them, and Thrax knew that Al-Maddon had died well. The blue line crept forwards, less than a mile to go now.

‘Give it everything!’ he roared at Kallan. ‘Run!’

The sobbing driver didn’t need to be told. She was leaning on the control levers with all her weight, as though pushing them harder against the maximum point could somehow wring a few more ounces of power from the Leman Russ’ howling engines. Thrax looked down past the corpse of the gun layer, saw that his loader was huddled under the empty breech of the tank’s main cannon, sobbing with helpless terror in the dim green light of the tank’s interior.

‘Faster!’

Behind them, the abomination Gorebrakah Urlakk was back on its feet and moving, the smoking wreckage of the Chimera abandoned in its lust for more death. It began to lumber after them, its massive clanking strides eating the distance at a terrifying rate.

The auspex flashed, the blue line finally passing over them. The tank sped on.

‘Nothing’s happened!’ Kallan wailed. ‘The line… I thought the line meant we were safe!’

‘The line isn’t for us,’ Thrax growled. ‘Forward!’

The tank was wallowing in the dunes now, one of the tracks slipping as the transaxle ground ominously against the chassis. Rage of Tallarn was dying around them, Thrax knew, but the mission was almost complete.

By the Emperor’s love, it was almost done.

He popped the hatch cover and reared up in his seat, the general’s khalig clutched tightly in his hand. He brandished it in the air, taunting the lumbering, smoke-belching monstrosity that followed. It was nearly over the line itself now.

Almost. Almost…

‘Come and take it!’ Thrax roared into the wind of their passage, laughing despite the vomit that welled up in his throat at the very sight of the ork warlord. ‘You want this? Come and get it!’

Gorebrakah Urlakk broke into a hideous travesty of a run, naked lust emanating from it as it reached out its power claw and grasped at the empty air. It didn’t dare shoot for fear of damaging the precious artefact, but Thrax knew it was going to catch them in a matter of minutes.

‘Mine!’ it bellowed, its guttural voice almost lost under the grinding of its gears, the clanking of armour and the wheeze of pistons. ‘Is mine! Stole it! Zoggin’ runt! Waaaagh! Waaaaaaaaaaagh!’

It didn’t matter, now. Gorebrakah Urlakk had crossed the blue line, and it was done. At great cost, but in the Emperor’s name, it was done. The mission was complete.

Thrax grabbed the vox, keyed it to the firebase’s emergency channel.

‘Now!’ he screamed over the furious howls that filled the airwaves. ‘Fire-pattern Alpha! Kill it!’

The horizon lit up in a flash like the very coming of the Emperor, and the air filled with screams that drowned out even Gorebrakah Urlakk’s insane ranting. Thrax threw himself back into the turret and began to pray at the top of his voice as the hatch slammed shut above his head.

The monster was finally in range of the Imperial artillery, lured out of the safe haven of its catacombs just as the colonel had planned all along.

The Earthshaker barrage split the sky, and Rage of Tallarn lifted into the air and flipped end over end as the massive shells came down behind it and smashed Gorebrakah Urlakk into the ground in a titanic explosion.

Thrax screamed as he was thrown free of his seat, falling upward into the crew bay as the tank rolled again. His head crashed into something, making his helmet ring like the tolling of a great bell. Again the world exploded as the second barrage fell, the Emperor’s judgement on the vile xenos abomination behind them. The auspex went dark, the green light failed, and Thrax knew no more.

The sobbing woke him.

Kallan was shaking him, weeping, begging him to live. He slowly opened his eyes.

The body of the gun layer was smashed to pulp, and the loader had been thrown face first into the breech of his weapon so hard that the impact had torn away his bottom jaw and ruptured his neck, almost ripping his head off. Kallan had a great shard of metal sticking out of the oozing red mess where her left eye had been.

‘Did we do it?’ she whispered. ‘Is… is it dead?’

Thrax groaned and nodded. They were still alive, so Gorebrakah Urlakk couldn’t be. If it was, they would be suffering impossible torments by now. He pulled himself up and pitched over sideways, and only then realised that his left leg had been torn off at the knee.

‘I gave you a shot for the pain and tied it off,’ Kallan said. ‘Had one myself. I’m not really crying, there’s just something in my eye.’

She laughed, then, a thin, reedy giggle that spoke of madness.

Thrax pulled an emergency lever and blew the nearest hatch clear of the tank, hauled himself out of the shattered vehicle with his hands. He lay on the ground, feeling the desert sun on his face once more as his severed leg oozed dark, arterial blood into the sand. Behind them there was a crater half a mile wide and a hundred feet deep, scattered with fragments of spiked black armour plating.

It was wonderfully, blissfully quiet.

‘There’s a Valkyrie coming for us,’ Kallan whispered. ‘Heard it on the vox. The colonel is pleased.’

Thrax closed his eyes and wondered if the sound of Gorebrakah Urlakk’s insane howls would ever leave him, if he would ever be able to sleep again. He looked at Kallan, at the metal sticking out of her face and the mad spit-flecked smile on her lips, and wondered what the future held for them.

That, as everything, was in the Emperor’s hands.

THE TWISTED RUNES

Matt Smith

Prognosticator Beynan Rhondus stood in the Well of Judgement. The stone pit was thirty feet deep, ten in diameter, and made up the centre of the Chamber of Fate, the most hallowed meeting hall of the Prognosticatum of the Silver Skulls. Surrounding the upper rim of the well were thirteen thrones set into individual alcoves. Twelve belonged to the most senior prognosticators. The last was reserved for the Chapter Master.

‘Speak, Prognosticator Rhondus. Tell us, what do the runes show you?’ a voice spoke above him.

Eight prognosticators sat in judgement on this day, but from the foot of the well, Beynan could not make out their faces. The Chamber was dark, lit only by the dying embers of torches. Their light served only to cast deeper shadows upon the thrones. All Beynan could truly see was the giant metallic skull leering down on him from the wall of the well. In this setting, the symbol of the Chapter was both intimidating and inspiring.

‘They show me death. Our deaths and those of every Silver Skull.’

The room fell silent but Beynan’s skin prickled as the air filled with psychic energy. He could only wonder at the words spoken in telepathic communion above him. He longed for the day he would be a part of it.

‘Where and how will this come to pass?’ another voice called down to him.

‘It is unclear. The runes are scattered, confused. For some time, I could not discern their meaning, but this night past I had a dream. A vision of the past and the future.’

‘Is this the first time you have foreseen the Chapter’s demise?’ asked another.

‘Yes. It was so vivid. Prognosticator Aharan was there. He spoke to me.’

‘Aharan?’ It was the first voice again, but softer now, and Beynan could see a blue-robed figure leaning forward from his seat. He recognised him as Chief Prognosticator Vashiro. The master of the Prognosticatum looked down at him intently. ‘Tell me of this dream, young brother.’

‘It was a vision of destruction and woe. I saw an item of great power and meaning. It was hidden, in a place remote and lethal, concealed from a sky ruled by warring dragons. It was taken by a thief in the night, hooded and cowled. Four sentinels barred the gate – an army of slaves, while harbingers waited in the shadows, wreathed in fire. They howled in despair. I saw a great beast to be slain, and a sorcerer consumed by pride. Aharan showed me a path that must be walked, for the sake of us all.’

‘Was there anything else?’ a new voice asked.

‘No.’

‘You bear Prognosticator Aharan’s runes, and your portents have seen us true this far. It is clear the Emperor speaks through you. Prognosticator Rhondus, you will have the warriors you require,’ said Vashiro. ‘Where will you take them?’

‘Skythis.’

Skythis was the only habitable world in the Aris Drakartis system, but Beynan knew this was a stretched truth. It was a death world characterised by sweltering jungles and vicious native wildlife. The Thunderhawk Seer’s Steed descended towards a remote island in the northern seas. Launched from their strike cruiser, Spear of Destiny, it contained eighteen warriors. Beynan sat at their head and looked down the row at the squads under his command. The first was Amethyst Squad. It contained ten Tactical Marines from the Sixth Company, led by Sergeant Braxus – a capable, if unspectacular, leader. The second Beynan had requested specifically. Jade Squad consisted of five veterans from the First Company under Sergeant Tor’ra, a staunch traditionalist. Bastev Tor’ra was an old friend of Beynan’s former mentor, Prognosticator Aharan. Though Beynan had only met him a couple of times, he had still recognised the sergeant’s face when it appeared in his visions. He was there for just fleeting moments on the periphery of greater events, but every time, his chainsword swung and cut down an unseen enemy. Tor’ra’s skill and brutality were both famous within the Chapter.

As they made their final approach, Beynan replayed his vision again, examining it for any meaning he may have missed.

‘It was hidden, in a place remote and lethal, concealed from a sky ruled by warring dragons.’

The Aris Drakartis system was named for the constellation visible from any of its worlds. It appeared to depict a pair of battling dragons. Skythis was the planet and this island was the most remote landmass. When he reached the end of the vision in his head, he felt a weight sink upon him, for he had lied to the Prognosticatum. There was one last thing he had seen.

‘A hero, exalted for generations.’

He had not told them this for he could not know if they would understand. If they thought he wanted to venture to Skythis in search of his own glory, they may have sent another in his place. He couldn’t allow that. In another’s hands, the Chapter was doomed. He did not do this for pride. He did this for the survival of the Silver Skulls, and because it was the infallible will of the Emperor. Beynan told himself this, over and over again.

Seer’s Steed was forced to set down in the rocky shallows surrounding the island, much to its pilot’s disdain. Brother-Techmarine Rikolux muttered litanies of apology to the machine’s spirit throughout the landing and visibly tensed as the gunship set down, as if he expected the ground to give way below it at any moment. After a few seconds of baited breath, the access hatches opened and the Silver Skulls disembarked.

The group stepped out into the humid air. They made their way down the access ramp and splashed through the shallow water. When they reached the shore, the prognosticator called them to gather around him in a circle.

‘Let us pray that we shall succeed here in carrying out the Emperor’s will, and in doing so honour the Silver Skulls. Primus Inter Pares.’ First Among Equals. It had been the Silver Skulls’ mantra since their birth in the Second Founding.

The Silver Skulls echoed their leader, then fell into their own ministrations. Some remained standing, others knelt. Some made the sign of the aquila, while others pressed their fists against their hearts in a warrior’s salute. They murmured prayers and litanies in different tongues and dialects from across the Chapter’s recruitment worlds. Beynan lowered to his knees. He removed a simple leather pouch from a cord tied around his waist. He weighed it in his hand for a moment, then closed his eyes and upended it. The rune stones held within fell and made tiny craters in the sand.

Aharan’s runes were made from grey slate carved from the frozen cliffs of Varsavia. Once sharp edged and rough, centuries of use had worn them smooth. Symbols had been carved into them with a knife and a delicacy unexpected of a warrior’s hands. Aharan had been slain eight months prior fighting orks on Godwin’s Landing. After being separated, Beynan had found his injured master just as Aharan used the last of his strength to tear the orks’ warboss in half with his incredible psychic might. As he’d laid dying, Aharan’s final act had been to bequeath his rune stones to his apprentice. Beynan would always remember his master’s pale and drawn face in that moment. He had looked so frail, and the scar surrounding half of his left eye, once distinguished, had become merely ugly.

Aharan’s stones spoke to Beynan clearly now, as they would speak to any who knew how to listen. Where Beynan had poured them from their pouch, the Emperor’s hand had placed them in the sand before him. He spoke His will through symbols, their orientation and their positions relevant to one another. The aquila stone was marked with the twin-headed eagle. It was the only stone that was not part of Aharan’s original set. Aharan had lost the original many years before, though he had never been sure when or how. Its replacement had been in use long enough that it had bonded with the rest and its virtue lay true. It had landed highest and correctly oriented. A good omen. The compass stone, marked with a four-pointed cross, had landed just below it. The longest point, which represented north, reached forwards towards the aquila. His goal lay to the north. The warrior and seer stones rested together. His path and that of his brothers ran parallel. Above them, the reaper’s stone had fallen oriented sideways. There would be deaths on both sides. This was regrettable, but such was the life of a Space Marine.

Beynan returned the stones to their pouch as the rest of the group ended their prayers. Sergeant Tor’ra then reorganised them into formation. His veterans spread out to take lead positions in a wide forward arc. Braxus’ squad fell into close defensive positions around the prognosticator and Techmarine.

‘I have had to make modifications to this auspex,’ said Rikolux dourly. ‘If doing so hasn’t offended its spirit too gravely, it should identify the energy signature much more clearly now.’

‘Then let us hope you have suitably appeased it. We do not have time to search the entire island. Join Sergeant Tor’ra and see that we are going the correct way.’

‘Yes, prognosticator.’

The group moved forward as one, and swiftly crossed the beach before passing into the jungle. The light dimmed immediately; the sun’s rays barred entry by layers of thick canopy. Power-armoured boots were caught up in thick bundles of roots. Progress slowed as the Space Marines were forced single file through an ever tighter bottleneck created by centuries’ old tree trunks. The air buzzed constantly with the sounds of insects. At first, Beynan filtered out the sound through his helmet’s auditory systems, but it grew so loud he could no longer block it without leaving himself deafened. With each step, the jungle grew thicker and the Space Marines were forced to draw blades to cut their way through the grasping branches. Beynan kept a close eye on the tracking signal coming from Techmarine Rikolux. More than once, he was required to regroup his retinue as they were broken up wading through the thick flora.

‘Contac–’ a voice yelled through the vox. It was cut off by a sickening wet crunch. A trio of bolter rounds exploded in the distance, then there was silence.

‘Brother Tek, report!’ Tor’ra growled into the vox, but there was no reply from the warrior who had raised the alarm. ‘Jade Squad, regroup on my position!’ Another bolter barked in anger.

‘Forward,’ Beynan ordered, and fell in behind two members of Amethyst Squad as they hacked furiously at the trees in their efforts to catch up to Tor’ra’s veterans. Beynan drew his bolt pistol and force sword, Soul Render. The bolter fire up ahead grew in intensity, and he could now make out an unfamiliar but unmistakably malicious hiss. He wondered what kind of foe could make such a sound.

‘Prognosticator, they’re here,’ Brother Artum called back to him as he cut through a gnarled branch with his knife.

Tor’ra, Rikolux and Jade Squad were fighting back to back, the ground around them littered with dead beasts. They were seemingly reptilian. Their hides were covered in thick scales that fluctuated through shades of green, brown and deep, natural reds. They had four legs that jutted at right angles from their long, heavy torsos, each ending in a trio of long talons. A pair of barbed whip-like tails lashed out erratically behind them at all times. On all fours they reached a Space Marine’s mid-thigh, but when reared up, Beynan estimated they could easily reach chest height. Their heads were wide triangles covered in spines that housed broad mouths filled with pointed teeth, two of which jutted down prominently near the centre of the upper jaw. As Beynan’s group reached them, Rikolux pinned one underfoot and finished it with a shot to the head. Another leapt at him from his right but was snatched out of the air by his servo-arm, which clamped around its neck and continued to squeeze until something snapped and the creature went limp. The largest pile of the dead lay around Tor’ra, their bodies shredded where the sergeant had set about them with his chainsword. He tore another from Brother Vra’del’s back and bisected it in a spray of ichor.

‘Join us, prognosticator. There are plenty to go around,’ Tor’ra said with a vicious enthusiasm as he discarded the dead beast. Beynan and Amethyst Squad added their strength to the defensive ring Jade Squad had formed. The prognosticator took his place to Tor’ra’s left.

‘What are these creatures?’ Beynan asked.

‘Some form of pack animal,’ said Tor’ra. ‘Which means one is the alpha. I suggest we kill them until we find it, then kill that too.’

For a time, the jungle was alive with the roar of bolters, the hiss of reptilian beasts, the wet cutting of blades against flesh and a high-pitched scraping of claws against armour. Then the sounds of battle faded, replaced only once again with the insect buzzing.

‘Do you think they’ve retreated?’ Brother K’la of Amethyst Squad asked.

‘No,’ said Tor’ra.

The sergeant was immediately proven correct. Using the dense undergrowth to hide their approach, they struck together on one side of the Silver Skulls’ defensive ring. Beynan was thrown to the ground along with the members of Amethyst Squad to his left. The creature on top of him snapped at his face, and Beynan could only raise an arm in defence. He stifled a cry as it bit down, fangs puncturing his armoured vambrace and digging into his flesh. A boot swung by Beynan’s head and hit his attacker. It released its grip and spat at the newcomer. A thick black substance covered the face of the warrior who had come to Beynan’s aid. It immediately began to eat away at the layers of ceramite. The warrior fell back, clutching at his helmet seals. Brother Artum raked the creature’s flank with bolt-rounds but did little more than anger it. One of its tails lashed out and severed his hand.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Beynan kicked the creature back and unloaded his pistol into it. The creature stepped back under the onslaught, allowing the prognosticator to stand. With some separation, Beynan could see what he was facing. This creature was larger than the others by far. It reared up on its back legs and loomed high above his head. Under its chin was a swollen, glistening black gland that no doubt produced the substance it had spat moments before. Every spine and barb on its body was longer and thicker than its peers, and its body rippled with dense muscle. If any creature was the alpha, this was it.

‘…a great beast to be slain.’ The prophecy rang around in his head.

Bolt-rounds detonated harmlessly against its hide and Beynan’s sword arm was growing numb where he had been bitten. The alpha rocked back on its haunches and the prognosticator made his choice. As the creature made to attack again, Beynan opened his mind to the Immaterium. He allowed its raw power to flow into him. His body coruscated with psychic energy that sparked like red lightning. He raised his hand and reached across the air. Beneath his helm, he snarled his contempt for the beast, and relished the agonising death he would bring it. The alpha lunged at him, but then stopped and recoiled. At first, it hissed in anger. That anger turned to pain and it squealed pitifully. It rolled onto its back, writhing and snapping, fighting against an enemy it could never reach. Beynan boiled its blood in its veins and didn’t stop until the creature’s mewling cries were silenced.

At the death of their leader, the remaining creatures scurried away, disappearing into the jungle as swiftly as they had arrived. Beynan closed himself off from the warp and allowed its energies to dissipate around him.

‘A fine kill, prognosticator,’ a gravelly voice said from behind him.

Beynan turned to see Tor’ra approaching. His helmet was clenched in his right hand, its face-plate still steaming where the thick black spit had struck it. His bare face was pale and bald with heavy patches of scar tissue on his cheeks and jawline, ancient wounds he wore like badges of honour. A pair of silver service studs were set over his right brow above a pair of surprisingly warm brown eyes.

‘And a good omen, sergeant.’

‘How so, prognosticator?’

‘A great beast to be slain. So says my vision, so it has come to pass,’ said Beynan proudly. ‘Brothers, heed me,’ he began, addressing the group now. ‘Skythis has claimed its tithe in blood from us here, but there is no greatness without sacrifice. The portents ring true. My path is certain. Walk with me and know not fear or doubt, for by my side you will know victory.’ The surviving Silver Skulls cheered their leader. A number then turned to speak litanies for the dead. ‘The Emperor will watch over our fallen brothers,’ Beynan added. ‘We will reclaim them when the battle is won.’

Tor’ra stepped past the prognosticator to inspect the alpha’s corpse. ‘Its skull will make a fine addition to the trophy halls back home.’

‘It will indeed,’ said Beynan, ‘and the elders will tell the neophytes of my victory here for millennia to come. We shall take its head when we come back to recover our fallen brothers.’

‘Our victory, prognosticator,’ said Tor’ra frowning.

‘History rarely remembers the names of the soldiers. Only their leaders.’

Tor’ra opened his mouth to respond but Beynan had already turned away.

The prognosticator picked out the Techmarine in the group – his head was bowed with the auspex gently pressed against his helm. Beynan watched him trace the symbol of the Omnissiah across his chest and heard him whisper litanies the prognosticator did not know the names for.

‘Which way, Brother Rikolux?’ he asked. The Techmarine’s head snapped up as if he had been rudely interrupted from his meditations and he looked around to see who had disturbed him. His shoulders rose and fell as he consulted the auspex, turned on the spot and pointed ahead.

‘This way,’ he said without enthusiasm.

‘Form up. Stay close. We know not what this world is capable of,’ said Tor’ra. The sergeant stepped past Beynan and once more took his place at the head of the group.

They pressed on. Progress grew ever slower as the jungle seemed to become more dense with every passing step. Many times, Skythis tried to kill them. Trees with thick, tentacle-like roots reached out to grab them. Giant insects with spear-like mouths descended on them and desperate canine carrion feeders snapped at their legs. After the first attack, none of these posed any true threat and each was hacked apart, crushed in armoured fists or summarily executed with clinical bolter fire.

It was not long before Brother Rikolux called the group to a halt.

‘Is this it?’ Beynan asked.

‘Yes, prognosticator,’ Rikolux said. ‘Just ahead. That is where the readings grow strongest. At least, to the best of my ability to interpret the available data,’ he gestured to the auspex. ‘Our guide’s spirit is unsettled.’

‘Then perhaps we are guided by more than energy signatures. Another good omen.’

Rikolux returned the auspex to his belt and checked the magazine on his bolter silently.

‘Be alert, brothers,’ said Tor’ra. He sent two members of Jade Squad ahead to cut a path, the rest following in pairs behind. It was a matter of seconds before they came to a halt once again.

‘Report,’ Tor’ra said across the vox.

‘There is a clearing, sergeant,’ the veteran replied. ‘And some kind of structure. A doorway. It appears to lead underground.’

Beynan pushed forward until he came side by side with the leading warriors. Tor’ra, Braxus and Rikolux followed behind. The clearing was small, no more than thirty yards in diameter. It was circular but irregular, as if it had been artificially created but neglected for many years. In the centre was a low, wide archway that sloped back into the ground. Its roof was covered in foliage but underneath was still traces of Astra Militarum-issue camouflage netting. Under the arch was a wall of solid black iron and a heavy door like one would expect to find on a fortress or vault.

‘Your orders, prognosticator?’ said Tor’ra.

‘…concealed from a sky ruled by warring dragons.’

Beynan looked up. The jungle canopy was thinner here and allowed one to see patches of bright blue sky. There were no stars in this light but he knew they were there. The Aris Drakartis.

‘This is the location, sergeant. This is where it rests. Underground, just as I foresaw. Let us not tarry here. Follow me.’

Beynan stepped free from the undergrowth and into the clearing. Tor’ra and Braxus followed, then Rikolux and the others.

‘Prognosticator, something moves,’ said Rikolux.

He was right. Beynan watched as two shapes emerged from the ground on either side of the door. Two more rose further out in the clearing, between the Silver Skulls and the door. His eyes widened as he recognised the familiar boxy shapes. Heavy bolter turrets. Each bore a pair of the weapons and spat streams of explosive bolts at the Space Marines.

‘Take cover!’ Tor’ra yelled, but not swiftly enough for some. Heavy explosive rounds tore into the Silver Skulls as they made for the small measure of protection offered by the tree line. All but Beynan. Drawing upon his Emperor-granted gifts, he summoned a dome of psychic force. Soul Render growled in his hand. His sword arm had grown strong once again, what vile venom had afflicted it earlier was now purged by his superior anatomy and the cocktail of potent stimms dispensed by his armour. He closed on the nearest turret, its heavy bolts exploding harmlessly against his shield. Soul Render lashed out, its empowered blade carving contemptuously through the first turret’s armour. A missile launched from the tree line and destroyed the second in a pillar of flame. The two remaining turrets either side of the fortified doorway turned to fire at the missile’s source. No longer under attack, Beynan allowed his shield to fall, and directed his gifts outwards. He grasped the turret with his mind and pressed. Plate by plate, the turret buckled under the weight of psychic pressure. Its fire became wild as it bent, then ceased entirely. It exploded from within as bolts detonated inside, unable to escape from blocked barrels.

Finally, the last turret turned on him. Whatever spirit guided its targeting deemed him the greatest threat and fired. Out in the open, unshielded and at close range, the heavy bolts struck Beynan and threw him from his feet.

‘Prognosticator?’

Pain ran through him, his breaths felt sharp in his chest. Beynan raised his head and looked over at Sergeant Tor’ra closing in on him. He looked worried but seemed to relax as he saw Beynan move.

‘Prognosticator Rhondus,’ the sergeant said, relieved. ‘We thought you were dead.’ Tor’ra offered Beynan his forearm but the prognosticator ignored it. He pushed the tip of his sword into the ground and climbed to his feet. He winced as pain shot through his torso. He should be dead. At that range, the heavy bolters should have punched clean through his armour. Looking down at himself, though his armour was blackened and his body evidently bruised beneath, he was otherwise unharmed.

‘The Emperor guides me, sergeant, and the Emperor protects.’

‘The Emperor protects,’ Tor’ra echoed.

Beynan looked over at the turret that had struck him down. It was now riddled with a dozen puncture wounds that streamed thin trails of smoke.

‘Vengeance rounds,’ Tor’ra said, following Beynan’s gaze. ‘Fortunate. I had almost elected not to bring them.’

Beynan shook his head. ‘It should be apparent to you by now, sergeant, that luck has nothing to do with our mission here. Everything is proceeding to the Emperor’s plan, just as I foresaw. We have defeated the four sentinels. Another obstacle cleared from our path.’

‘The four sentinels, prognosticator? I don’t understand.’

‘I do not require you to.’

‘Prognosticator Rhondus. You must see this,’ said Sergeant Braxus from the edge of the clearing.

Beynan made his way over to Braxus’ position, Tor’ra followed. A few steps beyond Braxus, face down in the dirt, was Rikolux. A chunk of the back of his head was missing. Deep red blood ran in streams over the uneven leafy ground and pooled around lumps of half-pulped brain matter and twisted shards of scarlet ceramite. Beynan sighed and made the sign of the aquila across his chest.

‘This isn’t right,’ mused Braxus.

‘This is a shame, yes, but he played his part. He brought us here. Let him always be remembered as my pathfinder. The Emperor protects,’ replied Beynan.

‘That is not what I meant, prognosticator.’ Braxus gestured to the fatal wound. ‘The wound isn’t right. It could not be caused by a heavy bolter. That would have removed his head entirely.’

‘What are you saying, sergeant?’

Braxus reached down and rolled the Techmarine onto his back. His cause of death became apparent. His left helmet lens had been punctured by a single, precise, small-calibre shot.

‘It would seem we are not alone here,’ said Braxus.

‘Did your vision show you this, prognosticator?’ asked Tor’ra.

‘No.’ The word hung awkwardly in the air. Beynan stared down at the dead Techmarine. The gathered Space Marines looked between one another, unsure of how to proceed.

‘Open that door!’ Tor’ra shouted over his shoulder at the members of Jade Squad gathered in the centre of the clearing.

‘No,’ Beynan said firmly, ‘if we have enemies out here, let us face them.’

‘I agree, prognosticator, but we cannot fight what we cannot see. Out here we are vulnerable.’

Beynan rounded on Tor’ra. ‘From all of Aharan’s stories, sergeant, I did not have you judged as a coward.’ Tor’ra bristled at the insult but Beynan ignored it. He was a prognosticator. The sergeant would not dare lay a hand on him. ‘Are you out there?’ Beynan called out to the jungle, his arms spread wide in challenge. ‘Do you dare face the wrath of the Silver Skulls?’ He turned back to Tor’ra. ‘See, sergeant, we are in no danger. Whatever was once here is now gone. It was not foreseen so it is irrelevant to my destiny. Now come, fate lies ahead.’ With that, he turned away and stormed across the clearing.

Seeing him approach, one of the members of Jade Squad who had been inspecting the door turned to address him. ‘Prognosticator–’

‘Stand aside.’ Once again channelling his gifts, Beynan gripped the fortified door and pulled. He felt the bolts fighting against him, but he would not fail now. As his focus intensified, his body throbbed with energy. Sweat beaded on his brow as he strained. The hinges buckled first. Then the locking bolts sheared apart. The door swung open and the hinges snapped allowing the door to fly out, narrowly passing over Beynan’s head. Tor’ra, Braxus and the surviving members of Amethyst Squad were forced to throw themselves to the ground. The door sailed into the jungle, splintering trees as it spun uncontrollably, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Beynan fell to one knee. His breath was laboured and it rasped loudly through his helmet grille.

Once more Tor’ra was the first to reach him and help him to his feet, but the prognosticator shrugged him off, drew Soul Render and strode onwards. Inside the bunker was pitch black, save for sparse red lumen lamps that indicated the only path forwards – a long, sloping corridor that led deep under Skythis’ surface. The walls were bare metal and gave no indication of who had built them. Beynan proceeded without caution, his heavy footsteps clanging loudly. The corridor led down for a hundred yards, then turned back on itself and descended further, eventually ending in a narrow doorway. Beynan passed through it and found himself in a small circular room with a low, domed ceiling. The centre was barred off, and Beynan made to skirt its perimeter to reach the exit on the far side. He was stopped in his tracks as the room came to life. The low red glow was replaced by a stark white luminescence that revealed the middle of the room as a hololith display. It projected a grainy image of a man in translucent blue light. He was unremarkable in every way – of average height and build for a mortal man, his facial features were hidden beneath a wide hood. What little of his face could be seen was covered in an armoured half mask fashioned as a stoic unmoving mouth. His body was draped in light robes that showed a glimpse of the bodysuit worn beneath. On his chest was a rosette depicting a skull before a stylised I. A message played, but it was damaged and hard to decipher.

‘Greetings. I am Inquisitor… of the Ordo… I do not know… found… but this is your first an… no further. What lay… very dangerous. Be you loyal… turn back. There is no… here. If… foe… kind, may you burn…’

It repeated continuously.

Beynan listened closely, trying to decipher the lost fragments, but additional voices broke his concentration. They were quiet, but echoed enough for his superior hearing to make out. They came from the entranceway – the rest of the Silver Skulls descending to meet him. The whispers spoke of dissent. Beynan’s choler rose that his warriors dared doubt him. He waited, and it wasn’t long before they arrived, Tor’ra leading. The sergeant walked around to stand by Beynan’s side and studied the hololith.

‘An inquisitor. He looks… familiar,’ he said.

‘You know this man? Beynan asked.

Tor’ra rubbed his forehead like a mortal developing a headache. ‘No. Perhaps… He is familiar, but I cannot place him and it pains me to try.’

‘No matter, sergeant. What is clear is that he is the thief in the night,’ said Beynan.

‘Another part of your vision, prognosticator?’

‘Yes, sergeant. This man took something of great importance to our future and it is here. I can feel it.’

‘Can you sense anything else?’ asked Braxus from across the room.

Beynan stared at him. ‘You doubt me, sergeant,’ he said. It was not a question.

‘No, prognosticator,’ said Braxus.

‘Do not lie to me, sergeant. It is unbecoming of a Silver Skull, as it is to whisper behind a leader’s back,’ Beynan said calmly but full of malice.

‘I am not, prognosticator. I have faith. I–’ The warriors of Amethyst Squad shuffled anxiously at the tension rising in the room, and clutched tighter at their bolters. More voices rose, either in defence of the sergeant or support of the prognosticator, but speaking over one another none could be heard.

‘Do not lie!’ Beynan shouted.

‘He is not.’ Tor’ra’s low growl cut through the rising bickering like a knife and brought the room to silence. ‘I doubt you.’

Beynan stood bolt upright and looked Tor’ra in the eye. ‘Explain yourself, sergeant.’

‘You are arrogant and look down upon your own brothers. You see us not as your brethren but as tools to use and dispose of to achieve your goals.’ Tor’ra’s voice dripped with disdain.

‘My goal is the Emperor’s goal. He speaks through me,’ Beynan replied angrily.

‘You are no divine prophet, prognosticator. Believing you are has made you reckless and has cost the lives of your brothers and almost your own.’

‘The Emperor protects the faithful!’

‘Then why are we dying? Open your eyes, prognosticator. If the Emperor could protect us all, then no Space Marine would ever fall. He may guide us. In our darkest need, He may turn His attention upon us for a beat of His heart, and then He is gone again. We must protect ourselves. Your way will see us dead. Aharan would be ashamed of you.’

Beynan had loved and respected Aharan above all others. Tor’ra’s words cut him to his core. ‘Do you believe you could lead better?’

‘I do. Cede leadership to me. I will heed your council regarding the portents, but the decision of how to proceed shall be mine. I will lead us to victory.’

Beynan had never been disobeyed like this before, or seen any prognosticator defied so openly. In the face of such betrayal and humiliation, Beynan’s already burning temper threatened to overcome him, but Aharan would have been ashamed of him if he allowed it, that much was true. He considered accepting Tor’ra’s request. Then the vision came to his mind once again, unbidden.

‘A hero, exalted for generations.’

The truth hit Beynan like a thunderbolt. ‘You believe it is you, don’t you? You would accuse me of hubris only to heap glory upon yourself.’

‘You are speaking in riddles, brother. I do not understand.’

Beynan growled. ‘I will not allow it, and I assure you, the Chapter Masters will hear of this.’ He turned to the rest of the group. ‘All that remain loyal to the Silver Skulls, follow me. Victory lies ahead.’ With that, he stormed out of the room and into an enormous square chamber. Support pillars ran in two rows down its length as far as Beynan could see. The Silver Skulls advanced and fell into formation around him. Fanned out, they covered half the chamber’s length. Beynan glanced to his left and a deep rage burned within his gut when he saw that Tor’ra had followed too. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to focus. Up ahead, a slight movement caught his attention and the sounds of chains turning cogs washed towards them. He could see the far wall opening to reveal hidden alcoves. From them stepped grey-skinned servitors. Each of them missed their right arm, replaced by all manner of heavy weapon systems. At first, they were still and stared blankly forward, then they raised their weapons.

‘Destroy them!’ Beynan ordered. He lashed out with a wave of brute psychic power. It flung several of them to the ground with such force it bent metal and ruptured flesh. He then stepped behind the nearest pillar as a stream of heavy slugs bisected the air where he had just been.

‘An army of slaves.’

The Silver Skulls’ counter-attack was swift. Beynan added his own pistol to the weight of return fire and blew the heads off two servitors in quick succession. Though outnumbered and outgunned, the Silver Skulls were winning. The servitors slowly advanced across open ground, paying no heed to their own survival, and though their weapons were heavy, their aim was poor. One by one the Space Marines cut them down. Then the battle changed.

It started with a pained howl from the rear of the group. Beynan’s head snapped around just in time to see another of Amethyst Squad fall, a pair of fist-sized holes burned clean through his chest. Beyond the fallen warrior, he could see more servitors entering from further alcoves which had behind them.

‘Sergeant Braxus! Rearguard!’ he shouted.

Braxus organised the rearmost Space Marines and returned fire. Beynan’s attention returned to the enemy ahead. ‘Damn the Inquisition, the wretched fools,’ he muttered to himself as he moved to the head of the Silver Skulls’ formation. His pistol barked, felling servitors with every shot. ‘Advance! Push them back!’ he ordered. There was another tortured cry from behind him and he dared a look back. The Silver Skulls were caught in a crossfire and the rearguard was crumbling. Shots flew past the Space Marines from both sides, the servitors even striking their own kind, but for each that fell, another advanced in its place.

Beynan cursed the weakness of his so-called brothers. If there was to be any victory here, he would have to take it for himself. He felt Soul Render pulsing in his hand. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘That would be glorious.’ Without warning, he charged. He emptied his pistol into the enemy horde, then took Soul Render in both hands, striking into their lines. There was only one who could fulfil the portents. One hero to be exalted. The name Beynan Rhondus would live on in legend.

Up close, the servitors were slow and ungainly, their weapons ineffective. He was an instrument of the Emperor’s will, His wrath made manifest. He was strong and skilled, a warrior without equal. Soul Render rose and fell in deadly arcs. With every strike and counterstrike, a servitor fell, relieved of what little life they still possessed. No movement was wasted. Every step was perfect. Should even the most vaunted of heroes in the history of the Chapter see him now, they would be envious of his skill. When the servitors drew too close or threatened to overwhelm him, he would strike out with his mind and throw them back, cutting them down once more.

Then he was through them and the path opened ahead of him, an adjoining hallway to the right. He forged onwards, valiant and unstoppable. From the chamber, he passed through corridors and rooms that spiralled down into the planet. In each, he was assailed by more servitors and turrets. He destroyed them all, never breaking stride and never looking back. Soon he reached an elevator, its doors open, awaiting him. He boarded and it carried him down into the depths. He waited impatiently as it descended and finally disgorged him at the end of a long, narrow room with a low, arched roof. In the distance, a figure barred his way. He could not make out details, only shapes. It was far taller and broader than any Space Marine and its head was highlighted from behind by a vibrant orange glow.

‘Harbingers waiting in the shadows, wreathed in fire.’

‘Come, harbinger!’ he roared. ‘But know that I will not be denied.’ He lifted Soul Render and charged. The harbinger responded in kind and screeched, a high pitched wail that pained Beynan’s ears even through his helm.

‘They howled in despair.’

It was far faster than he had anticipated, and its bulk filled the chamber, but Beynan was true to his word – he would not be denied. As it closed he could finally see it for what it was, a battle automaton. A relic from an age long past. It lowered its shoulder, intent on crushing him against the wall. Beynan sidestepped, his armour scraping against bare rockcrete, and slashed down at its arm. Its armour resisted even the etheric energies pouring into Soul Render. It turned and swatted Beynan away, sending him tumbling backwards. Beynan quickly regained his footing. The automaton closed on him and Beynan reached out, tearing a great chunk from the ceiling. It broke over the automaton’s back and forced it down to its knees. Seeing his opportunity, Beynan charged, channelling his great might once more into the blade. He turned it in his hand, reversing his grip as he leapt. The blade fell, driving clean through the automaton’s head. The psychic power discharged and Beynan was thrown back down the hallway. He hit the far wall hard enough to crater the rockcrete and for a moment the world went black.

When he came to, the top half of the automaton was gone, the kneeling legs smoked and sparked. Beyond the wreckage were Beynan’s brothers, or what remained of them. Tor’ra led them. Blood coated his right leg and he limped heavily. Two more of Jade Squad followed, one holding up the other, who held his hand to a wound in his abdomen. The fourth of Jade Squad had lost his left arm below the elbow. Sergeant Braxus was last, his face covered in blood from a pair of horrendous gashes down to the bone.

‘There you are,’ said Tor’ra, his voice pained.

‘Where else would I be, sergeant?’ Beynan said, getting to his feet.

Tor’ra’s face furrowed with anger. ‘Anywhere, prognosticator. We lost you before we left the first chamber. It has taken us this long to reach you. This place is a maze, designed to ensnare and destroy.’

Beynan was confused and momentarily lost. ‘That cannot be, sergeant. My path was clear. There was only one route through.’ Beynan smiled beneath his helmet. ‘Does it seem that destiny guides me after all, sergeant? My victory and my prize lie ahead. Come.’ He didn’t wait for a response before pressing on.

The door to the final chamber had been blasted from its hinges by the same shock wave that had destroyed the automaton. Inside was a vast, domed room, its roof so high it was claimed by the shadows. Besides sparse red lumen globes, there was a single light source. A bright white cylinder sat atop a pedestal in the centre of the chamber.

‘Is that it?’ asked Tor’ra as he followed Beynan into the room, ‘You abandoned your brothers. You charged ahead and left us to face an army. Tek is dead. Amethyst Squad are dead. Because of you. For what? Your vanity? Your pride?’

Beynan turned on his heel and thrust Soul Render towards Tor’ra. ‘Hold your tongue, sergeant! I have heard enough of your insubordination. Your plans to undermine my victory here have failed.’

‘My plans? I made no plans here but to achieve our objective. It saddens me that I had to question a prognosticator, but you gave me no choice.’

‘Do not treat me like a fool. You wish to be the hero the portents foretold, exalted for generations, but you are not. I led us here. I defeated the sentinels. I defeated the harbinger.’

Tor’ra frowned. ‘Once more you speak in riddles, prognosticator. My knowledge of the portents is only what you have told me. You have never spoken of any hero, and if the costs are as great as you have said, then our mission here is beyond any individual.’

Hearing Tor’ra’s bravado melt away into desperate pleas brought pride to Beynan’s hearts. He was victorious here also. Their mission was almost complete and he had proven himself superior to the self-righteous sergeant. He opened his mouth to speak but Tor’ra cut him off.

‘Wait,’ Tor’ra said. He hurried past the prognosticator to inspect the central pedestal.

‘You dare–?’

‘I said, be silent!’ Tor’ra snapped back at him. He turned back to the pedestal. ‘It’s a stasis field.’

‘What is inside?’ asked Braxus, standing near the entrance.

‘A book,’ said Tor’ra.

‘Bring it to me,’ said Beynan.

‘I… Prognosticator, we have made a dire mistake,’ said Tor’ra.

‘I have made no mistake. This is where the portents guided us. This is where we should be.’

‘Then the portents were wrong.’

‘Blasphemy!’ Beynan roared, and strode towards Tor’ra, Soul Render starting to pulse in his hand.

Tor’ra held up his hand but did not reach for a weapon. ‘Hear me out, prognosticator. I am starting to remember something. A mission, almost a century ago. The hololith at the entrance – the inquisitor – he approached the masters, asking for warriors. He was granted five – Ma’lok, Dastillus, Ko, myself and Aharan.’

‘Aharan?’

‘Yes. The inquisitor needed us to launch an ambush, to claim an alien relic. I cannot remember the attack, only that it was a slaughter. When it was over, the inquisitor left with his prize and we returned home.’

‘What was the relic?’ asked Beynan.

‘A book. This book.’ Tor’ra gestured to the pedestal. Inside the stasis field was a heavy tome bound in a strange material that shimmered in the dull light. Its cover was inscribed in alien symbols. ‘It is dangerous, prognosticator. Too dangerous to be allowed out of Imperial hands. After the mission, the inquisitor…’ Tor’ra growled in frustration. ‘His name eludes me. He had his psykers cleanse our minds so we could never be used to find it.’

‘How is it you recall this now?’

‘A safety measure. Should any of us encounter this cursed thing again, we would remember enough to know the threat it poses.’

‘Then how will it save the Chapter?’ asked Braxus.

A loud whip-crack echoed around the chamber and Braxus fell dead.

‘It will not,’ said a voice. It was soft but cold, angelic but inhuman. No, not inhuman. Alien.

Their approach had been silent and perfect. They filled the shadows between the Space Marines and the entrance. Beynan turned and saw lithe, tall warriors in bone-coloured armour with high helmets crested by manes of bright red hair. They carried finely crafted sabres that flowed with deadly energies.

‘Harbingers waiting in the shadows, wreathed in fire.’

Two figures stood apart, one wrapped in a hooded black cape, carrying a long rifle. The other dressed in cerulean-blue robes adorned with trinkets. She was the only one whose face was uncovered. Her skin was pale and unblemished, her face gaunt and hard with sharp, high cheekbones. Her ears went back to delicate points and her long black hair was tied up in a tight ponytail. She carried a spear in her right hand, its haft tapping against the ground as she stepped to the head of the group.

Beynan had encountered such creatures once before. Aeldari. He did not wait to ask questions.

‘Purge the xenos!’

The sound of bolter fire filled the room, but the aeldari were already moving. The bone-armoured warriors howled so loudly Beynan faltered in his charge.

‘They howled in despair.’

Pain speared through his head. The injuries to his arm and chest burned anew. Decades of psycho-conditioning fought against primal terror as fear threatened to overcome him. He may have run, but he could not move his legs.

The aeldari leader reached him first, her slender fingers outstretched. Lightning leapt from them and coruscated around him. His body was racked with pain and he fought to stay standing. Once more, he summoned his gifts, the Emperor-given strength he had used to forge the path down to this chamber, he would now use to crush this filthy alien.

But it was gone.

Where before he had been unstoppable, now he was only tired. He pushed back against the witch, but his efforts were nothing more than the flailing of a petulant child against her. Something gave inside him and he felt blood trickle from his nose. His body went numb and he slumped to his knees. The world around him felt like a dream. He could only watch as the final moments of the Silver Skulls played out before him.

He watched as screeching warriors danced around the last members of Jade Squad, cutting them to ribbons in a display of perfect acrobatic swordplay. He watched Sergeant Tor’ra holding more of them at bay, swinging his chainsword in wide, vicious arcs, but each was narrowly avoided by its targets. Tor’ra, who was wounded and bleeding, was tiring. Finally, one of the aeldari spiralled inside his guard and drove her sabre up under his chest-plate. He spat blood on her as the others leapt upon him. Tor’ra fell, still impaled on their blades. When Beynan looked back, the witch was standing over him. She was relaxed, confident he no longer posed a threat.

How could this be? Beynan thought. His vision had been so clear. The portents, every one of them had led him here. He had done as the Emperor demanded and yet he was dying, just like those around him.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, the words slurring uneasily.

‘I am Farseer Endrasil of the Craftworld Iybraesil.’

‘I am Prognos–’

‘I know who you are, thief. I would see your eyes once more before you die.’

His arms were heavy and it took great effort to lift them, but he would not shy away now. If he were to die, he would do so face to face with his killer. He unsealed his helmet and clumsily tore it off. It fell with a clang and rolled away. Endrasil flinched, then frowned.

‘You are not him,’ she said, scowling. ‘Where is he? The one with the crescent scar.’

Crescent scar? She could only mean one man. Prognosticator Aharan. He too had been part of Tor’ra’s mission.

‘Dead.’

Endrasil visibly tensed. Her spear lashed out, stopping as it pricked the skin of Beynan’s throat. ‘When? How?’

‘Eight months past. Orks.’

Endrasil hit the haft of her spear against the ground. ‘I have planned this moment for a hundred years and you tell me I am denied my moment of victory by a horde of moronic greenskins?’ She stopped and turned away, making a conscious effort to calm herself. ‘Very well. If he is already dead, then you shall have to do. Who are you?’

‘Prognosticator Rhondus. The man with the crescent scar was Prognosticator Aharan. My mentor.’

‘So the student shall pay for the crimes of the teacher.’

‘I came here following portents and visions from the Emperor… I–’

‘You believe that long-dead husk that you worship sent you here? Is it not clear to you yet? You are here because I drew you here. Tell me, do you also carry these?’ Endrasil reached into a shimmering pouch and extracted a dull grey stone inscribed with a twin-headed eagle. Beynan recognised it immediately. Aharan’s missing aquila stone.

‘That belonged to my master.’ Beynan removed his own pouch from his waist and dropped it by Endrasil’s feet.

‘I carry the rest.’

The farseer smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, this makes sense now. I can feel it. This stone and the rest of your master’s are deeply linked. With one, it was no trouble to manipulate the rest.’

‘My vision…’

‘Did not lie. I had only to suggest. Your hubris did the rest. You are the sorcerer consumed by pride.’ She pointed her spear towards the fallen Tor’ra. ‘Him. He who brutally murdered so many of my kin. A beast to be slain.’ She looked back to Beynan. ‘Your master, the thief in the night, hooded and cowled.’ She tapped his psychic hood and the helmet on the ground. ‘All of you are my army of slaves. Thanks to you, I can reclaim what was taken from me. You gave your lives so that my people need not. You are a hero. My people shall remember you.’

Endrasil’s words struck Beynan like a blade to the heart. He looked around at the bodies of the Silver Skulls around him and thought of those fallen throughout the facility and outside of its doors.

Endrasil walked past him towards the stasis field, and with a wave of her hand, its power died. As she reverently removed the book from its mounting, a piercing scream suddenly split Beynan’s mind. His knees gave way and he collapsed to the ground, his eyes rolling back in agony.

‘Forgive me, brothers,’ he breathed, and the darkness consumed him.

SAVAGE

Guy Haley

Gollph lay still, resolutely trying to wring the maximum amount of sleep out of his limited rest period. There were two factors working against his efforts. The lesser was the deep, rasping snore of First Gunner Meggen, who occupied the camp cot on the other side of the tent. The greater was the blue, pervasive light of the Omdurman predawn already warming the planet to an uncomfortable broil. Gollph was from a hot land, but even he had his limits.

He grabbed his thin pillow and clamped it to his face. It shut out most of the light, but not Meggen’s infernal snoring.

There was no way he was getting more sleep. He groaned and sat up carefully so as not to upset his flimsy bed. The tent canvas flapped listlessly in the damp wind. The days and nights were so short, nine hours apiece. No time to acclimatise to light or dark before it was over.

‘Better get up,’ he sighed. ‘Make the most of the cool.’ He tugged his boots over holed socks and went to lift the tent flap.

Heat dropped on him with the weight of a blanket soaked in boiling water. His physiology was more suited to the conditions than that of the other men who made up the majority of the force, and he coped better than most, but even so, sweat sprang up on his pink skin. There were a lot of listless men in camp, and a lot of officers too listless themselves to force them to work. The sun, yet to crest the horizon, reflected from the orange sky. Gollph stood with the flap open a moment, spitefully hoping the brightening morning and the heat would wake Meggen, but nothing stirred the big man.

‘Snores like a Throne-damned grox,’ he muttered. After several years of service, little trace of Gollph’s feral world accent remained; he sounded more Paragonian than Bosovar now. He let the flap drop, and stepped out into the camp.

It was not long after dawn, the coolest part of the day, but already the temperature was up at thirty grades and climbing.

Omdurman’s tropics were dominated by a roll of plains wrinkled by small hills and scarps, dotted with lakes fringed by lush miniature forests. There was a scarcity of flat ground in the area, and all there was available was occupied by the taskforce landing field, forcing the army to camp on whatever scraps of level ground it could find. The Seventh Paragonian Super-Heavy Tank Company were stationed on one such scrap, alone.

Gollph headed to the hill to the west overlooking the Seventh’s camp. The planet had a reverse spin, and the sun would be climbing the far side. If he hurried, he could catch the sunrise.

In the shadow of the hill, Gollph walked between the company’s four tanks. Ostrakhan’s Rebirth, the command Hellhammer, sat out front. Behind the Hellhammer in a loose laager were the Shadowsword Lux Imperator and the Baneblades Artemen Ultrus and Cortein’s Honour, the last two huddled together like herd animals.

Cortein’s Honour was Gollph’s posting, and he could think of it in no other way than his tank. He didn’t command it – even the thought was a ridiculous presumption – but his position as senior loader made him feel proprietary towards it. Honoured Captain Bannick said he had a clear run at a gunnery position. Gollph wasn’t sure he had the ability for the role, and suspected Bannick was making a point about the skill of the Bosovar. That would be like him.

Artemen Ultrus was four hundred years older than Cortein’s Honour. Gollph’s Baneblade was barely a decade old. But even so young a tank was drenched in history. It was named for an officer who died before Gollph had been drafted from his primitive home world. Its decks were bloodied by the lives lost serving aboard. Its metal interior hid terrible secrets, some of which he shared, and all the guilt that went with it.

On impulse, he reached up and stroked the metal, still warm from yesterday, soon to be heated to untouchable temperature again by the Omdurman sun. Camouflage of dull yellow, green and dark orange had been applied months ago, but the lack of action they’d seen on Omdurman and the regular washes the tanks received from the region’s torrential downpours meant it looked factory fresh. From a few feet away, the armoured panels looked smooth, identical, but up close you could see that the armour was rough with old paint, corrosion and bad casting. At that distance, the tanks’ individuality was obvious, each one as different to the next as one human being to another.

He let his hand drop. Currently, the Seventh didn’t seem like much. The company crews had abandoned their house-sized vehicles to the heat. Their weapons were covered over with protective tarpaulins. Hatches were dogged closed. Engine panels had been removed to prevent heat damage and shielded with mesh to keep out Omdurman’s multiplicity of insects. Access ladders and grab handles provided anchor points for awnings to shade the ground where men lolled. The tank park looked dishevelled, arranged as it was according to the uneven terrain. The super-heavies were drawn up as level as possible so as not to stress their suspension sets while resting. If he’d seen the tanks like this when he was a hunter on Bosovar, and still ignorant of the real world, he’d have thought them strange, but harmless. Back then he had no conception of the sheer destructive power of technology.

He smiled. He remembered that first moment when he’d seen the tanks fight, their engines roaring, guns booming, spear-straight rods of lightning belting from their lascannons. Gollph was far from a coward, but in that second he was terrified. He was also entranced, and elated.

Now the tanks were so quiet they wouldn’t scare a bovid. He felt sorry for them.

Behind the tanks were stacks of Munitorum containers, and past those, maintenance vehicles. All that part of the camp was untidy – a fact that had been commented on by more than one officer in the taskforce. Each time it was brought up, Honoured Captain Bannick had to call out his tech-priest to explain the necessity of their arrangement. If they stayed there much longer, earth-moving equipment would be brought in to resculpt the ground. The Astra Militarum could tolerate untidiness only for so long.

‘There we go,’ Gollph said, patting Cortein’s Honour. The Paragonians, Atraxians and the rest – all these strange men of the stars – said that their machines had their own souls. Gollph couldn’t quite believe it. He had once worshipped an oddly shaped rock, so felt he had something of a unique perspective. Having his own world view blown apart by reality, and roundly ridiculed to boot, made everyone else’s cherished beliefs seem equally improbable.

Even so, he walked quietly away so as not to wake their sleeping spirits, just in case.

In the maintenance yard, men were working in the cool of the morning. Machine tools whined as they bit into metal plating. That was another thing that had frightened him when he’d been drafted. Any kind of machine had filled him with fear. The spacecraft that came to collect him, the troop transport, the ablutorials in the ship – the doors, even.

Some of the other Bosovar never got over their culture shock. Several of those incapacitated by terror had been shot as examples, but the executions could not shake the rest of the afflicted out of their catatonia. Never knowingly wasteful, the Departmento Munitorum found other uses for those Bosovar that could not adjust. Gollph still saw their cyborgised remains mindlessly trudging around, from time to time.

A shower of sparks curved off an angle grinder. More spat from an arc welder at the opposite corner of the yard. The tech-adepts attached to the Seventh had requisitioned the largest flat stretch of the terrain there for themselves. An area of beaten earth stained by oil made up the centre. This space, where they serviced the tanks, was empty, and had been for a long time.

Gollph sauntered across the yard towards the slope. In the shadow of the hill it was pleasantly cool, and dew dampened his boots.

‘Hey! Hey, Gollph!’ The quiet hiss of the arc torch cut out.

Gollph stopped and turned to face the welder, a Paragonian man.

‘Morning, Fulken,’ Gollph said.

‘Morning, yourself, little savage.’ Fulken meant that affectionately; many men didn’t. He stood with one hand on his visor, ready to flip it back down. ‘Shoam’s looking for you.’

‘At this hour?’

Fulken grinned. ‘You know that Savlar, never sleeps. Where you headed?’

‘For a walk,’ said Gollph. ‘If Shoam needs me, he’ll find me.’

‘Fair enough. See you around.’

Gollph waved and headed on.

A few minutes later, he slipped past the picket patrols. He still had his hunter’s skill. Nobody saw him.

As he mounted the slope, the cares of the world slipped from him. He allowed himself to be, just for a while, and put the soldier the Imperium had made him out of his mind. Halfway up the hill, he looked back at the camp. There was such a small amount of activity there. A few shouts and reveille calls sounded, thinned by distance, as insubstantial as the blue wood smoke that threaded the sky over the galley tents. Nobody else was about on the hill.

Quickly, he leant down, unlaced his boots and took off his socks. A slow smile of contentment spread across his face as his feet sank into the damp grass.

‘This is the way man should walk and run,’ he murmured to himself in his own language. He rarely got to speak Bosovar these days. The regiments he had been recruited alongside had been sent elsewhere, so there were only a few of his countrymen left in the taskforce. Those that were on Omdurman were either oddities like himself, fulfilling roles no one expected feral worlders could, or more usually they worked as servants to the higher officers.

With his boots off, Gollph moved fast. He resisted the desire to remove his shirt. There was only so much savagery the commissariat would tolerate.

In no time at all, he broke the line of shadow on the hill’s ridge, and was into the first of the true daylight. The sun was heading rapidly up from the horizon, and its heat hit him hard. He slowed, panting lightly, and laughed.

Even after years and years away from home, they called him a savage still. He worked their machines, he knew their languages, he understood their customs; it didn’t stop them looking down on him. When they saw him, they saw a spear-waving child-man in woven grass clothes. Let them underestimate me, he thought, glorying in the view. They miss so much, these civilised, off-world men.

Trilling his tongue in the old day-greeting of his people, he went to a boulder he favoured, and sat upon it to watch the swift sunrise.

‘Basdack oil, wrong Throne-cursed formulation!’ Meggen tilted the massive battle cannon shell around on its base, rolling it about to inspect it from all angles. ‘For the love of the Emperor!’ he swore, throwing the shell down.

Gollph winced. He had another one of the shells between his legs, a synthetic fibre brush in his hand, and a bucket of soapy, oily water to his left. A pallet of more shells stood outside the edge of the awning shading Meggen and Gollph. The shell’s brass casings hid large charges of fyceline and a compact rocket motor, and the copper-jacketed projectiles nosed arrogantly skyward, each as tall as Gollph’s waist. Yellow plastek snap-tags threaded the bright red fuses of their tips. They were potent munitions, capable of blasting apart a battle tank, or slaying a unit of men in a single shot. Meggen was treating his as if it were as inert as a stone.

‘Careful, Meggen!’ he said. ‘We don’t want the bloody thing to go off.’

Meggen made a frustrated noise around his cheroot, ran his hands over his face and through his hair, pulling his forage cap off in the process. His torso was stripped to his vest, the arms of his tanker’s jumpsuit tied about his waist.

He manoeuvred his cigar to the side of his mouth and chewed it. ‘This oil is the wrong kind for this environment. Goes all sticky in the heat. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell them, they don’t listen.’ He toed the brass casing, which was now stuck all over with grains of soil. ‘It’s not those basdack pen-pushers who have to clean the things, is it?’

‘No,’ said Gollph, scrubbing pointedly at his shell. ‘But if we don’t get it done…’

‘It won’t get done,’ said Meggen, joining Gollph in mimicking Hurnigen, Lux Imperator’s commander. ‘I’ve had it. I’m going to speak to Brasslock.’

‘You know what he’ll say.’

‘Yes, I know what he’ll say,’ grumbled Meggen. ‘I’m still going to speak to him.’ Meggen pulled his forage cap on. He untied the sleeves of his jumpsuit, shoved his arms into them, and did up the zip on the front with a scowl. ‘Why is it so hot on this planet all the damn time?’ He set off grumbling and continued until he was out of earshot.

‘Hot, hot, hot,’ Gollph said. ‘Better hot than being shot at. Nobody ever says that.’

‘I do,’ a voice hissed at his side.

‘For the love of the Emperor of Terra and the sainted nine primarchs!’ Gollph shouted, jumping sideways. His upset bucket hadn’t even hit the floor before he had his knife out and at the throat of the speaker, Karlock Shoam, the driver of Cortein’s Honour.

‘Look what you’ve done!’ Gollph shook his head, sheathed his knife and bent down to pick up his bucket before all the water was gone. He was too late, the last of it was being sucked away by the thirsty soil. ‘They’ll take that out of my rations.’

‘Did I scare you, little warrior?’ chuckled Karlock Shoam. ‘You are a quick one. Never want to fight you.’ Despite the heat of noon, Shoam kept his filthy greatcoat on, though even he’d removed the shirt beneath. ‘Only old Shoam can spook you, eh?’

‘You must have been to the cleansing block, or I’d have smelled you coming.’

‘Downwind, my friend.’

Gollph wrinkled his nose as Shoam came around his front.

‘Throne, you’re right. You stink. Get a wash.’

Shoam upended the bucket and sat upon it. His respirator mask swung from its straps at one side of his neck. He was never without the mask or the small tank on his back that fed it, although from the clear look in his eyes and the relatively good condition of his skin, he’d not been partaking of the nitrochem it delivered for a while.

‘Can’t offend me.’

‘Yeah, well you’re offending my nose.’

Shoam chuckled. It was hard to upset the Savlar, which was good, as he had a habit of shanking people that managed to.

‘Too hot, eh? Sweaty pinky, sticky oil, grumpy Meggen.’ Shoam shook his head. ‘You think this is hot? You not been on Savlar in summertime. That’d fry your bones.’

‘I’m sure it would.’

‘Been looking for you.’

‘Yeah?’ Gollph went back to scrubbing the oil-streaked shell.

‘Yeah,’ said Shoam, leaning in. ‘Old Shoam hears some whispers, so he follows the whispers and hears some rumours. Rumours become little hints. Little hints lead to big orders.’ He sat back. ‘We’re leaving,’ he said, with great gravity.

Gollph looked up at him. ‘Seriously?’

Shoam nodded.

‘Six months in the heat, no action, we’re really moving on?’

‘Yes. Am I not clear?’

‘You’re clear.’ Gollph stopped scrubbing. ‘I don’t know how I feel about this. I’m bored as hell, but being bored beats being dead.’

‘What you feel don’t matter,’ said Shoam. ‘You’re a Guardsman. Do as you’re told. Go where you’re told. But not right now. Right now, you got something else to do.’

Gollph looked at him quizzically a moment. Realisation lit up his face with dismay.

‘Oh, no, no, no, no. You’re going to hold me to that, are you?’

‘Foolproof plan, little man, it’s got to be now, before they break the camp, before the logisters come in and count up all the nuts and the bolts and the ammopacks. Easy to lose things, breaking camp. Things go missing all the time. We want to do it, we do it now.’

‘Right, right,’ said Gollph. ‘But do we have to do it that way?’

Shoam grinned a rotten-toothed smile and nodded slowly. ‘Only way there is.’

Meggen came strolling back. He was looking over the instructive text printed on a can of oil, and did not see their visitor at first. ‘Hey, Gollph, Brasslock finally coughed up some of the better lubricant, the stuff they burn in the votive bowls, I told him the machine–’ He stopped. ‘Hello, hello. Karlock? Why are you lurking back there?’

‘It’s time,’ said Shoam.

‘It is?’ said Meggen. He dropped the can of lubricant and sighed in relief. ‘You mean we’re finally getting off this steam-bath planet?’

Shoam nodded. ‘You know what else that means?’

‘Oh, yeah!’ A gleam came into Meggen’s eyes that matched Shoam’s in wickedness. He looked at Gollph.

‘Not you as well! I’m not doing it!’ said Gollph. He set to scrubbing his shell furiously.

‘Yes, you are,’ said Meggen. ‘You agreed months ago. You said you would. You promised. As soon as we were moving out – that’s what he said, isn’t it, Karlock?’

‘That’s what he said,’ said the Savlar.

‘I was drunk!’ moaned Gollph.

‘It still counts,’ said Meggen. ‘Think of all the things he’s done for us. There are worse commanding officers. A lot worse. He deserves it.’

Gollph hunched over and scrubbed at the shell harder. ‘You’re so going to owe me for this.’

At his elbow, Karlock Shoam sniggered. It wasn’t a pretty sound.

Omdurman continued its rapid spin. The day turned to night as if someone had doused a light. A horde of insects burst from hiding the moment the sun was gone, with a keen interest in human blood. Gollph swatted at them in irritation as he, Meggen and Shoam hid in a thicket and watched the galley store.

‘Look at this.’ Gollph lifted up the breastplate of hollow reedstalks hanging over his chest. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘I made it,’ said Meggen.

‘I can tell. No Bosovar wears anything like this!’ The rest of his costume matched the breastplate in ridiculousness.

‘They don’t know that,’ said Meggen, watching the guards on the store. ‘Big tent,’ he said, lowering his magnoculars from his face.

‘This will be easy,’ said Shoam.

‘You sound disappointed,’ said Meggen.

Shoam shrugged.

‘This is stupid,’ said Gollph. ‘I’ve had enough of pinky this and pinky that. Why are you making me do this? This will make things worse!’

Meggen looked over his shoulder. ‘People say Shoam’s a criminal, and they don’t trust him, just because he’s from Savlar. You try being him, that’d stop your whining about people treating you badly,’ he said sagely.

‘But he is a criminal!’ Gollph whispered back.

‘I believe that’s discriminatory, Gollph,’ said Meggen with mock severity.

‘He’s from Savlar, they’re known for it!’

‘Is that so?’ said Meggen, lifting his magnoculars back up to his face. ‘Aren’t Bosovar known for being a bit slow on the uptake?’

‘That’s different! They think we’re fools only because we don’t know any better.’

‘There you go. It’s a misunderstanding. You can’t write a whole planet off because of your prejudices, Gollph. Karlock here is an honest operator.’

Shoam chuckled throatily behind them.

‘I’m hardly doing my bit to dispel misconceptions about my people with this act!’ said Gollph.

‘Never mind that, we need what’s in there. Here’s the requisition chit.’ Meggen pushed a crumpled sheet of paper at Gollph.

Gollph read it. ‘This is nonsense,’ said Gollph.

‘It’s supposed to look bad. The more they think some idiot pinkskin has it all wrong, the further they’ll be off our trail. I had to get Apranian soused to sign that. Cost me a good bottle of gleece,’ said Meggen.

‘I’m not happy about this,’ said Gollph darkly. ‘Apranian’s got five Bosovar on his personal staff. They could hang one of them.’

‘No hanging, brave warrior,’ whispered Shoam, which wasn’t at all unusual – he barely ever spoke above a sinister hiss. ‘Too many of them. These Atraxians and others, they can’t tell your kind apart. They won’t kill for this.’

‘Could we stop it with the “all Bosovar are stupid and look the same”,’ said Gollph. He sniffed and pulled a face, and looked down. ‘Throne! I think someone’s been using this bush as an ablutorial.’ He swore in his native, clicking tongue. ‘It’s all over my Throne-damned feet!’

‘Shut up, or we’ll be heard,’ said Meggen. ‘Shh!’ Two guards had come to the tent to relieve the others. Meggen leaned forwards and peered at them. ‘Yeah, yeah!’ he said eagerly. ‘There we are, that’s Kollopian. He’s the one we’re waiting for. He’s dim as they come. Right then, off you go.’

‘I really don’t want to do this,’ said Gollph.

‘Needs must,’ said Meggen. He shoved Gollph forwards. ‘Get to it, little savage, you know what to do. Keep them occupied. If you think about it, we’re doing the hard work.’

‘All right! I know.’ Gollph walked a few steps, then stopped and shot them a dirty look.

‘And don’t kill anyone!’ whispered Meggen.

‘I’ll try not to,’ said Gollph.

‘Go on now, shoo shoo!’ said Shoam flapping his hands.

‘This is so undignified,’ muttered Gollph as he headed down to the storage tent.

Gollph didn’t try to stay hidden, but it took a moment for the guards to notice him once he’d stepped into the wide, yellow pool of light around the galley store entrance.

‘Halt, who goes there!’ shouted the guard who wasn’t Kollopian, levelling his lasrifle bayonet as stiffly as a conscript on the first day of drill.

Kollopian slapped the weapon aside. He was a tall, mean, ugly-looking man. Rangy, but only dangerous to those smaller than himself, no real threat to a proper fighter. Gollph had his measure in half a second. Kollopian was a bully.

‘Put up your spear, stupid. It’s just a pinkhide, creeping about. What do you want, pinky?’ Kollopian’s challenge was heavy with glee. He sensed sport ahead. ‘Lone little man like you out in the night – not safe! Savvy?’

Gollph affected an expression of cringing subservience and approached. Outside the circle of light, Shoam and Meggen ran silently past, heading for the rear of the store. It was vital the guards paid total attention to Gollph.

‘Please! Help! Have here me order from Captain Apranian, Paragon four-seven foot. Need now, very quick. Please!’ He waved the form under Kollopian’s nose upside down. Kollopian snatched it. His face darkened.

‘What? What by Terra is this?’

Gollph blinked at him in a sham of incomprehension. Inside, he seethed.

‘Good form, yes?’

‘No, bad form,’ said Kollopian slowly and loudly. ‘Wrong form, savvy? No read-y read? Get it?’

‘What?’ said the other man.

‘Idiot’s got his officer to sign the wrong form, hasn’t he?’ said Kollopian over his shoulder. ‘This one’s for resupply, not special requisition.’ He shook his head at the childlike writing on the list of required supplies. ‘None of these little basdacks can read or write. What’s the point of them? They’re cowards, child-minded fools. Waste of rations.’ Kollopian handed his gun back to his fellow and crumpled the requisition form slowly in front of Gollph’s face.

‘Go away.’

‘Need flour ration, now?’ Gollph said quietly.

‘Throne, they can’t even speak properly,’ said Kollopian. He dropped the screwed up form onto the ground. ‘Get out of here.’

Gollph looked at the form, then looked at Kollopian. ‘No get?’ He acted fearful. ‘No get, pinky get the whip!’

Kollopian smiled nastily. ‘Yeah, wouldn’t that be a shame.’ He bent low, so his black-toothed mouth leered right in Gollph’s face. ‘If it were up to me, you’d all be whipped, every day, make you work harder and stop you running away, good-for-nothing little savages.’ He prodded Gollph hard in the chest. Gollph whimpered, while simultaneously calculating how to break every bone in Kollopian’s fist.

‘Get out of here, now.’

Gollph forced himself not to look over the guard’s shoulder at the tent. How long did the others need to get the stuff? Another minute? Two?

‘Please! Please, good sir,’ wailed Gollph at the top of his voice. ‘Must need have flour and foods for lieutenant! Is an order. Need now, please!’

‘For the Emperor’s sake, keep it down!’ Kollopian said.

‘Need now!’

Gollph saw Kollopian’s blow coming a mile away. His jaw set before his muscles in his arms tensed. He set his feet badly. Gollph could have had him on the ground with a dislocated shoulder before Kollopian could blink. He forced himself to take the blow.

‘Why good sir do that?’ said Gollph. His jaw stung. Kollopian was a lousy boxer, but that hurt.

‘Get out of here!’ Kollopian hollered. He punched Gollph again. He was smiling, enjoying himself. Gollph took a few more hits, blinking with studied incomprehension.

‘You pinkies really are stupid.’ He shoved Gollph hard, knocking him to the ground.

Gollph curled up. Kollopian laughed as he kicked him.

‘Hey! Hey! What’s going on here?’

Kollopian ceased kicking him and stood sloppily to attention. ‘A pinky sir, wrong orders, trying to get into the tent!’

Meggen sauntered over to the prone Bosovar and helped him to his feet. Gollph stood woozily. He didn’t need to act that. Kollopian’s comrade stood staring open-mouthed at Meggen, scared by which way the scenario might go.

‘Look at the state of you,’ said Meggen to Kollopian. ‘Bloody infantry, stuffed full of lackwits. Tidy yourself up!’ he said, slapping at Kollopian’s dishevelled uniform. ‘Where’s your weapon?’

Meggen’s rank of First Gunner was equal to that of an infantry sergeant, and Kollopian had no choice but to take the criticism. Gollph was right in his assessment; Kollopian didn’t have the guts to stand up to Meggen.

‘Sorry, sir. I’ll sort it out, sir!’

‘Get back on guard. Can’t a man go out for a quiet smoke? You’re a disgrace.’ Meggen warmed to his role, berating the infantryman with great gusto, to the point that Gollph thought he was overdoing it.

Over behind Kollopian and his comrade, Gollph saw a shadow carrying a heavy knapsack vanish into the dark. He tapped Meggen’s foot with his own gently. Meggen took the hint.

‘See this kind of thing doesn’t happen again, and you, you little pink savage, make sure you get the right damn form next time!’

‘Yes, good sir,’ said Gollph, bowing and cringing.

‘Come with me,’ Meggen said, and took Gollph by the arm. Once they were away from the tent, he grinned.

‘That went excellently,’ he said.

Gollph threw off Meggen’s arm. ‘You’re a Throne-damned basdack, you know that?’

‘Indeed I do,’ said Meggen happily. ‘Indeed I do.’

‘Every time, redeployment is sprung on us at the last moment. You would think that the Departmento could give us, of all people, a little more warning,’ said Colaron Bannick to his cousin, Jonas, as they walked through the files of tents back to Bannick’s quarters. ‘You can’t pack up and move a superheavy company overnight. It’s ridiculous. They must have known about this for days, if not weeks. We’re out of an active warzone, there’s no risk of espionage. We don’t even know where we’re going. It’s needless!’

Jonas, who was a calmer character than his cousin, shrugged. ‘That’s the Guard for you, Col.’

‘This whole posting’s been a disaster, Jonas. No enemy, no rebellion, barely any population to fend for and them all happy as can be with the Imperium. Half a year wasted on bad intelligence.’

‘I disagree there,’ said Jonas. ‘I wouldn’t say wasted, not at all. You have to make the best of cock-ups like this. Personally, I’ve enjoyed our little holiday.’

Activity was picking up in the camp as the first stages of packing commenced. The larger installations were the first to be dismantled, and the roads between the tents were busy with light haulers towing steel crates towards the landing fields.

‘Have you, now?’ Colaron said.

‘I have. As should you, Honoured Captain,’ said Jonas. ‘We’re both still alive. We aren’t all as wedded to duty as you, cousin,’ said Jonas.

Colaron scowled.

They reached the Seventh’s mess tent. Despite the heat, it was laced up tight.

‘Why are all the sides let down? Who did this?’ said Colaron, tugging loose the fastening of the flap. He strode within, his irritation building to outright anger, then stopped in his tracks.

In the muggy dark of the tent, his company were assembled around a single table laid with a white cloth, and illuminated by candles. Upon it was a meagre feast that nevertheless bettered anything Bannick had seen for some time: Paragonian cakes, fresh fruit and even a modest joint of meat.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Happy name day, sir,’ said Meggen.

‘What?’ said Colaron Bannick again. One of the crewmen took his coat. Another, posing as waiter, led him to the head of the table. A good, thick gleece awaited him. A rather bruised-looking Gollph showed him the bottle, rested it on a white cloth draped over his forearm and poured.

‘It was my name day weeks ago,’ Bannick said. ‘And I’ve not celebrated it for years.’

‘We thought it was about time,’ said Meggen, ‘on account of the fact that, of all the commanding officers we’ve known around here, you’re probably the least bad.’

‘Where’d you get all this?’

‘Need-to-know basis only,’ whispered Shoam, who’d gone so far as to take a bath for the occasion. ‘Sorry for the delay, chief man, breaking camp is the best time to organise such affairs.’

‘Jonas? Hurnigen? Marteken?’ Bannick looked to the other officers in the tent, who were grinning like drunkards. ‘You know anything about this?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Jonas. ‘But I’ll not knock a holiday or a party either. Do you mind?’ He picked up a glass, which was quickly filled. He raised it cheerfully. ‘Your health, cousin.’

The timbre of the camp’s noise changed as the army prepared to move on. Machines squealed about on their treads. Ships grumbled up and down from orbit on gushing plumes of exhaust. Klaxons blared out every hour, and orders issued from a dozen voxmitters, amplifying the voices of harassed officers to harsh barks. And yet, for all the noise the army made as it broke camp, all those tens of thousands of men moving and sweating and shouting, they barely made an impact on the vast silences of the savannah. If Gollph turned away from the camp, it was still possible to pretend it wasn’t there, and ignore it as a momentary blot on this peaceful, unspoilt world.

That morning, he looked back at the camp.

In one corner of the tent city, three punishment posts had been set up in a marshalling yard. Three figures were manacled to them. They were far too far away for Gollph to make out their individual features, but their lightly pink skin was clear enough. Three Bosovar, the servants of Apranian. He watched them being whipped, a humiliation he had suffered once himself. He supposed they were lucky; if the Militarum Arbitrators had decided that one was guilty of the theft from the tent, he would have been hanged.

All so the Seventh could honour their leader. Gollph watched the silent scene impassively. His was a world of bovid raids and honour killings, where the weak were murdered by the strong. He had killed his own kind for far less than a bottle of good liquor and a spread of food. However, his actions in this case felt dishonest. Though he thought little of the theft from the galley, it was achieved through humiliating deception, and the injustice of the punishment falling on other men bothered him.

The tiny figures jerked as they took their lashes.

Dying at the hand of a man who came against you openly was honourable. There was no honour in whipping, less in being judged by men who would never fight you.

They called him a savage. He knew who the real savages were.

Gollph looked away to distant horizons, imagining he was a free hunter again for this final dawn, before they took him up to the prisons of the voidships in orbit, and on to yet another war.

THE DEATH OF URIEL VENTRIS

Graham McNeill

‘Each man is a spark in the darkness.
Would that we all burn as bright.’

He had been wrought to bring death.

All his kind had been birthed with ancient gene-craft and knowledge culled from bygone ages with singular purpose.

To kill.

From the depths of Pavonis to the Spear of Espandor he had brought ruination down upon the heads of rebels, xenos and heretics.

With blade and bolter, he had been an instrument of the Emperor’s will. He had served captains, Chapter Masters and – latterly – a primarch.

He was not perfect. He had made mistakes.

Hubris had led him along dark paths, but each time he had found his way back to the light. He had watched battle-brothers die, seen friends betrayed, and fought beside those he would once have called foe.

But in all things, he had served with courage and honour.

Now that was at an end.

The wavering skull-visage hovering over him promised as much. Burning eyes smouldered red as its rasping voice spoke of the agony he was to suffer, describing in detail the torments of the damned soon to be worked upon every inch of his flesh.

He would be split from crown to heel.

He would be cut, burned and broken.

‘Pain can be endured,’ he told the skull. ‘I have known pain before.’

‘Not like this,’ the skull assured him.

Searing brightness filled his vision, hot and piercing.

The skull disappeared as the light entered him, accompanied by the smell of smoke.

It burned his throat; spicy, earthy and woody.

Sweetgrass, like the gold-green fields of Calth’s deepest arcologies, growing wild and far from the lethal radiation of his home world’s blue sun.

Words spilled over him, but he did not know them.

Glittering blades descended, wielded by porcelain-masked surgeons.

The skull-visaged speaker had spoken truthfully.

This pain was like nothing he had ever known.

For over two hundred years he had brought violent death to the enemies of the Emperor.

But now it was over.

His name was Uriel Ventris.

And this was his death.

But first, life…

Uriel opened his eyes, sitting bolt upright with a cry of shock on his lips. His vision adjusted to the low light in a heartbeat.

Rock surrounded him, the natural stone walls of a cave.

Shadows and light danced upon walls of gold-veined marble. The back of the cave was shrouded in darkness. Even with his enhanced sight, he couldn’t see what lay there.

His instincts told him it was nothing good.

Uriel coiled his legs beneath his body and rose to his feet in one smooth motion. His limbs were stiff, the muscles in his legs and shoulders burning, as if he’d come off a hard, months-long combat rotation.

He had no memory of battle, save the long years fighting the plague-hosts of the Archenemy throughout Ultramar. A quick check of his body revealed he bore no wounds. He was unarmoured, clad only in a simple training chiton of pale blue, like the ones he’d worn at Agiselus as a boy.

The entrance shimmered with light, and Uriel slowly walked towards it, wondering what he would find beyond the darkness of the cave.

Fronds of cliff-climbing plants hung like a curtain over the entrance, and as he pushed them aside, a sigh of warm air washed over him. Moist and freighted with the smell of loamy earth, fresh-turned and rich with nutrients.

Uriel took another breath.

His neuroglottis sifted a potent mix of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Agri world?

No, not an agri world.

Uriel stepped from the cave, high on a cliff overlooking a sweeping vista of natural wonder like a great work of art come to life.

His heart soared at the sight of snow-mantled peaks rearing above him, their cloud-tipped summits shawled with evergreen highland firs. Silver domes built on grassy plateaux dotted the mountainsides, and darting flyers left pale contrails against the aching blue of the sky.

A city glittered on the horizon, a wonder of gleaming glass arches, palaces of white marble and fluttering azure flags. Transit lines snaked across the landscape in harmony with its contours, and sunlight glittered on tall towers.

Something tugged at Uriel’s memory, but he couldn’t place it. A feeling he’d seen this city before. In his many years of service to the Golden Throne, Uriel had fought on hundreds of different planets, but this was not one of them.

At least, not this version of it.

And then he knew where he’d seen this city before.

Upon his every return to Macragge, Uriel would walk the circuit of frescoes encircling the Temple of Correction – an act of devotion to his primarch and a way to remember the world he once knew.

He would always stop at a heartbreaking work entitled Dawn on the Last Day of Numinous City.

The artist had rendered the sun over the city with such beauty and skill that some said it was possible to feel the last rays of its light before it had been poisoned into toxic lethality.

‘Calth looks different with sky overhead, doesn’t it?’

Uriel spun around, fists bunched and ready to fight.

A man sat on a raised boulder behind him, soaking in the view and the warm afternoon, his skin ruddy from the light of a hundred different stars. He, too, wore a training chiton, and had the bulk of a Space Marine. His grizzled face was lined and his shaven skull was pierced with four golden service studs. His grey eyes were deep pools of experience, but still shone with a youthful sparkle.

They were eyes Uriel knew.

‘Idaeus?’ he said, and a surge of grief clamped his heart for the warrior who had shaped him in so many ways; the warrior who had died on Thracia so very long ago.

Captain Idaeus dropped from the boulder, held out his hand and said, ‘Hello, Uriel. Welcome to Calth-that-was.’

Uriel remembered the pain of watching his former captain die on Thracia, obliterated in the explosion that destroyed a vital bridge to save the flank of an Imperial assault.

He tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

Uriel studied Idaeus’ face, following the grooves of age, the scars of war and the pitted burn mark on the side of his neck where a rad-burst from a breached engine core had almost killed him.

Idaeus was just as Uriel remembered him.

Was that what this was – a memory given form?

Had his mind retreated into fantasy to spare him from…

From what?

A skull-faced monster looming over him.

Wicked blades and blood.

The image faded, and he felt himself take Idaeus’ hand, feeling the calluses on his captain’s palm, the ridge line of a scar where a greenskin grenade fragment almost cost him three of his fingers.

None of this is real.

Uriel knew that with deep certainty, but the emotions clogging his throat and constricting his chest felt very real.

‘Am I dead?’ asked Uriel, finally able to speak.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Idaeus. ‘At least, not yet.’

‘So what is this?’

Idaeus strolled to the edge of the cliff.

‘I told you, this is Calth-that-was.’

‘The Archenemy murdered Calth thousands of years ago,’ said Uriel. ‘They poisoned the sun and burned all life from the surface.’

‘That they did.’

‘So how is this possible?’

Idaeus turned and spread his hands wide. ‘I don’t know, Uriel. Perhaps you are dreaming? Perhaps you are dying, and this is a last gift of beauty from the universe? All I know is that I am happy to see you, my boy. You’ve come a long way since Thracia.’

Uriel smiled, happy – despite the strangeness of this meeting – to see Idaeus.

‘A great deal has happened since…’

‘My death?’ finished Idaeus. ‘I know. I died in service of the Emperor, so there is nothing to regret. Did we win on Thracia?’

Uriel nodded. ‘We did. The rebels were routed and the Pax Imperialis restored.’

Idaeus grinned and slapped a palm on Uriel’s shoulder.

‘Most impressive,’ he said. ‘And then? I presume you took the captaincy?’

‘I did, though your legacy shaped everything I did.’

‘Then I trained you well, Uriel. It’s every leader’s job to train their replacement.’

They stood together at the edge of the cliff, and Uriel saw a path heading down the mountain, a switchbacking route leading to the plains below. He hadn’t noticed it before, but in this place, in this time… he should not be surprised at such things.

A white-walled structure lay at the foot of the cliff, a sprawling barracks, with training courtyards at each compass point and a punishingly brutal fighting ring at its heart.

‘You remember that place?’ asked Idaeus.

‘I do,’ said Uriel. ‘Vividly. But the Agiselus Barracks are on Macragge, not Calth.’

Idaeus shrugged. ‘This is not the real world, Uriel. Here we are not constrained by logic or planetary geography.’

Uriel’s eyes narrowed at Idaeus’ words. ‘That sounds like you know more than you are telling me.’

‘There’s some truth in that, my boy, but shall we venture downhill? I’ll wager there are some familiar faces who’ll be pleased to see you.’

‘My memories of Agiselus beg to differ.’

The route down from the cave was treacherous and filled with heart-stopping moments where Uriel felt sure he would slip and fall from the cliff. Sharp stones scored his bare soles, and loose shale cascaded downhill in mini avalanches.

‘If this is not real, can we not simply… appear at the bottom of the cliff?’ asked Uriel.

‘Maybe,’ laughed Idaeus, relishing the challenge of their descent. ‘But where’s the fun in that? The nature of the risk defines the reward.’

Uriel was about to answer when he heard crunching footsteps behind them. He turned to see a group of boys running over the ridgeline above them. Twelve of them ran as if a host of genestealers were hot on their heels, legs burning and arms pistoning hard as they sought to win the race.

At the head of the pack was a powerful, strong-limbed boy with close-cropped hair and the hard-edged features of someone who had never known second place.

‘Learchus,’ said Uriel.

At the sound of his voice, the boys turned and raced downhill, following the path he and Idaeus had taken. They leapt and tumbled towards them, determination making their features older than their years.

Uriel saw the stocky form of Cleander, a bully who had made his life a misery at Agiselus. Cleander was inseparable from Learchus, but he had become a heroic warrior of the Ultramarines, finally meeting his end honourably on Pavonis.

Behind him, Uriel saw a dark-haired youth with a serious face he barely recognised. Gulfs of time and experience separated them, but he could not fail to know his own youthful Calthian features.

Behind his younger self came the lumbering form of Pasanius. Even at this young age, his body was already enormous. Upon his elevation to the line ranks of the Adeptus Astartes, the Chapter’s Techmarines had been forced to fashion his armour from Tactical Dreadnought plates.

‘Hard to believe you were ever that young,’ said Idaeus.

‘I can barely believe it myself,’ agreed Uriel as the boys raced towards them, apparently oblivious to their presence. ‘If I could tell him the things I know now…’

‘What would you tell him?’

Uriel thought for a moment, watching the flinty eyes of his younger reflection focus on Learchus’ back.

‘I would tell him to remember the teachings of the Codex Astartes, to trust that doing the right thing will always be doing the honourable thing.’

‘Don’t you think he knows that already?’

‘He knows the words, but not the cost.’

The boys were almost upon them, and Uriel looked for safe ground to stand aside and let the boys past. The path was narrow, and there was nowhere to step with confidence.

He looked back in time to see the young Uriel pick up the pace to overtake Learchus. Learchus looked over his shoulder, cocking his arm back. Uriel knew what was coming next.

Learchus slashed back with his elbow.

And blinding light burst before him as pain exploded in Uriel’s face. He stumbled, hands flying to his face in surprise as fiery agony seared through him.

He staggered, the pain swimming his vision with red.

Too great for so insignificant a blow.

It felt as though his skull had been cracked open, as if rusted nails were scraping the interior of his skull.

Uriel blinked away the pain and turned away.

White light filled his vision, but when it cleared, he saw they were no longer on the mountainside. The running boys, too, had vanished.

Instead, the gates of Agiselus loomed before him; dark steel and banded adamantium.

‘I remember approaching these gates many times,’ he said, looking down at his hands to see the skin of his knuckles was split and bloodied. ‘Each time, the gates were closed.’

‘Do you remember why?’ said Idaeus.

Uriel saw his former captain was also bloodied. The scar on his neck had expanded to his face. The left side of it was ridged and dark, one eye milky and white.

‘No matter what hardships we’d suffered, we had to work together and push them open.’

Idaeus placed his hands flat on the gate. ‘Shall we?’

Uriel joined him, pushing hard on the black metal. It felt hot to the touch, like placing his palms on the blade of a sword fresh from the forge. He felt it burning, but kept up the pressure.

Heat spread up his arms, as though molten fire was pumping through his veins and burning them from the inside out. The heat coiled around his bones, fusing them and turning the marrow to magma.

He gritted his teeth and pushed harder, fighting through the pain. His fingers blackened, the flesh peeling back as the awful, intolerable heat filled him.

Uriel screamed and gave one last surge of anger-fuelled strength. The fight to get back into Agiselus every night had never been this painful, never this desirable.

Finally, a vertical sliver of torchlight grew between the halves of the gate. The sight gave Uriel strength, and he pushed through the pain, drawing it inwards and using it.

The gates swung open, and Uriel fell forwards onto his knees.

He looked down at his hands, the skin rough and textured from decades of war, but unburned and whole. He exhaled deeply and looked up as Idaeus offered him a hand up.

He took it, and Idaeus hauled him to his feet.

The captain’s face was worse than before.

His chiton was almost entirely gone, the fabric burned and ashen. The cataracted eye was now molten and glutinous, its fluid dribbling down a burn-scarred cheek.

‘What is happening?’

Idaeus’ mouth was gummed with scars, and it took him a moment to respond. When his words came out, they were wet and bubbling, forced up through a throat thick with blood.

‘No decision is without consequence, Uriel,’ said Idaeus. ‘Remember that.’

‘What decision?’

‘This one,’ said Idaeus, tapping a blackened finger against Uriel’s chest. ‘The one you’re making right now.’

For a moment, it felt as though Idaeus’ finger pressed beyond the barrier of flesh and muscle, through the ossified bone shield protecting the myriad super-organs beneath.

The moment passed, and Idaeus turned away, limping through the open gateway.

Uriel felt a mix of emotions surge through him as he followed Idaeus within, gripped by a strange sense of events spiralling beyond his control.

Inside the courtyard, the day transformed into night.

The pale blue sky darkened instantly to sable-black. Torches flickered in iron sconces, and a full moon bathed the hard-packed earth in silver.

Arrayed in uniform ranks were a hundred Space Marines, each armoured in the cobalt blue of the Ultramarines, their shoulder guards edged in the vivid green of the Fourth Company.

Uriel held himself taller at the sight of these titans in gleaming war-plate. He was so proud of these warriors, and loved every one of them, though he had the sudden, sinking sensation that this might be the last time he would see them.

Suffocating grief touched Uriel, threatening to overwhelm him. His eyes misted with a sudden swell of emotion.

The image of his warriors wavered, and it seemed to Uriel as if decades were passing with every breath. The ranked-up Space Marines remained unmoving and unflinching as creeping stains of rust spread across cracked and aged surfaces of once-inviolable war-plate.

Uriel blinked, and his warriors were once again as he remembered them.

He forced down his emotions.

This was not a time for grief.

What is it then?

He didn’t know, but as the familiar smell of lapping powder and the tang of sacred oils caught in his throat, the memories they evoked returned with physical force.

Physical and mental exhaustion, pride and – above all else – a ferocious determination to win a place within the hallowed ranks of the Ultramarines.

Hard times, to be sure, but entirely worthwhile.

All the pain and suffering Uriel endured had forged the steel in his soul, moulded the fire of his youth and tempered him into a weapon to serve the God-Emperor.

Movement drew his eye, and Uriel saw shafts of moonlight catching the woven metal of the clenched gauntlet upon the company standard. Ancient Peleus held the mailed fist banner aloft, and Uriel’s heart filled with deserved pride at all his warriors had accomplished.

‘The Swords of Calth,’ said Uriel.

His command squad stood with Peleus, heads held high and their numerous honour markings and purity seals bright in the moonlight.

Brutus Cyprian, a warrior so powerful he had once ripped open a t’au battlesuit with his bare hands.

Petronius Nero, the company champion and slayer of the legendary blade-dancer, Xiomagra.

Livius Hadrianus, with his battered, heat-patterned meltagun held across his chest.

Apothecary Selenus, who had saved the life of every man in the company more than once, and preserved the legacy of the fallen.

These heroes had come together during the t’au invasion of Pavonis, a war that now seemed a lifetime ago. Uriel knew each man’s heart as well as his own, and he could have picked no finer brothers to fight at his side.

A warrior stepped from the ranks, his bearing noble and his power unmistakable. His helm was the muted crimson of a sergeant, but as Uriel watched, the colour bled out of it, becoming the same blue as his armour. A golden wreath appeared at his brow and captain’s insignia faded in on his shoulder guard between his squad markings.

‘Learchus?’ said Uriel.

The warrior turned towards him, the red lenses of his visor accusing him with their steely gaze. In their youth, Uriel and Learchus Abantes had been rivals, enemies even, but years of battle had wrought a bond of brotherhood between them.

‘You left us,’ he said, his tones clipped and precise.

It took Uriel a moment to understand Learchus’ meaning.

‘The Death Oath…’ he said.

‘Death Oath?’ said Idaeus. ‘You went on a Death Oath?’

Uriel nodded. ‘A long time ago. I took your teachings a little too literally and believed I knew better than the Codex Astartes how to act.’

‘You left us,’ said Learchus. ‘You are leaving us right now.’

‘What? No,’ said Uriel, stepping in front of Learchus and gripping his shoulder guards. The gold of the wreath at his brow reflected the moonlight. ‘I am your captain, Learchus, and I will be until the Emperor takes me to His side.’

Learchus shook his head.

‘You left us,’ he repeated. ‘We are left behind.’

With that, Learchus snapped hard to attention and spun on his heel until his back was to Uriel.

As Learchus completed his about-face, the rest of the company followed suit. A hundred heels slammed down in unison as the Fourth Company turned their backs on Uriel.

‘Learchus, what are you doing?’ cried Uriel.

He turned to Idaeus. ‘I endured this once before, walking in exile from the Fortress of Hera to an uncertain future. I have no wish to relive that moment. Why does my mind conjure a vision of my greatest shame?’

‘I don’t know, Uriel,’ said Idaeus. ‘Everything here has meaning, but it is for you to understand its significance.’

In desperation, Uriel turned back to Learchus and put a hand on his shoulder guard.

No sooner had he touched his comrade’s armour than Learchus crumbled to dust, his form disintegrating in the blink of an eye. The wind that blew the company standard carried the ashen remains away, and Uriel watched in open-mouthed horror as a wave of dissolution blew through the company.

As if formed of mist, every warrior of the company blew away until only one remained.

He, too, wore the colours of a sergeant, but one of his arms was the gleaming metal of a cybernetic replacement. His armour was colossal, crafted from the remains of damaged suits of Terminator armour.

‘Pasanius! Emperor’s mercy, it’s good to see you.’

‘Mercy? The Emperor has no mercy,’ said Pasanius. ‘His sons learned that. The warriors of the storm, they knew it, and soon we’ll have to accept it. A new era is upon us. Upon you. Isn’t that why you came here?’

‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ said Uriel. ‘Is this a dream? A vision of the warp? I don’t know.’

‘It’s you,’ said Pasanius. ‘This. It’s all you. What’s past is prologue, and what awaits at the end is up to you.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I know you don’t, but you will,’ said Pasanius, and he placed his augmetic hand at the centre of Uriel’s chest.

Uriel felt the heat of his old friend’s hand through the thin material of the chiton.

‘The Noctis Aeterna has fallen, Uriel, and only the strongest will survive the coming war. You have to be strong. You have to endure. Remember that.’

Burning heat flowed from Pasanius’ palm, and Uriel dropped to his knees. Pasanius came down with him, keeping his hand pressed tightly to Uriel’s chest.

The pain was indescribable. Uriel’s primary heart pulsed like a newborn star within his flesh, and furnace heat spread from the treacherous organ, surging along his limbs like liquid metal in a mould.

‘Pasanius? What are you doing?’ gasped Uriel between breaths that felt like drawing shards of glass into his lungs. ‘What’s happening to me?’

‘What happens to all living things that seek to survive,’ said Pasanius. ‘Change.’

‘Please, make it stop!’

Pasanius shook his head and lifted his other arm to the night sky.

‘Time to go,’ he said, and an awful sensation of dread settled upon Uriel as Pasanius vanished, and he saw the hues of moon and sky reverse.

A creeping shadow slid over the surface of the silver moon, as a bleached, lifeless white bled into the sky.

The walls of Agiselus peeled away, pristine marble flaking like cinders lifting from charred timber. Veins of rust spread through the white walls as the stonework crumbled to reveal its bones of corroded iron mesh.

With the disintegration of the walls, Uriel saw the lush landscape around the barracks wither. The forested mountains blackened to become vast slag heaps of industrial debris as the city on the horizon reassembled itself into a series of skull-mouthed manufactoria, belching toxic fumes and poisonous waste from soaring flare-stacks.

What had once been a landscape of natural beauty was now a smog-wreathed hellscape, a devastated wasteland threaded by sluggish, rainbow-sheened rivers of petrochemicals.

‘No,’ said Uriel, recognising the dead sky and the hateful black sun presiding over this nightmarish landscape. ‘By the Emperor’s mercy, no!’

‘Weren’t you listening?’ said Idaeus, except the voice was no longer that of Idaeus. ‘The Emperor has no mercy, He’s a monster and a madman. I told you that before, but you didn’t listen then either.’

Uriel had not heard that voice for decades, but its mocking cadence and bitter tones were forever etched in his mind.

He knew it as well as his own.

Idaeus looked up, but the burned face of his former captain was gone.

In its place was the face of a warrior in burnished war-plate, steel-dust grey and chevroned with yellow and black. One arm was ebon black and cursed, the other held a monstrous axe.

His scalp was shaven and scarred, one eye a burning red cybernetic replacement. Uriel remembered firing the shot that cost him that eye.

‘Honsou…’ said Uriel.

‘Tell me,’ said the Iron Warrior, ‘did you ever think you’d return to the Eye of Terror?’

Uriel could not be on Medrengard.

This was not Honsou.

It could not be.

But now the searing fire in Uriel’s heart had a focus.

The litany of Honsou’s crimes was a legacy of slaughter; planets razed, entire populations murdered, and bloodshed so prodigious it seemed inconceivable a single individual could have orchestrated it all.

Honsou’s death was long overdue, but he had managed to escape the depths of Calth and flee Ultramar on the corpse-hauler Shendao. Astrogators and warp-divinators surmised he had taken the captured ship to the Eye of Terror.

But what had become of him after that was a mystery.

Most likely he was dead, dust and bones upon one of the hundreds of battlefields around the Cicatrix Maledictum.

No, this could not be Honsou.

And yet…

Uriel roared and charged the Iron Warrior.

The figure that had once been Idaeus rose to its feet and awaited his attack. The Iron Warrior dropped the black-bladed axe and spread his arms in a gesture of empty challenge.

Uriel’s fist smashed into Honsou’s cheek, snapping his head back with ferocious impact. Honsou took the blow stoically, reeling from a second thunderous punch.

Blood coated the Iron Warrior’s face in a grotesque mask, but he wasn’t fighting back.

Uriel bore Honsou to the ground, pummelling him as they fell. His fists slammed down again and again. Uriel reached for a weapon, something to finish his foe once and for all.

His fingers closed on cold steel, and he pushed himself upright. His breathing rasped hard in his chest, and he looked down to see he had picked up Honsou’s black-bladed axe.

Its weight was perfectly balanced, the grip textured for his hands. Uriel felt the power within the blade, a power so great it could slay gods.

He swung the weapon wide, arcing it up to bring down in an executioner’s stroke. The blade growled in pleasure, the bloodthirst at its heart eager for the kill.

Uriel roared and hurled the weapon away.

Honsou laughed and spat a wad of blood.

‘You never could kill me,’ said Honsou.

‘There’s nothing of you here to kill.’

‘So sure of that, are you?’

‘Yes,’ said Uriel. ‘Your face.’

‘What about it? I grant you it’s not as handsome as it once was, but I’ve seen worse. Trust me, a lot worse.’

‘You were once a Space Marine, but even a Space Marine’s skull should have been pulped by the beating I just gave you.’

Honsou retrieved his axe, but made no move to attack Uriel.

They circled one another warily beneath the light of the black sun. The blasted hinterlands stretching out in every direction were bleached of all life by the deathly sun, bereft of colour and signs of habitation.

Nothing could live here; nothing natural, anyway.

Scattered across Medrengard, conclaves of muttering heretic tech-priests laboured within bloodied forge-temples, and technovirus-infused monsters of flesh and steel roamed its junkyard forest of rust and debris.

Carrion-scrappers circled over ancient battlefields while the bones of the dead drifted on the sands of pale deserts.

In the distance, Uriel saw an ironclad mountain rise from the wasteland and climb to the sky with the ratcheting boom of impossibly deep world-gears. Squatting at the base of the mountain was a damned city of blighted strongholds, protected from attack behind layered defences of basalt walls and forests of razorwire, and overlooked by cliffs of artillery batteries.

Dark thoughts crowded Uriel’s mind at the sight of this nightmarish world, recollections of gut-wrenching confessions made to Chaplain Clausel in the candlelit gloom of the Reclusiam aboard the Vae Victus.

Enclosed in the dark folds of blood-rich flesh…

The essence of his soul grafted to another…

Unfleshed…

‘Memories of this place haunted me for years after Pasanius and I returned to Macragge,’ said Uriel.

‘I’m amazed they didn’t just shoot the pair of you down as soon as you appeared at the gates,’ said Honsou.

‘A Grey Knight by the name of Leodegarius tested our faith and flesh on Salinas,’ said Uriel. ‘He declared us free of taint, and the word of such a captain carries great weight.’

‘Still…’ said Honsou. ‘Can they ever really know? Can you? The Savage Morticians opened you up, worked their dark arts in the core of your being. How can you be sure they didn’t plant some little piece of Chaos to bring back with you? The ways of the Archenemy are insidious, you know.’

Uriel shook his head, amused by Honsou’s transparency.

‘Now I know you’re not him,’ said Uriel. ‘Honsou would never be so blatant. He would probe for weakness, test my defences and flank me when I least expected it. You’re not him. I know that for a fact, but I cannot look at you without the same hatred I felt all those years ago.’

‘Hatred is an underrated emotion,’ said Honsou. ‘It was all that sustained me when I was at the bottom of the wheel’s turn. It gave me focus when everyone wanted to crush me.’

‘There are better emotions than hate for that.’

‘None as pure.’

Uriel knew he could never reason with such a monster. Some souls had fallen too far into darkness ever to return to the Emperor’s light. Too blinded by their own evil or ignorance, they were lost in a swamp of their own making.

Honsou had become a figure of evil legend in Ultramar, his deeds still spoken of in hushed whispers for fear that the mere utterance of his name might reach him in some far-flung daemon world and draw him back.

His Bloodborn invasion of Ultramar had been repulsed, but only at the cost of millions of lives and almost a third of the Chapter’s warriors.

But seeing him here now – wherever here was – Uriel saw the truth of his once-nemesis.

‘I used to fear you,’ said Uriel.

‘I am fearsome,’ agreed Honsou.

‘Not that way. I mean in the sense that you were a dark mirror of my potential, the final destination of the path I was on. You say hate sustained you? Discipline sustained me. The rules I broke, the edicts of the Codex Astartes I flouted? Ignoring them was the quick and easy choice. The hard choice was doing the right thing, doing what needed to be done no matter how difficult. That’s what you could never grasp, because you served only one master. Yourself. And that’s why I no longer fear what you represent. I am a servant of the Golden Throne, and I am stronger for that.’

‘You’re still a servant, though,’ said Honsou. ‘And servant’s just another word for slave.’

‘You never did understand me, did you?’ said Uriel. ‘Even with everything you learned from the Newborn, you never understood. You had the genetics, the armour and the weapons, but you were never really a Space Marine. You were not trained among equals, never took strength from bonds of brotherhood, and you never learned how much stronger those bonds make us.’

‘Then illuminate me, O wise one.’

‘To be truly free, you need discipline.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘For every freedom you desire, there is a constant discipline you must implement until it becomes so ingrained a habit that it is as natural as breathing,’ said Uriel, seeing a rolling cloud of dust appear over each horizon.

Approaching vehicles, a lot of them.

His words grew stronger as he spoke, the truth of them armouring him in certainty.

‘From the physical to the emotional to the strategic and the tactical, the Codex Astartes taught me how to apply that universal formula to every aspect of my life.’

The cloud on the horizon was breaking up now, and between blustering squalls of ferrous dust, Uriel saw snatches of an armoured host of unstoppable force converging on him, like a noose around the neck of a condemned heretic.

‘So how does any of that help you now?’ asked Honsou, looking past Uriel to the approaching iron tide. ‘All the discipline in the world won’t save you from what’s coming.’

Uriel looked straight into the black sun, stark against the sky like a cyclopean eye staring down at him. It blinked, and the edges rippled with a smoky umbra. The whiteness of the sky around it gleamed oddly, like spots of light reflecting on ivory plates of ceramite.

‘Of course it will,’ he said.

‘How?’

‘By not giving in. That’s it, isn’t it? You are my weakness given voice. You want me to give in, to abandon my principles in the face of pain and adversity, but I will not. Whatever this place is, whatever is approaching, I will endure it. You think I will break here? I will not. You think I will succumb to you? That will never happen.’

Honsou shrugged and backed away from him as the horde of diabolical war-machines roared out of the dust towards Uriel.

They came as hulking, spike-hulled tanks and biomechanical constructs of brass and bone, bearing banners of flayed skin and leering, blood-stained mutants that clung to their hulls like psychotic parasites.

Uriel could not hope to fight such numbers and win, but that he would fight was what truly mattered.

‘You’re going to die here, Ventris.’

Uriel looked back to the host of snarling daemon-vehicles surrounding him. He knew the faces of the men clinging to them; they were the faces of every foe he had ever killed, and the faces of enemies he had yet to kill.

Whatever this was, whatever nightmare he had fallen into, he knew it had not broken him. In the face of pain, dark memories and temptations to weakness, he remained true to himself.

The words of the Codex Astartes returned to Uriel, as they always did in times of hardship.

‘The warrior who acts out of honour cannot fail. His duty is honour itself. Even his death – if it is honourable – is a reward and can be no failure, for it has come through duty. Seek honour as you act, therefore, and you will know no fear.’

‘Fine words,’ said Honsou with a grin as the guns of every one of the clanking monstrosities lowered to aim right at Uriel’s heart. ‘But just remember one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You chose this. All of it.’

Uriel’s world exploded in pain and fire.

But, mercifully, it was short.

The chamber echoed with the last of his screams.

Gore coated the gleaming ceramic tiles of its walls. It dribbled in thick ropes from the slab upon which the gene-wrought form of Uriel Ventris lay.

Whirring autoclaves vented superheated steam, and the blades of auto-chirurgeons were bright red and sticky with congealed, hyper-oxygenated blood.

Hissing censers billowed with scented fumes, and choirs of chanting acolytes stood in shadowed alcoves around the chamber’s perimeter.

Red-robed figures in blood-stiffened aprons retreated from the slab, their chimeric features hidden within their shadowed hoods.

Two others descended from the glass-fronted gallery above, their steps leaden and their hearts filled with foreboding.

They approached the slab, the body upon it already cooling as its vital functions stilled.

Auto-lungs wheezed one last time and then ceased their rhythmic rise and fall. Bio-monitors flatlined and the jagged sine-waves of brain activity plateaued.

‘Did it work?’ asked the first figure, a skull-faced giant in black armour.

His companion, plated in ivory and cobalt, consulted the chattering machinery, inloading data streams to his gauntlet.

‘He is dead,’ he said at last. ‘So, yes, it worked.’

‘Now what do we do?’

‘Now we wait,’ said Apothecary Selenus. ‘And we pray he crosses the Rubicon.’

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Chris Wraight is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Scars and The Path of Heaven, the novel Valdor: Birth of the Imperium and the Primarchs novels Leman Russ: The Great Wolf and Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written The Lords of Silence, Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne, Vaults of Terra: The Hollow Mountain, Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion, the Space Wolves novels Blood of Asaheim and Stormcaller, and many more. Additionally, he has many Warhammer novels to his name, including the Warhammer Chronicles novel Master of Dragons, which forms part of the War of Vengeance series. Chris lives and works in Bradford-on-Avon, in south-west England.

Peter McLean has written several short stories for Black Library, including ‘Baphomet by Night’, ‘No Hero’, ‘Sand Lords’ and ‘Lightning Run’ for Warhammer 40,000, and the Warhammer Horror tale ‘Predations of the Eagle’. He grew up in Norwich, where he began story-writing, practising martial arts and practical magic, and lives there still with his wife.

Josh Reynolds’ extensive Black Library back catalogue includes the Horus Heresy Primarchs novel Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix, and three Horus Heresy audio dramas featuring the Blackshields. His Warhammer 40,000 work includes the Space Marine Conquests novel Apocalypse, Lukas the Trickster and the Fabius Bile novels. He has written many stories set in the Age of Sigmar, including the novels Shadespire: The Mirrored City, Soul Wars, Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows, the Hallowed Knights novels Plague Garden and Black Pyramid, and Nagash: The Undying King. He has written the Warhammer Horror novel Dark Harvest, and novella The Beast in the Trenches, featured in the portmanteau novel The Wicked and the Damned. He has recently penned the Necromunda novel Kal Jerico: Sinner’s Bounty. He lives and works in Sheffield.

Steve Lyons’ work in the Warhammer 40,000 universe includes the novellas Iron Resolve, Engines of War and Angron’s Monolith, the Imperial Guard novels Death World, Ice Guard and Dead Men Walking, and the audio dramas Waiting Death and The Madness Within. He has also written numerous short stories and is currently working on more tales from the grim darkness of the far future.

Rachel Harrison is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Honourbound, featuring the character Commissar Severina Raine, as well the accompanying short stories ‘Execution’, ‘Trials’, ‘Fire and Thunder’, ‘A Company of Shadows’, and ‘The Darkling Hours’, which won a 2019 Scribe Award in the Best Short Story category. Also for Warhammer 40,000 she has written the novel Mark of Faith and the novella Blood Rite, numerous short stories including ‘The Third War’ and ‘Dishonoured’, the short story ‘Dirty Dealings’ for Necromunda, and the Warhammer Horror audio drama The Way Out.

Robbie MacNiven is a Highlands-born History graduate from the University of Edinburgh. He has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Blood of Iax, The Last Hunt, Carcharodons: Red Tithe, Carcharodons: Outer Dark and Legacy of Russ as well as the short stories ‘Redblade’, ‘A Song for the Lost’ and ‘Blood and Iron’. His hobbies include re-enacting, football and obsessing over Warhammer 40,000.

Phil Kelly is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novels Farsight: Crisis of Faith and Farsight: Empire of Lies, the Space Marine Conquests novel War of Secrets, the Space Marine Battles novel Blades of Damocles and the novellas Farsight and Blood Oath. For Warhammer he has written the titles Sigmar’s Blood and Dreadfleet. He has also written a number of short stories. He works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham.

Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novels The First Wall, Deliverance Lost, Angels of Caliban and Corax, as well as the novella The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs, and several audio dramas. He has written many novels for Warhammer 40,000, including Ashes of Prospero, Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah and the Rise of the Ynnari novels Ghost Warrior and Wild Rider. He also wrote the Path of the Eldar and Legacy of Caliban trilogies, and two volumes in The Beast Arises series. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the End Times novel The Curse of Khaine, the Warhammer Chronicles omnibus The Sundering, and recently penned the Age of Sigmar novel The Red Feast. In 2017, Gav won the David Gemmell Legend Award for his Age of Sigmar novel Warbeast. He lives and works in Nottingham.

Matt Smith has written several Warhammer 40,000 short stories for Black Library, including ‘In Service Eternal’, ‘The Twisted Runes’, ‘City of Blood’ and ‘The Price of Duty’. He is based in Norwich and spends his spare time working on his Raven Guard army and training in martial arts.

Guy Haley is the author of the Siege of Terra novel The Lost and the Damned, as well as the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, and the Primarchs novels Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter, Corax: Lord of Shadows and Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia. He has also written many Warhammer 40,000 novels, including Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work, Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Darkness in the Blood, Astorath: Angel of Mercy, Baneblade and Shadowsword. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

Graham McNeill has written many Horus Heresy novels, including The Crimson King, Vengeful Spirit and his New York Times bestsellers A Thousand Sons and the novella The Reflection Crack’d, which featured in The Primarchs anthology. Graham’s Ultramarines series, featuring Captain Uriel Ventris, is now six novels long, and has close links to his Iron Warriors stories, the novel Storm of Iron being a perennial favourite with Black Library fans. He has also written the Forges of Mars trilogy, featuring the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the Warhammer Horror novella The Colonel’s Monograph. For Warhammer, he has written the Warhammer Chronicles trilogy The Legend of Sigmar, the second volume of which won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award.

An extract from ‘Of Their Lives in the Ruins of Their Cities’
from the Warhammer 40,000 anthology Lord of the Dark Millennium.

It feels like the afterlife, and none of them are entirely convinced that it isn’t.

They have pitched up in a cold and rain-lashed stretch of lowland country, on the morning after somebody else’s triumph, with a bunch of half-arsed orders, a dislocating sense that the war is elsewhere and carrying on without them, and very little unit cohesion. They have a couple of actions under their belts, just enough to lift their chins, but nothing like enough to bind them together or take the deeper pain away and, besides, other men have collected the medals. They’re out in the middle of nowhere, marching further and further away from anything that matters any more, because nothing matters any more.

They are just barely the Tanith First and Only. They are not Gaunt’s Ghosts.

They are never going to be Gaunt’s Ghosts.

Silent lightning strobes in the distance. His back turned towards it and the rain, the young Tanith infantryman watches Ibram Gaunt at work from the entrance of the war tent. The colonel-commissar is seated at the far end of a long table around which, an hour earlier, two dozen Guard officers and adjutants were gathered for a briefing. Now Gaunt is alone.

The infantryman has been allowed to stand at ease, but he is on call. He has been selected to act as runner for the day. It’s his job to attend the commander, to pick up any notes or message satchels at a moment’s notice, and deliver them as per orders. Foot couriers are necessary because the vox is down. It’s been down a lot, this past week. It’d been patchy and unreliable around Voltis City. Out in the lowlands, it’s useless, like audio soup. You can hear voices, now and then. Someone said maybe the distant, soundless lightning is to blame.

Munitorum-issue chem lamps, those tin-plate models that unscrew and then snap out for ignition, have been strung along the roof line, and there is a decent rechargeable glow-globe on the table beside Gaunt’s elbow. The lamps along the roof line are swaying and rocking in the wind that’s finding its way into the long tent. The lamps add a golden warmth to the tent’s shadowy interior, a marked contrast to the raw, wet blow driving up the valley outside. There is rain in the air, sticky clay underfoot, a whitewashed sky overhead, and a line of dirty hills in the middle distance that look like a lip of rock that someone has scraped their boots against. Somewhere beyond the hills, the corpse of a city lies in a shallow grave.

Gaunt is studying reports that have been printed out on paper flimsies. He has weighed them down on the surface of the folding table with cartons of bolter-rounds so they won’t blow away. The wind is really getting in under the tent’s skirt. He’s writing careful notes with a stylus. The infantryman can only imagine the importance of those jottings. Tactical formulations, perhaps? Attack orders?

Gaunt is not well liked, but the infantryman finds him interesting. Watching him work at least takes the infantryman’s mind off the fact that he’s standing in the mouth of a tent with his arse out in the rain.

No indeed, Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt is not well liked. A reputation for genocide will do that to a man’s character. He is intriguing, though. For a career soldier, he seems surprisingly reflective, a man of thought not action. There is a promise of wisdom in his narrow features. The infantryman wonders if this was a mistake of ethnicity, a misreading brought about by cultural differences. Gaunt and the infantryman were born on opposite sides of the sector.

The infantryman finds it amusing to imagine Gaunt grown very elderly. Then he might look, the infantryman thinks, like one of those wizened old savants, the kind that know everything about fething everything.

However, the infantryman also has good reason to predict that Gaunt will never live long enough to grow old. Gaunt’s profession mitigates against it, as does the cosmos he has been born into, and the specific nature of his situation.

If the Archenemy of Mankind does not kill Ibram Gaunt, the infantryman thinks, then Gaunt’s own men will do the job.

A better tent.

Gaunt writes the words at the top of his list. He knows he’ll have to look up the correct Munitorum code number, though he thinks it’s 1NX1G1xA. Sym will know and–

Sym would have known, but Sym is dead. Gaunt exhales. He really has to train himself to stop doing that. Sym had been his adjutant and Gaunt had come to rely on him; it still seems perfectly normal to turn and expect to find Sym there, waiting, ready and resourceful. Sym had known how to procure a dress coat in the middle of the night, or a pot of collar starch, or a bottle of decent amasec, or a copy of the embarkation transcripts before they were published. He’d have known the Munitorum serial code for a tent/temperate winter. The structure Gaunt is sitting in is not a tent/temperate winter. It’s an old tropical shelter left over from another theatre. It’s waxed against rain, but there are canvas vents low down along the base hem designed to keep air circulating on balmy, humid days. This particular part of Voltemand seldom sees balmy humid days. The east wind, its cheeks full of rain, is pushing the vents open and invading the tent like a polar gale.

Under A better tent he writes: A portable heater.

He hardly cares for his own comfort, but he’d noted the officers and their junior aides around the table that morning, backs hunched, moods foul, teeth gritted against the cold, every single one of them in a hurry to get the meeting over so they could head back to their billets and their own camp stoves.

Men who are uncomfortable and in a hurry do not make good decisions. They rush things. They are not thorough. They often make general noises of consent just to get briefings over with, and that morning they’d all done it: the Tanith officers, the Ketzok tankers, the Litus B.R.U., all of them.

Gaunt knows it’s all payback, though. The whole situation is payback. He is being punished for making that Blueblood general look like an idiot, even though Gaunt had had the moral high ground. He had been avenging Tanith blood, because there isn’t enough of that left for anyone to go around wasting it.

He thinks about the letter in his pocket, and then lets the thought go again.

When he’d been assigned to the Tanith, Gaunt had relished the prospect as it was presented on paper: a first founding from a small, agrarian world that was impeccable in its upkeep of tithes and devotions. Tanith had no real black marks in the Administratum’s eyes, and no longstanding martial traditions to get tangled up in. There had been the opportunity to build something worthwhile, three regiments of light infantry to begin with, though Gaunt’s plans had been significantly more ambitious than that: a major infantry force, fast and mobile, well-drilled and disciplined. The Munitorum’s recruitment agents reported that the Tanith seemed to have a natural knack for tracking and covert work, and Gaunt had hoped to add that speciality to the regiment’s portfolio. From the moment he’d reviewed the Tanith dossier, Gaunt had begun to see the sense of Slaydo’s deathbed bequest to him.

The plans and dreams have come apart, though. The Archenemy, still stinging from Balhaut, burned worlds in the name of vengeance, and one of those worlds was Tanith. Gaunt got out with his life, just barely, and with him he’d dragged a few of the mustered Tanith men, enough for one regiment. Not enough men to ever be anything more than a minor infantry support force, to die as trench fodder in some Throne-forgotten ocean of mud, but just enough men to hate his living guts for the rest of forever for not letting them die with their planet.

Ibram Gaunt has been trained as a political officer, and he is a very good one, though the promotion Slaydo gave him was designed to spare him from the slow death of a political career. His political talents, however, can usually find a positive expression for even the worst scenarios.

In the cold lowlands of Voltemand, an upbeat interpretation is stubbornly eluding him.

He has stepped away from a glittering career with the Hyrkans, cut his political ties with all the men of status and influence who could assist him or advance him, and ended up in a low-value theatre on a third-tier warfront, in command of a salvaged, broken regiment of unmotivated men who hate him. There is still the letter in his pocket, of course.

He looks down at his list, and writes:

Spin this shit into gold, or get yourself a transfer to somewhere with a desk and a driver.

He looks at this for a minute, and then scratches it out. He puts the stylus down.

‘Trooper,’ he calls to the infantryman in the mouth of the tent. He knows the young man’s name is Caffran. He is generally good with names, and he makes an effort to learn them quickly, but he is also sparing when it comes to using them. Show a common lasman you know his name too early, and it’ll seem like you’re trying far too hard to be his new best friend, especially if you just let his home and family burn.

It’ll seem like you’re weak.

The infantryman snaps to attention sharply.

‘Step inside,’ Gaunt calls, beckoning with two hooked fingers. ‘Is it still raining?’

‘Sir,’ says Caffran non-committally as he approaches the table.

‘I want you to locate Corbec for me. I think he’s touring the west picket.’

‘Sir.’

‘You’ve got that?’

‘Find Colonel Corbec, sir.’

Gaunt nods. He picks up his stylus and folds one of the flimsies in half, ready to write on the back of it. ‘Tell him to ready up three squads and meet me by the north post in thirty minutes. You need me to write that down for you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Three squads, north post, thirty minutes,’ says Gaunt. He writes it down anyway, and then embosses it with his biometric signet ring to transfer his authority code. He hands the note to the trooper. ‘Thirty minutes,’ he repeats. ‘Time for me to get some breakfast. Is the mess tent still cooking?’

‘Sir,’ Caffran replies, this time flavouring it with a tiny, sullen shrug.

Gaunt looks him in the eye for a moment. Caffran manages to return about a second of insolent resentment, and then looks away into space over Gaunt’s shoulder.

‘What was her name?’ Gaunt asks.

‘What?’

‘I took something from every single Tanith man,’ says Gaunt, pushing back his chair and standing up. ‘Apart from the obvious, of course. I was wondering what I’d taken from you in particular. What was her name?’

‘How do you–’

‘A man as young as you, it’s bound to be a girl. And that tattoo indicates a family betrothal.’

‘You know about Tanith marks?’ Caffran can’t hide his surprise.

‘I studied up, trooper. I wanted to know what sort of men my reputation was going to depend upon.’

There is a pause. Rain beats against the outer skin of the tent like drumming fingertips.

‘Laria,’ Caffran says quietly. ‘Her name was Laria.’

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ says Gaunt.

Caffran looks at him again. He sneers slightly. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me it will be all right? Aren’t you going to assure me that I’ll find another girl somewhere?’

‘If it makes you feel better,’ says Gaunt. He sighs and turns back to look at Caffran. ‘It’s unlikely, but I’ll say it if it makes you feel better.’ Gaunt puts on a fake, jaunty smile. ‘Somewhere, somehow, in one of the warzones we march into, you’ll find the girl you’re supposed to be with, and you’ll live happily ever after. There. Better?’

Caffran’s mouth tightens and he mutters something under his breath.

‘If you’re going to call me a bastard, do it out loud,’ says Gaunt. ‘I don’t know why you’re so pissed off. You were walking out on this Laria anyway.’

‘We were betrothed!’

‘You’d signed up for the Imperial Guard, trooper. First Founding. You were never going to see Tanith again. I don’t know why you had the nerve to get hitched to the poor cow in the first place.’

‘Of course I was coming back to her–’

‘You sign up, you leave. Warp transfers, long rotations, tours along the rim. You never go back. You never go home, not once the Guard has you. Years go by, decades. You forget where you came from in the end.’

‘But the recruiting officer said–’

‘He lied to you, trooper. Do you think any bastard would sign up if the recruiters told the truth?’

Caffran sags. ‘He lied?’

‘Yes. But I won’t. That’s the one thing you can count on with me. Now go and get Corbec.’

Caffran snaps off a poor salute, turns and heads out of the tent.

Gaunt sits down again. He begins to collect up the flimsies, and packs away the bolter shell cartons holding them down. He thinks about the letter in his pocket again.

On his list, he writes:

Appoint a new adjutant.

Under that, he writes:

Find a new adjutant.

Finally, under that, he writes:

Start telling a few lies?

He pulls his storm coat on as he leaves the tent, partly to fend off the rain, and partly to cover his jacket. It’s his number one staff-issue field jacket, but it’s become too soiled with clay from the trek out of Voltis City to wear with any dignity. He has a grubby, old number two issue that he keeps in his kit as a spare, but it still has Hyrkan patches on the collar, the shoulders and the cuffs, and that’s embarrassing. Sym would have patched the skull-and-crossed-knives of the Tanith onto it by now. He’d have got out his sewing kit and made sure both of Gaunt’s field uniforms were code perfect, the way he kept the rest of Gaunt’s day-to-day life neat and sewn up tight.

Steamy smoke is rising from the cowled chimneys of the cook-tents, and he can smell the greasy blocks of processed nutrition fibre being fried. His stomach rumbles. He sets off towards the kitchens. Beyond the row of mess tents lies the canvas city of the Tanith position, and to the north-east of that, the batteries of the Ketzok.

Beyond that, the edge of the skyline flicks on and off with the unnervingly quiet lightning, far away, like a malfunctioning lamp filament that refuses to stay lit.

Slab is pretty gruesome stuff. Pressure-treated down from any and all available nutritional sources by the Munitorum, it has no discernible flavour apart from a faint, mucusy aftertaste, and it looks like grey-white putty. In fact, years before at Schola Progenium on Ignatius Cardinal, an acquaintance of Gaunt’s had once kneaded some of it into a form that authentically resembled a brick of plastic explosive, complete with fuses, and then carried out a practical joke on the Master of the Scholam Arsenal that was notable for both the magnificent extent of the disruption it caused, and the stunning severity of the subsequent punishment. Slab, as it’s known to every common Guard lasman, comes canned and it comes freeze-dried, it comes in packets and it comes in boxes, it comes in individual heated tins and it comes in catering blocks. Company cooks slice, dice and mince it, and use it as the bulk base of any meal when local provision sources are unavailable. They flavour it with whatever they have to hand, usually foil sachets of powder with names like groxtail and vegetable (root) and sausage (assorted). Ibram Gaunt has lived on it for a great deal of his adult and sub-adult life. He is so used to the stuff, he actually misses it when it isn’t around.

Men have gathered around the cook tents, huddled against the weather under their camo-cloaks. Gaunt still hasn’t got used to wearing his, even though he’d promised the Tanith colonel he would, as a show of unity. It doesn’t hang right around him, and in the Voltemand wind, it tugs and tangles like a devil.

The Tanith don’t seem to have the same trouble. They half-watch him approach, shrouded, hooded, some supping from mess cans. They watch him approach. There is a shadow in their eyes. They are a wild lot. Beads of rainwater glint in their tangled dark hair, though occasionally the glints are studs or nose rings, piercings in lips or eyebrows. They like their ink, the Tanith, and they wear the complex, traditional patterns of blue and green on their pale skins with pride. Cheeks, throats, forearms and the backs of hands display spirals and loops, leaves and branches, sigils and whorls. They also like their edges. The Tanith weapon is a long knife with a straight, silver blade that has evolved from a hunting tool. They could hunt with it well enough, silently, like phantoms.

Gaunt’s Ghosts. Someone had come up with that within a few days of their first deployment on Blackshard. It had been the sociopath with the long-las, as Gaunt recalled it, a man known to him as ‘Mad’. A more withering and scornful nickname, Gaunt can’t imagine.

Rawne says, ‘Here comes the fether now.’

He takes a sip from his water bottle, which does not contain water, and turns as if to say something to Murt Feygor.

‘But I paid you that back!’ Feygor exclaims, managing to make his voice sound wounded and plaintive, the wronged party.

Rawne makes a retort and steps back, in time to affect a blind collision with Gaunt as he makes his way into the cook tent. The impact is hard enough to rock Gaunt off his feet.

‘Easy there, sir!’ cries Varl, hooking a hand under Gaunt’s armpit to keep him off the ground. He hoists Gaunt up.

‘Thank you,’ Gaunt says.

‘Varl, sir,’ replies the trooper. He grins a big, shit-eating grin. ‘Infantryman first class Ceglan Varl, sir. Wouldn’t want you taking a tumble now, would I, sir? Wouldn’t want you to go falling over and getting yourself all dirty.’

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t, trooper,’ says Gaunt. ‘Carry on.’

He looks back at Rawne and Feygor.

‘That was all me, sir,’ says Feygor, hands up. ‘The major and I were having a little dispute, and I distracted him.’

It sounds convincing. Gaunt doesn’t know much about the trooper called Feygor, but he’s met his type before, a conniving son of a bitch who has been blessed with the silken vocal talent to sell any story to anyone.

Gaunt doesn’t even bother looking at him. He stares at Rawne.

Major Rawne stares right back. His handsome face betrays no emotion whatsoever. Gaunt is a tall man, but Rawne is one of the Tanith he doesn’t tower over, and he only has a few pounds on the major.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Rawne says.

‘Do you, Rawne? Is that an admission of unholy gifts? Should I call for emissaries of the Ordos to examine you?’

‘Ha ha,’ says Rawne in a laugh-less voice. He just says the sounds. ‘Look, that there was a genuine slip, sir. A genuine bump. But we have a little history, sir, you and I, so you’re bound to ascribe more motive to it than that.’

A little history. In the Blackshard deadzones, Rawne had used the opportunity of a quiet moment alone with Gaunt to express his dissatisfaction with Gaunt’s leadership in the strongest possible terms. Gaunt had disarmed him and carried Rawne’s unconscious body clear of the fighting area. It’s hard to say what part of that history yanks Rawne most: the fact that he had failed to murder Gaunt, or the fact that Gaunt had saved him.

‘Wow,’ says Gaunt.

‘What?’

‘You used the word ascribe,’ says Gaunt, and turns to go into the cook tent. Over his shoulder, he calls out, ‘If you say it was a bump, then it was a bump, major. We need to trust each other.’

Gaunt turns and looks back.

‘Starting in about twenty minutes. After breakfast, I’m going to take an advance out to get a look at Kosdorf. You’ll be in charge.’

They watch him pick up a mess tin from the pile and head towards the slab vat where the cook is waiting with a ladle and an apologetic expression.

He sits down with his tin at one of the mess benches. The slab seems to have been refried and then stewed along with something that was either string or mechanically recovered gristle.

‘I don’t know how you can eat that.’

Gaunt looks up. It’s the boy, the civilian boy. The boy sits down facing him.

‘Sit down, if you like,’ Gaunt says.

Milo looks pinched with cold, and he has his arms wrapped around his body.

‘That stuff,’ he says, jutting his chin suspiciously in the direction of Gaunt’s tin. ‘It’s not proper food. I thought Imperial Guardsmen were supposed to get proper food. I thought that was the Compact of Service between the Munitorum and the Guardsmen: three square meals a day.’

‘This is proper food.’

The boy shakes his head. He is only about seventeen, but he’s going to be big when he fills out. There’s a blue fish inked over his right eye.

‘It’s not proper food,’ he insists.

‘Well, you’re not a proper Guardsman, so you’re not entitled to a proper opinion.’

The boy looks hurt. Gaunt doesn’t want to be mean. He owes Brin Milo a great deal. Two people had gone beyond the call to help Ibram Gaunt get off Tanith alive. Sym had been one, and the man had died making the effort. Milo had been the other. The boy was just a servant, a piper appointed by the Elector of Tanith Magna to wait on Gaunt during his stay. Gaunt understands why the boy has stuck with the regiment since the Tanith disaster. The regiment is all Milo has left, all he has left of his people, and he feels he has nowhere else to go, but Gaunt wishes Milo would disappear. There are camps and shelters, there are Munitorum refugee programmes. Civilians didn’t belong at the frontline. They remind troopers of what they’ve left behind or, in the Tanith case, lost forever. They erode morale. Gaunt has suggested several times that Milo might be better off at a camp at Voltis City. He even has enough pull left to get Milo sent to a Schola Progenium or an orphanage for the officer class.

Milo refuses to leave. It’s as if he’s waiting for something to happen, for someone to arrive or something to be revealed. It’s as if he’s waiting for Gaunt to make good on a promise.

‘Did you want something?’ Gaunt asks.

‘I want to come.’

‘Come where?’

‘You’re going to scout the approach to Kosdorf this morning. I want to come.’

Gaunt feels a little flush of anger. ‘Rawne tell you that?’

‘No one told me.’

‘Caffran, then. Damn, I thought Caffran might be trustworthy.’

‘No one told me,’ says Milo. ‘I mean it. I just had a feeling, a feeling you’d go out this morning. This whole taskforce was sent to clear Kosdorf, wasn’t it?’

‘This whole taskforce was intended to be an instrument of petty and spiteful vengeance,’ Gaunt replies.

‘By whom?’ asks Milo.

Gaunt finishes the last of his slab. He drops the fork into the empty tin. Not the best he’d ever had. Throne knows, not the worst, either.

‘That general,’ Gaunt says.

‘General Sturm?’

‘That’s the one,’ Gaunt nods. ‘General Noches Sturm of the 50th Volpone. He was trying to use the Tanith First, and we made him look like a prize scrotum by taking Voltis when his oh-so-mighty Bluebloods couldn’t manage the trick. Throne, he even let us ship back to the transport fleet before deciding we should stay another month or so to help clean up. He’s done it all to inconvenience us. Pack, unpack. Ship to orbit, return to surface. March out into the backwaters of a defeated world to check the ruins of a dead city.’

‘Make you eat crap instead of fresh rations?’ asks Milo, looking at the mess tin.

‘That too, probably,’ says Gaunt.

‘Probably shouldn’t have pissed him off, then,’ says Milo.

‘I really probably shouldn’t,’ Gaunt agrees. ‘Never mind, I heard he’s getting retasked. If the Emperor shows me any providence, I’ll never have to see Sturm again.’

‘He’ll get his just desserts,’ says Milo.

‘What does that mean?’ asks Gaunt.

Milo shrugs. ‘I dunno. It just feels that way to me. People get what they deserve, sooner or later. The universe always gets payback. One day, somebody will stick it to Sturm just like he’s sticking it to you.’

‘Well, that thought’s cheered me up,’ says Gaunt, ‘except the part about getting what you deserve. What does the universe have in store for me, do you suppose, after what happened to Tanith?’

‘You only need to worry about that if you think you did anything wrong,’ says Milo. ‘If your conscience is clear, the universe will know.’

‘You talk to it much?’

‘What?’

‘The universe? You’re on first name terms?’

Milo pulls a face.

‘Things could be worse, anyway,’ Milo says.

‘How?’

‘Well, you’re in charge. You’re in charge of this whole task force.’

‘For my sins.’

Gaunt gets to his feet. A Munitorum skivvy comes by and collects his tin.

‘So?’ asks Milo. ‘Can I come?’

‘No,’ says Gaunt.

A Black Library Publication

‘Exodus’ and ‘Light of a Crystal Sun’ first published as eShorts in 2017.
‘The Battle of Blackthunder Mesa’ first published in Black Library Events Anthology 2017/18 in 2017.
‘Blood and Bone’ first published in Blood of Iax in 2018.
‘By Your Command’ first published in Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah in 2018.
‘Unification’ first published in Lords of Silence in 2018.
‘A Company of Shadows’, ‘Lightning Run’, ‘Sand Lords’ and ‘The Twisted Runes’ first published digitally in 2018.
‘Savage’ and ‘The Death of Uriel Ventris’ first published in Black Library Events Anthology 2018/19 in 2018.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Paul Scott Canavan.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-353-0

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