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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.

FLAYED

Cavan Scott

Alundra was running, feet pounding on the dirt-covered road. She’d run everywhere all her life, always in a hurry. This way and that. Always being told to calm down – to stop and take a breath. She couldn’t stop today. No one could, not if they wanted to live.

She turned a corner, tearing into a paved side alley, the soles of her sandals slipping on the slick flagstones. Something wet. She didn’t look down to see what it was, didn’t want to know.

Seventeen years she’d lived in the township. Her entire life. She knew every corner, recognised every sound: the chirp of the birds, the braying of the grox in the fields to the south, the clamour of market day. Not today. Today there were no birds, no bustle – only screams and explosions and the incessant rattle of shots being fired.

There had been raids before. Of course there had. Perversely, the attacks had become just as much a part of life as the daily grind of washing and cleaning. They had learned how to deal with them, the people of Sandran. At first sight of the invaders, a bell would sound, the streets clearing immediately. The rich would make for their bunkers, the poor to whichever crumbling hab they called home. Raid shutters nailed against windows, families huddling together in the dark, praying that they wouldn’t be found.

Alundra could still remember her first time. A strange brew of absolute terror and the comforting smell of her mother, drawing her in tight and whispering gently in her ear: It will be over soon, my darling, just you see.

So many memories. Cautiously emerging onto the streets when the danger had passed, assessing the damage.

Clearing away the bodies.

So many bodies.

She’d seen her first corpse at the age of six, running into her aunt’s hab after a raid and discovering that one of the monsters had materialised behind the shutters, within the imagined safety of the four walls.

Alundra had lost count of how many raids there had been since then. How many sleepless nights cringing in the darkness, listening to the screams.

But this time was different. This time, everyone was going to die.

There had been no peal, no warning. Just the roar of engines in the sky.

The Flayers were close behind, drawn to bloodshed like dust moths to a flame.

Her grandfather had warned them when she was just a kid. The old man had found Alundra fighting her brother one blazing summer afternoon, the two of them trying to claw each other’s eyes out. There hadn’t been a raid in two years, maybe three. Grandfather’s calloused hands had pulled her from Husim, still kicking and screaming. It wasn’t anything unusual. Husim and Alundra were always scrapping, too similar in temperament. Headstrong. Stubborn.

It had been the first time she’d ever heard Grandfather raise his voice.

‘Don’t you realise what you’re doing? The Flayers can sense violence from two systems away. Do you want to bring them back, risk another raid?’

‘That’s rubbish,’ Husim had sneered, full of childish arrogance. ‘They don’t exist. Galeb says. It’s all lies.’

That night the bell sounded. All four generations of the family next door were slain. Husim and Alundra promised never to fight again.

As if that was ever going to happen.

Where was he? Alundra had already tried two of her brother’s usual hangouts. One had been abandoned; the other had already been raided. She couldn’t identify the remains, but the clothes didn’t look like Husim’s, even under all that gore.

Behind her, Alundra could hear the heavy tramp of booted feet, the all-too-familiar bark of handguns. They were close. Too close. She took a corner fast, belting down the narrow gap between two shops. There was an alley behind the buildings. She could avoid the main roads, make her way to Torin’s place. If he couldn’t come home, Husim would have gone there, probably dragging hapless Galeb with him.

‘Frag, no.’

Alundra skidded to a halt, kicking up a plume of dust. A dead-end; tall redbrick buildings boxing her in. How could she have gone the wrong way? She ran over to the far wall, trying the solitary door’s handle. Locked. Of course it was. There were a couple of windows on the upper levels, but was it worth chancing the old pipes that snaked down to a heap of old barrels in the corner? No, she should head back to the main streets, get her bearings. Time was running out.

Alundra spun on her heels and felt the blood freeze in her veins. A ghoul stood in the entrance to the alleyway, swaying back and forth, hungry red eyes fixed on her. It seemed to be waiting for her to make the next move, the noonday sun reflecting off what little of its metal frame was exposed. Its grimacing skull was still visible, as was a blood-smeared chestplate and long, knife-like fingers. The rest of its body was bound tightly in gory strips of human skin. Some of bands looked old, like brittle leather baked in the sun, while others looked disturbingly fresh, edges caked in rapidly drying blood.

A Flayer.

Alundra had heard the name during her first raid. Grandfather had gathered her near, gently explaining what they were hiding from.

‘They are daemons, my child, mechanical devils forged from steel and fury. They come to Sandran for one reason and one reason alone – to gorge on any living soul they encounter. They exist only to feed a hunger that can never be sated.’

Even as a child the very idea had seemed illogical.

‘But they are machines, Grandfather,’ Alundra had pointed out. ‘They don’t need to eat, do they?’ The old man had merely shaken his head sadly. He didn’t answer all of her questions that day. She’d asked where they’d come from, but he said he didn’t know, no one did. She asked what happened to the bodies of their victims. He’d just sent her to help her mother, but not before warning her that they would strike again. The inevitability in his voice was more chilling than the stories of the ghouls themselves.

It was only later she discovered how the Flayers earned their name – how the lifeless raiders wore the skins of their victims on their metal backs, a trophy for every kill. Some went even further, carrying exuviated torsos as grisly standards, testament to their madness.

Perhaps he had been trying to protect what little of her innocence was left. Maybe he had been right to try. Three years later she glimpsed a Flayer through a gap in the raid shutters, watching in horror as it shaved the skin from the medikai as easily as someone might peel an apple. From that day on, her nightmares were filled with tarnished skeletons appearing from nowhere. That was the thing that actually scared her the most. Not the butchery itself, but the fact that the Flayers simply shimmered into being. No spaceships descending from on high or smouldering drop pods crashing to earth. These mechanical devils just materialised from thin air, flensing talons scraping together in fevered anticipation.

Just like the abomination standing before her.

The Flayer cocked its head one way and then other, as if trying to ease out a crick in its neck, the fractured skulls it wore as a belt clattering as it swayed.

Who’s going to make the first move? Alundra asked herself, amazed she was even capable of rational thought in such a situation. Who’s going to run?

Time seemed to slow down, seconds stretching into minutes, hours, before she realised what she was going to do. She had always been fast, but could she outrun a Flayer? Only one way to find out.

Alundra feinted to the left as if she was going to attempt to run past it. The ghoul responded how she had hoped, racing forward to intercept, claws outstretched.

The gambit paid off, a move perfected over years of playing ball games with her brother and his friends, having to match their strength with cunning and fast feet. She immediately doubled back, racing for the barrels. She leapt on top of the containers, grabbing for the perilous drainpipe.

Realising its mistake, the Flayer dived towards her, talons closing around Alundra’s ankle. She screamed as the Flayer yanked, the rusty metal of the pipe stripping the skin from her palms as she slipped back down.

Kicking back with her free leg, Alundra somehow managed to find the Flayer’s head, although her thin, leather sole was little use against a living metal skull. The raider grabbed at her, one of its claws piercing the back of her calf, not deep, but enough to remind her that this was a battle she could never win.

She would die here, in a litter-strewn alley, a crazed raider carving her up like a cheap grox steak. Worst of all, she would never see her brother again.

The alleyway erupted with the thunder of gunfire. Alundra felt the robot’s claws whip away, looking down to see the Flayer flatten against the wall, shells punching into its body in quick succession. She followed the line of fire to its source, a giant stomping into the alleyway, an excessively large bolter held steady in a gloved hand. Her saviour was clad head-to-toe in heavy monochrome power armour, a winged skull emblazoned across a monumental chest. A similar death’s head was displayed on its bone-white pauldron, this skull painted over a pair of crossed ebony scythes.

The Death Spectres, another name whispered by Grandfather all those years ago; a chapter of Space Marines, dedicated to protecting humanity from the terrors of the Ghoul Stars. No, that wasn’t right. Dedicated to protect the Imperium. There was a difference.

Whatever its mission, Alundra offered a prayer of thanks to the Angel of Death’s God Emperor. Just because she didn’t believe in Him didn’t mean He wouldn’t listen. He might even deliver her from this madness, transport her far away from the vengeful Space Marine and the Flayer that was dancing like a deranged marionette under the Death Spectre’s onslaught.

‘Alundra. This way!’

She looked up, amazed not just to hear her name but also to recognise the voice that said it.

‘Husim?’

Her brother was leaning out of the window above her, a toned arm reaching down. ‘Keep climbing.’

Alundra didn’t need telling twice. As the Space Marine emptied its weapon into the stricken Flayer Alundra climbed, ignoring the pain from her palms and calf. The pipe creaked under her weight and with a sickening ping started to pull away from the brickwork. As it arched back, she threw up her hand, finding her brother, and let herself be hauled up.

Her fingernails scraped against the stone sill as she scrambled for a hold. Husim leant further out of the window, grabbed the thin material at the back of her tunic and pulled her through. They tumbled to the floor on the other side. She was inside. She was safe.

The bolter fire had ceased.

‘I need to see,’ she exclaimed, scrabbling back up to the window.

‘Alundra, wait!’ Husim made a grab for her, but she shook it off, almost throwing herself back over the sill in her haste. The Flayer lay on the floor, twitching where it had fallen. As if the punishment hadn’t been severe enough, the Death Spectre raised its grinding chainsword and severed the raider’s head in one practised move. The metal skull rolled away from the decapitated torso, coming to rest face up, staring straight at Alundra. Their eyes locked for a second, before the lights beneath the Flayer’s heavy brow flared and extinguished forever.

She became aware of another set of eyes upon her. The Death Spectre pointed its chainsword up at the window, uttering a single, solemn command.

‘Stay where you are.’

Husim pulled her away from the window. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he shouted. ‘Come on. We’re upstairs.’

Dazed, Alundra dragged her eyes away from the Space Marine and limped after her brother.

‘This way. Quickly.’

Husim grabbed her hand, guiding her down a corridor and through a storeroom. The place was crammed with sacks of grain and empty wooden trays. They were above the bakery.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, as her brother ushered her up a stairwell.

‘Hiding, what do you think?’

She took the stairs two at a time, coming up into a sawdust-covered room stacked with boxes from wall to wall.

‘Are you alone?’

‘No. Galeb’s here too,’ Husim said, following her.

‘What about Torin?’

Husim simply barged past, ignoring the question.

‘Galeb needs your help.’

‘He’s hurt?’

‘See for yourself.’

Husim pushed back the tattered curtain that was covering a doorway at the back of the room.

‘What happened?’ Alundra asked, rushing over to the boy lying on the floor. Yes, she knew that she should think of Galeb as a man now, but he’d always be her little brother’s playmate, getting into scrapes and always coming out the worst.

But never as bad as this

‘One of them got Torin,’ Galeb wheezed, breaking into a wet, hacking cough.

‘The idiot tried to stop it,’ Husim said, his voice wavering despite the tough talk. ‘Got slashed across the belly for his trouble.’

‘It was killing him,’ Galeb argued, wincing as he tried to push himself up.

‘He was already dead,’ replied Husim, flatly.

Alundra examined the blood-soaked shirts wrapped around Galeb’s stomach.

‘You did this?’ she asked her brother.

‘It was all we had,’ Husim snapped back. ‘I had to think quick.’

‘You did well,’ Alundra said, trying to still her brother’s defensiveness. ‘But we’re going to need to find more supplies if we’re going to get him out of here. Proper bandages.’ She glanced around the room. There was a small pile of food in the corner, a couple of loaves, some migan fruits and a few nuts. It wouldn’t last them long.

‘We can’t go back out there.’

Alundra fixed Husim with a look that told him he was being stupid. ‘We have to.’

‘No way,’ Husim insisted, pacing back to the curtain and checking the room outside. ‘We’re safe here. We’ll wait until the raid is over and then we’ll get him home. Mother will know what to do.’

Alundra felt tears prick her eyes. She knew she should tell him why that wasn’t possible, that Mother was no longer waiting at home, but it wouldn’t have helped. He’d stick his heels in even further.

‘He’s right, Alundra,’ Galeb wheezed, grabbing her arm with a trembling hand. ‘If we head outside, we’ll be taken.’

Alundra looked up into the rafters, feeling a cool breeze across her face, cool against the stifling heat of the small room. She could just make out a hole in the ceiling. There must be an attic above them, maybe a way out onto the roof. Not that Galeb was in any fit state to clamber up and out of the building.

She closed her eyes for a second, letting the draft wash over her. She wished Grandfather were here. He’d know what to say, how to persuade the boys.

She squeezed Galeb’s hand, forcing a smile. ‘Listen to me, both of you. We’ve got to keep moving. Everyone is gathering in the town hall. They’re going to find a way of getting us out of this.’

Husim snorted. ‘What are they going to do? Reason with them?’

‘They’re going to try,’ she snapped back. ‘Better that than hiding in darkened rooms.’

‘That’s what we always do,’ Galeb pointed out, his voice catching with the pain.

‘This time is different,’

‘Yeah,’ snorted Husim. ‘This time the ghouls aren’t the problem.’

Alundra sighed, stood and walked back to her brother, placing her hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze in the same way Mother always had when she tried to get through to him.

It was amazing how soon you started thinking of someone in the past tense.

‘We’ve got to move Galeb.’

‘And how do we do that, genius?’ he asked, shrugging her off.

‘We’ll carry him. If we’re careful–’

A noise from below cut her off.

‘What’s that?’ Galeb whimpered, only to be told to shut up from Husim who peeked around the curtain.

‘There’s nothing there.’

‘It’s coming from downstairs,’ Galeb insisted, fixing Alundra with a panicked stare.

Footsteps.

They weren’t alone in the building. It could have been the baker, of course – if the baker had started wearing exceptionally heavy boots.

‘Husim...’ Alundra hissed, willing her brother to make the right decision.

‘OK, OK,’ he finally agreed, throwing his hands up in surrender. ‘There’s a hole in the wall in the far room. We can crawl through to the next building.’

‘I won’t be able to,’ Galeb sobbed.

‘You’ll have to,’ Husim insisted, moving over to his friend. ‘Put your arm around me and keep it quiet, will you?’

Alundra crept over to the little food Husim had scavenged, trying not to make too much noise as she shoved it into her brother’s leather satchel.

The stairs creaked.

‘It’s coming up,’ Galeb snivelled, drawing a glare from Husim. The three of them froze, staring at the thin curtain, as they listened to the hydraulic pumps hissing with every step.

Should have got them to move straight away, Alundra scolded herself. Stupid. They could have been out of the building by now, heading to the town hall.

Whoever was on the other side of the curtain stopped. Alundra glanced at her brother, Galeb’s arm around his shoulder, his own hand looped around his friend’s waist, holding him close. Galeb’s eyes were so wide they looked like he was no longer blinking.

Then, above them, something moved. Wood creaked. Metallic limbs glinted over their heads.

Alundra yelled a warning, forgetting about keeping quiet. Husim looked up to the ceiling and tried to pull his friend to the side, but it was too late. The Flayer dropped down from the rafters, landing on top of Galeb. Husim was shoved back, cracking his head on the far brickwork before slumping to the floor.

Galeb screamed as the monster’s tapered claws pushed deep into his belly. The cry was replaced by the sound of someone choking on their own blood as the raider yanked free a handful of intestines and attempted to cram the fresh meat into metal jaws that couldn’t even open. The entrails spilled through its fingers, slopping back down onto Galeb’s convulsing body.

Trapped behind the Flayer, Husim threw himself forward, slamming against the metal body, trying to shove the ghoul from Galeb. The Flayer merely thrust out a hand, claws puncturing Husim’s chest, pinning him against the wall.

Alundra looked around, frantically searching for something to use as a weapon. A water pipe ran around the foot of the wall. She gripped it hard, the rusted surface cutting into already punished hands, and yanked. It shifted, but not enough. She dropped down, pressing a foot against the wall and heaved again. Once, twice, until finally it came away from the wall.

Screeching like a banshee she rushed forward, bringing her makeshift quarterstaff down on the skin-covered back. It connected sharply with the ghoul’s exo-skeleton, sending vibrations shooting back up her arms, almost forcing her to drop the pipe. But she carried on battering the living robot, screaming in fury with every strike.

The attack was short-lived. With a hiss of annoyance, the Flayer turned, slashing out with bloodied claws, and swatted her aside. Gashes opened cleanly across her side and she was propelled headfirst into the wall. The pipe clattering across the floor, Alundra threw up her hands to protect herself, the skin tearing from her arms as she skidded down the bricks.

She landed in a crumpled heap, reeling from shock and pain, her head spinning. Husim’s screams seemed to be coming from all directions at once.

‘Leave him, abomination, and feel the Emperor’s teeth.’

A shadow fell over Alundra, a giant figure pushing its way into the tiny room, ripping the curtain from its pole, chainsword held aloft and growling like a mechanical hound. Her saviour from the alley. The Death Spectre.

The Flayer whirled around, flinging Husim aside, but it was already too late. The chainsword bit into the Flayer’s shoulder plate, cleaving the monstrosity in two in a blaze of coruscating sparks.

Alundra scrabbled behind the Space Marine, gathering Husim into her arms, trying to gauge how badly he was hurt. Her brother’s chest was a spider’s web of lacerations, each ebbing dark, treacle-like blood. His eyes were rolling in their sockets, his body going into shock. She shouted his name, trying to get him to stay with her.

‘You must come with me,’ a reverberant voice growled above her. The Space Marine was looming over her, its power armour splattered with gore and oil. ‘Leave the boy.’

Alundra all but snarled at her rescuer. ‘He’s my brother.’

The Death Spectre reached out a gauntleted hand and pushed her aside to examine Husim, the Angel of Death’s touch gentler than Alundra had expected.

‘The injuries are severe,’ the hulking figure concluded categorically. ‘He will not survive.’

‘He won’t if we leave him here,’ she snapped back, her fury giving her courage she never knew she possessed. The Space Marine could snap her neck in an instant, but she didn’t care anymore. There was no hope of rescuing Galeb, trampled beneath the Flayer’s bisected corpse, but she wasn’t going to abandon her brother.

A shower of sawdust rained down from above. The fight had attracted more ghouls, hoping to scavenge carrion. Three of the creatures were attempting to claw their way through the hole in the ceiling, stuck halfway in their haste. It wouldn’t take long for them to burst through. The ceiling was already bulging, cracks spreading as they struggled, consumed with blood lust.

‘Get out,’ the Death Spectre barked, snatching his mag-locked bolter from his leg and firing into the Flayers, the report of the gun like thunder in the enclosed space. ‘Get out now!’

Alundra grabbed Husim, ignoring his screamed protestations and bundled him out of the room even as the ceiling gave way. Behind her, flensing claws squealed against ceramite armour.

Alundra didn’t look back.

‘We’re nearly there,’ Alundra coaxed, half carrying her brother down the back stairs to the ground floor. She’d slipped twice, Husim landing painfully on her own injuries. There was no time to rest. It sounded as if the building was about to come down around them.

‘Hurts,’ Husim whined, sounding like the child she had known growing up. ‘Really bad.’

‘I know, Hu, but you’ve got to help me. We can do this together.’

‘Okay, Ma,’ Husim replied weakly, at least attempting to put one foot in front of the other. Alundra didn’t correct his mistake.

The stairs ended in another storage area, crammed with mops and buckets. She struggled over to the door, praying that it wouldn’t be locked, that they wouldn’t be trapped here. She could hear talons skittering on floorboards above. Perhaps even an Angel of Death hadn’t been strong enough to hold back a flood of ravenous Flayers. A renewed volley of bolter fire told her differently. If the Space Marine could keep the Flayer busy she might still be able to get Husim to a semblance of safety.

She twisted the handle, cursing as the door wouldn’t budge. Hefting her brother, she put her shoulder to it, offering thanks to a Throne she still didn’t believe in when it shifted in the frame. Just stiff. They could still get out of this. She tried again and it sprang open, nearly sending them sprawling across the bakery’s tiled kitchen.

Outside she could hear concussive blasts and the deafening howl of transports thundering through the air. The evacuation had already started.

‘This way,’ she said, guiding Husim around a large wooden preparation table and into the passageway. There was a heavy thud from above, knocking plaster from the ceiling. Husim had stopped responding, but at least was allowing himself to be mindlessly led by his sister. ‘Not long now,’ she lied.

Something crashed down the stairs, clattering into the buckets and trays.

‘Just keep going,’ she said, barrelling into a narrow corridor that led out to the street, unsure if she was encouraging herself or Husim. ‘A few more steps, that’s all.’

They reached the door. They were going to get out. Shifting Husim’s weight, she reached forward, pulling on the handle. It didn’t move. She panicked, her heart thudding in her chest. Why wasn’t it moving? Then the realisation dawned. Push to open. She laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation, and shoved at the metal door. It swung open easily; too easily. Alundra and her brother tumbled forward, Husim’s legs giving way, dragging her down. The two of them splayed on the floor, Husim crying out. It was the last sound she’d ever hear him make.

Alundra groaned, her wounds, shallow though they were, burning like a furnace in her side. She looked up, realising that she was staring at melanoid boots that crunched on the dirt as they turned. She cast her eyes skywards, squinting in the sun, not one but two unmistakable silhouettes above her.

‘No,’ Alundra cried out, trying to throw herself over Husim as armoured fingers pulled her roughly back to her feet.

‘Superficial wounds,’ rumbled a red-helmed Death Spectre, yanking her arm up to examine the dark stain spread across her tunic. ‘Scan her, Quintus.’

‘At once, Sergeant Vilda.’

Alundra tried to wriggle free but the sergeant just stood as immovable as a statue, its brother sweeping a handheld augury up and down the length of her body. The device buzzed and chirped as the results scrolled on a screen.

‘She is surprisingly well-nourished, sir. No known maladies or infections,’ the Death Spectre called Quintus reported, looking up from the augury. ‘Safely within selection parameters.’

Her captor nodded. ‘Excellent. She will be taken with the others.’

Alundra fought against Vilda’s grip. ‘What about my brother? You need to help him.’

The Death Spectre released her, and she tumbled back into the dirt, instinctively reaching out to touch Husim. He was so still.

Quintus didn’t even check his scanner.

‘Subject rejected,’ he intoned. ‘Injuries fatal.’

‘No,’ Alundra yelled, springing back to her feet and pounding her fists against the Space Marine’s chest, no longer caring if such actions were tantamount to a death sentence. ‘You’ve got to do something. He can’t die.’

The red-helmeted sergeant grabbed her arm once again, but this time the fingers bit deeper, bruising muscle, making her cry out.

‘And spirited too,’ he commented, sounding what, amused? She wanted to kill both of them.

From the passage behind them, a voice rumbled out, agreeing with the sentiment. Alundra twisted to see her saviour marching down the restricted space of the corridor, his pauldrons scraping against the narrow walls. As he stepped out into the sun, Alundra couldn’t help but stare. The Space Marine had lost his helm in the battle, revealing a stark visage, almost completely devoid of pigment. The skin was corpse white, with closely cropped hair the colour of snow and eyes as red as the blood that flowed freely from a fresh wound across his pale cheek.

‘She took on a Flayed one single-handedly,’ he reported, almost sounding proud. ‘Strength of will as well as body. Unusual for a human.’

‘Then we have chosen well, Karnos,’ Vilda replied, shoving Alundra towards the albino. ‘Prime stock. Take her to the transport.’

‘Wait,’ Alundra pleaded, as Karnos clutched her arms tightly. ‘I’ll go with you, as long as you take my brother too.’

Vilda reached forwards, grabbing her cheeks between thumb and forefinger.

‘Listen to me, girl,’ the Death Spectre snarled. ‘If it were up to me you would all burn. Too many of my brothers have been lost rescuing you from these unholy aberrations.’

‘Sergeant Vilda,’ Quintus warned, glancing up the road. ‘Another wave of necrons approaching...’

But Vilda didn’t acknowledge his battle-brother. ‘The Megir has ordered we select the best specimens from your settlement, those strong and healthy enough to bear future generations who might join the ranks of the Death Spectres.’

Prime stock. Vilda’s early comment replayed in her mind, filling her with a deeper horror than the Flayers had ever induced.

‘Suitable colonies are few and far between this far from the heart of the Imperium. An Exterminatus order has been issued and you will be taken to a suitable breeding world near Occludus. A glorious future awaits, girl. You will serve your Emperor well.’

Behind her, Karnos released one of her arms to fire into the approaching Flayers. It was the chance Alundra had been waiting for, a distraction she could use to escape, but the fight had gone, stripped as easily as the ghouls could have flensed her skin.

‘Sir,’ Quintus prompted, ‘we should make for the extraction point.’

‘Agreed,’ Vilda acknowledged, pushing Alundra’s face away sharply. Her head cracked painfully against Karnos’s chestplate. ‘Bring her.’

Alundra didn’t struggle as Karnos plunked her from her feet. Instead she stared into the glazing eyes of her brother as he lay in the rampaging necrons’ path, bleeding out in the baking sun.

THE LORDS OF BORSIS

L J Goulding

There was one thing for which Turakhin was renowned above all else and – much to the dismay of those that called him overlord – it was not his military acumen. From his throne at the head of the grand hall, he would regularly preside over the greatest and most lavish banquets that any on the seventeen worlds of the Bor Enclave could ever hope to witness.

Wines from Harapti flowed freely from ewers carried by robed servants, while others bore platters laden with spiced fruit and aromatic roasted meats. Guests were anointed with sacred oils as they seated themselves – lords and delegates from across the sector, who were then treated to harmless displays of techno-magick and rousing recitations of the ancient sagas performed in flawless pentatonic harmony by Turakhin’s troubador-minstrels. Fragrant incense burned in golden braziers, wafting scented smoke into the upper reaches of the hall where the quantum-flambeaux flickered silently overhead.

Not since the days of the old gods had such epicurean pleasures been known.

Or so it was said. Few of those now present had any memory of those times, and those that did were rather more preoccupied with other matters.

Amontar, rightful lord and ruler of the world of Xanderat, could not take his eyes from the goblet that sat upon the table before Turakhin. It was carved in shimmering crystal that caught the light, refracting and casting it through the wine like a hundred miniature rainbows. In any other household, it would have been a priceless treasure, but to the Overlord of Borsis it was simply one amongst thirty-five identical pieces that he used when entertaining his royal court, and he appeared to pay it no mind.

‘Khetmes,’ Turakhin muttered, fixing the noble seated opposite Amontar with an inquisitive squint. ‘You look as though you have something to say.’

The exalted Nemesor Khetmes, bedecked in his warlike finery, stared coldly back. His fellow lords shifted uncomfortably in their seats – though the confrontation had been expected, this was far from the manner in which they had proposed that the matter be broached. As usual, the characteristically forthright Khetmes lacked the subtlety and sagacity required for proper courtly business.

‘My lord, the hospitality you have afforded us is admirable. But we do not feel that now is the time for feasting and celebration. There are more pressing matters at hand.’

From his seat at the overlord’s right hand, Turakhin’s vizier and chief advisor Heqiroth stood and noted the interruption upon a lavish vellum-slate.

‘The great and mighty Turakhin, regent of the Magadha dynasty and master of Borsis, recognises Nemesor-designate Khetmes, conqueror of the Ferandu Trinary.’

With an air of mild disinterest, Turakhin plucked the goblet from the table and peered disapprovingly into it. ‘And what would these pressing matters be, nemesor?’

Amontar froze. He watched the overlord languidly swirl the wine around the bowl of the goblet, though his attention was clearly already drifting.

Khetmes rose, the woven electrum scales of his cloak clattering from his chair. ‘Alien incursion, lord. The foulest creatures threaten our borders, most likely sponsored by the blood-witches or the damnable eldar, and yet you do nothing.’

He swept his arms wide, gesturing into the unseen heavens with his sceptre of office and silencing the troubadours and the idle chatter of the overlord’s other guests. Heqiroth continued to scribble upon the slate as Khetmes spoke.

‘The Kurg Reach has fallen. Xirec too. Our ancient domains are being picked clean by these ignorant upstarts, and yet you would have the Magadha dynasty remain quiet and isolated. How much longer do you really think it will be before the Bor Enclave attracts the notice of the alien invaders?’

Turakhin shook his head. ‘Nonsense. Impossible. You start at shadows, Khetmes. The great war is long over, and these barely-sentient brutes will never truly threaten us. They are too parochial, too close-minded – they squat on the periphery of our domain without any understanding of our eternal majesty. With all the grand armies at our command, Magadha has nothing to fear from them.’

Khetmes continued to glower, but Turakhin merely raised the goblet to him, before taking a deep sniff of the wine’s bouquet.

‘Have I ever told you,’ he began afresh, ‘of the Quad-sultans of Obe? Theirs was a fascinating culture, though hopelessly doomed from the very beginning, you see. It is said that they believed themselves to be the pinnacle of sentience, and raised monuments to their artistic glories across a dozen worlds…’

Drink. Drink it, you old fool. Amontar felt his impatience getting the better of him, and released his grip on the edge of the table as Turakhin rambled on. He glanced around warily at the overlord’s lychguard, suddenly convinced that he had somehow attracted their notice. He tried to get the attention of the servant that he had bribed, though the imbecile only stared vacantly ahead with the wine ewer still gripped in his cold hands.

‘Enough!’ cried Khetmes, drawing his ceremonial voidblade and plunging it into the polished surface of the table.

Halted mid-sentence, Turakhin stared at him with wide eyes. His praetorian judicator, Metzoi, stepped forward with his hand upon the hilt of his sword, already gauging Khetmes’s stance, likely support and possible escape routes.

The nemesor was unfazed, and remained defiant even as his peers began to edge away from him.

‘You are weak, my lord. You have no vision for our people, or the future of our dynasty. You would be content to spin us tales of your past glories from now until the suns grow cold, but I will not stand for it any longer.’ He shucked off his cloak to an attendant groom, and pointed with his sceptre. ‘I won the Bor Enclave for you, and if you will not defend it then I will take it back.’

Outraged, Turakhin threw his goblet to the floor where it shattered across the smooth marble. Heqiroth raised his voice to the hall. ‘These are bold words, exalted nemesor. What is your purpose here?’

Amontar watched the poisoned wine trickling into the cracks between the flagstones, though he felt little regret – it seemed that his lost opportunity to act against the overlord was about to be replaced by a formal leadership challenge from Khetmes. An unexpected development, though not an unwelcome one.

Besides, eliminating the nemesor later on would be even easier.

Khetmes took up his long warscythe and began to pace around the table towards the throne, scattering servants and noble guests before him. ‘Overlord Turakhin, I find you wanting in the leadership of Magadha and the Bor Enclave. As such, by the ancient forms of martiality I challenge you to single combat. Let justice be decided by–’

He never finished speaking his challenge.

One moment, Judicator Metzoi was standing ready behind Turakhin; the next, he was behind Khetmes with his sword blade extended. Life faded from the nemesor’s eyes, and his severed head crashed onto the banqueting table, coming to rest upon a silver platter.

The symbolism appeared to please Turakhin. He clapped his hands together and laughed gleefully as Khetmes’s body toppled to the floor.

‘Well done, Metzoi – oh, well done indeed!’ he cackled. ‘You’ve saved me the trouble of having to reclaim the title of nemesor from him, one day. A most agreeable turn of events. Most agreeable.’

The judicator sheathed his blade once more, and gave the overlord a short bow.

Amontar gazed in horror at the slack, gaping death mask of Nemesor Khetmes before him. Several of the other delegates retired from the table at the sight, even as Heqiroth urged the troubadours to strike up once more.

‘Praise be,’ the vizier cried exultantly. ‘Fortune favours our noble regent! Let it be known that the vile traitor Khetmes is hereby stripped of all rank and title, and his household condemned to dimensional exile. So shall be the fate of all who dare conspire against the great and mighty Turakhin of Magadha!’

After the feast, when the flambeaux were extinguished and the hall had fallen at last to silence, the remaining lords of Borsis met in the gloomy galleries beyond.

Uluszakh, the self-styled Tyrant of Ghyr, was skulking beneath an idealised statue of Yggra’nya; once the patron deity of Borsis, the c’tan was depicted in the classical style, bound up with symbolic restraints that held his legendary power in check.

‘You choose an auspicious hiding place, “tyrant”,’ hissed Amontar as he approached. ‘Do you cower in the shadow of the Shaper as a symbol of your desire to remould this world in your own image, too?’

‘I’m not hiding,’ Uluszakh snapped.

‘Of course you’re not. For, undoubtedly, you have nothing to fear from our great overlord’s guardians, or that ghoul Metzoi.’ Amontar drew up beside him, casting a quick glance in each direction to be sure that he had not been followed. ‘Khetmes, he was easy prey, but you… you they would think twice about striking down as nothing more than an example to the rest of us.’

Before Uluszakh could reply, the two of them both started at the sound of another hushed voice in the shadows.

‘Are you brain-dead? Quieten your words, both of you!’

Wrapped up as though against the chill in his coarsely woven robes, Hixos emerged from the gloom like a neurotic phantom. He pulled back his hood to reveal a gleaming, bare pate, and waved his two alien thralls away with almost skeletal fingers.

‘The overlord’s lychguard prowl these corridors even as we speak…’

Amontar sneered. ‘You have brought the slave-lord into our confidences, Uluszekh? You have precious few allies among the court, true, but I never dreamed that you would stoop so low as this.’ He glanced sidelong at Hixos, making a show of his disdain. ‘Hail to thee, Hixos of Naravekhi. I would offer my hand, but I fear that I would never then be clean of the alien stench that clings to you.’

‘Be still!’ Uluszekh growled in frustration. ‘You know that Hixos has ever been our ally, and while his Legions are few, his slaves have leave to walk the darker places of the palace where we cannot. Such gifts are not to be overlooked, in our enterprises.’

Cautiously, Amontar regarded the two miserable thralls skulking in the wan light of the main gallery – they were malnourished, sallow things with heavy collars about their necks. ‘I don’t like the look of them. How can we be sure that these primitive beasts will even be capable of playing any part in our intrigue, or that they won’t slit our throats while we sleep?’

Hixos grinned. It was a toothy, unpleasant sight.

‘My lords, I make it my business to invest in only the finest stock. Though they may appear as little more than shaved apes, these creatures are intelligent enough to do as they are told. They are strong and capable, and have been vetted – they are not mind-singers.’

He rubbed his neck, thoughtfully.

‘And besides, I have slept enough to last me a score of lifetimes.’

In spite of himself, Amontar chuckled.

Uluszekh inclined his head. ‘Something amuses you, friend?’

‘No. It is nothing. Recently I fancied that I had forgotten what true, restful sleep was, is all.’

Hixos grinned again. ‘Spending too long concocting your lethal poisons, no doubt. Although, it is my understanding that we have yet to see any evidence of your professed skill? You should take care not to confuse your exit-dose with your sleeping draught, my Lord Amontar…’

‘How dare–’

Uluszekh raised his hands. ‘Friends, be still. It was merely bad luck that delivered Turakhin from Amontar’s lethal attentions this night – the overlord’s fit of pique was a variable that we could not hope to have predicted.’

Hixos nodded. ‘Just so. My apologies, Lord Amontar. I spoke out of turn.’

Aye, you simpering bastard, Amontar thought. I’ll see you cold and froth-lipped on the floor of your chambers too, when this is all done.

‘Then let us be about it,’ Uluszekh went on. ‘I bring news – great news, indeed, for our gathering. Khetmes and his household are gone, but still our numbers grow! There are others who would join our noble efforts to remove the imbecile Turakhin from the throne of Borsis.’

Amontar felt something like panic stirring in his chest.

‘Uluszekh, you fool – who have you been blabbing to? You cannot just talk about these things openly. The forms of intrigue are not so carefully enshrined as the forms of martiality in the secret wars among the nobility. There are procedures, double-blind intermediary channels to protect–’

‘Peace, friend. It was the other parties that approached me.’

Hixos leaned forward. ‘Who? Who approached you?’

The Tyrant of Ghyr steepled his fingers. ‘Why, none other than the high magister himself.’

Amontar gaped.

‘Overseer Ruadzhe?’

He caught himself as his fellow conspirators made to hush his outburst, and continued almost in a stage whisper that seemed to carry further than usual in the empty gallery.

‘The regent’s own cryptek – are you mad? It’s bound to be a trap. You’ve doomed us all!’

Even Hixos seemed perturbed by this revelation. The slave-lord took a staggered step backwards, tugging his hood back over his skull. ‘I am inclined to agree. This was ill-advised.’

‘Calm yourselves,’ Uluszekh insisted. ‘Ruadzhe has a well-placed sponsor in this endeavour.’

Hixos blinked. ‘Better placed than the high magister to the regent? Pray tell, who else–’

‘I believe that Lord Uluszekh is referring to me.’

Amontar spun to face the newcomer, an envenomed blade flashing into his hand from the folds of his robe. Neither he nor Hixos could believe their eyes.

Vizier Heqiroth stood awkwardly at the edge of the gallery, half-swathed in the darkness beneath a set of luxurious hanging drapes. Aside from his simple loincloth and a ceremonially decorated breastplate and headdress, his lean form was bare, and he picked nervously at the large red gemstone mounted symbolically over his heart. This milksop was no warrior, no cunning leader of the Immortal Legions – that much was clear to Amontar.

He gestured with his dagger. ‘This is insanity, Uluszekh. We must kill him now, before he takes word back to Turakhin. Or Metzoi.’

Heqiroth put up his hands in alarm.

‘My lords, I beg you – let me be part of your conspiracy. I have diverted the lychguard patrols away from this meeting as a sign of good faith, and there is no one here in the palace who can get you closer to the regent than I.’

Uluszekh moved between Amontar and the vizier. ‘He speaks truthfully, friends. Tell them, Heqiroth – tell them what you told me. Why should they trust you as I do?’

Heqiroth edged forward, a beseeching look about him.

‘My dynasty was subsumed by Magadha during the last war. I and all scions of the once-mighty Nephrekh dynasty were bound up into the regent’s own Legions, in exchange for his protection against the alien usurpers. But we weren’t to know that he was nothing more than a paper prince, a bumbling coward. It was Khetmes who won our battles and guarded the borders of the enclave as Turakhin’s designated war-leader, and now that he is gone I am left in a most precarious position – if my involvement in the nemesor’s attempted coup is discovered, then…’

His meaning was clear. Amontar lowered his blade.

‘Khetmes bargained outside of our gathering for his own gain in the succession?’ Hixos muttered. ‘Maybe he wasn’t as ignorant as we thought.’

Amontar fixed Heqiroth with a level glare. ‘The nemesor is gone, and with him our best hope of a martial challenge to the overlord’s rule. Turakhin hides behind Judicator Metzoi – he and his praetorians are sworn to uphold the ancient codes, and to protect the throne of Borsis.’

‘Yes, yes,’ the vizier gasped, his tension quite visible in his trembling hands. ‘Metzoi is a singular foe, and I doubt that any of you could best him… with all due respect, of course. It was for this reason that I enlisted the help of Overseer Ruadzhe.’

At the mention of the cryptek’s name, Uluszekh became more animated.

‘You see, friends? Our parallel intrigues meet in the middle. The high magister has procured an ancient device, a tesseract labyrinth of infinite complexity with which we might banish Metzoi long enough for our own households to storm the palace. With Hixos’s slaves to open the gates from within and lead our warriors along the secret routes, our superior numbers will enable us to depose Turakhin. He will have no choice but to hand over the regency of the Bor Enclave to one of us!’

There it is, Amontar mused to himself. And I’m sure I know which one of us you intend it to be, ‘friend’.

‘It is agreed, then,’ he said out loud. ‘With Metzoi imprisoned within the labyrinth, Heqiroth will bring Turakhin to an agreed place and we can strike freely.’ Turning to face the vizier, he narrowed his eyes. ‘And if you think to betray us, we need only point to your involvement in Khetmes’s treachery and you will simply disappear… along with the rest of your Nephrekh rabble.’

Heqiroth nodded quickly, his gaze kept low.

‘How soon can the plan be put into action?’ asked Uluszekh.

Hixos curled his claw-like fingers into a fist.

‘My thralls can be ready to move by the next dual-sunset.’

Alarum bells rang throughout the palace, though for whose benefit they were intended was a mystery. If, indeed, the witless multitudes that served the Magadha dynasty understood the great political upheaval that was about to begin across the Bor Enclave, they seemed not to care.

There was an old adage that Amontar couldn’t exactly recall – something about the lower orders and their fascination with unimportant matters. As he led his own honour guard along the grand avenue to Turakhin’s throne room with handfuls of dim-eyed commoners regarding them vacantly as they passed, he supposed that such wisdom might have felt particularly poignant.

Not to worry. He would include it in his victorious address to the people, perhaps as a sly barb at their expense.

Hixos’s thralls had proven as good as the slave-lord’s word. They had deactivated the great shield generators that protected the palace district, allowing Uluszekh’s Doom Scythe wings to strafe the outer defences before the ground troops moved in. Ghost Arks had moved slowly through the streets of the capital, their grim clarions heralding the imminent end of the overlord’s reign as the confederate Legions advanced.

Open war was not an elegant affair, but it was permitted under the forms of martiality as a symbolic show of force. In these things, the old ways mattered a great deal – whether by duellist, general or diplomat, the conflicts between the noble households had always been settled in just such a manner, since the earliest days of the Triarchy.

Following their thrall guide, Uluszekh and a cohort of his Immortals emerged from the immense hypaethral structure in the precinct beyond the grand avenue. The Tyrant of Ghyr was clearly not accustomed to walking into battle unseen and unchallenged, but with victory so close at hand he was also clearly quite willing to endure the indignity of it. He hailed Amontar as the two parties met.

‘Greetings, friends. Fate smiles upon our enterprise, does it not?’

With his dagger concealed behind his back, Amontar nodded respectfully. If he could have forced a smile, then he would have.

‘Indeed. We encountered little resistance – the vizier held true to his promises.’

A flash of heavy beam-weapon fire lit up the skyline, somewhere off towards the equatorial generator sinks where the fighting still apparently raged on.

Uluszekh gestured to the great throne room doors. ‘Will you lead the way?’

Amontar snorted. What kind of fool do you take me for, he thought, but managed to be far more diplomatic in his response.

‘It would be unseemly for either of us to be seen to enter first, under the circumstances.’

The Tyrant nodded. ‘Together, then. We have nothing to fear from the regent any longer.’

Their warriors drew back the vast, graven doors on heavy iron chains, and the two lords strode into the throne room side by side. Flanked by their household guard, they were a sight that could have driven even a phaeron to surrender.

But the throne was empty.

No lychguard stood sentinel over the grand dais, no Immortal cohorts were arrayed to repel them.

Somewhat confused, Uluszekh directed his warriors to spread out through the chamber’s expanse. ‘Perhaps he–’

Laughter echoed from above them. Amontar’s eyes snapped up to the shrouded galleries, where Turakhin lounged against a golden balustrade as though he might be casually taking in a mummers’ performance.

We are betrayed. Damn you, Hixos.

‘My lords,’ the regent cackled, ‘surely you can’t be looking for me, with all your warriors in tow? You look very small from where I am standing.’

From the shadows in the arched recesses of the throne room, the unmistakeable, bulky silhouettes of the praetorians emerged – Metzoi’s entire battalion, by the look of it. Their staffs and particle casters were trained and ready.

Amontar whirled around, realising too late that they were completely surrounded.

Turakhin made a grand flourish. ‘As you can see, your pitiful coup has failed.’

A short, plaintive cry drew Amontar’s attention to the alcove behind the main dais – Judicator Metzoi shoved a bedraggled looking Hixos into the light with the pommel of his sword. The slave-lord fell to his knees, his eyes beseeching his fellow conspirators for some kind of deliverance. Three of his alien thralls lay dead, their throats cut.

‘Forgive me, my friends…’ he mumbled. ‘We were discovered.’

Turakhin was joined at the balustrade by Heqiroth. Uluszekh sagged at the sight, even as his staff was taken from him.

‘You see?’ Amontar spat. ‘I warned you. I warned you both! We should not have trusted the vizier.’

The regent and his advisor made their way down the black marble staircase to the throne room floor, watching as the confederate troops were led away. Turakhin continued to laugh.

‘Good, loyal Heqiroth – there is little that escapes his ear in courtly matters. You should not have underestimated him so, or maybe one of you would be sitting upon the throne of Borsis at this very moment.’ He drew up next to Uluszekh, running a mocking finger down the captured lord’s cold cheekbone. ‘If you could stop plotting against one another for long enough, of course…’

Heqiroth stood just behind his master, fixing them with a piercing stare. His gaze now spoke of a resolve and intensity that Amontar would scarcely have guessed him to possess.

‘It was simple enough to win their confidence. They knew that a covert intrigue would never be sanctioned by the judicator, after the fact. They needed to abide by the forms of martiality, if they wanted to seize the throne from you.’

His eyes seemed to sparkle at the thought.

‘In fact, my lord regent – there is something else.’

Turakhin did not turn to face him. ‘Oh yes? Present what you have, good Heqiroth. Though there is little that can further compound the misery that will soon be heaped upon these traitors…’

Heqiroth retrieved something from a pouch at his belt. ‘It is a modest token, from Overseer Ruadzhe. He bid me reveal it to you only when the conspiracy was unmasked.’

The vizier placed it in Turakhin’s open hand. The overlord looked down, as did Amontar.

It was a small, black pyramidal object. Its smooth inner surfaces seemed visible, moving and spiralling, whirling through infinite fractal loops, drawing the eye inwards… ever inwards, down into the darkness of an unknowable and eternal voidandnevershouldasentientmindwitnesssuchhorrorssuchhorrorssuchhor–

Amontar let out a shriek, tearing his gaze away from the tesseract and sprawling to the floor. White flashes crazed his vision, hot needles of agony searing into his mental processes as he broke the contact.

Turakhin was not so fortunate.

His eyes wide and fixed upon the stygian depths, he simply vanished into the space between moments. The unassuming artefact dropped to the floor, clattering against the marble and letting out a faint, dying wheeze of quantum impossibility.

Uluszekh and Hixos stared. Amontar shook his head to clear the afterimages of his brush with oblivion, but he could only stare too.

Stooping to retrieve the tesseract labyrinth, Heqiroth turned to regard him where he lay on the polished marble. The red gemstone at his breast seemed to pulse with an inner fire, and he hissed in delight.

‘I should thank you, really,’ said the former vizier. ‘You were the perfect distraction while I made my final preparations. The lie wrapped in half a truth is so much easier to believe.’

Amontar rose shakily. He could not feel his own heartbeat.

Heqiroth turned to the dais where Metzoi still stood. ‘Judicator Metzoi, appointed representative of the Triarch and praetorian guardian of Borsis – the forms of martiality have been obeyed. I stand victorious over the deposed regent, with fully two-thirds of his Legions loyal to me and all conspirators against the throne brought out into the open. Will you honour my claim?’

Disbelief and outrage fought for dominance in Amontar’s breast. Unthinking, his fingers fell to the grip of his concealed dagger.

‘You will never sit upon the throne of Borsis!’ he cried, and rammed the envenomed blade between Heqiroth’s ribs, up to the hilt. It stuck fast.

There was a moment of awkward silence in the grand chamber.

Heqiroth glanced down at Amontar’s blade, then to Amontar himself.

Then he turned back to the judicator.

‘As you can see, the Magadha dynasty is plagued by madness. They fight amongst themselves, and are unfit to rule the Bor Enclave any longer. Noble Nephrekh will rise to relieve them of the regency, by your leave, and purge the alien menace that threatens our borders.’

He stepped away, and Amontar numbly released his grip on the knife.

‘It is you who are mad, vizier!’ he gasped. ‘The judicator battalions are sworn to protect the overlord. You have falsely imprisoned their master!’ Desperately, he pointed at Heqiroth. ‘Kill him! Kill this usurper!’

The praetorians remained unmoving. Heqiroth spoke quietly, almost as an aside to Amontar and no one else.

‘Do not embarrass yourself further. The judicator protects this world, not the regent.’

Amontar stumbled away, unable to process what he was hearing. He looked at Uluszekh with fresh eyes; where before had stood his sworn ally and rival for the throne, he now saw only a ghastly, tottering revenant of dark metal.

Heqiroth addressed the judicator once more. ‘I ask again, will you honour my claim?’

Metzoi cast his inscrutable gaze over the assembled warriors, lords and praetorians. He looked down at the dead alien thralls at his feet, and then to the empty throne.

When he spoke, his voice was deep and resonant.

‘The forms of martiality have been obeyed. The Triarch praetorians will honour your claim, Heqiroth of the Nephrekh dynasty. Take this world to war.’

Heqiroth laughed his triumph, long and loud.

Tugging Amontar’s dagger from his ribs and letting it slip from his fingers, he took slow, deliberate steps towards the throne, and savoured each one. Standing literally before the ancient seat of power within the Bor Enclave, he gestured to the Magadha – no, Nephrekh – guards.

‘Activate the holosphere.’

Amontar winced as energy pulsed through the conduits at the base of the throne, casting Heqiroth’s skeletal form in a pale under-light that made him appear even more sinister. Hixos, still on his knees upon the dais, buried his face in his hands, lest his shame be caught in the glare of the new regent’s vainglory.

Heqiroth laughed again, and snapped around to face the holospheric field.

‘Loyal citizens of Borsis – your overlord is no more. I, Heqiroth of Nephrekh, have cast out the weakling Turakhin, and I stand before you now as the validated regent of the Bor Enclave!’

Across the world, vast projection cones would be relaying his words to every mausoleum, necropolis and monument district. The mindless commoners and drone-warriors of the Legions would find their eyes drawn irresistibly to the great, lambent figure that now addressed them from the dark skies.

None could fail to hear the commands of Overlord Heqiroth.

‘There is a creeping evil at the borders of our domain, and I would see it eliminated once and for all before it challenges the eternal supremacy of the necrontyr race. We shall halt the advance of the alien vermin, and kick over every rock until we have driven them into extinction.’

As one, the praetorians around the throne room each began to beat a fist upon their golden breastplates – a ponderous, fearful rhythm that underpinned Heqiroth’s words. Cowed by the rising sound, Uluszekh tried to catch Amontar’s eye, but the Lord of Xanderat found that he could no longer bear the sight of him for even a moment.

Heqiroth continued. ‘Even though the subsumed Legions of Nephrekh are fewer in number than they once were, Borsis is far from helpless. The Triarch praetorians have kept a great secret upon this world, and now is the time to unleash its true power. We have not had need of such destructive weaponry since the days of the War in Heaven, but the necessary modifications will be made…’

As he spoke, his fingers strayed to the red gemstone mounted where his heart should have been. It pulsed in time with the praetorians’ beating, and Amontar caught the faintest impression of a shimmering, quicksilver shape at its centre.

It was moving. Writhing. Yearning to be free.

Still illuminated by the hazy glow of the holosphere, Heqiroth noted Amontar’s gaze and transfixed him with a fearsome, malignant stare. In that moment, there seemed no end to the depths of his hatred.

‘Judicator Metzoi,’ he hissed. ‘Prepare the World Engine.’

THE WORD OF THE SILENT KING

L J Goulding

More, my Lord Anrakyr? You would know more?

Better than this, we will tell you everything. Perhaps then you will understand. After all, you will need allies.

Long have we known of the Devourer. While the majority of the necron race slept away the aeons, his great majesty Szarekh, the Silent King, journeyed far and wide beyond the borders of this galaxy. Such unspeakable things did he witness as cannot be adequately articulated in our noble language, nor any other.

The most dire of all these extragalactic enemies were the tyranids.

For countless cycles he has sought to repel this threat. In his wisdom he has observed them, studied them and committed them to oblivion in all but the final, decisive deed. He has brought them to battle on a hundred worlds, ravaged their slumbering fleets out in the cold, measureless void, and even united the more fractious, warring dynasties so that our mutual interests might be protected.

What, you ask, has this to do with an alliance between the living and the dead?

We will tell you everything, my lord. Perhaps then you will understand.

The world’s name is not important. Not to us. To the humans, though, it seemed to be paramount. For a species that would see themselves as the undisputed masters of this galaxy, they place so much emphasis on names, and the paradises and damnations that they imagine for themselves.

This, then, becomes a tale of angels and of devils, to use the crude, ancient terms.

The bloodiest of angels, fighting upon the Devil’s Crag.

And we were there. The three of us – Khatlan, Dovetlan and Ammeg, if you will – and so many more. So many, many more.

While you travelled the stars, seeking tithes and tribute, we answered the call of our true master. The Praetorians can move in great numbers, quickly and quietly, when the attentions of the dynasties fall elsewhere for a time. So it is that we return to the court of the Silent King whenever he would wish it, to bring him new word of the Great Awakening. To the rest of the galaxy, we are his eyes and ears, as we are his right hand, and his only voice.

He does not speak. He will not speak. Not to you.

Not yet.

But he may, in time, if you prove worthy.

They had us, brothers. We were done for.

We had fought them hard. On Gehenna, those clanking mechanical xenos seemed to be without number. For three weeks, Dante had led the Third Company against their Legions – we in the Assault squads would strike and fall back with the commander, over and over, while Captain Tycho directed the long range engagement. It was a dry, dusty grind. The only blood that fell upon the barren wastes was ours.

That felt wrong. There was nothing to slake our thirst, no glorious crimson to bathe the armour of the damned.

Tycho was the Master of Sacrifice. That title seemed appropriate. We felt sacrificed.

Gehenna is nothing if not an altar upon which such offerings can be made, though the myriad alien races seem forever drawn to test the Imperium’s right to preside over it. A million souls more hallowed than ours had passed on the hive world’s plains, over the millennia. What more noble endeavour, what more glorious calling can there be than to defend such a place from the hordes of the restless xenos dead?

And so defend it we did, with every last ounce of our company’s strength.

We fell from the grey-streaked skies, the crimson of the Ironhelms Assault squads like a bloodstain upon the pristine gold of the Sanguinary Guard. Commander Dante was ever at the front, the tip of the blade thrust into the necrons’ flanks. The Axe Mortalis hewed left and right, cleaving through metal bodies as easily as it might through living flesh on any other battlefield, and in Dante’s divine shadow we were inspired. I led my squad in a freefall drop, the weight of our charge like the hammer of Sanguinius’s own wrath against the enemy, their dully glowing eyes turned upwards in those last heartbeats before we were in their very midst.

No towering necron lords swathed in fuliginous silks, no insectoid sentinels lashing us with electrum whips. These were the poorest stock of the Legions that we now faced, the meagre revenants that seemed almost without number and whose only tactical use seemed to be that they absolutely would not die.

Exhorting my battle-brothers onwards, I drove into the necron warriors with my blade held before me. Speed, we had found, was the key – they simply could not track us quickly enough as targets if we kept moving, and they seemed incapable of firing their gauss weaponry without first taking careful aim. And so we struck them down by the dozen, taking heads and limbs and blowing out armoured torsos with point-blank pistol fire, and stamping their remains into the dust beneath our boots.

Yet for every necron we tore apart, three more would trudge forwards to take its place; or else the supposedly dead warrior would simply rise up again once we had passed by, wounds reknitting under whatever baleful technomancy powered them.

Green flashes cast the seemingly endless horde in silhouette, and I looked up to see more of the great, gravitic monolith structures gliding ponderously down the slopes from the crags beyond. Their energy matrices cast thumping charges into the melee, scattering golden-armoured Blood Angels like leaves in the wind. Maddening, squealing static cut through the inter-squad vox-channels, and suddenly we were cut off from Dante’s command entirely.

And more necrons came. And yet more.

The press of cold, lifeless bodies around us become entangling, and the warriors began to jab at us with their hooked bayonet blades. Brother Jophael tried to free himself from the horde’s grasp by launching back into the air, but metal claws pulled him down, jump pack and all, beneath the ambling tide. His agonised screams were mercifully brief.

I planted a boot into the chest of the closest necron warrior and sent it sprawling backwards with a pair of frag grenades for its trouble. The blasts hurled a score more of them aside, but all that bought me was the space to truly see the inevitability and futility of our assault. We were outnumbered by hundreds to one, and hovering ark-transports would gather the xenos dead right out from beneath our feet to send against us once more. And on, and on, until we were buried.

We had been sacrificed. I did not know if Commander Dante had planned it that way, but I could no longer even see his Sanguinary Guard amidst the throng.

There would be no resurrection for us. Once fallen, the Angels of Death do not rise from the dead. There is purity in that – something that the necrons have failed to grasp in their eternal pursuit of… eternity.

Two more of my brothers fell. Then a third.

I don’t remember what it was that I screamed in that moment – likely it was something ignoble and suitably defiant. I struck a necron down with every swing of my blade, until it seemed that I could no longer even find room to draw it back between blows.

My pauldrons began to catch on the press of metal limbs. Unfeeling fingers clamped around my wrists, and my neck. My sword was pulled from my grip, and my plasma pistol too. I realised that I was being dragged over backwards, and I was no longer even screaming real words.

That’s when it happened.

The pause. The stutter.

As one, the necrons faltered. Just for a fraction of a second, their eyes dimmed.

Then, again as one, they put up their weapons and turned to withdraw. I crashed to the ground on my back, before scrambling free of my jump pack harness to see ten thousand immortal xenos warriors striding away from us as implacably as they had been advancing only moments earlier.

I snapped my pistol up and put down nine of them without thinking. I shot them through their retreating backs, hot plasma dashing their mechanical innards onto the ground. Others did the same, in futile impotent rage. Our blood was still up, and the wounded remnants of the front line squads harried the enemy with frustrated battle cries still upon our lips. Necrons fell, and still the Legions did not pay us any more regard that day.

It was as though we had simply ceased to exist.

It made no sense at the time. Why would they suddenly give up, with certain victory within their unfeeling, iron grasp?

The answer was the result of cold, mathematical logic. It would come to stun us all, and most especially Commander Dante.

We had misjudged them. We misjudged them so badly.

You understand, lord, that the angel-humans were never our real foe in this. Mere happenstance it was that placed them in opposition to the Silent King’s plan. That, and their characteristic unwillingness to admit that they know nothing of the true nature of the universe.

For as much as the human empire considers itself the height of evolution and the antithesis of the tyranid race – if you can believe such a thing! – they are perhaps more alike than either of them can know. Dovetlan once likened the humans to insects. They swarm. They cannibalise. They live without real thought for the future or the past, beyond the propagation of their own brood.

And they build hives. Literally.

Teeming with human vermin and other, even more degenerate life forms, their settlements agglomerate around the points of industry and resource, openly abusing their worlds to feed the wasteful cycle of war and procreation. Even their ruling classes may live out their entire organic lifespan within a ten-kilometre area, such is the self-contained and parochial nature of the hive cities.

In all our time, we have rarely witnessed such edifices constructed by a sentient race. They are stockpiles of humankind, in all its stripes. Concentrated cells of organic filth.

Bio-mass.

Bait.

It was a fortuitous coincidence that placed a world such as this in the path of the Silent King’s quarry. After his great victory over the tyranid beasts in the dimensional anomaly at Anjac, he had pursued a splinter fleet through the void entirely undetected for almost three cycles. He observed their movements. He studied their reactions to external astral stimuli.

And then he began to calculate ahead.

None but he, in his majestic wisdom, could have accomplished such a feat – but even the magnificent Szarekh could not deny the providence that brought them hence afterwards.

Our cold bodies hold little interest for the Devourer. At best, they might be drawn to the more physical power sources utilised by our technologies, or defend themselves when we strike them. But fodder for their living ships, we are not.

The hive worlds of the humans shine like beacons in comparison. The tyranids are drawn to such banquets with a singular, predatory hunger.

The Silent King knows this.

The beginnings of a plan began to form in his mind, as he later told us.

He would lay a trap for them, and he would bait it with the humans.

The seven of us stood around the hololith table – the five surviving squad sergeants, battered and bloodied, shielded from the worst of the commander’s wrath by our noble captain Erasmus Tycho. Though he was similarly armoured in golden plate, the two of them could not have appeared more different in that moment.

‘Answer me this,’ Dante growled. ‘How did they know? How can the necrons scan the interstellar void more accurately than the long-range sensors of the Bloodcaller?’

The Chapter Master had set his death mask upon the surface of the table, and I could scarcely take my eyes from it. The play of light over the angelic, sculpted features of our Lord Sanguinius lent the helm an even more numinous aspect, beyond even the polished golden halo that encircled the crown.

From behind his own half-mask, Tycho spoke carefully.

‘I’m not sure they can, commander. It is possible that they already knew the tyranids were approaching before the hive ships crossed the system’s heliopause. Our sensorium officers’ report did cite multiple objects “of unknown origin” in their initial tactical sweeps, but you and I both bid them turn their full attention towards the necrons. We simply perceived a greater threat on the ground.’ The corner of his mouth flickered with an involuntary tic. ‘We were watching the pageant when we should have been scouting the hall.’

Dante glowered up at his protégé, gauntleted palms resting on the table’s edge, and a grim smile creased his dour features. ‘Aye, perhaps.’

Between the two of them, the lambent silhouette of Gehenna Prime turned slowly in the tactical hololith projection. The planet was bracketed by the battle-barge Bloodcaller and the twin strike cruisers Melech and Fratrem Pugno at station in high orbit. Of the necron cairn-ships that had apparently retreated from the system more than a month earlier, there was still no sign.

Instead, from the galactic southeast had come the tyranids.

Xenological identifiers marked them as a splinter of the defeated Behemoth fleet, or possibly cousins of little-known Dagon. Regardless of their origin, the four great hive ships had already spawned a veritable multitude of lesser craft and begun to move into a splayed formation that bypassed the outer worlds entirely. Tiny numerals rolled down the hololith next to each sensor contact as the telemeters updated their distance and relative speeds.

There was no mistaking it – this was a standard xenos attack vector. The tyranids had set their ravenous gaze upon Gehenna Prime.

‘What would you command of us, my lord?’ asked Phanuel, turning away from the dire tableau. The Devastator squads had been furthest from the necrons’ front wave, and so were the least mauled by the weeks of attrition that the rest of us had suffered.

Dante gestured to the approaching hive ships. ‘We are about to be caught between our chosen foe on the ground and a new one in the heavens, brother-sergeant. Our victory over the necrons was already far from assured. Now we face an even more overwhelming force – one that could take an entire world on its own.’

The weight of that truth hung in the silence for a moment. Tycho nodded slowly, presumably at the prospect of a swift and glorious end for his battle company. ‘The presence of the tyranid fleet does at least go some way towards explaining why our astropathic calls for reinforcement seem to have fallen upon deaf ears, Chapter Master,’ he offered with a shrug. ‘Nonetheless, the Ironhelms are with you to the very last.’

Before the commander could reply, the hololith flickered and a shriek of white noise cut through the embedded audio feed. We all recoiled, startled but ready to react.

Then the display blinked out, along with every visual feed, lumen and powered system in the strategium chamber, plunging us into darkness.

‘Generatorium!’ Dante roared. ‘Restore the–’

Static seeped through the dead channel, bleeding in and somehow multiplying in the air before us. Motes of greenish light ran upwards from the table’s surface, though this time it cast no reflection in the Death Mask of Sanguinius.

The rasping un-sound built upon itself, pulsing in strange, eddying waves.

‘Listen to that,’ whispered Gaius, reaching for his bolt pistol but finding the holster empty. ‘It’s a voice.’

I spat, my hands bunching into fists as I scanned the room for any threat. ‘That’s no voice. It’s artefacting from an incompatible signal source. Nothing more.’

The motes of light began to swirl and gather above the centre of the table, blocking out some new shape in the space where Gehenna had previously hung. The emerald glare grew in intensity, rising with the crackling, maddening howl of the–

‘HUMANS. PROSTRATE YOURSELVES BEFORE OUR MAGNIFICENCE.’

Turning slowly in the shimmering field, a gaunt necron visage with a high crest stared out at us, its eyes blazing almost white and casting tiny arcs of energy before them. Tycho and two of the others moved quickly to place themselves between Dante and the xenos avatar, but the commander barged them aside, a look of disbelief upon his face.

‘I AM THE JUDICATOR-PRIME. I AM CHARGED WITH SECURING YOUR COOPERATION. YOU WILL NOT RESIST.’

With a snarl, Phanuel drew his combat blade and slashed at the thing’s face, but the weapon passed cleanly through and left him only with a tracery of greenish sparks dancing over his gauntlet and vambrace. The necron either did not notice, or did not care.

‘WHOM AMONG YOU HOLDS AUTHORITY?’

Dante scowled, and stepped forwards. ‘I am Dante,’ he said from between clenched teeth, ‘Master of the Adeptus Astartes Chapter the Blood Angels. Who are you to address me and my officers in such a manner?’

The avatar regarded him with its blazing white eyes. ‘I AM THE JUDICATOR-PRIME. I AM CHARGED WITH SECURING YOUR COOPERATION. YOU WILL NOT RESIST, DANTE OF THE BLOOD ANGELS.’

Reaching out to the table controls, Gaius warily mashed the keypad with his palm, hoping to sever the connection. It did not have any effect. Commander Dante looked back to the Judicator.

‘Cooperation in what, xenos? Until mere hours ago, our forces were locked in mortal combat. Now you are fled to the empty plains, awaiting our inevitable vengeance. There is no matter in which we or you will ever cooperate.’

‘YOU ARE INCORRECT. OUR SUCCESS HAS ALREADY BEEN CALCULATED. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN US WAS AN ERROR.’

Rage boiled up inside me at the thing’s brazen insolence. I bared my teeth and bellowed back at the projection. ‘Silence! Let us end this on the field of battle. You will not strike at the worlds of the Imperium and then run for cover when a greater enemy rears its foul head!’

The Judicator’s gaze swept over me. ‘THE CONFLICT BETWEEN US WAS AN ERROR,’ it repeated.

Tycho raised his voice, then. ‘Who decides that? You?’

‘NO. IT IS THE DECISION OF MIGHTY SZAREKH, LAST AND GREATEST OF THE SILENT KINGS. PROSTRATE YOURSELVES BEFORE HIS MAGNIFICENCE.’

An uneasy silence fell over the seven of us. I turned to my brothers, unsure how to react.

Dante narrowed his eyes. ‘The Silent King… The Silent King?’

‘MIGHTY SZAREKH, LAST AND GREATEST OF THE SILENT KINGS.’

‘The Silent King is… here, on Gehenna?’

The Judicator’s head twitched. ‘I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF “GEHENNA”. BUT THE SILENT KING IS HERE, NOW. HE WOULD TREAT WITH YOU, DANTE OF THE BLOOD ANGELS, IN THE FACE OF OUR COMMON ENEMY.’

More motes of light spun out to create a topographical map in the projection, with a specific ridgeline highlighted in a brighter green from the rest.

‘SEND YOUR EMISSARIES TO THIS LOCATION AND MIGHTY SZAREKH, LAST AND GREATEST OF THE SILENT KINGS, WILL RECEIVE THEM.’

With a sudden flash that left blooms of colour on our retinas, the necron avatar vanished. After a single heartbeat of silent darkness, the lumens and hololith stuttered back into life and left us blinking in the pale light of the strategium once again.

I spun to face Tycho. ‘My lord, I know where they want us to go.’

Though Commander Dante still stared at the now empty space above the table, the captain’s expression was stern. ‘Speak, Brother-Sergeant Machiavi. Where is it?’

‘It’s where my squad landed in the last assault – the Devil’s Crag.’

Szarekh would have it known by every phaeron of every dynasty, that he is a just and noble ruler. Before the Great Sleep, he realised his failings and vowed to atone for them. He is humble enough to learn from his own mistakes. The necrons will rise once more, and he will lead us into a new and glorious age as the preeminent masters of creation. Not because it is his right, but a privilege that he would first re-earn.

Yet, his benevolence has its limits.

It is not to say that he harbours the humans any particular malice. Simply, their supposed destiny is incompatible with our own. Perhaps if they had ascended more powerfully in an earlier epoch, then they might have claimed this galaxy out from beneath the slumbering dynasties while the Silent King still dwelt in self-imposed exile.

And perhaps not. Their propensity for self-destruction is… troubling.

The tyranids are anathema to all life, and life is what the necrons require for supreme domination. So too, then, is the primal destiny of the Devourer incompatible with our own.

The humans create.

The necrons maintain.

The tyranids consume.

There can be no lasting symmetry in that triumvirate. One must fall. The great Szarekh has decreed that it shall be the tyranids, and none can refute the word of the Silent King.

It is unlikely that the humans see things as clearly as we do, Lord Anrakyr. Ironic, is it not, that they gnash their teeth and cry out at the injustice of a new alien race polluting ‘their’ empire with brash, unwitting conquests? We have seen this before, and doubtless we will see it again. When all of this is but a footnote in the annals of our great triumph, who will even remember the name of a dead human Emperor, or the ignorant miseries doled out in his name?

The court awaited the humans openly. There could be no suggestion of deception. We had returned to the ridge where last the Dante-Angel had resisted us.

Beyond the unnumbered ranks of common warriors and the Immortal Legions, a full nine hundred of the Triarch Praetorians stood sentinel before the Silent King’s throne. Not in the living memory of the Imperium would such a gathering of our order have been witnessed by any human, and likely it never will be again. Our Judicator-Prime attended noble Szarekh at his right hand, and the High Chronomancer, whose techno-magicks had so confounded the humans, stood at his left. Beyond were arrayed the seven phaerons who had sworn themselves to the Silent King’s purpose in secret – each of them wearing a bronzed mask to hide their identity from all but their own household guardians.

The first we saw of the humans was a haze of chemical fumes and plains dust kicked up by their primitive transport. It trundled over the terrain on wheeled treads, its bulky armour caked in red paint and crude, winged glyphs. As it drew nearer, the Judicator-Prime descended the polished steps of the courtly dais to bar the humans’ path.

At Dante’s command, the hastily installed servitor driver brought the Rhino as close as possible to the necron herald. The engine idled for a moment, then cut out. Cooling metal on the exhaust stacks ticked and clicked in the dismal morning sun, but aside from that the silence felt absolute. Though we could see the necrons standing in their uncounted thousands, not a sound did any one of them make, nor was there any hint of movement.

I peered out through the forward viewing block, scanning the grand dais for sign of our host.

It was absurd – a monolithic ziggurat, easily forty metres at the peak, dropped onto the surface of Gehenna Prime as a monument to xenos vanity. Cast from some achingly black, polished metal, it was edged with glinting golden runes and glyphs that ran in interconnecting patterns up the long flight of steps to the summit. Upon its tiers stood the more elite warriors of the necron horde, elevated above their kin and presumably enjoying the prestige of greater proximity to their monarch. Gleaming statues of alien deities towered at the cardinal points of the structure, and the two greatest of them held their arms out to form an arch over the peak of the dais, heads bowed in symbolic supplication.

This was a king, their posture said, that had once held even the gods in his thrall.

And this was his court that travelled wherever he went.

I glanced back into the darkened interior of the troop compartment. Captain Tycho reluctantly put up his combi-melta in the overhead stowage, and edged around the tarpaulin-covered bulk in the middle of the floor. He had pleaded for the honour to undertake this endeavour alone. Nay, he had almost begged for it. It was his right, and he had insisted. His privilege. His duty. But Dante would not hear of it.

The commander’s face was set, almost as serene as the golden mask that he held so carefully in his gauntlets. It was the face of a man who knew that destiny had smiled upon him, no matter what the cost of that fortune might ultimately prove to be. How like our father Sanguinius he seemed in that moment.

‘Brothers,’ he said calmly, ‘let us go to him.’

I eyed the open palm of my gauntlet warily – it felt so heavy – and tried to keep my voice low.

‘My lord, is this necessary? We are here. We could–’

Tycho silenced me with a hand on my pauldron. ‘This isn’t about tactical positioning, Machiavi,’ he muttered, squinting at me sidelong through the eye of his half-mask. ‘This is about respect. No matter how much we may despise the xenos, the Chapter Master would at least meet this Szarekh face to face. No one else will ever get this chance again. We have to at least see him with our own eyes.’

Dante nodded. Tycho managed a wry grin, and reached for the rear hatch controls.

‘Besides, I think noble Dante wants to hear the supreme ruler of the necron race beg for our help, first.’

The ramp opened on powered hydraulics, and the three of us stepped out onto the dusty ground at the foot of the ziggurat, defiant in the face of the ten thousand enemy warriors who watched from all sides.

The Judicator-Prime stood before us, a tall ceremonial glaive held rigidly in both hands. As well as the high crest of his office that had been visible in the hololith projection, he wore a mantle of smooth metal links that hung from his shoulders like a cloak. He regarded us coldly for a moment before inclining his head in a condescending gesture that we should follow him.

My hearts began to hammer in my chest. I could taste the acrid tang of xenos energy weapons in the air, feeling the dead gaze of the machines upon us as we ascended the steps. I walked to the commander’s left, Tycho to the right. The captain glared, but said nothing.

Dante simply followed the herald, the mask of Sanguinius held in the crook of his arm.

We reached the summit and passed beneath the archway of the god-statues. Beyond, shimmering silk drapes fluttered in the breeze between ornate electro-flambeaux that cast the various necron lords of the court in an even more eerie light against the Gehenna sun. I looked to each in turn, wondering which of them was him…

Without warning, the Judicator-Prime halted, and whirled around. Reflexively, the fingers of my gauntlet closed, but I managed to catch myself before it was too late.

‘Kneel, humans,’ he commanded. ‘Kneel before mighty Szarekh, last and greatest of the Silent Kings.’

The visible half of Tycho’s face appeared unimpressed. He rested his thumbs at his belt, and tilted his head. ‘We will not. He is not our king.’

The Judicator-Prime bristled, but did not repeat himself. Instead he turned solemnly and sank to one knee. The move was echoed first by the masked nobles, then by their retainers, and then by every other necron warrior upon the dais and beyond. Again as one, they knelt.

Except for one figure.

He was taller than the rest, yet not as tall as I had imagined he might be. His mechanical body was a work of unspeakable xenos artifice, more finely wrought than any I had ever seen upon the field of battle. Where they might be skeletal, he was lithe. Where they were animated with grim, unyielding purpose, his every movement possessed an undeniable vitality. His form spoke of musculature and clean-limbed strength, perhaps touched by the divine, and his finery was simple and yet impossibly elegant.

His face, though…

Brothers, I can scarcely put into words what I felt in that moment. What all three of us must have felt. It was not reverence or awe, I can tell you that much.

It was closer to hatred.

Framed by a cowl of shimmering light and the traceries of his intricate collar, Szarekh – heralded as the last and greatest of the Silent Kings, and undisputed overlord of the necron race – wore a golden mask fashioned into the likeness of our Lord Sanguinius.

A rank blasphemy, indeed.

The humans were surprised. Their flesh-forms took time to process what they were seeing, though it clearly stirred their indoctrinated racial hatreds at a fundamental and subconscious level. The Judicator-Prime was the first to rise, transmitting a sub-ethyric signal to the Praetorians to be ready. No matter that they had sent the Dante-Angel and the Tycho-Angel, their most respected battle leaders, as a gesture of good faith. The human warrior castes can be unpredictable and nihilistic when pressed, and may act illogically in the face of insult or overwhelming adversity.

We may speak more of this later, Lord Anrakyr. After all, you will need allies. Learn their strengths as well as their weaknesses, and turn all to your advantage.

Wise Szarekh knew this. He saw the truth of it when first he encountered the humans squatting upon the tombs of the dynasties and the ruins of the eldar empire. They believed that their stars were in the ascendant, and that they would soon conquer the galaxy. Of course, this was not to be. It will never be. It cannot be.

It is curious what the humans choose to know of their past, and what remains unremembered. They do not heed the lessons that they have already learned, because they often elect to forget them. Perhaps, had he not fallen to illogical and prideful infighting, their Sanguinius-Angel might have steered them towards a more enlightened destiny.

Certainly, he would have made a more amenable emperor than a preserved witch-corpse.

If ever there were a human to be mourned, noble Szarekh would say that it was him. That alliance – the first alliance, perhaps? – might have ended the threat of the Devourer before it ever surfaced. At least, the tyranids might never have been drawn to this galaxy in the first instance.

Like the humans, the Silent King was blind to this possibility at the time.

But unlike the humans, he is humble enough to learn from his own mistakes. The High Chronomancer’s temporal mastery merely afforded him the insight that he required, and the opportunity to prepare a new truth for them.

The Chapter Master’s grip tightened around the golden helm in his hands, and he quaked with a barely suppressed fury. This time I saw Captain Tycho’s fist clenching, although he too managed to restrain himself. We had to see how this would play out before doing anything premature.

Dante looked from his own mask – the Death Mask of Sanguinius, holiest relic of the Chapter – to the benign, alien representation of the primarch worn by the Silent King. The similarities were astonishing, brothers. Though elongated and curiously more androgynous, the features were mournful and angelic in the way that every Blood Angel knew and recognised even from the first day of their Adeptus Astartes induction. The proud and noble brow. The suggestion of tumbling hair swept back from the face. Even the stylised halo crowned Szarekh just as it did the commander.

But where Dante’s mask was crafted into a defiant, righteous battle snarl, this was Sanguinius at his most benevolent and peaceful.

The face of a king. A ruler supreme.

More beautiful, perhaps, than any sculpture or cast had any right to be that was not the work of human hands, though it pricked at my soul to admit it.

Dante’s blood was up. Finally, he found his voice.

‘How… dare…’

Ignoring the commander’s outrage, the Judicator-Prime spoke again in his strident and uncaring tone. ‘Dante of the Blood Angels, the Silent King bids you welcome. None among us shall harm you while you respect the sanctity of this court.’

Captain Tycho’s eyes widened, and he looked to me in disbelief. The Silent King remained still, regarding us all with the eyes of our primarch.

Through gritted teeth, Dante cursed.

‘Your Silent King had best learn to speak, and explain to me why he insults us with this… this… mockery of our Lord Sanguinius. It is a travesty, and I shall not suffer it! If he thinks to make his demands more pleasant by skinning them in the face of our holy founder–’

‘This is not so, Dante of the Blood Angels,’ said the herald. ‘Mighty Szarekh, last and greatest of the Silent Kings, honours your angel-father and the accord that we wished to strike with him in ages past.’

Numbness spread through my chest at these words. Even Dante twitched.

‘That is a lie,’ he murmured. ‘Our gene-sire would never have treated with xenos filth.’

‘The Silent King cannot lie, Dante of the Blood Angels, for he does not speak. He will not speak. Not to you. But your angel-father would have seen the wisdom in this alliance, and we hope that you will also. The tyranids are coming, whether you or we choose to remain, or not. The conflict between us was an error. Our success has already been calculated.’

I was very keenly aware that the Chapter Master held his gauntlet loosely at his side, with the palm wide open. Both Captain Tycho and I followed suit, trying to keep the movement as surreptitious as possible and hiding it from the passing gaze of the necrons.

All three of the human emissaries kept their right hands open. It was a curious gesture, likely some measure of deference offered to the majestic Szarekh as their natural superior.

Ammeg later postulated that it signified they were unarmed. I am not so certain.

Regardless, the alliance was soon agreed.

The ignorance of the humans is easily turned to our advantage.

Unable to take his eyes from the Silent King’s mask, I watched Dante consider the herald’s words.

‘Why, then? Why seize this world, and defend it from us when we came to reclaim it?’

‘The conflict between us was an error. Mighty Szarekh, last and greatest of the Silent Kings, did not seize this world. He meant to defend it from the Devourer.’

Another long moment passed. I regarded the various necron nobles of the court – where living beings might betray their true intentions with subconscious body language or barely perceptible movements, these machines were unreadable. Instead, I wonder if I projected something of my own thoughts onto my perception of them, in their perfect ambiguity. The Silent King continued to gaze plaintively at us. I shuffled uneasily.

For the first time ever, in all my days, I felt a tremor of pity for the necrons. Had we, in fact, misjudged them?

The Judicator-Prime raised a hand. ‘The error was yours, Dante of the Blood Angels. But you were not to know, and we did not take the time to make it known.’

‘Oh, blood of Baal…’ Tycho whispered, realising the full extent of what was being implied.

Dante let out a long, measured breath. ‘And in fighting us, you have lost significant forces that might have assured your victory over the tyranids.’

The Silent King nodded slowly, but it was his herald that spoke.

‘Correct. There is no more time. We must form the alliance that mighty Szarekh would have pursued with your angel-father. Join us, and we will save this world for your Imperium.’

The Chapter Master’s brow furrowed, just slightly. ‘What do you care of the Imperium and its people?’ he asked in a low voice.

The Judicator-Prime swept his arm out to encompass all of the assembled necron Legions. ‘Regardless of what you might believe, Dante of the Blood Angels, we are most concerned with the survival of the human race. There are greater matters at stake here. Perhaps one day these lesser differences can be reconciled.’

With great solemnity, Commander Dante handed his helm off to me, and I took it carefully in my free gauntlet. Then he stepped forwards, holding out his left hand to the Silent King.

‘I cannot speak for the Imperium, and I cannot speak for what my blood-father Sanguinius would or would not have done in my place. But my warriors will lend their numbers to yours, if you truly mean to save this world from the Great Devourer.’ He paused, and his expression became more fierce. ‘And then you and I will speak of the future, King Szarekh. We will speak of what may be, if this alliance is honoured to its end.’

The Silent King reached out and grasped Dante’s wrist in a remarkably Imperial manner.

Then he leaned in with an alien grace that should have been impossible for a machine, and whispered something into the Chapter Master’s ear.

I speak the truth. The Silent King spoke to him. Tycho and I both strained to hear, but the words were lost to the breeze. Dante recoiled slightly, his face a picture of shock and confusion. Then he composed himself, and nodded to Szarekh.

And so the alliance was accepted.

Calm yourself, my Lord Anrakyr. The great Szarekh did not need the humans in order to defeat the tyranids.

Consider the facts. Our fleet had transitioned out of range of their primitive sensors, but were at full battle readiness throughout our engagement with the Dante-Angel’s forces as well as afterwards. Similarly, we outnumbered them by many hundreds to one on the ground. A thousand or more, by the end, since it was they who made the greater sacrifice in battle against the tyranids.

Consider the wisdom of noble Szarekh. He allowed the humans to believe that they alone held void-superiority over the hive fleet, and so they alone took damage in engaging the alien vessels as part of the allied offensive. Our ships remained safely out of the conflict. He also allowed the humans to mount what they considered a valiant and righteous defence of the larger city-structures – a manoeuvre that held little tactical merit or advantage, and a much higher likelihood of attrition. He maximised the effectiveness of the alliance entirely in favour of the necron forces, by giving the humans just enough hope for a brighter future, and just enough of the truth to commit them to our cause.

Doubtless, they would have turned on us if the opportunity had presented itself, later. Most especially if they had learned the whole truth. That was a risk that wise Szarekh could not take.

Even so, it was hard not to admire the conviction with which the humans fought. They may come to recognise in time the threat of the tyranids like we do. For that, we wear these trinkets and adornments to commemorate their sacrifice. We honour their dead, even if we do not mourn their loss.

If you would review the specifics of the battle that the magnificent Szarekh fought that day, then I will bring you the accounts from the Praetorian archives. They are exhaustive.

Do not be like the humans, my lord. Learn from the past.

You will need allies if you are to prevail. Maximise the effectiveness of your alliances, and turn them entirely to your advantage.

Prove yourself worthy in this, and the Silent King may speak to you as well.

In time.

It was only after the Gehenna Campaign was concluded that we realised how completely we had been deceived by those thrice-accursed xenos. But it was difficult to be truly bitter when we had intended to betray them from the start.

When Commander Dante, Captain Tycho and I had returned to the Rhino to leave, we had carefully removed the remote triggers from our gauntlets, and disarmed the detonators under the tarpaulin. As I said, this had all been Tycho’s idea, and he had wanted to carry it out alone. He would have become the Master of Sacrifice, indeed.

When Dante had realised that the Silent King – the Silent King – was present on Gehenna Prime, our duty to the Imperium was clear. This was the supreme ruler of the necron race, a being so legendarily elusive that even the most informed members of the Ordo Xenos doubted whether or not he even existed in a literal sense.

We had to kill Szarekh, no matter what. He could not be allowed to leave this world.

Concealed beneath the tarp inside the troop compartment was the warhead from a cyclonic torpedo. It had been carefully and painstakingly removed from the magazine on board the Bloodcaller by our company Techmarines, shuttled down to our encampment and hidden within the Rhino at Dante’s command.

It was a planet-killer. An Exterminatus-grade weapon, the use of which could only be sanctioned by the Chapter Master himself.

Each of us held a trigger in our open, gauntleted palm, and any one of us could have fired it in an instant. At ground zero, the nucleonic blast would have annihilated everything on the planet’s surface within a five hundred kilometre radius. The Silent King, the three of us, every single necron construct stationed at the Devil’s Crag, every last member of Third Company who remained in our own encampment, and the common citizenry of at least two major hive cities – all would have been evaporated in the space of a few heartbeats.

It was a sacrifice worthy of Erasmus Tycho’s title, and his ambition.

Dante, however, had refused to let him go alone. He schooled us in his reasoning around the strategium table.

It would arouse the suspicions of the necron lords if the Blood Angels suddenly withdrew from the surface, leaving only a single, nihilistic warrior to approach their master. We could not risk ordering an orbital strike without first making visual confirmation of Szarekh’s presence, lest the necrons realise our duplicity with the bare, vital moments that they needed to pre-empt us.

It had always been a desperate scheme, with only a slim chance of success.

But for that slim chance, Dante was willing to sacrifice himself.

I claimed the honour of the third position within the emissary group. My familiarity with the local terrain made me the obvious choice.

It was only Szarekh’s mask, and the insinuation that Lord Sanguinius himself might have once been on the verge of an alliance with the necrons, that stayed Dante’s hand. Was it even true? Had Szarekh ever looked upon the face of our primarch? It did not appear to matter.

As the Rhino had bumped and rolled over the plains back to the encampment, Tycho had voiced the question that was at the forefront of my mind, too.

‘So we are taking his… word… for it, my lord? We will knowingly and willingly enter an alliance with our hated xenos enemies, with the view to some possible future reconciliation?’ He rubbed at his good eye. ‘No one will believe this. Chapters have been excommunicated for less.’

Dante narrowed his eyes. ‘We serve the Imperium. We protect its people when they cannot protect themselves. If we do this, then we will save at least a portion of Gehenna Prime. If we do not, then the world will fall to the tyranid advance, and the nucleonic fire of Szarekh’s murder.’

Before Tycho could reply, Dante had raised up the Death Mask of Sanguinius and gazed into its lifeless eyes. Appraising. Reconsidering.

‘And when the war against the tyranids is won, I will slay Szarekh myself.’

It had seemed like the perfect solution: we would use the necrons to ensure an Imperial victory first and then strike down their king once we had secured his confidence. But we had misjudged them. We misjudged them so badly.

They had deceived us.

As the campaign against the foul hive-spawn drew to a close, we began to notice strange things – the bodies of our fallen brothers were being looted, our supplies raided. Was it the tyranids, you ask? Unlikely.

We realised that fewer and fewer of the necron lords and elite guard were making each successive rendezvous with us as planned. We had not heard from the Judicator-Prime or his Praetorians in days.

We were being frozen out of the final stages of our combined victory.

By the time we stood upon the killing fields in the shadow of Hive Sendeep, our rent armour and notched blades caked with more xenos blood than we could ever ask, we were reduced to a handful of survivors from the Ironhelms and the Sanguinary Guard. The Fratrem Pugno had been gutted by plasma fire, and it would be many more months before she was warp-capable again.

Wounded, Captain Tycho had instead been evacuated up to the Melech to coordinate the last stages of the void-war. It was I alone who stood at Dante’s side, and the grim realisation came upon us both as our battle-brothers led teams of ragged local militia in heaping up the bodies of slain tyranids for the cleansing pyres.

He leaned heavily upon the Axe Mortalis, his breath coming like a gasp through the gaping mouth of the Death Mask.

‘We haven’t seen any necrons in over twelve hours, my lord,’ I muttered. ‘Szarekh isn’t coming back, is he?’

Dante did not answer, but stared hard at the setting sun over the distant mountains. His rage was spent. It was the same for all of us.

I wiped xenos foulness from my combat blade, and sheathed it at my hip. ‘Do not concern yourself with this, Lord Dante. I will have the official records amended to state that you allowed the xenos to depart as a gesture of respect for their unexpected assistance in the campaign. We will catch him eventually, and you will have vengeance.’

At this, the Chapter Master shook his head, and pulled his helm free.

‘No, Sergeant Machiavi. We will never have this chance again. I doubt whether any warrior of the Imperium will ever again lay eyes upon the Silent King.’ He sighed. ‘If that is even who he was…’

We remained there for another hour or so, watching in quiet contemplation as the pyre flames began to spring up in the dusky twilight.

I thought back to the moment that we decided to spare Szarekh from the fire, and I am ashamed to say that the most impertinent question sprang unbidden from my lips. In fact, brothers, I am still amazed that this moment of indiscretion did not cost me my eventual succession to command of Third Company.

‘What did the Silent King say to you?’

Dante’s weary gaze rolled to me, and he stiffened slightly.

‘He said… something that I no longer think I understand.’

The commander paused. I waited expectantly, almost now dreading to hear the answer.

‘He said, “They are the rising storm, and you must become the shield”.’

VEIL OF DARKNESS

Nick Kyme

‘I am the Undying. I am doom incarnate…’

It towered over me, this monster of living metal. It wore a crown with a red gemstone, torcs banded its mechanised arms and an azure pectoral hung around its neck. These were royal trappings. Here I fought a king of the dead, a robotic anachronism of an old and conceited culture, full of darkest anima.

Necrons, they were called. Its regal status only spurred me on.

‘We are the slayers of kings!’ I declared, spitting the words in anger at the gilded monster before me.

We fought alone, the monster and I. None interfered. I had drawn only my sword. For my victory to have any meaning, this was how it had to be. Even terms, its crackling war-scythe matched against my venerable Tempest Blade. But in the end, it was not my sword that was found wanting…

After a savage duel, it cut me deeply. No foe had ever done that before. And with blood filling my mouth, I fell. I, Cato Sicarius, Master of the Watch, Knight Champion of Macragge, Grand Duke of Talassar and High Suzerain of Ultramar, fell.

And as the veil of darkness wrapped around me like a funerary shroud, I heard the monster’s words again…

‘I am doom.’

I came around coughing up amniotic fluid, spraying the inside of the revivification casket. I roared, thundering my fist against the glass, my muscles and nerves suddenly aflame.

‘Release me!’ I spat, half-choking.

Locking clamps around the casket disengaged, admitting me back to the world of the living. I arrived breathing hard, sitting in a half-capsule of briny, viscous liquid and murderously staring down my Apothecary.

‘Welcome back, brother-captain.’

Lathered in gelatinous filth, I scowled. ‘Venatio.’

My Apothecary had the good grace to nod.

He was wearing his full armour-plate, white to identify his vocation as a medic rather than the ubiquitous Ultramarine-blue of our Chapter, but he went without a helmet. An ageing veteran of my command squad, Venatio’s hair was fair, closely cropped, and he had dark green eyes that had seen too much of death.

It was dark in the apothecarion, shadows suggesting the shape of various machines and devices the Chapter medics employed in the service of preserving life. The air reeked of counterseptic and a fine mist clouded the floor. It was clean, cold; a desolate place. How many had come through these halls bloody and broken? How many had arrived and never left? Always too many.

I made to rise but Venatio lifted a gauntleted hand to stop me.

‘Don’t presume you can keep me from climbing out of this casket,’ I warned him.

The hand gesture became placatory. ‘Let me at least run a full bio-scan first.’

Venatio had the device in his other hand and was already conducting his test, so I endured the amniotic filth a little longer. When he was done, I refused his proffered hand and extricated myself without his help. My side ached. Once I was out of the casket and standing on the tiled floor, I looked down and saw why. An angry scar puckered my flesh from where the Undying’s war-scythe had cleaved me.

‘It’s remarkable you are even alive, let alone walking, brother-captain,’ the Apothecary said, consulting biometric data from his scanner.

‘I’ll do more than that,’ I promised vengefully, but realised I had no knowledge of what had happened after I had collapsed. ‘What of Damnos? Were the Second victorious?’

Venatio’s already severe expression darkened, pinching together the age lines of his face.

‘After your defeat, Agrippen and Lord Tigurius rallied the men. But we had badly underestimated the enemy and were forced to evacuate. Damnos is lost.’ He lowered his voice. ‘So too Venerable Agrippen.’

I clenched my fist so hard that the knuckles cracked. It was a sparse chamber we occupied; much of the apothecarion’s equipment was situated at its periphery with only my amniotic casket within striking distance. I hit it hard, putting a fissure in the glass. Had I my Tempest Blade at hand, I might have cut it apart. Galling was not the word.

I was about to ask Venatio to tell me more when another voice from the shadows, a presence I hadn’t noticed in my recently revived state, interrupted.

‘I had to see it for myself…’

A son of Ultramar, the son of Ultramar, if some amongst the Chapter were to be believed, stepped into the light. He too was fully clad, his plumed helmet sitting in the crook of his left arm, a ceremonial gladius strapped to his left leg. Gilt-edged shoulder guards and breastplate shone in the lambent lumen-strip above us, and his war-plate was festooned with the laurels of his many years of vaunted service.

‘Severus.’ I bowed my head out of respect for the veteran, but his stern expression, hardened further by his scars and the platinum studs embedded in his bald forehead, suggested he came here with ill news.

‘Cato.’

I hated the fact he used my given name, though I knew he hated me for doing so first. We were rivals, he and I. Severus Agemman was my predecessor as Captain of the Second. He in turn succeeded Saul Invictus after the great hero fell at Macragge. Now he stood as Calgar’s right hand, and I beneath him. We were rivals because our war philosophy was very different. Agemman was a blunt but effective adherent to the Codex Astartes, whereas I interpreted our primarch’s teachings and was less predictable. Some have said reckless. Only Agemman has ever said so to my face.

He smiled, but it was a cold, pitiless gesture.

Out with it then.

‘I wish I could I report I was here merely to see the dead brought back to life…’ Agemman gestured to the formidable scar raking my side. The smile faded to the thin, hard line of his mouth. ‘But, I cannot. You are to stand before Lord Calgar. The Chapter Master would have knowledge of what happened on Damnos and why we returned to the empire in ignominious defeat.’

My eyes narrowed, but I held my temper. An argument here, now, with Venatio looking on, would serve no good purpose.

‘And am I to be held responsible for this defeat? I know that whilst I yet stood, the warriors of the Second were not routed.’

Agemman refused to be baited. He was rigid, and a pain in the arse for that.

‘You have six hours to prepare your testimony.’

‘My testimony? Am I to be judged then?’

My opponent betrayed no emotion, though I refuse to believe he did not take some petty pleasure in all of this.

‘The events on Damnos were disastrous. Questions must be asked.’

I began to walk towards the chamber door, still dripping.

‘Then let us go now. I have nothing to hide and don’t need six hours to realise that.’

Agemman put his armoured bulk in my path.

‘Cease this wanton disregard for orders, Sicarius! Your reckless behaviour is what has brought you to this point.’ He calmed down, though it took some effort to reassert the mask of control he had been wearing ever since addressing me from the shadows. ‘It seems you have yet to learn that.’

‘Don’t speak to me like a neophyte, Agemman,’ I warned. ‘As they have on countless occasions, my swift actions prevented an earlier defeat. I prefer to win hard battles, not easy campaigns and reap the hollow glory. Next time you behold my banner on the field, look at the victories upon it and then look to your own.’

I goaded him out of a desire to return the disrespect he had just afforded me. I vaunted the First, and their captain. They were some of the bravest and most capable warriors in the Chapter, but that didn’t mean I had to like them.

Agemman had every right to strike me. To my irritation, he resisted, but as he spoke through clenched teeth I knew he’d come close.

‘Six hours.’

Agemman left the apothecarion without another word. He’d be saving them for my trial, no doubt.

To his credit, Venatio said nothing. He merely gave his professional report.

‘You are fit to resume your duties, brother-captain.’

At a command from the Apothecary, a serf entered the room from a side chamber and began scraping the remaining amniotic gel from my skin.

Still seething after Agemman’s exit, I nodded to Venatio.

‘Tell me, Brother-Apothecary. Where are my armour and weapons?’

‘The Techmarines have been repairing them. I understand there was much damage to the war-plate in particular. You’ll find them in the armourium. East wing.’

Dismissing the serf, I grunted a word of gratitude to Venatio and left for the weapon workshops. Something in the penumbra around the apothecarion had set me on edge and I desired the return of my war trappings as soon as possible.

The Fortress of Hera is a vast and near-impregnable bastion. It is the noble seat of Macragge, the slab-sided barrack house of the Ultramarines Chapter, and has always been so. Its armouriums, battle cages and shrines are many. We all worship at them in our own way, these temples of violence and honour. I found Techmarine Vantor easily enough.

Like the apothecarion, the armourium was dark, but far from cold. It radiated heat that prickled the air and raked my nostrils. There was smoke and flame, ash and the taste of metal. Great engines tended by serf-engineers and cyberorganic servitors pummelled iron and steel. Here, the artefacts of war were repaired and manufactured. On a metal dais, a Rhino armoured transport lay gutted, whilst incense was burned and canticles of function were invoked. At a great anvil, blades were tempered and honed by hammer-armed servitors. Workshops were arrayed in multitudes with their rows of dark iron benches and churning machineries.

All of this fell into insignificance, however. For nearest to me was a servo-armed Techmarine, stooped over a suit of magnificent power armour.

It was good to see it again. It would feel even better to don it.

‘Brother…’ I announced my presence at the armourium’s door, which had slid open to admit me into the expansive workshop.

Vantor turned at the sound of my voice, his bionics grinding noisily as he moved.

He bowed slightly. ‘Captain Sicarius, I have almost finished my ministrations to your armour.’ Spoken through the vox-grille covering his mouth, the Techmarine’s voice was as mechanised as his right arm and leg. ‘I’m sure you’ll be pleased to learn that, like you, it yet lives.’

I always found it curious, the way the adherents of the Cult Mechanicus regarded inanimate adamantium and ceramite. Vantor had not only been repairing my armour, but also had been soothing its machine-spirit too. As a Techmarine, Vantor wore not the blue of the Ultramarines but the red of the Martian world where he had received his clandestine training. Only his shoulder pad remained the blue of Ultramar as a concession to his dual fealty.

‘Indeed I am, brother. I long to wear it again, and feel the grip of my Tempest Blade in my–’ I stopped abruptly, my eye drawn to a work-team of servitors labouring at the back of the chamber.

I could not disguise my anger. ‘What in Terra’s name is that?’

Beyond the honest industry of the armourium, beyond the slow beaten battleplate and forged blades, the tanks and engines, was an abomination.

Vantor turned, incredulous.

‘Frag, shrapnel. They are what remnants of the enemy we managed to salvage before the evacuation.’

Ranked up, steadily being logged and categorized, examined and tested, were pieces of the necron. Heads, fingers, limbs, even broken portions of their weaponry, were under heavy scrutiny by the Techmarine’s lobotomised serfs. I counted over twenty different benches of the material.

The urge to grasp my sword deepened.

‘They are inactive, I take it?’

Vantor nodded. ‘Of course, but by studying even the inert pieces of necron technology we can develop our knowledge of them.’

The fact that the Techmarine could neither see nor appreciate the danger in bringing this flotsam into our fortress-monastery only served to show the gulf between us in sharper relief.

I walked through the workshop, Vantor following, and approached one of the work benches where a servitor was toiling over an array of limbs, heads, even torso sections. I reached out to touch one of the silver skulls, its rictus grin mocking me even in destruction, but fell just short of touching it.

‘How are they even here? I am no expert on the necron, but aren’t they supposed to disappear when destroyed?’

Vantor came to stand beside me. A blurt of binaric dismissed the servitor and set it to another task.

‘Apparently, the Damnosian natives found a way to retard that ability through magnetism.’

I frowned at Vantor. ‘Really? A human colony with rudimentary engineering ability, using only electromagnets and a theory, achieves what the Mechanicus couldn’t?’

‘I was similarly unconvinced, and yet…’ He gestured to the workshop full of deactivated components.

‘I would not have sanctioned this research,’ I declared. My gaze lingered on one skull in particular. There was something strangely familiar about it.

He blinked, his very human eyes like flashes of burned umber.

‘Lord Calgar agrees that our knowledge of this enemy is of paramount importance if we are to fight it effectively.’

‘We fought effectively enough,’ I replied, my manner absent-minded as I drew closer to the skull. Like a siren it seemed to call to me, beckoning, reminding…

I felt the darkness close, the veil around me tightening and suffocating. Vantor’s next words were lost in this fog as was my response. All I could see was the skull, the eyes aglow and its rictus grin. I reached for my blade but grasped air, neither hilt nor scabbard. Legs buckling, unable to hold my weight, I fell to my knees and gasped. The air would not come. I was drowning with no ocean for miles, save the one of oil and blackness devouring me. Everything surrendered to the dark: Vantor, the armourium, the serfs, my armour – all was consumed. Only I remained, staring down the lidless orbs of that gilded, grinning skull.

‘I am doom…’

The last of my breath ghosted the air as an icy chill came over me. I felt ice underfoot, though I was still inside the fortress-monastery, and a low rumbling tremor in its frigid depths…

I breathed and the darkness crowding my vision bled away at once like ink dispersed in water. The ice melted and I resurfaced from the vision. The necron skull was in my hands, grasped tight. Its eyes were lifeless, dead in their sockets, a rusty patina weathering cheeks, pate and temples of gunmetal grey. Not gold. Not the king. Not here.

Vantor was gone, only the servitors were left and I assumed he had let me stay here to peruse the battlefield relics as if I alone could unlock some secret by merely looking at him. He hadn’t realised I had become lost in a dream, but nor had I.

The wound in my side flared anew and I grimaced to keep the pain at bay.

My armour was waiting for me, a gift from Vantor.

I took it, eager to leave the armourium and the unquiet resonance it had stirred inside me. I needed to ease my mind. It had been never so pure and focused as when in combat. I headed at once for the battle cages.

I found an old comrade in the lonely arena.

Daceus was the only warrior sparring that night and I crossed a gloomy threshold of empty cages, their servitors dormant and inactive within, to reach him.

‘Brother-sergeant,’ I called up to him, having to raise my voice above the punishing din of his sword blade striking the vital kill-points of the combat servitor he had chosen to pit himself against. It was a grossly uneven contest, of course. Daceus could have wrecked the machine many times over but was here to practise his form and test his stamina, not incur the wrath of the Techmarines by needlessly dismantling servitors.

‘Pause routine,’ he uttered breathlessly and looked down at me, his face mildly beaded with sweat. Daceus saluted, sword in front of his body. ‘Brother-captain, I am glad to see you returned to us.’

‘I hoped to bless the reunion with honest combat.’

Ever the martial exemplar, Daceus stepped aside and hammered the icon which opened the cage door with his fist.

‘Then let us see what benedictions you might offer.’

Already, he was measuring my combat efficacy, observing, strategising. My brother-sergeant wanted to know how sharp my fighting edge was. So did I.

Using the Tempest Blade in the battle cage would dishonour the weapon and put me at an unfair advantage, so I selected a training gladius from the rack to match the one wielded by my opponent. The balance was good, the blade straight and sharp despite the many hours of practice bouts it must have endured. It was no master-crafted weapon, but it was a worthy one.

‘Helmets on or off, brother?’ asked Daceus. Here in the cages, once blades were drawn, rank ceased to have meaning.

‘Off. I want to be able to breathe and use my senses without hindrance.’

‘Agreed. No strikes above the neck then. First to three hits?’

I nodded, taking up a fighting stance in my power armour. Vantor would be annoyed if I scratched it so soon, but I believed war-plate needed scars before going into battle proper.

‘Begin.’

Daceus’s first thrust was quick and aimed at my torso. I barely parried it before a second lunge caught me off guard and took a chip out of my plastron.

We paused and returned to our initial engagement positions.

‘First hit is yours, brother.’ I tried, and failed, to hide my annoyance. ‘Again.’

Daceus chopped downwards, high to low, and I managed a hasty block in response. Stepping back, I invited him to advance, which he did with a swift back to forehand slash. I used a hilt guard to protect myself and forged a jab of my own, but Daceus deflected it easily and used the kinetic momentum to rotate his blade into a half circling up and over slash that smashed against my clavicle and put me down on one knee.

I was sweating, but Daceus returned to the initial engagement position and did not dishonour me by offering me a hand up.

‘That’s two,’ he said with the barest hint of a smile.

Now I was burning with shameful anger. Returning to position, I adopted a ready stance. ‘Again.’

This time I swept in low, beneath the crossways slash crafted by my opponent and went in under Daceus’s guard. He stabbed downwards, a makeshift block, and our blades clashed. But the force pushed his sword hand outwards and I used the weakness to hammer my shoulder into his solar plexus. Daceus reeled, staggering back to regain footing, but I pressed my attack, first using an overhead slash to break open his flailing guard, then delivering a diagonal uppercut that put a groove in his plastron and pulled him to the ground.

We went again, this time exchanging a flurry of blows, feints and blocks. Our blades became a blur of clashing steel and I began to feel like my old self again. After a brutal riposte, I swapped hands mid sword flourish and smacked the flat of my gladius against Daceus’s gorget.

He gasped as the blade came close to his neck: a foul stroke.

I ignored his slight shock and returned to position.

‘Evens, two hits apiece. Again.’

As I moved through the blade disciplines, the finely crafted sword strokes, I felt a background pulse directly behind my eyes. It was like an intense headache, a drum inside my skull, pounding in time with my heartbeat.

Shadows flooded the arena that housed the battle cages; it had been this way since I had entered. But now, the darkness began to coalesce and I felt it close around me like a slow clenching fist. A silent predator lying in wait, it crouched at the edge of my vision and from somewhere distant I felt a chill enter my bones.

It was snowing, the battle cage far away and forgotten as an arctic tundra overwhelmed it in my senses. At the edge of a frost-encrusted ruin, the veil of darkness persisted. Through the black fog, an enemy emerged.

‘I am doom…’

Beneath my feet, the ice trembled like the beating of some immense heart.

The king had returned, in all his gilded and terrible majesty.

We clashed, I with the Tempest Blade crackling in my gauntleted fist, the primarch’s name on my lips like an unsheathed sword.

The king swung his war-scythe around, the great reaping edge like a crescent moon cut from the bleakest night and fashioned into a weapon. Our blades struck together in a cascade of sparks and we broke apart. I took a moment’s respite but the necron king needed none, his anima fuelled by some ancient will and driven by the machine he had surrendered his mortal flesh to become. Massive, overpowering, he loomed over me in seconds.

‘Not again!’ I roared. ‘I am a Lion of Macragge, I am Master of the Watch. A slayer of kings!’ With fury born of desperation and hate, I hurled myself at the necron. His scythe haft shattered, sheared in two by my blade and I battered his weary defence as he threw up his arms in surrender.

‘No mercy for you,’ I vowed, raining down blows until my shoulder ached and my lungs were fit to burst.

Breath did not come. I was drowning again and the veil of darkness crept into my field of vision, smothering and denying me my prey.

‘No! I will not be cheated of my victory. Not again, not–’

As I collapsed, retching what I thought was fluid from my chest but bringing up only air, I saw Daceus.

His gladius was broken, split along the blade. His vambraces were hacked apart, his face awash with shock and anger.

‘My brother…’ I struggled to gasp, falling. Daceus, despite my wounding of him, rose up to catch me.

At the doleful clang of our power armour meeting, I resurfaced from the dream and the pool of dark imaginings that choked me.

‘Brother-captain…’ He sounded panicked. I waved his concern away, and stood up unaided.

‘I am all right. And you?’ I asked, gesturing to his battered war-plate.

‘A scratch,’ he lied, then frowned. ‘What happened?’

I saw no sense in hiding the truth, so I told him of what I had seen, of my slayer reborn, of the duel I thought I was fighting against him.

‘I could have killed you, Daceus.’

‘But you did not.’

But I could have. I almost did.

A remnant from Damnos, some revenant I had brought with me, lingered. I felt the chill of it in the air around me and the dull pain in my side. I saw it in the shadows, the veil of darkness which harboured monsters of cold steel and viridian fire.

Something in the gloom around us caught my attention and I seized the Tempest Blade, throwing a fresh sword from the rack to Daceus at the same time.

‘What is it?’ The sergeant caught the blade easily and swung around, trying to follow my gaze.

I whispered, ‘Are we alone?’

Daceus nodded slowly and I eased open the door to the cage.

‘Not any more…’ I told him.

Together, we crept from the battle cage and spread out. My eyes never left the exact spot where I had seen movement, and I battle-signed the enclosing manoeuvre to the sergeant.

As well as the battle cages themselves, the arena had a servitor rack. It was an automated station where deactivated combat-servitors yet to be invested with sparring protocols would wait until called upon. Some sixty of the automata were currently in the rack in three rows of twenty, one surmounting the other.

More machines. More cold steel.

In the dingy arena hall, they did not look so dissimilar from the necrons displaced around the east wing armourium.

Daceus and I closed on the servitors’ dormant forms. One in particular had drawn my eye. On Damnos we had seen necrons that clothed themselves in the rancid flesh of the dead, using their skins as a crude and scarcely effective form of camouflage.

I could almost swear the eye sockets of this one were aglow…

Not waiting for Daceus, I thrust with my blade, releasing an actinic blur of fused steel and energised brutality.

Impaled on my sword, I wrenched the interloper from the servitor rack and with a grunt threw it down for us to finish off.

Daceus stopped me.

‘Brother-captain…’ He sounded concerned, but was looking at me and not our enemy. ‘It is just a servitor. Not even active.’

‘Strength of Guilliman…’ I breathed, before letting the Tempest Blade sag down by my side. He was right. It was just an automaton. Nothing more. No assassin clothed in flesh. ‘Perhaps I left the care of Brother Venatio too soon.’

To his credit, Daceus tried to reassure me.

‘You were in a suspended animation coma, brother-captain. Some… side-effects are to be expected.’

I grunted, the equivalent of a vocal shrug, and heard the chime of choral bells echo throughout the arena.

‘Has it been that long?’

Daceus’s eyes narrowed in confusion. ‘Long for what?’

‘I am to stand before Lord Calgar and be judged for my command on Damnos. I had thought I had longer to prepare.’

‘It would be my honour to accompany you to the Hall of Ultramar, my lord.’

‘Aye. Agreed.’ I clapped Daceus on the shoulder. He was as good and loyal a soldier as any captain had a right to have in his service. ‘Gratitude, brother.’

We left for the Hall of Ultramar and an audience with its regent and most august lord.

Replete in his war panoply, the Lord of Macragge was seated upon a throne like a battle king of old, and my heart both swelled with pride and trembled with awe at the sight of him. He wore his formal battleplate, a ceremonial suit festooned with laurels and awards. A pair of hefty power gloves clothed his hands, which he rested regally on the throne arms. His hair was white as hoarfrost, and he glowered at me through one organic eye. The other eye was a bionic, and even less welcoming.

‘Brother-captain,’ he said, radiating authority. ‘Come forward.’

Here in the Hall of Ultramar, the great and noble were personified in statue form and shadowed me as I walked the long processional to a place before my lord. I saw Invictus, Helveticus and Galatan, Titus, all measuring my worth with the weight of their marble stares. I would not be found wanting.

Daceus had come with me as far as the great bronze doors, and there I had bid him stay, despite his offer to the contrary. I didn’t want him caught up in this. Any judgement would be my burden to carry.

As I walked, I passed under great looming archways and saw again the shadows within the chamber’s lofty vaults. I tried to avert my gaze, turning my mind to the matter at hand, but when my eyes alighted on Lord Calgar I saw a strange halo encircle his head. At first I continued with the slightest break in step, aware of not only Calgar’s eyes upon me but Severus Agemman’s too and the honour guard of Macragge. Then as I drew closer, what I believed to be a trick of the light was an actual glow. No, not merely a glow, a mark. It was viridian green, and I realised a fraction too late what it portended.

‘Get down!’

Agemman reacted first to my warning, putting himself between me, as I ran down the processional, and Calgar, who was at the other end of it. He thought I had lost all sense and was preparing to knock some back into me. I had drawn my pistol, prompting the honour guard to draw arms also. Five bolt weapons were trained on my chest in an instant. My gaze went to the eaves above us, the shadows in the vaulted roof, and I pointed to get my brothers’ attention and stop them from executing me.

‘Up there!’

Agemman saw it too, crouched like an iron gargoyle, the darkness as its cloak. A single eye betrayed its position, but we would be far too late to prevent it achieving its goal. In truth, the optic was a targeting matrix and Lord Calgar was in its crosshairs.

A long, slim rifle slid into its grasp. I watched it shoulder the weapon and aim it. Reality slowed, as if the assassin were chronologically a few seconds ahead of us and functioning in a different time stream.

A plume of viridian gas expelled from the rifle’s vents like a breath. There was no recoil, only the expulsion of a missile that raked through the air. I followed the missile’s trajectory in my peripheral vision, triggering my pistol in the same moment and setting the vaults alight with a pulse of energised plasma. The others had seen the danger now and were discharging their own weapons into the time-shifted assassin above us.

Calgar grunted, the sound someone makes when they’re gut punched and the air is blasted from their lungs. Having got to his feet when the interloper had been discovered, he fell back and clattered into and then out of his throne, half rolling down the steps that led up to his seat.

We destroyed the archway where the assassin had made his nest, ripping up the shadows with streaks of blinding muzzle flash and plasma and bringing down a cascade of debris. This was the Hall of Ultramar and we had wrecked it like a band of careless thieves.

Time resumed, our weapons fell silent again, but the quarry was gone, slipped back into whatever darkness had spawned it. The assassin hadn’t merely escaped, it simply wasn’t there anymore, phased out like the necrons too badly damaged to self-repair. Only we hadn’t destroyed it. Not even close.

With the immediate danger passed for now, Agemman was at Lord Calgar’s side. The honour guard closed around them protectively like an armoured cocoon.

‘Stay with the Chapter Master…’ I was running back down the processional, the vaunted marble heroes urging my every step. Every footfall I took was punctuated by a glance above me, back into the shadowed roof and searching for my enemy.

Bursting through the bronze doors, I met Daceus.

The brother-sergeant was armed, having clearly heard the gunfire from within.

‘What’s happened?’

I didn’t linger, but kept on down the corridor, intent on reaching the east wing of the armourium where I knew an answer would be waiting. Daceus kept step.

‘Our enemy is in the Fortress of Hera,’ I told him. ‘They have just tried to assassinate Lord Calgar.’

‘Blood of Guilliman! Is he–’

I spared the brother-sergeant a stern glance. ‘He lives. He will live.’

Daceus would chastise himself for his doubt later; now we had to reach the armourium.

I was about to raise Vantor on the vox to get a warning to the Techmarine when the shrieking alert sirens told me I was too late. Light from the lumens and glow-globes shrank to an amber wash that overlaid the halls of the fortress-monastery in sickly monochrome.

I activated the vox in my gorget. ‘Agemman.’

His reply was a few seconds late in coming.

‘We’re headed for the apothecarion. Brother Venatio awaits us.’

‘The alert?’

‘Is coming from the armourium in the east wing.’

All my fears suddenly crystallised. The memory of the necron ‘corpses’ returned, those that were too badly damaged to self-repair but unable to phase out. Only they weren’t damaged. It was a ruse and in our ignorance we had invited them into our bastion, our home.

I wanted to hit something, but instead I bit back my anger and answered Agemman.

‘Sergeant Daceus and I are on our way there now.’

I cut the link – the First Captain had enough to deal with.

As we entered the east wing, the corridors strangely abandoned, I saw the veil of darkness. Something writhed within it, something of cold steel with viridian eyes like balefires.

‘Am I imagining that?’

Shaking his head, Daceus racked his bolter slide and took aim at the mechanised horrors emerging from the shadows.

The Tempest Blade is a relic of Talassar, and I am a descendent of that world’s noblest household. I honoured my ancestors by bringing its fury to my enemies. A necron exoskeleton is formidable but no match for a power sword such as this. They were warrior-caste, the foot soldiery of their darkling empire. The first I vaporised with a ball of incandescent plasma, the second I beheaded. My armour was impervious to their beam weapons and I was barely slowed as I hacked the arm off a third and then bifurcated its torso. Three necrons phased out in a cascade of howling energy.

Daceus neutralised three more with precise burst-fire from his bolter. Even when one of the mechanoids was a handspan from his face, the sergeant was unflinching and maintained strict fire discipline. He tore the thing apart almost point-blank and let the frag pepper his armoured form.

When we were done and the necrons vanquished, we waded into the darkness looking for more but the veil was thinning by then and disappeared entirely in a few more seconds.

Daceus scowled. ‘How many of these things are we dealing with?’

‘Judging by what I saw dissected in Vantor’s workshop, dozens.’

‘Could they gain a foothold here, a means of bringing greater forces directly into the fortress?’

I clapped my sergeant’s shoulder guard to reassure him.

‘We won’t let that happen, brother.’

Ahead of us, the east wing of the armourium beckoned. Its entry gate was open and a flickering light from within threw syncopated flashes into the gloom.

Inside, the armourium was a charnel house. Blood streaked the walls and machineries. It mingled with oil from the drones. Every serf, servitor and enginseer was dead. Their bodies lay strewn about the workshop, eviscerated and impaled. The luminator rig above had been damaged during the commotion and threw sporadic light across the grisly scene. Every flash revealed a fresh horror: faces frozen in terror and death. But there was no sign of the necron, none at all. The limbs, torsos, skulls and weaponry were all gone.

Then I saw Vantor, and my grief redoubled.

The Techmarine was dead, split from groin to neck by an energised blade. It had cut through his artificer armour like tin. Biological entrails entwined with cables and wires as all that comprised Euclidese Vantor was vented out and strewn like offal. It was no way for my brother to meet his end. His murderers had robbed him of glory.

I placed my gauntleted hand upon his face to close his still-staring gaze. Even the dishonoured dead should be allowed eternal sleep. Such was the damage done, even his gene-seed could not be recovered.

For a moment I shut my eyes, marshalling my anger, turning it into something useful.

The sensation of drowning came back, and the darkness in my mind’s eye returned with it. I fought it down, clenching a fist to stay focused. Whatever trauma I was experiencing would have to wait. I was determined to master it.

I addressed Daceus.

‘A deadly enemy is at large in these halls, brother. It has already laid low our Chapter Master and now it seeks to end us into the bargain.’ I gritted my teeth. ‘We will not yield to it. We must rouse our battle-brothers, hunt this menace down and exterminate it.’

Daceus nodded grimly and we left the armourium as we had found it. No time to mourn or bury the dead. More caskets would line the Fortress of Hera’s funerary chambers if we did not act.

‘Brother-captain!’ Daceus stabbed out a finger, and was already raising up his bolter as the veil of darkness returned. It was real this time, not a shadow creeping across my subconscious.

I fed a surge of energy down the Tempest Blade and it crackled into an azure beacon.

It was the assassin, his cyclopean eye aglow.

‘By Guilliman’s blood,’ I swore. ‘I will have that bastard’s head…’

But he wasn’t alone, as three bulky warriors stomped up alongside him bearing twin-barrelled cannons. A trio of muzzle flares roared into being.

I got off a single shot, and took the one-eyed assassin directly in his glowing orb. Unprepared to engage his chronometric defences, his head exploded in a pulse of scorching plasma. As the corridor lit up with the flare of a necron cannonade I had the satisfaction of seeing Calgar’s shooter crumple and phase out.

Resurrect from that.

‘Move!’ I grabbed Daceus and we dove back inside the armourium as the corridor where we’d been standing was stitched with viridian beams.

Hunkered down, our backs against the wall as our enemy advanced down the corridor spewing fire, Daceus handed me a primed charge.

‘Here…’

I glanced at him quizzically.

‘One can never be too prepared.’

‘Even in the fortress-monastery?’

He shrugged. In my hand, I held a krak grenade.

I leaned out into the corridor, squeezing off a snapshot and clipping one of the bulky cannon-wielders. The necron was heavily armoured but the plasma bolt tore off its right shoulder and most of its arm. Unable to heft its weapon, it stumbled and collapsed against the corridor wall. But it was far from finished, as its self-repair protocols activated.

Behind the first wave, three more immortal warriors lumbered into view.

‘There are too many.’

Daceus fired off a bolter burst one-handed, the two of us alternating our snap-fire in an attempt to slow down our enemy. It wasn’t working.

‘Agreed,’ said the sergeant.

A plan formed. I thumbed the krak grenade’s detonator, and primed it for a six-second timer.

‘Give me some covering fire.’

Daceus triggered a three-round burst as I leaned out with him a fraction later and clamped the krak grenade to the wall.

‘Back, now!’

We ducked back inside the armourium as a firestorm ripped through the corridor, bringing most of the ceiling down and sealing it off.

Daceus and I were back on our feet a moment later. Outside the armourium, the dust was still settling. Chunks of debris fell from the ceiling, and where internal circuitry was exposed, wires spat and fizzed.

Our enemies were trapped, but already the veil of darkness was beginning to coalesce again.

Daceus raised his bolter but I seized his arm and urged him away from the rubble.

‘Come on. We need to gather reinforcements.’

We had scarcely taken a few steps when the vox crackled again.

‘Sicarius…’ It was Agemman. His voice was strained and I heard the distinctive sounds of combat in the background. ‘We are under attack. The necrons have laid siege to the apothecarion. Lord Calgar is in danger. I don’t know how much longer we can–’

The link was severed in a blurt of hostile static. Agemman was gone and no amount of attempts was going to raise him again.

Like smoke on the wind, the darkness abated. It was headed elsewhere, possessed of a singular purpose.

Grim-faced, Daceus and I set off for the apothecarion. I hoped to Guilliman we would not be too late.

Despite the wailing alert sirens, the warning strobes and its call to arms, the Fortress of Hera was eerily empty.

It had unnerved Daceus. ‘Where are our battle-brothers?’

I shook my head, hurrying down the ghost-like hallways as my vox hails were met with forbidding silence.

‘Engaged against the necrons.’

‘With no word, no warning or attempt to coordinate defences?’

Daceus was unconvinced.

So was I.

‘There is no other explanation, brother-sergeant.’

That too was a lie. I could think of one, so could Daceus, but neither of us would speak it.

There were no further encounters with the necrons before we reached the apothecarion. Standing at the end of the short hallway to the chamber’s entrance, I realised why.

There was no entrance. It had been entirely consumed by the veil of darkness.

As if sentient and reacting to our sudden presence, the tendrils of night began to whip and eddy as if borne by an ethereal breeze. Twisting and uncoiling, unfurling like a ragged black cloak, the darkness came for us.

Within its depths were the necrons.

Three armoured warriors stomped towards us, coffin-shaped shields locked together in the manner of some ancient empire. Unlike the other necrons we had faced, these carried energised khopesh blades and were emblazoned with dynastic symbols. I knew a warrior elite when I saw it. I also knew who they were protecting.

A one-eyed necron, not an assassin but more a vizier, cowered behind this trio of formidable guardians. Stone like lapis lazuli accented his mechanised body in long strips and a gilded beard clasp protruded from his chin. In one metal-fingered hand he carried a staff; the other clutched the tethers of the veil. Here was the architect of darkness. And it was through him we would have to go if we were to reach our stricken Chapter Master.

As his guardians marched towards us, the vizier extended a talon in our direction.

His voice echoed with the resonance of ages.

‘Defilers. Infidels. You are an inferior species, lesser in every way to the Necrontyr. Behold what your arrogance has wrought. You will have all eternity to regret it.’

I glanced to Daceus. His bolter was aimed and ready.

‘Bold words. Sounds like a challenge.’

My brother-sergeant snarled. ‘Which I gladly answer.’

Daceus unleashed an unceasing storm of fire from his bolter. The heavy shells hammered the necron shield wall, battering the guardians back and breaking their defence. It ended with the hard thunk of the bolter’s empty magazine. Daceus dropped it, unholstering his sidearm in one hand and drawing his gladius with the other.

I saluted our opponents with the Tempest Blade, hilt raised up to my eyes.

‘In the name of Ultramar, you will not stand between us and our Chapter Master.’

Two of the vizier’s guardians yet lived. I brought my sword down preparing to engage them, when Daceus stopped me.

‘No, brother-captain. Kill that thing,’ he nodded towards the vizier. ‘Save Lord Calgar.’

After a moment’s hesitation and knowing the fate my sergeant had condemned himself to, I ran down the corridor.

One of the guardians stepped into my path but I parried its khopesh blade and thundered a kick into its lowered shield, smashing the necron aside. Hearing Daceus engage them both, and not stopping to see how he fared, I leapt at the vizier.

The ancient necron recoiled, brandishing his staff defensively as vortices of shadow swirled around him. I watched the darkness retreat, like mist before the sun, carrying the vizier with it, clinging on like some infernal passenger. I vaulted into the air, the sword of Talassar held aloft in a two-handed grip. As the blade descended, the vizier was already fading. Cruel laughter echoed around me as I scythed through nothing, embedding my sword in the deck-plate underfoot with a resounding clang.

But I would not be denied, and gave chase into the apothecarion. Behind me, Daceus was fighting for his life. I could not stop, or his sacrifice would mean nothing.

With the scent of my fleeing enemy still on me, I hurried through the gaping doorway.

The vizier had not run far, for inside the apothecarion the veil of darkness howled like a captured thunderhead. It bleached all vitality from the room and its occupants as if their very life forces were being surrendered to sustain it.

At the eye of this storm, I saw Agemman and the survivors of Calgar’s honour guard. Two were dead already, slumped against the medi-slab where the Lord of Ultramar lay supine and unconscious.

Venatio was nearest to him, but far from ministering to our wounded Chapter Master, he was fighting hard against a score of necrons. Like the creatures we had fought on Damnos, they wore the skins of the dead like mantles or trophies, and carried no weapons as such except for their dagger-length talons. The Damnosians had taken to calling them flayed ones.

One turned as I entered the apothecarion, alerted to my presence by the vizier who was skulking in the background, half-smothered by shadow.

It sprang at me, this flesh-draped horror.

I weaved away from its reaching claws and cut its midriff, parting abdomen and torso through its spinal column. I didn’t wait to see it dissipate – more were coming.

I shot one with my swiftly drawn plasma pistol. The burst took it in the chest, arresting its mad leap and blasting it into the ether. I aimed at a second but one of the flayed ones slashed my forearm, tearing up the vambrace and disarming me. Sweeping the Tempest Blade, I decapitated it. A third I impaled through the chest, staggering a fourth with a heavy punch. It was dazed, or rather I had forced a system reboot, and it took a few seconds for it to adjust. Long enough for me to cleave it open diagonally from shoulder to hip. It phased out in a flurry of sparks.

My efforts had got me as far as the medi-slab.

Calgar’s recumbent form looked frighteningly still and I tried to tell myself he yet drew breath.

Some eighteen necrons had been struck down around us. Several had phased out, but the rest were currently self-repairing. In the encroaching veil of darkness, I saw more viridian balefires flicker into life as the vizier summoned yet more warriors.

For Agemman’s benefit, I aimed my sword at the vizier.

‘We need to end that thing.’

The other defenders’ bolters had run dry of ammunition long before and the First Captain had taken up one of the fallen Ultramarines’ relic blades in preference to his ceremonial gladius. The remaining honour guard wielded power axes, whilst Apothecary Venatio had his chainsword.

‘How do you propose we do that?’ Agemman gestured to the necron horde that had just redoubled in size. A ring of steel stood between us and the vizier.

There was but a few seconds’ respite to form a strategy before the flayed ones would be on us again.

‘With courage and honour, Severus. He won’t escape this time. Make me a breach with your warriors, and I’ll pierce whatever passes for a heart in this thing.’

‘What of Lord Calgar?’

Venatio spoke up. ‘I’ll stay by the Chapter Master’s side.’

Agemman glanced back at me.

‘If this fails, you’ll be overwhelmed.’

I nodded. ‘Aye, but you always said I was reckless.’

I heard the smirk in his response. He summoned the honour guard and prepared to open the gap I needed.

Self-repairing, several of the necrons jerked back to their feet. Their jaws clacked as if laughing, and they sliced their talons against one another in anticipation of the kill. For machines, they displayed an unnerving awareness of malice.

I lowered my sword, looking down the blade as I adopted a ready stance.

‘Cut deep…’

Leading the honour guard, Agemman charged the necrons.

The sudden attack briefly stunned the horde and for a few seconds they reeled against the First Captain’s fury. Agemman used his bulk and strength to break the flayed ones apart, ignoring the claws that raked his armour.

He roared, cutting a necron down with every sweep of his borrowed relic blade.

‘Courage and honour!’

Through the flurry of power axes, I saw mechanised limbs fall in a metal rain. Torsos were hacked apart, heads cleaved. Like their captain, the honour guard were brutal. Relentless. My warrior’s heart thundered with pride to witness such unstinting determination and bravery.

Like a speartip they had driven deep into the flayed ones, forcing a channel that thrust all the way to vizier. Embattled on every side, Agemman cried out and with one last effort made the breach I needed.

‘Do it, Sicarius… Now!’

The distance was short, my passage blocked only by broken necrons underfoot.

I fixed the singular orb of the vizier with a glare that promised retribution.

‘For Ultramar!’ I declared, my fury unstoppable. ‘Here you die!’

As I reached my enemy, I sprang into a shallow leap using it to gain loft and additional momentum. Holding nothing back, I struck down one-handed putting every iota of strength I possessed into the blow. My Tempest Blade cut the staff in half and carried on without pause into the vizier’s skull. I split him down the middle, bifurcating his cyclopean eye, and did not stop until I had sheared him clean through. Both halves collapsed in a frenzy of flashing sparks and thrashing wires. The vizier phased out before they even hit the ground.

Triumphant, I turned to Agemman.

The darkness was receding, my plan had succeed–

Agemman was down, parted from his relic blade. The three honour guard were strewn around him, slain. Venatio lay sprawled on his back. The Apothecary was unmoving.

Calgar was alone, unconscious and undefended on the medi-slab.

As I saw the thing that loomed above him, I realised it would be his mortuary slab instead.

My sword felt loose and heavy in my grasp. I scarcely had breath to speak.

‘No…’

An old enemy turned to regard me and in its fathomless gaze I saw the fall of empires and the terrible entropy of ages.

It had returned. The gilded king, my nemesis, the Undying of Damnos.

‘I am doom.’

As the darkness closed in around me and I drowned again, I saw its war-scythe held over Calgar in an executioner’s grip. There was no pity in his eyes, no mercy, not even malice, just a deep abiding ennui that presaged an end to all things.

The ice came back, crusting the ground and shawling my body in a sudden snowfall. Beneath it, I heard the beating heart that quaked the very earth.

I gasped, but breath wouldn’t come. Black spots flecked my sight, converging at the edge of my vision. I raged but knew I was dying. My gauntleted fingers slipped from the sword’s hilt and I heard it clatter uselessly to the ground.

I fell to one knee, then all fours.

Crawling, still defiant, I felt the scrape of talons pinning me as the flayed ones swarmed over me, swallowing me in a sea of cold metal. Something seized my face and then a hand clamped around my neck. A blade pierced my shoulder, another in my back and I was steadily transfixed.

Powerless, I could only watch as the war-scythe descended…

As the veil of darkness claimed me, I heard far away voices but dismissed them as nostalgic memory. I had died on Damnos and come back, but there was no returning from this.

A dense ball of white heat flared in my side prompting a gout of hot fluid to erupt from my throat, spewing up over my lips in a coppery wash. I spat it out, retching up the blood–

No… it wasn’t blood. It was the briny, amniotic soup of the revivification casket I could taste in my mouth.

I opened my eyes and found I was cocooned by a viscous recuperating gel.

Had I survived? Were the voices I heard real after all? Did Daceus yet live and muster reinforcements?

My mind overloaded with uncertainty, and with my senses restored I hammered a fist against the inside of the casket. My rebreather had come loose and I was drowning in this filth.

The locking mechanism disengaged and I fell forwards onto the apothecarion floor as the revivification casket opened with a blurted warning chime.

On my knees, coughing up the amniotic brine that had saved my life and kept it tethered to the world, I looked up into the eyes of my Apothecary.

I could scarcely believe what they were telling me.

‘Venatio?’

He nodded respectfully, fashioning a warm smile. ‘Brother-captain. Welcome back to the world of the–’

‘You’re alive…’ Staggering, I got to my feet. I was sweating with the intense biological rigours my body had just undertaken and was still a little unsteady. Venatio went to assist me but I held him back with my outstretched palm.

‘And so are you, Sicarius. You were badly injured and have only just–’

I interrupted for a second time. ‘Injured where? Here, in the fortress-monastery?’

Something wasn’t right. An odd sense of recollection, a very mortal experience described as dèja vu, that which is ‘seen already’, was affecting me. I remembered the chronometric device utilised by the assassin, how it had blurred time and I wondered if I was somehow trapped in it.

‘Damnos.’ Venatio’s eyes narrowed. He was already consulting his bio-scanner, as if their readers could provide some clue to my sudden distemper. ‘You were struck down on Damnos, several weeks ago in fact. You have just this moment come back to consciousness.’

I gazed around the apothecarion, at the shadows at its periphery, but saw no veil of darkness, no hidden foes this time.

‘I was drowning…’

Venatio bowed his head, abruptly contrite. ‘Apologies, brother-captain. Your rebreather came loose towards the end of suspended animation. You appeared to be experiencing some form of nightmare. It’s not uncommon. So close to revival, I couldn’t interrupt the process to wake you or replace the rebreather. It was inactive for but a few seconds.’

I was shaking my head.

‘But this is… it’s impossible.’

The Apothecary showed his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘You are here. You are back with us. What is your name?’

I frowned, incredulous. ‘My name?’

‘Yes. What is it?’

‘Cato Sicarius. I am master of my senses, Venatio.’

‘You do not seem it.’ Agemman stepped from the shadows, just as he had before.

‘Severus…’ Another apparition. ‘I saw you fall.’

The First Captain opened his arms as physical testament to his veracity. ‘I am standing before you now, Cato.’ He disengaged the locking clamps on his battle-helm and removed it, placing it in the crook of his arm. ‘Brother.’ He came over and put his hand on my shoulder. This scarred veteran of the Tyrannic Wars, hair shorn close to his scalp, service studs gleaming in his brow, was trying to reassure me as one battle-brother to another.

I began to realise the truth and it stirred an even greater concern within me.

‘You are here to summon me before Lord Calgar, are you not?’

Nonplussed, Agemman let go of my shoulder. ‘I am, yes. How did you know?’

I didn’t answer and turned to Venatio instead.

‘Apothecary, tell me – did we bring anything back from Damnos, anything from the necron?’

Venatio nodded slowly. ‘Yes, but–’

‘And is it under Techmarine Vantor’s custody in the east wing armourium?’

Agemman answered. ‘It is. What is this about, Sicarius?’

I met his questioning gaze with one of certainty and urgency. ‘Do you have a sidearm you can lend me?’

Agemman nodded, not understanding but beginning to trust my instincts. He unholstered his bolt pistol and handed it over.

Appreciating the grip of the weapon, I regarded them both.

‘We have to get there at once – the Fortress of Hera has been breached.’

Daceus had been on his way to the apothecarion when we met in the corridor.

I quickly explained the situation and together the four of us made all haste to the armourium in the east wing of the fortress-monastery.

Both Agemman and Daceus had their bolters, whilst Venatio and I held pistols. I hoped it would be enough for whatever awaited us in Vantor’s workshop.

‘Should we invoke a fortress-wide alarm?’ asked Daceus on the way.

Agemman shook his head. ‘Let’s see what’s in there first.’ He had donned his battle-helm again, so I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he doubted my assertion that the fortress was in danger and I suspect he didn’t want to create needless panic.

I saw him exchange a glance with Venatio. The Apothecary hid his concern poorly, but I took no heed. We had arrived at the armourium.

We had not voxed ahead. I was insistent on this. Whatever awareness the dormant necrons in the workshop possessed, I didn’t want to risk my warning activating them prematurely.

I hammered the icon for the door release and stepped first into the armourium.

It was much as I remembered: a hive of industry and labour, serfs and engineers hurrying back and forth, servitors engaged in their menial tasks, arms and armour in various conditions of repair and restoration. And there, at the back of the expansive workshop, tended by a small army of menials, was the salvage from Damnos.

Vantor turned as I entered. He was just finishing working up my armour-plate. I saw the Tempest Blade and my plasma pistol on a separate rack nearby.

‘Brother-captain, your timing is impeccable.’

‘I do hope so.’

The Techmarine’s expression changed from warm greeting to slight confusion as Agemman, Daceus and Venatio filed in after me.

‘Is there a problem I am unaware of, brothers?’

My gaze was fixed on the back of the workshop.

‘Evacuate your labourers.’

Vantor looked to Agemman for confirmation.

‘Do as he asks, brother.’

Like ants returning to the nest, the horde of serfs, enginseers and servitors removed themselves from the armourium. None questioned their orders, but some looked worryingly askance at the Ultramarines in their midst as they departed.

‘With me.’ I advanced into the workshop, indicating a perimeter around the necron salvage where I then came to a halt.

Vantor joined the others as they fell in beside me.

‘This is illogical, Captain Sicarius. What are you trying to–’

Dozens of viridian eyes flaring into life in the gloomy armourium arrested the Techmarine’s question and had him instinctively reaching for his plasma carbine instead.

‘They are self-repairing…’

I raised Agemman’s bolt pistol. My battle-brothers readied their weapons in unison with me.

I scowled as the necron host began to reassemble itself.

‘Not for long.’

Roaring muzzle flare and a hail of fire broke the tension as the five of us unleashed our weapons, engulfing the back of the workshop in explosive annihilation and destroying everything in it.

Only when we had emptied our clips did we stop firing. Even Vantor exhausted the power cell in his plasma carbine.

When it was over, the back of the workshop was a scorched, half-destroyed ruin. It was as if a battle had just ended. In truth it had. We had won.

Agemman slammed a fresh clip into his bolter, ever the prepared soldier.

‘Whatever is left, incinerate it.’

Daceus and I were sifting through the wreckage, making sure we had cleansed the room thoroughly.

I lowered my borrowed bolt pistol, and signalled to my sergeant to stand down.

‘There’s nothing left. The threat has been neutralised.’

Across the workshop, Venatio caught my eye. He gestured to the carnage around us.

‘How did you know?’

I had no good answer for him, so I told the Apothecary the only thing that made any sense.

‘I saw a darkness in my dreams and vowed I would not see it come to pass.’

Agemman was more pragmatic. ‘Whatever the cause of your prescience, I for one am glad of it.’ He bowed his head. ‘Gratitude, Sicarius. But Lord Calgar yet awaits.’

Agemman insisted I be cleaned and wearing my armour before my audience with the Lord Calgar. As I had seen in my half-remembered dream, I walked the processional of the Hall of Ultramar with the statues of heroes measuring my every step.

And as before, I knew I would not be found wanting under their gaze.

Lord Calgar waited for me, seated upon a throne, his banners describing a legacy of war and glory behind him. Agemman was by his side.

I stopped at a respectful distance and saluted.

With a huge, power-gloved hand, Calgar beckoned me to approach. ‘Come forth, Cato.’

I obeyed, masking any surprise at such informality, and took a knee before the Lord of Ultramar.

I bowed my head solemnly. ‘I stand in judgement.’

‘Rise. You are not being judged this day, though I had reviewed the engagement on Damnos.’

My eyes narrowed in confusion as I came to my feet.

‘My lord?’

Agemman maintained his studied silence as Calgar explained.

‘Damnos wounded us all, but you and the Second suffered more grievously than most.’

‘It is a stain on my honour.’

‘One I would see removed, Cato. I will not have this go unchallenged.’

I frowned again, not quite grasping Calgar’s meaning.

‘Permission to speak freely, my lord.’

‘Granted.’

‘What exactly are you saying?’

Calgar’s eyes were like chips of steel. ‘In your unconscious visions, you saw the ice? You heard the beating of its heart?’

My voice almost caught in my throat at this revelation.

‘Yes.’

‘It is the necron, mocking us. I feel it in my bones, Cato. Whether it be one year or fifty, we are not done with Damnos, and it is not done with us.’

A nerve tremor in my cheek didn’t quite manifest into a smile. And it would not until the stain against my honour was removed and Damnos reconquered.

‘I shall count the days until our return, my lord. This isn’t over.’

MISSION: ANNIHILATE

Gav Thorpe

‘And you didn’t think it was worth checking the signal before starting the countdown, brother-captain?’ Haryk Thunderfang’s bass rumble was tinged with disappointment rather than anger. The Space Wolf looked around the chamber, the glow from his eye lenses reflecting off cobalt-like stone, glittering along silvery circuitry inlays that covered every surface.

‘The mission is more important than our survival, Haryk,’ replied Artemis, brother-captain of the Deathwatch, leader of the kill-team. ‘The necron tomb complex’s destruction is our only concern.’

‘I find it more problematic that we were capable of teleporting in with the cyclotronic detonator, but are now incapable of getting out. How could we be blocked from teleporting one way?’ The question came from Lavestus, seconded to the Deathwatch from the White Consuls.

‘I don’t think we were a threat until we teleported in,’ said Sekor. The youngest, he was often left behind to pilot the Thunderhawk gunship, but on this occasion they had teleported directly from their ship, Fatal Redress.

‘Another explanation is that this part of the tomb complex is shielded from teleporting, which is why we landed half a kilometre from our target coordinates. We head back to the landing point.’ Artemis strode back towards the trapezoid doorway through which they had entered, the door turned to steaming slag by a melta bomb a few minutes earlier.

‘Let’s get going then,’ said Haryk, hefting his plasma reaper.

Ahead of the Space Wolf, Artemis took a step into the passageway and then stopped. A scratching sound echoed down the triangular corridor. Something glittered in the distance just as a noise like a rusty blade being pulled down a metal plate assaulted the ears of the Space Marines.

‘Scarabs!’ Artemis had only time to bark the warning before a tide of small, multi-limbed metal beetles, each the size of his hand, poured towards him, scuttling along floor and walls with equal ease.

Opening fire with metal storm rounds, the kill-team blew away the first swathe of necron constructs, but more followed, their metallic mandibles clicking open and closed, compound-lensed eyes glowing green with alien energy. They advanced into the swarm, weapons spitting destruction.

‘We’re going to run out of time,’ said Sekor. The chrono-display had counted down below three minutes.

‘Attack! Cut through them!’ Artemis combined command with action, drawing his power sword to slash through a handful of constructs. He stepped into the gap he had cleaved, firing his bolt pistol to destroy more scarabs.

Haryk joined the brother-captain and opened fire with the plasma reaper. A storm of blasts streamed along the passageway, each tiny star miniscule compared to the bolt of a normal plasma gun, but still enough to punch through the armoured carapace of a scarab with ease. The whine of energy cells recharging replaced the skittering of metal claws.

‘Quickly, they will return soon enough,’ said Artemis, breaking into a run along the empty corridor.

The walls started to shine, a sickly yellow glow streaming along what Artemis had thought to be veins in the rock. By this dim light he could see mechanoid skeletons entombed within the material itself, rictus-faced skulls grinning at him from the depths.

‘We were wrong,’ said Sekor. ‘This pyramid complex isn’t guarding a subterranean tomb. It is the tomb!’

‘Even better that it will soon be nothing more than a cloud of ash and particles, Emperor be praised,’ replied Lavestus.

They burst into the octagonal hall where they had first teleported into the tomb. It was nearly a hundred metres across and fifty high. One wall was dissolving. The blue stone slewed away to reveal shaft after shaft filled with scarabs. Awakening artificial eyes bathed the black armour of the Deathwatch warriors with a jade glow.

Artemis tried to lock on to the teleport signal again, but his attempt was met by a dull growl from the teleport homer and a smear of nonsense across the display affixed to his right wrist. He took a moment to gauge what was happening as the others opened fire on the swarm of constructs pouring out of the wall towards them. Past the flicker of plasma charges and metal storm bolts, Artemis noticed something was amiss. The scarabs were not trying to attach themselves to the Deathwatch members. From past records, he knew that scarabs often clung to their victims and detonated themselves, destroying both. Why were they not doing the same?

‘Does this seem at all familiar?’ said Haryk, blasting apart half a dozen scarabs with a burst of plasma. ‘I mean, a countdown that is going to destroy us all, fighting against an alien terror waking up around us?’

‘Shut up, Haryk,’ said Artemis, trying to concentrate.

He noticed that many of the constructs were not attacking, but were slipping past the Space Marines to disappear down one of the other corridors. A few were heading towards the cyclotronic device.

‘Keep them away from the detonator, I have a theory,’ Artemis told his companions, setting off after the errant scarabs. The small constructs ignored him as he pounded past, crushing them underfoot.

Less than a hundred metres long, the passage opened up into another tomb chamber. The scarabs hurled themselves at a wall, blowing themselves up to shatter the azure blocks. Amongst them was something a lot larger, several times the mass of Artemis. It floated just above the ground, six bulky legs curled up beneath it, two more limbs extended towards the far wall where green energy beams sliced through the stone-like substance.

Looking past, Artemis saw something within the structure of the tomb, taller and wider than the necron warriors they had passed earlier. Through the diminishing layers of protective cobalt, his gaze met a trio of glowing eyes. He felt a strange moment of connection to the ancient buried thing; they despised each other in equal measure.

Checking his teleport homer, Artemis realised that the jamming signal was emanating from the spider-like construct, which was continuing to ignore him in its efforts to cut free the necron commander. He ejected his bolt pistol’s magazine and slammed in kraken penetrator rounds. Lining up his shots, he fired six times, every bolt punching into the mechanical arachnid between head and body. Sparks flew as it fell to the ground, smaller eruptions jerking its body from within.

‘The signal!’ crowed Sekor. ‘It’s back.’

‘Fatal Redress, evac teleport, now!’ barked Artemis.

With shards of stone crashing to the floor around it, the necron lord erupted from its sarcophagus. Artemis fired his pistol. The bolt clanged from the forehead of the necron commander, leaving a bright scar in the living metal.

‘Stay dead this time,’ he growled. A moment later, a soul-wrenching sickness churned in his stomach and the world disappeared.

As Artemis was deposited on the strike vessel above Norantis XIX, the tomb complex was engulfed by a sphere of plasma and nuclear fire.

COLD STEEL

David Guymer

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//Transmission decrypted
//Revivification protocols initialising >> screening transmission >> scan complete
//Message begins:

A distant tremor had the cell’s single light source swaying in its fitting. It blinked ominously before humming back to its full, grey-shade wattage. The lumen filament was well past its prescribed life-span, but it was enough to describe three metres by one of dour rockcrete. Where just the day before condensation had lathered the walls, now bands of ice glittered in the uncertain light like claws of silver. Even the stench of the steri-sprays had been frozen into the walls. Another quake shook the light, sending a crystal drizzle onto the shaven head of the man strapped to an upright pallet beneath.

The facility was under attack.

Drax rolled his head back and to the left, watching the glittering particles as though nothing in a galaxy of horrors and wonders had fascinated him more. He didn’t shiver. It only made the cold worse. He considered just how many kilometres of rockcrete separated the solitary confinement wing from the surface and then, with a smile meant for no one at all, relaxed back into his restraints. The leather straps creaked like a harness as the prison moon’s pathetic gravity finally took a grip on his bulk.

Tough luck for the facility.

The walls trembled once again. Or, more truthfully, they shivered. Drax knew the difference, knew earth like other men of other home worlds knew sky, and he remembered how it felt to be separated by a few hundred metres of crust from something that could crush him in a second if it ever cared he was there at all.

And it hadn’t bothered him back on Caldera either.

He closed his eyes, as if determining to take a nap. A strange, regular stamp, like some kind of hydraulic press, was audible over the crump of impacts. It sounded almost like footsteps. They were drawing nearer, definitely footsteps, but caused by something much heavier and more ponderous than a man, its stride almost mechanically exact.

No.

Not almost.

Drax heard it thump onto his wing, halt for a half second as it hit the right-angle bend, then turn ninety degrees with a chill whisper of servos. Not Imperial. Too smooth. And coming closer. The narrow passage rang to the stamp of metal on stone. Drax tensed on instinct. The restraints bit into his wrists as he tried to press himself further into the pallet, turning his face from the light. One eye open, he stared through the bars of the face-high grille in the door. The unsteady illumination reflected off something silver.

Drax froze, rigid, as a gleaming skull passed before the grille and turned to glare into his cell. It must have been mere seconds but, bathed in the soulless glow of its dull green eyes, each of those seconds felt like long minutes. The metallic skeleton tramped past, the alien glare fading back into grey shadow.

The light source flickered.

Breath misted from Drax’s open mouth as he listened to the footsteps recede. He’d seen some horrific things in his time, but this…

He was still listening when a furtive shuffle heralded the approach of another set of footsteps. These were definitely human and, as they drew nearer, brought the flat creak of flak armour.

The newcomer paused a moment outside Drax’s cell, then rapped softly on the metal doorframe. Drax said nothing. Nothing had changed his opinion that he was better off where he was. The anxious tap came again, cooling mist rising through the grille, followed by a curse and the fumbling of keys until one was inserted into the lock and twisted. With a clank, the locking bolt withdrew and the door listed open. A grey man in his mid-forties wearing a pitch-black stab-vest nudged it the rest of the way on the barrel of an autogun. The weapon was standard issue, stamped with the insignia of the Ixus II enforcers, but the knife lashed to the muzzle with electrical tape certainly wasn’t.

‘Drax?’ the man hissed. ‘Calderan 18th Armoured?’

‘Couldn’t say,’ Drax answered, voice a hoarse rumble after so long in solitary. ‘No names here.’

‘Don’t screw with me,’ the warden growled, urgency cracking the frosty patina that filled his brow’s furrows. He pulled his rifle to his chest and edged into the cell. The corporal’s stripes on his left shoulder pad shimmered dully. He angled the back of his hand to the swaying light source, shivering at the meagre touch of its warmth. There was something scrawled in black ink on the skin. ‘Gamma 19119,’ the warden read. ‘That’s you, right. The driver?’

‘If that’s what the brand says,’ Drax shrugged, angling his face so the man could read the ident code tattooed across the left side of his forehead.

The warden grunted, setting his rifle against the wall as he thumbed through his ring of keys for the one that matched the padlocks on Drax’s restraints. He found it and started forward. ‘Didn’t say in your file you were this damned funny. What it said was that you killed your own crew, and that you didn’t last a month in gamma before murdering two good wardens. So I’d advise you keep that hatch of yours shut, Drax. You’re lucky I need a driver.’

‘We going for a drive, corporal?’ Drax gave the man a companionable smile and shrugged again, emphasising his last restraint. ‘They lock you up for that.’

The warden grunted as he tugged out the final strap, pocketed the keys and swiftly back-pedalled to recollect his autogun. ‘Vox is out, along with pretty much everything else except basic power. I’ve got someone on it. Enough to know there’s a real shak-storm going on up there.’

Drax wrapped his thick arms around his chest, rolling out his neck and listening to it click. ‘Shak-storm,’ he agreed, trying out the Ixus vernacular and finding it sorely lacking. The Ixus dialect was, like its women, anaemic and inoffensive. ‘Yeah, I’d say. And what’s up with the cold?’

The warden backed out into the passageway and gestured for Drax to follow. ‘It gets better. Environment went down with everything else. It’s online but there’s no one left alive to recalibrate it.’ He upended his wrist, then rubbed the film of frost from his chrono. ‘Would you rather suffocate or freeze?’

Drax’s grin failed to warm his eyes. He had always known that something in the universe loved him. Either that or the Emperor wanted him at arm’s length for as long possible.

‘I was in the Guard, corporal. It’s nice just to be asked.’

‘Spare me,’ the warden snarled, holding the rifle in one hand and fishing in his chest pocket with the other. He flourished a second, smaller set of keys. ‘Your file said you drove Leman Russ for the Calderans. Can you can drive a Chimera?’

‘Sure,’ Drax shrugged, eyeing the bump in the man’s carapace that hid a stainless steel ring and its two little ways off this rock. How different could they be?

‘Good.’ The warden cast another anxious look at his chrono.

‘What’s your name, corporal?’

‘What?’

‘Your name,’ Drax repeated. ‘I like to know a man’s name.’

‘Stannis,’ the man replied, letting his wrist drop to his side. ‘Corporal Gerralt Stannis.’

Drax extended his right hand. ‘Pleasure to work with you, corporal.’

Stannis nodded, distracted, transferring his rifle from right to left to accept Drax’s offered hand. The gun was still halfway between hands when Drax suddenly clapped both hands either side of Stannis’s face and, in the same motion, twisted his skull from his spine. There was a crunch of split vertebrae and the man hung limp, the dead lump of flesh and armaplas hanging sanguine in low-grav. Drax hooked the Chimera keys from his chest pocket and let the body float to the ground.

It only took one man to drive a Chimera, and he wasn’t about to start sharing oxygen with dead-weight.

Almost as an afterthought, he collected the warden’s autogun, jiggled the knife free of its bindings and slid the gun into his cell. For want of pockets, he held on to the keys and sheathed the blade carefully under his left sleeve. One-handed, he lugged the body in after the gun, then closed the door on them both. He glanced left, holding his breath for a moment, listening out for the metallic skeleton. Its clanking step was a distance away now and moving farther. Smiling grimly, he checked the cell door was fully closed and started right.

The roots of the Ixus IX penal facility sank deep into the moon’s frozen crust. Drax took branches as he came to them, ignored others, loping unerringly forwards in a complicated but deceptively efficient sequence of low-grav strides. He could have found his way to the surface with both eyes closed and a giant pteraworm hunting the resonance of his footsteps. Drax had always been firmly ambivalent about his upbringing. He had simply not experienced anything else. But surviving a childhood in the subterranean fortress-hives of Caldera certainly made life off-world seem as easy as falling asleep. And no more perilous.

What few doors he passed were empty, but that was unsurprising. A man of the Gothic Sector’s CXVII penal legion had to try hard to find himself confined down here. The appearance of one door in particular as he rounded a familiar bend had him double-checking the knife in his sleeve. It was a double door, centimetre thick steel with a wire-reinforced, plastek window. In either door, just beneath the window, was a plastek flap about the right size and position for an autogun muzzle or a stun baton. It had been a while since Drax had been this way, but he remembered the access to the guard room. He didn’t remember it being unlocked though.

Or unguarded.

Shifting nearer, he tried to peer through the window, but it was one-way and all it presented was his own distorted reflection. He thought for a moment, then shrugged and nudged through.

Stepping into the guardroom was like entering a disturbing dream: not quite right, yet close enough to his memories to make the new reality all the more disturbing. Frost crept along the rockcrete walls and upturned tables. The hiss of snow from the security monitors banked along the right-hand wall filled the room with static.

Two men looked up at his entrance.

The first was clearly another prisoner. He was pasty and greasy-haired, garbed in a ratty black jumpsuit, sitting cross-legged with his back to an upturned table. The thing was on its side, legs out, bland top blocking the plastek windows onto the corridor beyond the far wall. The prisoner gave a callow smirk then dismissed Drax from his attention, drifting back to the patched-up vox between his legs. It was producing a hissing noise. The man turned his ear towards it, a grin twitching and fading as he fiddled with a dial on his near side.

The second man was on his feet, pacing out his frozen nerves. He was fiery haired and keen-eyed, armoured like a warder in black flak, similar to that of the late Corporal Stannis except that his was ill-fitting and absent of rank. Drax’s appearance startled him from his stride, autogun swinging around to cover the door.

‘You can’t be Drax?’ he said, chin lifting in acknowledgment of Drax’s height, voice high and determinedly disbelieving. ‘You’re too big for a tanker.’

The second man rolled his eyes and didn’t look up, as though discomforted by the manufactorum-fresh lustre of the young warden’s weapon. Despite his ill-fated attire, he was clean shaven and groomed, aside from the rash around his nostrils and upper lip that had chapped nastily in the cold. His boots, and even the zip that ran down the back of his jumpsuit, were buffed like a warmaster’s medals.

‘Where’s Stannis?’ the warden continued, as though filling in Drax’s side of the interrogation for him.

Drax smiled. Maybe it would catch on.

‘He took us down a wrong turn,’ he replied, spreading his hands to engender the lie that he was unarmed. The knife kissed his wrist beneath the sleeve. The kid with the autogun would have to go first. The tech would go easy, assuming he couldn’t be useful. ‘Walked right into one of those things.’

The warden swore, nervously and quiet. ‘Wait until I get one in my sights.’

‘They’re called necrons,’ murmured the tech. He shivered and twitched but, judging from his sheen of sweat and pinpoint pupils, it had nothing to do with the cold. He sniffed loudly, still not looking up from his hardware. ‘And it’s been over an hour since the power went down. Don’t pretend you don’t know where they are.’

‘Necrons,’ Drax’s voice echoed. ‘What are they?’

‘Before my… heh… reassignment, I was with the signals corps, Mordian 9th, Mechanicus liaison. We were a good three systems behind the front lines, when these… things… just appeared from nowhere. Four months. That was how long we held out…’

‘They’ll die like every other xenos,’ whispered the warden, clutching his autogun like a crozius.

The prisoner’s look was like acid. ‘They don’t die. They don’t even hurt.’

‘Enough, Sep,’ growled a third voice.

Drax turned into the snowy glare of the monitors and squinted. Featureless shadow-men waded through static. He could make out hallways, guardrooms, but he didn’t know the facility well enough to guess what he was looking at. Below the bank of screens, a second warden sat on the workstation. The light at his back hollowed his eyes, highlighting grey hair from brown and emphasising his padded bulk. His autogun rested on his lap, one hand on the muzzle as though it were a mastiff at its master’s charge. ‘Warden Rhain,’ he grunted. ‘And him,’ he pointed out the red-haired youth, ‘you call Warden Colddryn.’

‘And him?’ said Drax, angling his head to the tech, who gave a grin full of sour gums and mutual distrust.

‘Just more droppings from the wrong end of the Imperial Guard,’ said Rhain, patting his rifle as if willing it to go off of its own accord. Drax wondered how many penal troopers had gone that way on this man’s watch. ‘Like you. But we need a driver if we’re going to make it across the surface to the orbital pad. Stannis gave you the keys?’ Drax nodded. Rhain slid from the console and into a more normal light. He stood as though born to attention, jaw cleft to a military grade, blue eyes glaring like headlamps from a battered old battle tank. The warden turned to Sep. ‘Anything out of that thing yet? Survivors? Reinforcements?’

‘Lho-stick shipment?’ Sep asked sourly, pitching the frequency from his vox-unit to a whistle, then back down towards a dissonant bass as he manually scanned through the channels. The unit looked like it had been through a war zone or three, shot through once or twice and singed with las-burns, the whole thing crudely strapped together with tape, scavenged utensils, and what looked like the wire from a commissar’s dress cap. Sep played the dial back and forth over a particular wavelength, harsh voices drowned in static, the chaos lent order by a repeating click.

‘Sounds like miners’ code,’ said Drax, then shrugged when the two wardens turned to him. ‘We use it on my home world, to talk between tunnels that haven’t been wired.’

‘Background,’ said Rhain. ‘Probably from one of the void banks.’

‘Maybe,’ Sep muttered.

‘Where did you find this, anyway?’ asked Colddryn. ‘Imperator, you’ve been in solitary my whole tour.’

Drax crouched to take a better look at the vox. An autopistol materialised between his eyes.

‘This is my stuff,’ Sep hissed, drawing a loud sniff that involved his entire face. ‘Hands off my stuff.’

Rhain swore quietly and shook his head as Colddryn dropped a hand to his newly empty pistol holster, then threw the hand accusingly at Sep. The tech leered, the pistol now aimed shakily at Colddryn’s padded chest. The warden’s face was furious, his outstretched hand dropping to his autogun.

‘Cut it out,’ said Rhain. ‘Both of you.’ Gun still on Drax, he turned his head to regard the monitors at his back. ‘They’re rigid in their routine. Always the same corridors at the same intervals. We’ve got a window to break for the control room. From there we can ride the elevator all the way to the main hangar.’ As Rhain finished speaking, his and Colddryn’s wrist chronos bleeped in unison. Each man mirrored the other in silencing the alarms.

‘Now!’ Rhain snapped, autogun sweeping to indicate the outer door.

Sep was already swinging the vox-unit across his shoulders while, with a little too much haste, Colddryn toed him in the back until he was on his feet, shepherding him through the door on the muzzle of his rifle. Rhain circled behind Drax, autogun pointing the way.

‘After you. I wouldn’t want to take a wrong turn.’

Drax bared his teeth in a grin, then ducked through the doorway into a long corridor. The bare monotony of rockcrete was relieved only by the lumen strip inset into the ceiling. It flickered with the distant thumps that shook down from the surface. Colddryn and Sep were already well out of sight, but a tunneler’s instinct took him left, earning a grunt of respect from the old warden who easily kept pace with his arcing low-grav stride. Of the invaders, these necrons as Sep had called them, there was no sign.

Or no visible sign.

The heavy stamp of their feet beat from every door, around every corner, a metronomic counterpoint to the staccato rumble that sent shivers through the light fixtures. They had only passed a couple of doors when Drax started to feel the burn spread from his thighs to his chest. Each breath left his lungs half-full and froze his throat on the way down, failing then to thaw it as it headed back out. The facility wasn’t just losing heat, it was bleeding atmosphere too.

How long did they have?

A claustrophobic, semi-lit corridor led to a thick set of plasteel blast doors. They were open, the lighting giving an intermittent hum along a short passage towards a second set of doors. Las-resistant plastek boxes jutted in from both sides. The boxes were empty, frosted white. An unsecured communications hatch was affixed to the wall before the blast doors. It was a wired device, designed to retain function in case of power failure or haywire attack. The mouthpiece hung off the receiver, emitting a continuous null tone. A standard alert rune pulsed slowly across a plastek display, dappled by five bloody prints. It was the first sign that anyone had ever been here.

Where were they? Where were their bodies?

Drax’s fingers traced the ring of six tiny holes that sunk into the plastek casing around the receiver cord. There was something in its delicacy, its surgical exactness, that was more chilling than the most wanton carnage.

Just then, Rhain pulled up beside him, autogun sweeping on down the corridor. The warden’s lined face was tense, veined with silver. He glanced at his chrono, then prodded Drax in the ribs. He nodded towards the second set of doors when, from that direction, there came a tight burst of autogun fire.

Then another.

‘Damn that kid,’ Rhain swore over another blast of auto-fire, glancing at his chrono and then taking his rifle in both hands to sprint for the second door.

Drax followed more cautiously. The beveled flooring dug through the soles of his boots, and the lingering sting of teargas made his nose run. As well as the vents in the floor, Drax’s eyes were drawn to the tubes in the ceiling. They looked like grenade launchers. Death was promised in every window, under every tread. It felt like driving a lumbering Leman Russ through an enemy hive. More relieved than he let on, Drax passed through the second blast door into the prison control room.

It was circular, large enough to accommodate the thirty or so penal staffers important enough to have had their duties secured under two kilometres of rockcrete. A sealed plasteel cage on the far side of the room denied admittance to an elevator shaft, but the remainder of the wall-space was dominated by flickering screens. Most of the displays were black, but a handful remained online, their stuttering blue screens issuing impatient decrees for start-up rituals. A dozen or so around the room were riddled with broken glass and bullet holes and at the nexus of that vandalism stood Sep and Colddryn, each man trying to pull the weapon from the other’s hands.

‘I’m taking them out!’ Colddryn yelled, turning his greater strength to pry the other man’s fingers from his rifle. At the same time, Sep dug his fingernails into Colddryn’s throat, then kneed him in the groin. Colddryn’s moulded armaplas took the blow and he pulled Sep’s fingers from his neck before shoving him back and downing him with a rifle butt into the collar. The young warden swung up his weapon, aiming over Sep and sweeping the bank of consoles. Sweat iced his brow.

‘Stand down,’ Rhain gasped, breathing a trial in the thinning air.

Colddryn didn’t budge. His eyes urged them towards one of the damaged consoles.

‘What on Holy Terra?’ Drax murmured. Rhain immediately snapped his weapon around to cover the cogitator bank that Colddryn had been shooting at. He didn’t fire, instead using his trigger finger to sign the aquila across his chest.

Sep got up, rubbing his chest and glaring hatefully as he moved towards the console. Brushing aside broken glass, he pincered two fingers around a hand-length metallic limb and lifted an ugly, silver-bodied bug from the debris. Drax felt his insides knot. This one had been shredded by auto-fire, but there were more. They were everywhere, suckling at the cogitator cores, silver bodies glistening like coral under the blue glow of standby screens. Drax couldn’t shake off the eerie alignment between those sharp little legs and the punctures on the comms hatch in the passageway.

‘Are they what took the power down?’ said Rhain.

‘Scarabs, we called them,’ said Sep, dropping the dead lump and clearing a station of broken glass for him to sit and unburden himself of his vox. ‘They’ll put their teeth in anything.’

‘Stand off then,’ Rhain whispered, lowering his rifle and backing into the blast door to close it. There were two more doors either side, lightweight, probably leading back to the plastek firing boxes. ‘We can’t risk any more shooting. Do you think the necrons’ll come to investigate?’

Sep shrugged.

‘Well, do you?’ Drax prodded. Was he the only one that heard the closing stamp of metal on rockcrete passageways?

‘What d’you all want from me?’ Sep sniffed hard and thrust out his forehead and slapped the barcode tattooed there. ‘Does it say Saint Tannis bloody Sep of bloody Mordia now? It’s a bloody miracle.’

‘Easy,’ said Rhain, lowering his rifle and stealing a look through the blast door’s plastek viewport. ‘Just bring the elevator and get us out of here.’

Muttering vehemently, Sep tapped at one of the consoles, pale face blue in the stand-by glow. ‘It’d be here already if…’ his fists waved, cheeks bulging as though he was about to have a fit and swung an arm towards Colddryn. ‘If bleeding Macharius here hadn’t killed the bad panel.’ He thumped the side of the screen and it hummed to life. Sep grinned, muttering what sounded like an Adeptus Mechanicus chant and, after a few seconds of inputting commands, the light above the elevator slowly flashed to amber.

Drax watched it blink. It wasn’t going to be fast enough.

‘Get yourselves ready. And do it quick. We’ve got company.’

‘How do you–’ Rhain began, then gave a shallow wheeze, his face perilously blue. Drax wasn’t the only one whose chest felt like it was bound in cold steel. ‘How long?’

‘Maybe a minute.’

‘Sep!’ Rhain managed.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Sep, sucking his fingers for their warmth. ‘If this was easy then we’d be escaping all the time.’

Drax almost smiled. Almost.

Colddryn cast a last look towards the engineer as he took the opposite side of the blast door from Rhain. His eyes were wide and full of white, but excitement overcame breathlessness for a second and he chuckled. ‘How many do you–’

He was cut off by a slam of metal upon metal. It was the outer blast door. Condensation had greyed out the window, but Drax imagined clumsy fingers clawing at the doorway until it parted for the metallic clank of the necrons.

Drax threw himself to the floor, skidding the rest of the way to the inner door and coming up between the two wardens. He demisted the window on his sleeve. Three of the skeletal aliens were halfway down the passage, clutching their long rifles with a simian hunch, marching in file as though directed by a single will. Their dully gleaming eyes bored through the plastek and into Drax’s soul.

As if he had anything to envy.

A fourth warrior guarded the outer blast door and a fifth was just arriving. More were on the way. The metallic stamp drew nearer.

Was this all they had? It would take more than that to bring down Drax.

‘I didn’t sign up to the penal legions for this,’ Rhain hissed.

‘The Emperor protects,’ said Colddryn, excited smile frozen solid. Drax spread his arms, covering the hands of both Colddryn and Rhain. A kind man would have ascribed their shaking to the cold.

No one had yet charged him with kindness.

‘The Emperor protects,’ he repeated. Colddryn’s grip tightened. Rhain’s might have frozen into his for the sweat between them.

It was always the tough ones.

And then the wait was over. The door shook as if shelled, a terrific slam ringing through Drax’s buttocks and into the cold ground as hands tougher than plasteel hammered down and then pushed. Damn, they were strong! Colddryn screamed pure adrenaline. The doors began to give but the rockcrete ground was rough, resisting the slide of his boots.

Praise the Emperor for small mercies.

‘Drax,’ Rhain rasped, heels scraping helplessly forwards. ‘Can you hold it on your own?’

He hoisted an eyebrow as another hammer blow rang through the door. A metallic fist punched through the window. Colddryn nearly choked as he was showered with plastek shards and flattened himself from the grasping arm. With an insipid moan, Rhain unholstered his autopistol and sprayed the clip around the metallic limb, emptying it in under ten seconds. Ignoring the superficial bruising, the metal skeleton forced its arm through the window until it was clawing at Colddryn’s shoulder. Rhain kept the trigger pressed long after it became clear that the clip was empty. In a broken epiphany, he threw the pistol aside and hugged his autogun close.

‘Sep!’ Drax roared, twisting his own head from the necron’s reach. ‘How long?’

Instead of answering, Sep started to whistle, switching on his vox-receiver to smother the racket in white noise, then dialling up the wavelengths as if trying to match its pitch to Colddryn’s cries.

‘Turn that shak off!’ Colddryn shouted, but Sep just increased the volume.

‘Colddryn,’ Rhain said, speaking over the static, lending strength to his voice. ‘Take the right-hand firing platform. I’ll take the left. Take a couple down. Buy some time.’ He nodded to Colddryn, then to Drax. ‘Ready?’

Drax braced, setting his legs wide as both men rose and ran.

Colddryn was a second faster, ripping open his door and pounding up the steps to the shielded box overlooking the walkway. No sooner had the iron ring of boots on stairs subsided than auto-fire burst over the vox static. Bullets ricocheted between the plastek las-shields that flanked the passage. A living man would’ve been minced, but the necrons were not men and nor, Drax was coming to realise, were they truly living. Even after Rhain opened up from the opposite side, the combined strength of three necrons continued to bear down across Drax’s shoulders. He roared, sinews knotting his neck like rope as, millimetre by millimetre, the blast door budged out behind him. The din of twin autoguns roared through the open door like an ork battlewagon stuck in neutral.

What he’d do for a proper weapon right now.

He felt out the knife under his sleeve. A blade was a blade pretty much anywhere in the galaxy. Even out here in the sticks they couldn’t mess that up.

A necron warrior forced its knee through the door. It was as hard as steel and, without warm blood to deny the elements, chilled Drax’s spine where it touched. Drax grimaced and thanked the Emperor for his back-handed benevolence.

Better an alien’s kneecap than a stray autogun round.

The light above the elevator doors flicked to green. It was more beautiful than Drax’s first and final Calderan sunrise. Still whistling, Sep tugged on his vox-set and rose, just as the elevator arrived in a hiss of hydraulic brakes and the doors slid wide. Sep backed into the elevator cage, depositing the vox and drawing up his autopistol. His hand hovered over the ascent rune, eyes lingering on Drax’s, pale lips tugging into a leer.

Bastard, Drax thought, feet gritting out another centimetre.

‘You coming then, driver?’

Drax smiled and flung himself forward, low-grav hanging his body to dry as three necron warriors stamped into a hail of autopistol rounds. Hands and feet flapping in a weirdly frictionless doggy paddle, Drax kept himself moving towards the elevator. From behind there came a gathering hum of charge and a wasp of greenish energy flashed past his head. It wasn’t hot, it smelled of nothing, but it made a sound like a tank across gravel. Drax could almost see the disassembled singlets of oxygen and nitrogen raining from the path of the beam. Half running and half flying, he fell into the elevator, pulled himself up against the inside wall of the cage and slammed the rune to ascend.

The doors began to slide closed.

So, so slowly.

The pulsing barrel of a necron rifle thrust into the cage before the doors could fully close. Sep screamed. The doors stalled and slowly began to re-open. Drax cursed, mashing the ascent rune and flattening the rifle to the still-retracting door.

The necron fired.

The energy flare reduced the left-hand side of the elevator cage to molten slag. Sparks geysered from a damaged conduit. Drax turned his face away, losing his grip on the rifle as the doors widened far enough to admit the chilling xenos warrior. With a snarl, Drax drove his fist into its jaw. Metal dented around his knuckles and the machine stuttered back. Drax chewed down the pain, slipping the knife from his sleeve and burying it in the wrist with which the necron held its rifle. Implacable as an ablative plate, its grip held, but Drax sawed through the synthetic sinew and ripped the rifle away.

Taking it in both hands, he stepped back, birthing its cold stock to his shoulder. The alien weapon was almost as long as he was tall and pulsed with raw energy as he levelled it point-blank on the damaged skeleton. He closed his fingers around the grip.

Then stared down at the pulsing rifle.

‘Where’s the damned trigger, Sep?’

Sep answered with a moan, blindly punching the ascent rune, causing the doors to stutter and retract around the necron’s body. The dent in the alien’s face was already flattening out, the lacerations in its arm closing even as Drax watched. With a howl, he smashed the rifle through the skeleton’s ribcage. It fell hard, but was already starting to rise before Drax broke the useless weapon across its skull. One of the two by the blast doors aimed its weapon, only for a sudden storm of autogun fire from the right to throw off its aim. Emerald lightning sheared across the control room, eating into the ceiling and sending monomolecular vapour streaming to the floor.

‘Punch it!’ Drax roared. Sep needed no urging.

The doors slid closed, slow enough for Colddryn to clutch his steaming autogun, bound past the sluggish warriors, and throw himself through just as they clanged shut behind him. The man scrambled for the rear of the cage. He didn’t say anything as the elevator cage shuddered and began to rise, just gasped great nebulae of mist that were struck with short-lived stars where the cage’s left side scraped sparks from the walls of the shaft. Drax looked at him. He looked at Drax.

No one mentioned Rhain.

Drax wrapped his arm through the bars of the cage. It was more than just weakness from being in solitary. The air was thinning. The cold was getting harder to ignore. He looked up and took the deepest breath his lungs could hold. The citadel must have been breached. It was only going to get worse.

‘You’re a tough nugget, driver,’ said Sep, scraping little jewels of sweat from his brow and sinking down beside his still-hissing vox-unit. He tweaked a dial, causing the repeating click to rise above the static. Opening a hatch from the back, he withdrew what looked like a diagnostic slate. He tapped at it a few times to no effect, then ground his thumb into the plastek display with a snarl of frustration.

‘You know what you’re doing with all this?’ Drax shouted over the cry of plasteel, eyeing the man and his instruments with suspicion.

Sep glanced over the top of his pad and grinned coldly. The whites of his eyes were etched with little red lines. ‘Apparently there are some itches that even servitors can’t scratch.’ The non-answer made Drax scowl. ‘I hear Caldera’s a death world,’ Sep went on, returning his eyes to the data-slate.

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘Ahh, the old “my home world is tougher than your home world” routine. Add a quart of amasec and some laspistols – and make it a bit less damned cold – and it could be just another day.’

Drax grunted. It was a shame they had so little chance of making it off-world. He would have really liked some alone time with Tannis Sep when this was all over. The data-slate in Sep’s hands projected a sequence of runes onto the man’s face. His bloodshot eyes roved across them.

‘What’s it say?’

‘Do I look like I can read this shak?’

‘Then what the hell?’

Sep shushed him with a wave, fiddling with the vox-dial and driving the pitch to a squeal. ‘Some telemetry packaged up in the signal. Maths being the universal language and all that “Glory the Omnissiah” shak. Signal came from out of system, about a day ago, received by something about eight or nine kilometres beneath us.’

Drax watched the walls shriek by in a flurry of sparks. The shaft ran deep. So very deep. He thought of the quarrying that had been his days and his nights before his temper – and a couple of necks – had snapped and he’d landed in solitary. A powerful impact, numbingly near at hand, caused the cage to rattle.

‘We’ve a saying on Caldera: the deeper you dig, the deeper in it you get.’

In the corner of the cage, backed into the angle between the two prisoners, Colddryn looked up, flak suit clapping with the shaking cage. ‘So there are necrons below the surface and necrons from off-world. Does that mean they’re fighting each other?’

Sep shrugged.

The necron code was still pulsing from the vox, voices slowly bleeding through the bordering static. Drax moved from the side of the cage, shoving aside Sep’s angry twitch to lay his own hands to the frequency dial. He could make out the top of the shaft now. They must be near enough to pick up intra-unit transmissions. Deep voices emerged from the white noise; screams, howls, each running through the next and broken up by the explosive crump of gunfire. It was too heavy for auto-rounds. This was bolter fire.

‘…Sabaktes has the main hangar. Dispatch two phalanxes to hold… Make them bleed, brother… Enemy reinforcements on auspex… Will choke on their hollow skulls…’

Hope animated Colddryn’s frozen armour. ‘Those voices. Those weapons.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Sep muttered, quietly flicking off the vox.

‘Adeptus Astartes,’ the warden breathed. ‘We’re saved.’

Sep and Drax shared a calculating look. Neither one was going back to their cell.

Hissing to a halt, the elevator cage clanked against the roof of the shaft, the chatter of bolter fire rising to a blood-hungry howl as the doors shuddered wide and sucked the air out into a cauldron of fumes. Drax gasped, flooding his lungs with cold air that tasted like it had been filtered through an organic solvent.

Crimson tracers and emerald lances criss-crossed the cavernous hangar the elevator had brought them to. Smoke rose from hundreds of hobbled vehicles, snatched at and dragged, caught in the crossfire between the metallic xenos warriors and the bronze-armoured colossi that poured through the breaches in the far, left-hand wall. The air screamed over the angled, oddly slick, hulls of Predator tanks as it forced its way out.

Drax recognised the standard template construct.

The vehicles charged into the hangar, jumping and snarling as they rammed aside the broken Imperial transports that littered their path. Sponson heavy bolters gnawed through the shattered vehicles and raked the necrons that moved between them. Lascannons punched down those that still walked, steaming holes the size of a power fist passing right through their torsos.

Get up from that you metal bastards, Drax thought.

Space Marines and lighter vehicles ran in the Predators’ wake, kicking aside rubble to form a barricade from which to drop to one knee and open fire. Drax watched as a Dreadnought stomped ahead of the line, bellowing an incomprehensible blend of blood rage and High Gothic from its loudspeakers as it swept a pair of necrons from their feet. The spinning claws of its power fist shredded them like confetti.

Drax cursed as a good chunk of necron fell his way. He threw himself the ten or so metres from the elevator towards the crippled Munitorum walker that lay broken-legged on its side. He pressed his back to it and swore, then looked up. The pieces were still falling, just clattering against the elevator as Sep and Colddryn joined him in cover.

He still wasn’t quite used to the gravity here.

Colddryn spun around, gasping hard, slamming the barrel of his autogun on the walker’s splayed leg.

‘Put it away. And keep your head down.’

‘They need our help,’ said Colddryn, a necron warrior locked in his sights. A second later that warrior fired, emerald lightning stripping the Dreadnought’s legs down to naked servos and sending the raging machine crashing to the floor. Colddryn screamed in anguish. ‘This is your chance for absolution.’

Sep held up a hand and looked away, blinking away airy tears. ‘Wait for it. Wait for it. Any second now, I’ll start to cry.’

‘I told you to put it away,’ said Drax.

‘But–’

‘It’s useless and you know it. Just ask Rhain.’

Colddryn gripped the gun tighter, then surrendered a nod and lowered it. ‘The Chimera’s in bay 18.’

‘My lucky number,’ Drax smiled, risking a look over the debris and finding the numeral CLIX rendered in peeling white paint beneath the frost. The bay to the right was one higher, to the left one less. That meant closing with the Space Marines. Drax glanced back at Colddryn, then decided the boy was too simple to be any kind of liar.

And at least it was on the way out.

Keeping low and to the wall, Drax abandoned the fallen walker for a Trojan tanker, then another, and another, stop-motion snippets of inhuman violence flashing through the gaps between their frost-bitten bodies. The light cast by bolters on baroque bronze; smoke, crackling with green lightning like a thunderhead; the fitful spark of hypoxic fires; the eerie march of the metallic dead. He thought he could hear the stutter and snap of auto and las-fire and the crump of grenades, but the smoke was too dense to see.

The ranks of Trojans gave way to Chimeras, cold and dark as a death in space. Through the strip of unoccupied rockcrete, a squad of five Space Marines stood shoulder-to-shoulder, voice amplifiers curling from their helmets like daemonic horns, throwing out the most feral howls as their boltguns tore a swath through a swarm of scarabs. And yet they retreated. A sixth figure was behind them, two and a half monstrous metres of cracked bronze armour, embossed with strange, quasi-mechanical devices. Half a dozen sinuous servo-arms trailed limply around his feet. Another pair swayed threateningly above his head, unleashing bursts of flame, plasma, and weird coruscating electricity over the heads of his guardians and into the swarm as he backed up against the rear hatch of a Chimera. Yet still the scarabs came.

Drax was smiling. He studied the painted numeral beneath the Techmarine’s feet.

XVIII.

Who said the universe didn’t have a sense of humour?

Unseen behind him, Colddryn let out a righteous roar and stepped out from the rank of Trojans, controlled bursts of auto-fire shredding scarabs by the dozen. It hardly mattered since they swarmed by the thousand, and no sooner had the boy left cover than a storm of bolter fire drove him back.

‘Human!’ Colddryn wheezed, waving his rifle around the back of the tank.

Another shower of explosive shells was his response, and the amplified cry went out like a vox-echo. ‘Bleed!’

Drax left him to it. There was a reason the Imperium had too few heroes.

In Bay 19, he crouched and took a look around the vehicle’s flank. Colddryn had drawn the Space Marines’ fire. Scarabs swarmed their ankles. Only the Techmarine himself was continuing to retreat, limp servo harness sending cutting beams slicing through the swarm. He was neither too powerful, nor too inhuman, to betray a very real fear.

Taking advantage of their distraction, Drax started from cover, only to be stopped by Sep’s sweaty hand on his. Terror pinned the man between the spurs of the Chimera’s ’dozer blade. Drax patted him on the side to indicate that he should stay and made the short hop from bay 19 to 18.

The glacis plate of the Chimera radiated an empyreal chill. White frost that was something far colder than mere water ice filled the cracks between ablative plates. He kicked open the driver’s hatch and, grunting at the cryo-blisters, stepped up onto the angled plate.

‘Forgetting something, driver?’ Sep hissed, freeing a hand to display a ring of keys hanging from his finger.

‘Are you?’ Drax returned, an autopistol in his grip.

‘You bleedin–’

‘Toss them over.’

Sep hesitated for a second, then swore and slid the keys across the floor. Drax stamped on them and bent, pistol steady, to gather them.

‘You think you’re getting out of here alive?’

Smiling, Drax climbed back onto the tank, looking past the turret just as a Space Marine charged down a full magazine of auto-fire to drive Colddryn screaming from cover. Even Drax couldn’t watch what happened next. He turned back to Sep, aimed the autopistol to the ceiling and squeezed off a few dozen rounds. He wasn’t counting. Even amidst the carnage, it went off like a klaxon. Sep gaped, and Drax tossed the weapon to him.

‘Keep them busy for me.’

Before the man could react, Drax was pivoting to feed his feet into the hatch and then slither through on his belly. He fell into freezing cold leather, reaching up to seal the hatch on Sep’s curses and plunge himself into darkness, bolter fire and screams receding to a hollow tinnitus. He was cocooned in plasteel, a bubble of cold damp and engine grease. Grav-harnesses and oxygen feeds slithered across his face as he groped for the ignition, found it, slid in the key and twisted. The engine choked on petrochem fumes and growled into life. Lights flickered on. The broken auspex emitted a shrill tone that Drax quickly silenced, then he gripped the gear stick and slid it into reverse.

The tank lumbered backwards, rear rising as it passed over something unyielding and then crashed back down. Bolt rounds pattered harmlessly off the hull as he shifted into forward gear. The tough little box-screen to his right showed black and white images from pict-feeds to front and rear. It showed a Techmarine and a pair of Space Marines crushed in his tread marks. Mechatendrils jerked like electrocuted serpents and then were still.

Behind them, Sep was clambering onto the neighbouring tank, clinging to its roof as bolter rounds blazed over him, and pulling uselessly at the turret hatch. He fell a second before Drax looked away, a flurry of auto-fire accounting for him and for the Space Marine that was ripping into Colddryn’s corpse with his bare gauntlets. A squad of dull-eyed men in black jumpsuits and with barcodes tattooed across their foreheads shambled into view of the pict-feed. One was punched from his feet by a bolt round, the blood spray eliciting an ecstatic howl from the surviving Space Marines. The other troopers twitched, small scarab-like machines clasped to the roof of their spines, and sprayed the Space Marines with auto-fire.

What in the Eye of Terror? He supposed that explained the lack of bodies.

With a noxious snarl, the Chimera leapt forwards and away.

The breach in the outer wall was about three hundred metres ahead. It was thick with smoke and the hellish glow of bolter fire. The Space Marines that were currently running through it turned their weapons his way and fired. Explosive rounds pranged off the thick frontal armour. One of the Space Marines dropped to one knee and hefted a missile launcher. Drax gritted his teeth, slamming the accelerator to full just as the krak missile burst from the tube.

The warhead struck the glacis plate just to the left of the right hand track. The hull-mounted heavy bolter flew across his visual field and the whole tank tipped towards its left side. Drax swore and held on. The track flapped through thin air before crashing back down, threatening to drag the vehicle into a skid before Drax brought it under control. The Chimera powered ahead and the Space Marines scattered. Bolt rounds peppered the rear hatch, but a second later he was out, jumping across the cratered moonscape. The perimeter lights of the orbital pad blinked in the distance as, unnoticed, the Chimera left the road and veered left.

His attention was riveted to the pict-feed, its silent series of grainy stills reporting devastation on a planetary scale.

The confinement habs had been levelled, there was nothing left of them but three new craters and vast overlapping rings of scrap. The ruins crawled with necrons. Like creatures from beyond the grave, they dug themselves from the frozen ground, joining the thousands of others already marching in unison towards the eastern face of the valley where once there had stood mountains. The range had been demolished, rock and ice scattered across the cratered plain. In its place, the twisted and bloody wreckage of a starship lay under a pall of slow-settling methane snow. Drax whistled nervously, then finally took stock of where he was going. Hab-dome gamma lay immediately ahead, and it seemed to be the nexus of the necron activity. Ring after ring of unfeeling warriors surrounded it like a wall, taking their punishment and offering it back while, behind them, scarabs and more warriors waded through the ruins and dug.

The rubble there was shifting, something rising from its ashes. The moon shook with it and it rattled the tank like a broken egg.

A quintet of hypersonic flyers arrowed overhead, all gleaming silver alloy and sleek metallic lines. Pulling impossible turns, they swept around, strafing the Space Marine lines before banking into a holding pattern. Drax stared into the pict-feed, up past the flyers into what should have been a night sky. But even the galactic behemoth, Ixus IX, had been dragged into the fight, the vast black hemisphere glinting with the gold, white, and crimson of weapons-fire and explosions.

A sudden fury overcame him then. He was Drax, of Caldera. He’d fought on fifteen worlds and left each of them the worse for having him. Chaos take them all, he swore, and banked hard.

Hab-dome alpha spun across the pict-feed, heaped with the ice that had belonged to the toppled mountain range. Weapons fire of a hundred different types stitched across the plain as the Space Marines brandished power spears, unleashed boltguns into the sky, and charged towards hab-dome gamma. An immense war engine of a type Drax had never seen led the assault. It was the assault. Frozen gore bled from its humanoid chassis, gatling gun chaining in airless silence through the unfeeling ranks of the necrons. More monster than machine, it had taken damage enough to drop a Titan, and fury alone drove its tracks into one final charge.

The murderer’s blood in him bubbled just watching it.

The weight of gees pressed him to his seat as the Chimera swung fully about. The orbital pad lay directly ahead and he hit the accelerator.

He was the hardest, the worst, he lived where other men died and, by the cold body of the Emperor, it’d take more than this to put Drax in the ground.

Turning to his rear-view feed, he watched with a contagious grimace as pylons and lumps of ferrocrete gave way before an ascending monolith. It was a pyramid, black as deep space, and it was rising. Rock and ice crumbling from its sleek geometric sides, the rubble of hab-dome gamma gave and, impossibly, it continued to climb, gravity just another force it had elected to disregard. Drax hit the accelerator for all it was worth. Only something huge could be getting so much further behind him and yet grow no smaller. Small arms fire and hot blasts of las and plasma deflected off its monolithic hull and, as though aligning itself to the turnings of the cosmos, the pyramid turned slowly about its vertical axis.

And then it was as if the world broke in two.

The pyramid split down the centre, the pict-feed dissolving into static as a golden brilliance roared through the cracks like the birth of galaxies. A shockwave thumped through the moon’s crust, tossing aside mighty Space Marines like spent cartridges from a magazine. A kilometre away, even the Chimera jumped like water in a hot pan. With a curse, Drax held it steady.

The pict-feed was clearing up, capturing a ring of devastation around the opening pyramid. There was a being inside it, bound in chains of stellar matter as though caged within the heart of a star.

Except it wasn’t.

Drax watched as the earth fell away, a vast canyon that tracked, to the precise degree, the pyramid’s rotation and the eyeline of that shackled entity. Where its gaze fell, Rhinos and Predators were flipped into the air and torn open, infantry consumed by withering waves of fire. Drax couldn’t believe what he saw, but he couldn’t look away. As he watched, a string of meteors materialised out of the sky, hanging like beads on a necklace before they spontaneously ignited, hyper-accelerated, and hammered through the Space Marine advance in huge explosions of ice and fire.

No, Drax thought, as the pyramid continued to turn, that arc of devastation coming inexorably towards him, like an asteroid destined to cross the orbit of a sun. This being had brought the star into the cage with it.

‘Try it!’ Drax roared at the screen. It heard him, he knew. He could feel it, just as he had felt its first stirrings from within his cell. ‘Come on. Come get some.’

It turned full face.

And then Drax really did feel it, the full epochal malevolence of the c’tan.

The ignition spluttered. The lights flickered and failed and Drax found that he couldn’t move, not even to put his fingers to the ignition keys. He was a child, left in his crib of cold leather and plasteel by a cruel star-god. It saw him, but his eyes couldn’t begin to fathom it and he saw only darkness. Drax might have wept then, but it didn’t matter. The transcendent shard of the c’tan took the time to study him. Not because Drax was special. He was not. It took the time because it could, because time ran to its command. The instant stretched, to an infinity if the c’tan had so willed, but time enough for Drax to comprehend.

The universe didn’t love him. The Emperor would never know his name. Only this entity, this god of ancient stars, would remember.

And in the second that followed, the Chimera flipped onto its back, its belly splitting open. Air, heat and Drax himself were ripped through the hull and out onto the surface of the moon. He floated, falling so slowly. The world was black and silent. It was cold.

And the c’tan looked away.

>>Message reads:

>>Ignoble scion of a forgotten dynasty, your awakening disturbs the quiet of space, that stillness to which the necrontyr aspire. Your world will be calmed, your minds quieted, your bodies restored to order. The Tesseract Vault and its transcendent shard shall return to Sarkon, that the c’tan may again purge the stars of disquiet. As it was after the Wars of Secession, so it shall again be. Thus decrees the Emperor of the Severed.

>>Message ends.

BUT DUST IN THE WIND

Jonathan Green

The Thunderhawk gunship dropped through the planet’s exosphere like a star falling from heaven, its scorched and scarred hull-plating glowing hot as molten gold. Beneath it lay a vast shroud of cloud cover and beneath that the frozen world of Ixya.

Clouds boiled and evaporated at the caress of the burning craft, and as the vessel continued its descent, those on board were afforded their first view of the snowball world at last.

Ixya might look no more than a vast planet-sized chunk of ice drifting silently through space at the far reaches of the freezing depths of the Chthonian Subsector, but according to the data the Chapter’s archivists on board the Phalanx had been able to coax from the ancient Archivium’s cogitators, it was the foremost provider of essential ores and precious metals to the forge worlds of the Chthonian Chain.

Platinum, iridium, plutonium and uranium were all found buried within the crust of the planet, even though it was compressed beneath ten kilometres of crushing ice in some places. Iron ore was found in vast quantities in great seams running practically the entire circumference of the planet’s equator and it was the only attainable source of a number of rarer elements for twelve parsecs.

But all that was currently visible to the Thunderhawk’s pilot was kilometre after kilometre of fractured ice sheet, crawling glaciers and frost-formed blades of frozen mountain ridges.

‘Any lock on the source of the signal yet?’ Sergeant Hesperus enquired of the battle-brother piloting the craft.

‘Triangulating now, sir,’ Brother-Pilot Teaz replied via the vessel’s internal comm.

There was a pause, accompanied by an insistent pinging sound as the Fortis’s machine spirit gazed upon the blue-white world through its auspex arrays, seeking to pinpoint the source of the distress signal. Mere moments later, the servitor hard-wired into the gunship’s systems in the co-pilot’s position began to burble machine code, its eyes glassy and unblinking as it continued to stare perpetually out of the front glasteel shield of the Thunderhawk’s cockpit.

‘Scanners indicate that it is coming from a location three hundred kilometres from our current position. Signs are that it is uninhabited. But...’ Teaz trailed off.

‘What is it, brother? What else is the Fortis telling you?’

‘Very little at that location. But there is a large settlement – a Mechanicus facility of some kind two hundred kilometres from here.’

‘The miners,’ Hesperus mused. ‘And the distress signal isn’t coming from there?’

‘No, brother-sergeant.’

‘And yet the facility is inhabited?’

‘Reading multiple life-signs, sergeant. Cogitator estimates somewhere within the region of three thousand souls.’

‘And are you reading any other settlements of comparable size anywhere else upon the planet’s surface?’

‘No, sir. This would appear to be the primary centre of human occupation.’

‘Then I think we should pay our respects to the planetary authorities, don’t you, Brother Teaz?’

‘Shall I hail them, sergeant?’ the pilot asked.

‘No, brother, that won’t be necessary. Besides, I am sure they already have us on their scopes and if they don’t already know of our imminent arrival, then they soon will. I think it only right that we meet with those charged with the care of this world face to face. After all, first impressions matter.’

‘You think they will brave this blizzard to meet us, brother?’

‘If they have any sense, they would brave the warp itself rather than leave a detachment of Imperial Fists unattended.’

‘Very good, sir. Landing site acquired. Planetfall in five minutes.’

Keying his micro-bead, Sergeant Hesperus addressed the other battle-brothers on board, strapped within the ruddy darkness of the Thunderhawk’s belly hold.

‘Brothers of Squad Eurus, the time has come,’ Hesperus said, taking up the venerable thunder hammer that it was his honour to wield in battle along with the storm shield that bore his own personal battle honours. ‘Lock helmets, bolters at the ready. We make planetfall in five.’

Like a spear of burning gold, cast down from heaven by the immortal Emperor Himself, Thunderhawk Fortis made planetfall on the snow-bound world.

With a scream of turbofan afterburners and attitude thrusters – the jet-wash from the craft momentarily disrupting the blizzard sweeping across the barely-visible mass of chimneys, pylons and refinery barns – the Fortis touched down on the landing pad located within the facility’s outer defensive bulwark.

Power to the engines was cut and the Doppler-crashing white noise of the fans descended to a deafening whine, the craft’s landing struts flexing as they took the weight, as the great golden bird settled on the plasteel and adamantium-reinforced platform.

By the time the disembarkation ramp descended and Sergeant Hesperus led the battle-brothers of Squad Eurus out onto the hard standing of the firebase, the Space Marines’ ceramite boots crunching on the ice-patched rockcrete, the welcoming committee was already trooping out onto deck to greet them. The blunt shapes of shuttle craft and grounded orbital tugs squatted on the platform, their hard profiles softened by drifts of snow.

Three men, diminutive by the standards of the Emperor’s finest, made the long walk from the shelter of an irising bunker door to where Squad Eurus had formed themselves up in a perfectly straight line, ready to receive them.

Although he was at least half a head shorter than either of his two companions, from his bearing, along with the red sash and ceremonial badge of office, to his straining dress jacket, ursine fur cloak, and polished grox-hide jackboots, Hesperus knew at once that the Space Marines’ arrival on Ixya had brought none other than the planetary governor – the Emperor’s representative himself – to receive them. It was a good sign; Sergeant Hesperus liked to be appreciated.

The three men faced the nine mighty Adeptus Adeptus Astartes of the Imperial Fists Chapter, resplendent in their black-iron trimmed golden yellow power armour, the jet packs they wore making them appear even more intimidating. Every member of the welcoming committee had to look up to meet Hesperus’s visored gaze.

With a hiss of changing air pressures, Sergeant Hesperus removed his helmet and peered down at the shortest of the three. He had to admire the man; his steely expression of resolute determinedness did not falter once.

The governor had a face that looked like it had been carved from cold marble. His pate was balding but the white wings of hair that swept back from his temples and covered his chin gave him an appropriately aristocratic air.

The man held the Space Marine’s gaze for several seconds and then bowed, his ursine-skin cloak sweeping the powdered snow from the landing deck.

‘We are honoured, my lords.’ He rose again and carefully considered the smart line of Space Marines. ‘I am Governor Selig, Imperial administrator of this facility and by extension this world. I bid you welcome to Aes Metallum.’ Hesperus considered that the man’s chiselled expression did not offer the same welcome his words offered. Governor Selig was suspicious of them.

A wry smile formed at the corner of the sergeant’s mouth. And so would I be, Hesperus thought, if I were governor and a fully-armed assault squad of Imperial Fists Space Marines arrived unannounced on my watch.

Governor Selig turned to the man at his right hand, a military man wearing a cold-weather camo-cloak over the uniform of a local militia officer. ‘May I introduce Captain Derrin of the Ixyan First Planetary Defence Force,’ – the man saluted smartly and the governor turned to the towering, semi-mechanoid thing shrouded by a frayed crimson robe to his left – ‘and Magos Winze of the Brotherhood of Mars who oversees our mining operation.’

Hesperus noted the huge ceramite and steel representation of the Cult Mechanicus’s cybernetic skull heraldry on the towering facade of the structure before the landing pad, the details of the huge icon blurred by the snow that had settled upon it.

‘Welcome to Aes Metallum,’ the tech-priest hissed in a voice that was rusty with age and underlain by the wheezing of some augmetic respiratory function. A buzzing cyber-skull – looking like a miniature version of the cult’s crest – hovered at the adept’s shoulder.

Hesperus acknowledged the tech-priest’s greeting with a curt nod of his head.

‘What can we do for you, sergeant?’ Selig asked.

‘Ask not what you can do for us,’ Hesperus countered, ‘but what we can do for you.’

‘My lord?’

‘The strike cruiser Fury’s Blade picked up a faint automated distress call being broadcast from this world three standard days ago. Our glorious Fourth Company was en route on the Phalanx, our fortress-monastery, to the Roura Cluster, to bolster the defence of the Vendrin Line against the incursions of the alien eldar. However, it was deemed appropriate to send a single Thunderhawk and accompanying assault squad to assess the level of threat that had triggered this distress beacon accordingly. I presume you are aware of this distress signal yourselves, are you not?’

To his credit, Governor Selig’s steely expression didn’t change one iota. ‘Yes we are, thank you, brother,’ he stated unapologetically.

‘An explorator team is currently carrying out a survey of that region,’ Magos Winze explained, ‘searching for new mineral reserves we suspect may be located in the area.’

‘And have you sent rescue squads to investigate?’ Hesperus challenged.

Governor Selig turned his gaze from the looming Adeptus Astartes to the local militia officer at his side. ‘Captain Derrin?’

‘No, sir.’

Hesperus looked at him askance.

‘And might I ask why not?’

Captain Derrin indicated the blizzard howling about them with a gesture. The clinging flakes were steadily turning the Imperial Fists’ armour from dazzling yellow to white gold.

‘It’s the ice storm, sir,’ he said, pulling his cold-weather camo-cloak tighter about him as he shivered in the face of the freezing wind. ‘We’re only at the edge of it here but further north it’s at its most intense – so cold it’ll freeze the promethium inside the tanks of a Trojan. The planes and armour we have at our disposal are not able to withstand its full force.’

Hesperus turned from the captain to the tech-priest, the altered adept’s mechadendrites seeming to twitch with an epileptic life all of their own.

‘You can confirm this, magos?’

‘Captain Derrin is quite correct,’ Winze wheezed. ‘Aes Metallum’s been locked down for three days. However, our meteorological auspex would seem to suggest that the storm is moving east across the Glacies Plateau. In two days it should be safe to send out a team to investigate.’

‘Have you had any pict-feed or vox-communication with the explorator team since the storm began?’ Hesperus pressed.

‘No. Nothing but the signal put out by the automated beacon.’

The Imperial Fist on Hesperus’s right, Battle-Brother Maestus, keyed his micro-bead. ‘Do you think it could be the eldar, brother-sergeant?’

At mention of the enigmatic alien raiders, Governor Selig’s expression faltered for the first time since he had welcomed the Adeptus Astartes to Ixya.

‘The distress beacon could be explained by any one of a dozen or more scenarios,’ Magos Winze interjected. ‘A snowplough could have fallen into an ice fissure, or the team saw the storm coming and triggered the distress beacon hoping for a quick extraction. We would not wish to keep you from your holy work, brother.’

‘We may yet be needed here,’ Hesperus countered. He turned to Maestus. ‘Remaining here will not tell us whether the eldar are poised to attack this world as well. It is time we followed the signal to its source.’

He addressed each of the Ixyan welcoming committee in turn. ‘Captain Derrin, ice storm or no, mobilise your men. Magos Winze, see that your servants run diagnostics of all this facility’s defences; I want them primed and ready for action. Governor, good day to you.’

‘But–’ Selig began before Hesperus cut him off with a curt wave of an armoured hand.

‘It is better that you prepare for the worst and ultimately face nothing than it is to do nothing and reap the bitter harvest that follows as a result of your inaction. Look to your defences. Secure the base. We shall return presently. Squad Eurus, move out.’

And with that the nine golden giants boarded the Fortis again. Only a minute later, as Governor Selig and the rest of the welcoming committee returned to the shelter of the bunker, the Fortis lifted off from the landing platform, the snow flurries returning as the Thunderhawk was swallowed up by the blizzard.

The Fortis shook as the freezing winds assailed it, the constant staccato of hailstones pounding its hull-plating like a remorseless barrage of autocannon fire. But the Thunderhawk, as capable of short range interplanetary travel as it was of atmospheric flight, resisted and held firm, Brother-Pilot Teaz steering a course through the hurricane winds and hail towards the spot indicated by the chiming distress signal.

‘This is the place,’ Teaz said as the Thunderhawk’s forward motion suddenly slowed, holding it in a hover above the ice and the snow for a moment before bringing it down in the middle of a whiteout so intense that for all the visibility there was, they might as well have landed on the dark side of the planet; if that had been the case, at least then the Thunderhawk’s lamps would have been able to make a difference.

Squad Eurus disembarked from the craft again, Teaz remaining on board as before, in case there was the need for a hasty extraction or the Space Marines found themselves involved in an encounter that required heavier firepower to resolve it than was carried by the members of Hesperus’s team.

And yet continued sensor sweeps carried out by the Fortis’s instruments during the short hop from the Aes Metallum facility, now one hundred kilometres to the south-west, had revealed nothing. No signs of life, no indication of an alien presence, nothing at all. It seemed that there was nothing out there beyond the howling ice storm, other than whatever anomalous geological feature it was that had led the explorators here in search of mineral deposits in the first place.

‘Search pattern delta. Battle-Brother Ngaio, I want you up front,’ Hesperus instructed his squad members via the helmet comm. He would have struggled to make himself heard by his battle-brothers otherwise, even with their Lyman’s ear implants.

In response the nine Imperial Fists began to fan out from the landing site, sweeping the snow-shriven wilderness with their weapons, each alike – bolter in one hand, chainsword in the other, except in Battle-Brother Verwhere’s case, who targeted the illusory shapes created by the flurries of gale-blown snow with his plasma pistol. Battle-Brother Ngaio advanced at the forefront, at the apex of the expanding semi-circle of warriors, his chainsword mag-locked to his hip, replaced in his gauntleted hand by the auspex he was carrying.

Hesperus moved forwards, between Ngaio and Battle-Brother Ahx. Then came Ors and Jarda. To Ngaio’s left were arrayed, in the same formation, Battle-Brothers Maestus, Verwhere, Haldrich and Khafra.

Not one of them had been born on the same world – Jarda had not even set foot on one of the vassal worlds of the galaxy-spanning Imperium until after he had been inducted into the Imperial Fists Chapter, having been void-born, while Khafra was from the desert necropolis world of Tanis – but they were all brothers nonetheless. They might not have the same predominant eye colour, skin tones, hair or bone structure, but thanks to the gene-seed they all bore inside them now, they were all Imperial Fists and shared the common physiological traits of a Space Marine.

The Imperial Fists gathered their aspirants from a whole network of worlds, many of which they had visited before in the ten millennia since the Phalanx had set out upon its never-ending quest to bring the Emperor’s mercy and justice to the galaxy. But although the brothers of Squad Eurus might not have come from a common culture or been born of a common ancestry before joining the ranks of the Imperial Fists, since their induction into the Chapter – second only, other agencies claimed, to Great Guilliman’s Adeptus Adeptus Astartes paragons, the Ultramarines – they were all Sons of Dorn now, the superhuman essence of the primarch having been passed down to them through his blessed gene-seed.

Hesperus peered through the whiteout, everything coloured now by the heat spectrum of his helmet’s infrared arrays. But even the HUD struggled to reveal any more than he could already see with his own occulobe-enhanced sight.

Shapes came into relief out of the impenetrable whiteness, ice-obscured objects delineated by the subtle variations in light and shade that existed even within this white darkness. Huge things with tyred wheels and caterpillar track-sections, twice as tall as a Space Marine, and bucket scoops large enough to contain a land speeder emerged from the storm-wracked ice-desert.

Servos in his suit whirred as Hesperus scanned left and right, surveying the frozen wrecks of earth-moving machines and the explorators’ abandoned equipment.

‘Where are the bodies?’ he heard Brother Jarda wonder aloud over the helmet comm.

Hesperus had been thinking the same thing. Here were the explorator team’s machines, left to be claimed by the ice and snow, but there was no sign of the crews that had driven the hundred kilometres across the ice sheet to bring them to this place.

‘Sergeant Hesperus,’ Brother Ngaio voxed. ‘I have something.’

‘It’s all right, brother, I see it too,’ Hesperus replied.

‘No, I mean there’s a structure, sir.’

‘A structure?’

‘It should be right in front of us.’

A gust of biting wind suddenly swept the ice sheet all about them clear of snow and – beyond the frozen, broken shapes of the earthmovers and drilling rigs – Hesperus saw it. It was a great rift in the glacier, as if a great cube had been cut out of the ice where the explorators had dug down into the ice, exposing...

Hesperus tensed.

It was a pyramid. It was caked in ice, half-buried by the drifts of snow. What little of it that was visible appeared to be made from a seamless piece of some unrecognisable compound that looked like dark silver, but it was pyramidal in form and there was no mistaking its origin.

‘The soulless ones,’ Hesperus growled. Not the renegade eldar they had been expecting perhaps, but xenos nonetheless – something even more alien than the piratical raiders. Something utterly inimical to life.

‘Brothers, with me,’ Sergeant Hesperus instructed, leading the march down the rutted slope of ice that had been carved from the ice sheet by the explorators’ machines. ‘Brother Teaz, remain with the Fortis,’ he commanded the Thunderhawk’s pilot. ‘We may be in need of the Fortis’s legendary firepower before too long.’

The rest of the Imperial Fists formed up behind him, trooping after him into the hole, which was ten metres deep and more than six times that across, that had been carved into the ice of Ixya.

Over the keening of the wind Sergeant Hesperus imagined he could hear another sound, like the echoes of the desperate cries and terrified screams of those who had met their end here. For there was no one left to find. They would not find anyone alive this day; of that fact Hesperus was certain.

The nine Space Marines gathered before the looming pyramidal spike of alien metal, their weapons trained on the xenos structure.

‘You think they’re in there?’ Brother Maestus asked. He and Hesperus had a unique relationship within the squad, since they had been aspirants together almost sixty years before.

‘I think that something unspeakable woke, walked from this tomb and took them.’

‘Do we attempt a rescue?’ Brother Verwhere asked, his plasma pistol ready in his hand, trained at the curious spherical and hemispherical hieroglyphs etched into the otherwise perfectly smooth surface of the pyramid.

‘And rescue what, exactly?’ Hesperus challenged his brother. ‘We would find nothing alive in there, I can assure you.’

He took a step back from the towering structure.

‘This is only the tip of the iceberg,’ he said, smiling darkly. ‘No, we pull back, return to the Aes Metallum facility. We send an astropathic message to our brethren aboard the Phalanx and the Fury’s Blade and we prepare for a battle the like of which I’ll wager this world has never seen.’

‘Sir, I have something on the auspex,’ Ngaio announced, the adrenaline-rush detectable in his tone.

‘Range?’ Hesperus demanded, scanning the ice-locked structure in front of him, searching for any sign that the sepulchre was about to open and disgorge its unholy host.

‘Sixty metres. Moving this way.’

‘Vladimir’s bones! Where did that come from?’

‘Nowhere, sir. It came out of nowhere!’

‘Direction!’ Hesperus demanded.

‘Heading two-seven-nine degrees!’ Ngaio stated, turning to face the approaching menace, bolter in one hand, auspex still gripped tightly in the other.

‘Squad Eurus!’ Hesperus called to his companions over the sheet ice and howling gale. ‘Ready yourselves. The enemy chooses to show itself.’

And then he saw it through the blizzard, a black beetle shape gliding towards the Imperial Fists through the whirling snow.

More than twice as large as a Space Marine, the construct hovered over the frozen ground towards them, its flight unaffected by the powerful wind shear.

Eight articulated metal limbs hung from the iron carapace of its body. The thing reached out with its forelimbs and with a ringing of blades the tips each ratcheted open to form three savage cutting claws. Multiple asymmetrical artificial eyes scanned the Space Marines, pulsing with the eerie green light of an unfathomable xenos intelligence.

‘Fire at will!’ Hesperus commanded and a cacophony of bolter fire immediately filled the ice hole like the barking of angry hate-dogs.

Mass-reactive shells exploded from the resilient carapace of the construct. The arachnoid-thing jerked and faltered, rotating wildly about its centre of gravity as the battle-brothers found their target.

The spyder-like construct surged forwards again, closing the distance between the Space Marines and it. And was it merely the strange acoustics set up by the flesh-scouring wind keening through the teeth of the weird ice formations that clung to the pyramid, or at that moment did the xenos-construct give voice to a disharmonic shriek of its own?

With a high-pitched scream, a pulse of rippling blue-white energy burned through the whipping winds of the ice storm and struck the soaring spyder. There was an explosion of sparks and one of the construct’s fore-claws went whirling away into the storm. The limb landed in a wind-blown drift, still twitching with a macabre life of its own. As the spyder recovered and closed, Brother Verwhere stood his ground, his plasma pistol still trained on the construct as he waited for the weapon to recharge.

Sergeant Hesperus strode forwards, ready to bolster Verwhere’s defence. If the spyder evaded the next shot from his plasma pistol, he would ensure that the thing did not escape the wrath of his thunder hammer.

As the spyder construct closed on them, Brother Verwhere fired again, the shot making a molten mess of the thing’s head and sending it ploughing into the ice in a sparking, crackling mess, bolts of green lightning arcing from its metal carcass.

‘We have multiple contacts,’ Ngaio declared clearly over the comm, one eye on the blizzard of returns now painting the scope of his auspex.

And then the snowstorm birthed a host of figures even more macabrely grotesque and yet, at the same time, hauntingly familiar. They possessed the form of hunched humanoid creatures and advanced at a gambolling gait, darting through the ice and snow, reaching for the Space Marines with hands shaped into glinting razor-sharp talons, as long as a man’s arm, dripping blood and sticky with gore.

And as if the presence of such soulless, inhuman things was not bad enough, then the grisly trophies with which they had adorned themselves made their very existence all the more mind-wrenching. Their ghoulish garb – the shredded skins they had flayed from the bodies of their victims – eradicated any lingering doubt within the minds of the Space Marines as to the fate of the lost survey team.

As the sinister silver and crimson figures stalked towards them out of the blizzard, Squad Eurus opened fire with their bolt pistols, the rattle of gunfire warped by the wind into something that sounded not unlike the drumming of iron bones on a taut skin of human hide.

Metal bodies jerked and spun, clipped by the mass-reactive shells, or were thrown backwards into the snow when a direct hit was scored.

Hearing a thrumming, insistent buzzing noise, Sergeant Hesperus’s attention was drawn away from the approaching alien automatons and onto the approach of another three of the hovering spyder-things.

‘Defence pattern gamma,’ Hesperus commanded and the eight battle-brothers present reacted immediately, forming a tight circle of ceramite and adamantium armour between the pyramid and the Thunderhawk. With every angle covered, they lay down suppressing fire, dropping spyders and the flayed ones before they could even get close.

‘Sergeant,’ Teaz’s voice came over the comm, ‘look to the pyramid.’

Hesperus stepped forwards and dropped another of the skin-wrapped metal skeletons with his crackling thunder hammer and stared at the frozen structure even though he already knew what he would see there.

Under its cladding of ice and snow, part of the pyramid’s solid surface appeared to have liquefied and now rippled like quicksilver. Defying all the laws of physics, the liquid surface remained at a slant, ripples gliding out from its centre as if a pebble had been dropped into a pool of mercury.

All this happened in only a matter of seconds. His attention still half on the approaching xenos constructs, Hesperus turned and spun, bringing his hammer down on another of the spyder-things even as it reached for him with snapping pincer-claws.

Something was emerging from the pool of liquid metal that had formed in the side of the pyramid. At the periphery of his vision, Hesperus saw a skeletal metal thing step out from the fluid shimmering surface and begin to stalk towards the Space Marines’ line. Its gleaming metal skull was hung low between its armoured shoulders, its crystal eyes glowing with a malign intelligence. In its gauntlet-like hands the inhuman warrior carried a bizarre-looking weapon of alien design, but nonetheless lethal for all that. Hesperus had read a treatise disseminated by the Cult Mechanicus that postulated how such weapons operated and recognised the glowing green rods that formed what could best be described as the barrel of the gun as a linear accelerator chamber. Beneath this, the firearm sported a cruel, scything blade – a lethal close quarters combat attachment.

‘We’re not prepared for this,’ Hesperus muttered. It was not the way of an Imperial Fists commander to readily give the order to retreat. The Chapter was notorious amongst the Adeptus Adeptus Astartes for the stubborn determination of its warriors, who would stand and fight long after the brethren of other Chapters would have quit the field of battle. But nor was it the Imperial Fists way to waste such a precious commodity as experienced battle-brothers, by fighting a suicidal action which would not win them the day and which, in the case of Ixya and the Aes Metallum facility, would leave the Emperor’s loyal subjects open to attack, with no hope of victory in the face of the xenos threat.

There was a steady stream of the skeletal warriors emerging from the quicksilver pool now, without there being any indication as to when the reinforcements might come to an end.

Beside him Brother Ors’s chainsword bit through the spine of a warrior, sending chewed-up chunks of metal vertebrae flying and leaving shorn gold wiring exposed.

In the face of ever-increasing numbers, having no idea how many there might still be to come, Hesperus called the retreat.

‘Squad Eurus! Ignite jump packs and fall back to the Fortis. We are leaving – now!’

He did not fall back lightly; it was not the Imperial Fists’ way. But Hesperus knew from bitter experience, that where there was one necron, a multitude might follow.

‘Brother-Pilot Teaz,’ he called into the comm, once again. ‘Covering fire, now!’

One after another, in quick succession, the Space Marines’ jump packs ignited with a roar and Squad Eurus rocketed skywards.

A split second later searing laser light streaked over their heads and down into the excavation site, exploding spyders and warriors where it struck as the grounded Thunderhawk’s strafing fire found targets even through the obscuring blizzard.

Pulses of sick green lightning burst from the weapons of the advancing warriors, chasing them from the depths of the whiteout, evaporating the falling snow and lending the snowstorm an eerie, otherworldly cast.

Almost as quickly as the Thunderhawk’s laser barrage had begun it cut out again.

‘Brother Teaz!’ Hesperus called into the comm as he began to descend again towards the waiting Thunderhawk. ‘We need covering fire, now!’

He could make out the silhouette of the great adamantium craft on the ice beneath them now. What he could not hear, however, was the roar of turbofan engines running up to take-off speed and he could not see pulses of laser-light spitting from the Fortis’s guns.

As he and his brother Space Marines dropped lower he understood the reason for the Thunderhawk’s unprepared condition. The hull of the craft appeared to ripple as if its adamantium plates had fractured and acquired some unnatural form of life.

As they came closer still, Hesperus could see that the undulating surface was in fact formed from myriad beetle-like constructs that were swarming all over the Fortis, jamming its flight controls, clogging its propulsion systems and interfering with its weapon arrays.

There were more of the beetling machines burrowing up through the ice to join the host already smothering the Thunderhawk. If the craft was to be of any use to the Imperial Fists in their flight from this xenos-cursed place, the silver scarabs had to be eliminated.

‘Squad Eurus, deploy grenades.’

As well as being armed with bolt pistols and chainswords, each of the Space Marines also carried a number of grenades. Mag-locking their chainswords to their armoured suits, the battle-brothers of Squad Eurus slowed their rapid descent, dropped the primed frag charges where the swarm was thickest, training their pistols on the scarabs interfering with the weapons systems and the Thunderhawk’s engines, removing them with precision shots to free the more delicate parts of the craft from the xenos swarm infestation.

The grenades detonated as they hit, sending fragments of alien artifice flying, turning the beetle-things into just so much more shrapnel, clearing a score of the creatures from the fuselage with every blast.

As the Space Marines dropped the last twenty metres to the landing site, they opened up with their bolters, their own strafing fire clearing yet more of the insidious scuttling things from the stricken Fortis.

Hesperus landed hard, the ice shuddering beneath his feet. He was up and at the swarm in the time it took him to rise from the crouch in which he braced himself as he landed, batting the scrabbling scarabs clear of the wings of the Thunderhawk, sending a dozen flying with every powerfully concussive blow of his hammer.

But the Space Marines’ action against the Thunderhawk was making a difference now. Slowly, the flyer’s turbofan engines began to whine as the cockpit controls came online again and Brother-Pilot Teaz coaxed the great craft into life.

Striding into the thick of the skittering beetle-things, Hesperus made his way to the Fortis’s hold access and, with well-placed sweeps of his crackling hammer head, he beat the scarabs clear of the hatch.

‘Brother Teaz, can you hear me now?’

‘Re– czzz– ving you now, s– czz– geant.’

‘Then open up and let us in.’

With a grinding whine the embarkation hatch opened and Squad Eurus boarded the Thunderhawk. Brother Khafra, the last on board punched the switch to activate the closing mechanism as the Fortis lifted off, shaking the snow from its landing struts and sending the last of the scarabs tumbling from its surface where they had persistently clung onto the outer hull.

As the Thunderhawk continued to gain altitude, Brother-Pilot Teaz swung its nose round, pointing it back in the direction of the mining facility. Sergeant Hesperus, his hearts still racing within the hardened shell of his ribs, peered through the closing crack of the outer hatch and uttered a heartfelt prayer to Dorn and the Emperor. A multitude filled the excavation site before the frozen pyramid, the legions woken by the explorators’ innocent interference darkening the snow and ice with their innumerable host.

‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘we return to the facility to prepare for a siege.’

‘What news, sergeant?’ Governor Selig asked as the great and the good of Aes Metallum met the Imperial Fists again upon the adamantium skirt of the shuttle pad.

Hesperus removed his helmet again before answering the governor.

‘Nothing good I fear,’ he said, his face hard.

‘But did you find the missing explorators?’

‘What was left of them.’

The governor stared at him aghast. Hesperus took a long, slow breath, carefully composing what he was about to say in his mind first.

Selig blanched as Sergeant Hesperus told him what had befallen the explorator team and what would soon befall the mining facility. For those who had once claimed this frozen hell as their own had woken from the slumber of aeons to take it back.

‘Governor, were it not for our presence upon this world, I would say that the fate of this world was sealed, that Ixya was doomed. But you see here before you ten of the Emperor’s finest warriors, each one worth a hundred of those who fight within the Emperor’s inestimable armies, and as a result this world is not yet doomed. For as long as you have us to bolster your defence of this bastion, there is still hope.’

‘Throne be praised,’ Selig gasped, making the sign of the aquila across his chest.

‘The Emperor protects.’

Magos Winze’s circling mechadendrites formed the holy cog symbol in supplication to the Omnissiah of Mars, accompanied by a chirrup of machine code-prayer.

‘Captain Derrin,’ Hesperus said, turning to the commander of Ixya’s planetary defence force. ‘What armour have you? Aircraft? Gun emplacements? How many men do you have at your command? What other defensive measures? I need an inventory of everything you have got at your disposal. You too, Magos Winze. Tell me everything.’

When Captain Derrin had finished running through the local militia’s resources on Ixya – from the flight of Valkyries, through to Hades breaching drills, Sentinel power-lifters and Trojan support vehicles – aided by the tech-priest’s indefatigable augmented memory, Sergeant Hesperus looked at each of the three men and said, ‘Then we prepare for war!’

‘Permission to speak honestly, brother-sergeant,’ Brother Maestus said over a closed comm channel so that only Hesperus could hear him.

‘For you, Maestus, always.’

‘Sir, it is not enough,’ the battle-brother said, gravely.

‘I know that, brother,’ Hesperus replied, ‘but what would you have me tell Selig and the others? Take away their hope and we take away the best weapon these people have at their disposal. As it stands, this facility may well be doomed, but if we can hold the enemy at bay long enough, then it is still possible that reinforcements may arrive in time.’

He hesitated and then turned back, calling after the departing tech-priest. ‘Magos Winze, a word if you would be so kind.’

Winze appeared to rotate at the waist and then glided back across the hard deck towards them. ‘How may I assist you, sergeant?’

‘How are the refined minerals you produce here transported to the forge worlds of this subsector?’

‘Why,’ the adapted adept croaked rustily, ‘Mechanicus transport vessels arrive on a regular basis to transport the ores and isotopes we refine here to Croze, Incus and Ferramentum III.’

‘And when is the next shipment due to leave?’

‘Why, the Glory of Gehenna is coming in-system as we speak,’ Magos Winze announced, augmetic nictitating eyelids clicking in quick succession. ‘Would I be correct in the assumption that you are now cogitating what I predict you to be cogitating, sergeant?’

‘Hail the Glory of Gehenna. We shall have need of the might of Mars as well as the might of the strength of Dorn’s legacy this day.’

Like some leviathan void-spawn birthed in the cold, dark depths of space, the Mechanicus vessel Glory of Gehenna coasted in the exosphere of the frozen planet a thousand kilometres below, like some vast and ancient cetacean trawling the shallows of an arctic sea.

The servitor bound from the waist down into the ordnance post of the nave-like bridge rotated to face the command pulpit and a string of machine code emanated from the speaker grille that stood in place of a mouth.

The tech-priest at the pulpit-comm smiled in satisfaction, a hundred artificial muscle-bundles articulating the near-dead flesh of his mouth into something approximating the correct facial expression.

‘Target confirmed,’ Magos Kappel said.

While on the surface of the snowball world everyone and everything – from caterpillar-tracked servitors, as large as a full-grown grox and twenty times as strong, to huge earthmoving machines – was pressed into service in preparing the mining facility for the siege that was to come, the Glory of Gehenna prepared to deliver a dolorous blow against the enemy and pre-empt the xenos attack on Aes Metallum Hive.

Dropping into low orbit, the Mechanicus vessel locked onto the coordinates relayed from the surface by Thunderhawk Fortis’s machine spirit, the signal boosted by Magos Winze’s Mechanicus-maintained communication arrays.

A seismic shudder passed along the length of the Glory of Gehenna as with a silent scream the vessel’s port and starboard laser batteries fired on the surface of Ixya. They hit the ground with a deviation of only point zero six degrees, due to atmospheric distortion, and pounded the excavation site and the xenos ruins with everything the servants of the Machine-God on board could coax from the ancient weapons batteries, channelling as much energy as they could from the leviathan’s ancient plasma core.

Atmospheric gases were split into their component elements as the beams of focussed retina-searing light, as hot as the heart of a sun, speared down through the cloud-festooned atmosphere of the planet, setting the sky on fire, mere nanoseconds later reaching their target on the ground.

Ice melted and water boiled as the furious heat of the Glory of Gehenna’s attack burned away the layers of frozen glacier within which the doomed explorator team had found the alien pyramid waiting for them.

Hundreds of the inhuman constructs were wiped out in the initial phase of the bombardment. The skeletal warriors were reduced to their component parts, as units of tomb spyders and swarms of scarabs, too numerous to count, were eradicated alongside them.

In only a matter of seconds half the emerging necron force had been eradicated by one decisive, pre-emptive strike.

But as the clouds of steam drifted clear of the burn site and the whirling snow returned, it soon became apparent to those monitoring the results of the orbital barrage, from both the heavens and one hundred kilometres away within the rockcrete bunkers of the Aes Metallum base, that despite wiping out a significant portion of the burgeoning necron host, the blasphemous structure on the ground – the pyramid itself – still stood. The only thing that had altered about its status was that much more of it had been uncovered by the scouring laser lances as their furious barrage cut through ice many metres deep, exposing not just the primary pyramid, but the peaks of two smaller structures that lay in its deathly shadow.

‘Magos Winze,’ the adept-master of the Glory of Gehenna said, speaking into the pulpit comm-link, addressing the senior adept on the surface. ‘I regret to report that the target still stands.’

‘Understood, Magos Kappel,’ a static-distorted voice replied, echoing back across the gulf of space from the planet below, echoing like the voice of some disembodied machine spirit between the ornamented metal ribs of the bridge nave. ‘Our initial sensor scans suggest that too.’

‘We are charging batteries for a second attempt,’ Magos Kappel continued, and then broke off abruptly. ‘Wait, auspex arrays are detecting fresh activity in the vicinity of the structures.’ He stared at the data-splurge scrolling across the pulpit monitor screen. ‘Just a nanosecond...’

A series of live-feed data-inputs from the various servitor scanner stations ranged throughout the bridge spiked as a dramatic change in energy output was detected, centred upon the three xenos structures.

No more than four kilometres from the pyramidal hibernation sepulchres, the compacted snow covering the ice sheet fractured like the sun-baked clay bed of a receding summer watering hole. Three crescent-shaped pylon structures shuddered up out of the snow, seismic tremors rippling through the glacier, quantities of the white powder falling from them in fresh cascades as more and more of the pylons were revealed. Each supported a huge green crystal emitter, and all three were already pulsing with pent-up esoteric energies. Finally the alien devices shuddered to a halt, the last of the clinging snow dropping from them in blocks of melting slush.

With the whining thrum of ancient machinery grinding into operation again after countless millennia of inaction, the three pylons rotated slowly, like morning flowers turning to follow the sun. As one they turned and as one their energising crystals glowed into deadly life, as an aetheric light began to trickle like a shower of pulverised emerald dust from the tips of each crescent. With a crack, like the ignition of a thousand rocket launchers, the gauss annihilators fired.

Whips of coruscating energy lashed out from the crystals, focussed by the vanes that projected from the pylons to either side of each emitter that harnessed their unimaginable power, streaming it into a lethal crackling discharge kilometres in length.

The annihilator beams merged a thousand metres up, cutting through the tortured atmosphere, their combined lethal lightning fingertips reaching into the exosphere, not stopping until they made contact with the Glory of Gehenna itself.

The annihilating beams stripped the shields from the Mechanicus vessel within seconds setting the port weapons batteries on fire and tearing through the hull plating. The carefully regulated artificial atmosphere on board the ship ignited as it bled out into the void in rippling waves of flame a hundred metres long.

As the beams continued to rip through the Mechanicus vessel, the Glory of Gehenna was clearly doomed. Listing badly to port, the ship commenced its descent, its blunt prow glowing magma-red as it plunged head-long through Ixya’s upper atmosphere.

The blazing wreckage of the Glory of Gehenna fell on Ixya like the divine wrath of the God-Emperor of Mankind Himself. It struck the ice sheet two hundred kilometres east of Aes Metallum, the shockwave of its crash-landing rippling through the crust of ice and rock, hitting Aes Metallum only a minute later, followed by a dense white cloud, a tsunami of snow that was thrown up into the freezing air as the concussive energies raced outwards from the epicentre of the crash site.

The distant crump and boom of its reactor core was also the sound that signalled the beginning of the assault on Aes Metallum.

‘Brother-sergeant, they are here,’ Ngaio announced from his place on the northern bulwark of the defended facility.

Before its catastrophic death, perpetrated by the gauss annihilators, the Glory of Gehenna had eradicated much of the necron force as Magos Kappel tried to destroy the pyramidal structure. But out of the thousands that had already emerged from the tomb, hundreds had still survived the orbital bombardment. And that surviving vanguard force had now reached the walls of the mining facility.

Aes Metallum already had two semi-circular rings of defences, based on the Phaeton pattern – the rear of the facility being shielded by the towering cliff face against which it had been built – but the Imperial Fists had worked hard to bolster these by barricading the gates with earthmoving vehicles. Magos Winze’s tech-priests had done what they could to hard-wire a number of the servitors available to them into the gun emplacements in redoubts and atop the bulwarks of the base. Atop the cliffs behind the refinery works and the ore-processing sheds stood yet more servitor-tasked Tarantula gun turrets, covering the reverse approach.

But the Imperial Fists had also used the mining equipment and facilities available to them to prepare a few other surprises with which to challenge the enemy’s assault.

Skimming towards them now, over the wind-whipped ice, advanced the destroyers. To the untrained eye they looked like anti-gravitic speeders, only where a land speeder needed a separate pilot, in this example of heretical xenos machinery, the vehicle and its pilot were one and the same. Rising from the prow of each of the skimmer bodies was the torso, arms and head of a humanoid automaton. These mechanoids were more heavily armoured than the warriors Squad Eurus had encountered at the excavation site and were noticeably more heavily armed as well.

As Hesperus peered through a pair of magnoculars at the approaching skimmers he could see that each of the constructs had had its right arm melded into an energy cannon that pulsed with malevolent emerald energy.

‘On my mark,’ Hesperus announced into his helm comm, ‘activate forward countermeasures.’

The Imperial Fists, the serried ranks of the local militia and even the miners of Aes Metallum, who had exchanged hammer-drills for autoguns, waited. The sense of tense anticipation shared by the Space Marines, the half-human things of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the mortal defenders of Aes Metallum, was a living breathing thing, and its breathing was shallow and its pulse panic-fast.

‘Wait for it,’ Hesperus muttered under his breath. ‘Wait for it.’

They waited. The destroyers drew nearer.

And now scuttling swarms of scarabs, the trooping warriors of the necron host and other skulking or swiftly darting things appeared as the snowstorm abated at last.

Gauss weapons glowed with a foetid green light as the advancing host prepared to fire on the mining facility’s defenders.

The destroyers were in range of the defenders’ guns now and, more worryingly, the aliens’ own weapons were in range too, ready to give the defenders a taste of their lethal lightning discharges.

‘Mark!’ Hesperus shouted into the comm.

A split second later, the bulwarks of the base were rocked by a series of detonations that threw up great clouds of white snow and black rock that enveloped the speeding necron destroyers. As the Imperial Fists and local militia conscripts had worked to strengthen the base’s forward defences, teams of miners, under the supervision of tech-priests, had cut trenches in the ice in which they had laid the explosives they normally used as part of the mining process to open new seams of precious ore. But they had been put to a more war-like use this day.

A moment later, the destroyers emerged from the smoke and fresh-falling snow, trailing smoke, their carapaces scorched and dented. Some were listing badly. One had almost lost its cannon-arm to the charge it had passed over. Another skewed sideways, collided with one of its fellows and the two of them then ploughed into the frozen ground, triggering another detonation that had failed to fire first time round.

Broadcasting on all channels, Sergeant Hesperus cried, ‘For Ixya, for Aes Metallum, and for the Glory of Gehenna!’ His cry was echoed by the miners and local militia troopers while their tech-priest overseers made the sign of the cog and offered up prayers of supplication to the Omnissiah for the thousand souls that had perished aboard the mighty Mechanicus vessel.

Then Hesperus spoke again, standing atop the battlements overlooking the main gate of the facility, behind which had been parked a host of heavy, earth-moving and drilling machinery to form an additional barricade behind the vulnerable entrance. Thrusting his thunder hammer into the sky, he shouted – so that all could hear – ‘Primarch. Progenitor, to your glory!’

‘And to the glory of Him on Earth!’ his brothers bellowed in response.

The necron advance hit the outer bulwark like a hammer blow. Destroyers and tomb spyders sprouting particle projectors blasted battlements, gun emplacements and defenders alike with coruscating beams of molecule-shredding energy and searing bolts of hard-white light.

A turret-mounted autocannon magazine cooked off, not thirty metres from the main gate, the gun emplacement disappearing in an expanding ball of black smoke and oily orange flame.

Men caught in the coruscating emerald beams screamed briefly and then died as layer after layer of their bodies was stripped away by the gauss guns.

Necron warriors advanced by the score, rank after rank of the relentless warriors, each locating their targets on the battlements and then picking them off with mechanical precision. Other things, only partially humanoid in form – the elongated spines of their armoured skeleton bodies tapering to lethal shocking blades – moved with bewildering speed, blinking in and out of existence, vanishing in one position only to reappear at the foot of the base’s defences. Then they would blink out of existence again and re-materialise atop the battlements, striking with whip-like arms and deadly scalpel-fingers.

More of the facility’s guardians screamed and died, in horror as much as in agony as they were cut down by a grotesque vision of their own mortality made manifest.

The ground itself appeared to be moving. And then, through the drifting smoke and whirling snow, the panicked defenders of the curtain defences saw the seething mass of scarabs closing on them, crawling over everything in sight.

With a roar of turbofans, the Thunderhawk Fortis swept low over the icy no-man’s-land before the walls of Aes Metallum, twin-linked heavy bolters raking the troops massed on the ground in front of the siege works. Where the massive-reactive shells hit, necrons were blown into their component parts, mechanoid body parts raining back down onto the sullied snow in a shower of twisted black metal and fused components.

A second later, Captain Derrin’s Valkyries screamed overhead, great blooms of orange fire blossoming in their wake and more of the undying legion fell – destroyers, spyders and warriors alike.

A dreadful scream – like the rending of reality itself – ripped the heavens asunder. Green fire blazed across the firmament and tore the snow-white skies apart as the trailing Valkyrie disintegrated in shredding flames.

The red harvest had begun.

Sergeant Hesperus batted aside another darting robotic wraith-form, the crackling head of his thunder hammer pulverising its living metal cranium. The thing slid back down the second curtain wall, throwing up a stream of sparks behind it as it scraped against the adamantium-reinforced bulwarks.

The defenders of Aes Metallum had had to abandon the outer defensive ring after a concerted pounding attack by a trio of heavy destroyers had breached the main gate. But losses had been heavy on both sides. As the Imperial Fists performed a rearguard action, the surviving local militia troopers and others involved in the defence of the facility retreated behind the second curtain wall and the refinery barns and processing manufactorums beyond. Battle-Brother Verwhere triggered another trap, igniting the promethium store that had been positioned between the two gates with a well-placed shot from his plasma pistol.

Flames rose twenty metres into the freezing air, licking at the mechanoid forms pouring through the breach in the base’s defences, but doing little in the way of any real harm.

A coruscating cord of dread lightning tore across the sundered ice-field, shredding the tyres from a massive spoil plough and sending the machine sliding sideways.

The particle whip reached out again, sending half a dozen of the curtain wall’s defenders to their deaths.

Sergeant Hesperus’s gaze immediately went to the source of this devastating attack.

Standing serenely at the centre of the necron strike force, clad in crumbling vestments, was a thing apart from the others of its kind now marching into the compromised mining facility. Its body was the colour of antique silver inlaid with hieroglyphs of gold, its skull tarnished with the fractal patterns of the patina of epochs past. It scanned the progress of the battle raging all around it with tactical interest as it directed its forces into the fray.

It was the calm at the centre of the storm, the eye of the hurricane, and in its hands it clasped its staff of power. With a silent gesture it guided its warriors forwards, towards the breach, glittering arcs of energy crackling between its skeletal digits, its entire being suffused with ancient power.

This was the focus of the necron force’s esoteric energies. For this was their lord. As their mechanoid master passed by, those among their number that had already fallen to the Imperials rose to fight again, living metal re-knitting itself, repairing damaged limbs and forging their armoured shells anew.

‘Brothers,’ Hesperus spoke into the comm, directing his own troops into the fray, ‘we have our target. The xenos lord cannot be allowed to stand any longer. It is a blasphemy in the sight of the Emperor. In the name of Dorn, ignite jump packs.’

To which the battle-brothers of Squad Eurus replied in unison, ‘And Him on Earth!’

Hesperus’s body smashed through the ranks of the milling necrons, sending a number of the xenos flying as his armour-hard body collided with them. His hurtling flight was brought to a sudden stop by the dozer blade of a heavy earth-mover. The bodywork of the huge digger buckled at the impact and Hesperus dropped to the ground, momentarily stunned by the blast from the necron’s arcane weapon.

Recovering quickly, he got to his feet again, grey tendrils of smoke rising from the scorched ceramite plates of his power armour. If it hadn’t been for the now dented storm shield that he still held fast in his left hand, he would have been lucky to survive the staff of light’s unkind ministrations at all.

Raising his thunder hammer above his head once more, he began to pound towards the silver and gold ancient a second time, hammer held high, an unintelligible bellow of battle-rage on his lips. The pace of his pounding footfalls began to pick up as he covered the expanse of ice before his target.

As he ran, servos in his armoured greaves squealing, the necron prepared itself for another onslaught from the Imperial Fists. With his eyes locked on the necron lord, Hesperus could still see the broken and mangled metal carcasses of fallen xenos warriors knit themselves back together – as if he was watching a pict-feed of the destruction of the alien host running backwards – the undying automatons rising from the sullied snow to fight again at their master’s side.

Hesperus readied himself both physically and mentally for the necron’s retaliatory attack that was sure to come, but kept running.

Hearing the hot roar of a jump pack above him, he looked up and saw Battle-Brother Maestus, shorn of one arm already, descend upon the necron from the sky like the wrath of Dorn himself.

As Maestus dropped on the necron, Hesperus could tell that something was wrong with his battle-brother’s jump pack immediately. The Space Marine was doing his damnedest to direct his wild plunge directly onto the target, rather than making a controlled leap across the ice-field. The trail of smoke trailing from the port gravitic thruster attested to the problem as well.

But Hesperus had no idea just how badly damaged Brother Maestus’s jump pack was until, preceded by a cry of ‘For Dorn!’ from the plunging Space Marine, the pack’s power core overloaded, resulting in a detonation as powerful as that of a cluster of thermal charges.

Time suddenly slowed for Hesperus as he watched the scene unfold before him as if he were watching a pict-feed playing at half-speed.

He saw the jump pack rip apart like burnt paper as the blast consumed it. He saw Brother Maestus reduced to his component atoms as the resulting fireball from the sub-atomic explosion consumed him. He saw the necron’s tattered robes burn away to nothing on the nuclear wind. He watched as the skeletal lord warped, melted and disintegrated nanoseconds later. Then the hungry flames were washing over him and the shockwave hit, sending him somersaulting backwards once more across the vaporised ice-field.

Sergeant Hesperus picked himself up for a second time and gazed in stunned shock across the ice-field, knowing what he would see there. Nothing at all.

Brother Maestus was gone. Of the necron master, there was no sign either. What there was, was the solidifying bowl of a melted crater focussed on the epicentre of the catastrophic blast. For thirty metres in every direction lay the fallen of the necron host: warriors and wraiths, scarabs and spyders, all obliterated by the blast, their cybernetic components fused into lumps of useless metal, the flicker of artificial automaton intelligence in their eyes fading to the black of oblivion.

The loss of Battle-Brother Maestus was a dolorous wound in the very heart of Squad Eurus, but his passing had dealt an even more dolorous blow against the enemy. Maestus’s sacrifice had taken down the entity that had led the necrons into battle. With the ancient’s passing the attacking force was as good as defeated.

‘Squad Eurus,’ Hesperus commanded. ‘Sound off!’

As the seven surviving battle-brothers under his immediate command signalled their condition to their sergeant and the rest of the squad, Hesperus stared in wonder at the debris littering the battlefield all around them.

Even as the remaining necron warriors continued to stride towards the mining facility over the ice with lethal purpose blazing in their incandescent eye-sockets, they began to shimmer, their armoured bodies becoming blurred and hazy. And then suddenly Hesperus was staring right through them until they weren’t actually there at all.

Even the battle debris of necron constructs besmirching the snow and the crater-gouged ice – up-ended spyders and sparking scarabs included – shimmered and phased out of existence. Soon even the spectral forms of the steel skeletons were no more.

If it had not been for the great smouldering wounds scarring the bulwarks of the base, the wrecked earth-movers, the devastated Trojans, the downed Valkyrie and the bodies of those who had died defending the facility, Hesperus could have believed that there hadn’t been an attack launched on the base at all. Of the enemy there was now no sign.

The Imperial allies had won. Aes Metallum had been saved but at a price, a price that had been paid in the blood and the lives of local militia troopers, tech-adepts and one battle-brother of the lauded Imperial Fists Chapter.

A leaden silence descended over the blizzard-blown wastes, falling across the battlefield like a funerary shroud, as autoguns, las weapons and the huge autocannon emplacements ceased firing.

Then, intermittently at first, Hesperus’s acute hearing registered the utterances of disbelief of the Ixyans. Many men had died, but Aes Metallum still stood and the enemy had been vanquished.

Gathering pace and momentum, like a snowball rolling downhill, the gasps turned to emotional whoops of joy and of relief, mixed with wailing cries of intense emotion and heartfelt howls of grief.

But, as the sounds of jubilant celebration increased, overwhelming all other expressions of emotion, ringing from the cliffs behind the base, the Imperial Fists remained silent. Their sergeant’s dour mood reflected how they all felt.

Hesperus’s helm comm crackled into life.

‘Sergeant? Are you receiving me?’ It was Brother-Pilot Teaz.

‘Receiving,’ Hesperus confirmed. ‘Where are you, brother?’

‘Sir, I’m eighty kilometres north of the facility.’

‘What news?’

For a moment Hesperus could hear nothing but the hiss of static over the helm comm. He knew immediately that the news was going to be bad.

‘Reinforcements are moving in on your position from the north-east.’

Hesperus took a deep breath, trying hard to dispel the chill that had now permeated even his ossmodula-hardened bones. ‘Reinforcements, brother?’

‘Well, no, sir, not really, I suppose. It would appear that the force that attacked Aes Metallum was only the vanguard of a much larger reaper force that has risen from inside the pyramid.’

‘How much larger, Brother Teaz?’

‘A thousand times, sir.’

‘Their number is legion,’ Hesperus breathed.

The remaining members of Squad Eurus met with Governor Selig, Captain Derrin and Magos Winze in the shell of a manufactorum temple. None of them had escaped the battle for the base unscathed. The governor had acquired a haunted, hollow-eyed expression. Captain Derrin’s right arm was bound up in a sling that was now soaked with blood. Even the magos showed signs of having played his part in the battle for Aes Metallum: a half-shorn mechadendrite convulsed spastically and there was no sign of his attendant cyber-skull.

‘But the battle is won, brother-sergeant,’ Selig protested, a haunted look in his eyes. ‘The necrontyr are defeated. I witnessed their destruction with my own eyes. You and your men bested them and in their rout the blasphemies quit not only the battlefield but reality itself!’

‘The force we defeated was merely the vanguard,’ Hesperus stated bluntly, ‘but a fraction of the legion of undying xenos constructs that is even now marching on this base.’

‘But our hard-won victory cost us dear,’ Derrin said hollowly. ‘We shall not survive another battle like it, I fear.’

‘Whatever else happens, we must not despair,’ Sergeant Hesperus told the Ixyans.

‘You have been in touch with your brethren?’ the magos queried, his croaking words washed through with a static buzz.

‘We have reported our status but they are too far away to be able to relieve Ixya and are already on course for the Chthonian Chain. Even if they broke off from that Chapter-sanctioned campaign, they would not reach us in time. The only ones who stand between the necrontyr and their re-conquest of this world is us.’

‘But Captain Derrin has made an accurate assessment of the situation. Those who remain cannot hope to win this day.’

‘Perhaps not,’ Hesperus admitted, ‘but that does not mean that the necrontyr shall either.’

‘Please explain yourself, Adeptus Astartes,’ the tech-priest crackled.

‘Magos, from where does Aes Metallum get its power?’

‘We take our energy from the boiling heart of this world, deep, deep below the ice.’

‘As I suspected, geothermally.’

‘Your point being, sergeant?’

‘Captain Derrin, you are right; I fear none of us shall see another dawn, but our deaths shall not be in vain.’

The governor’s shoulders sagged, his head hung low.

‘We must prepare to sell ourselves dear. We shall die this day, yes, but we shall die as heroes all. For it is in our power to ensure that no more Imperial lives are lost. Through our actions here, this day, we can keep the rest of the Imperium safe from the menace being birthed here.

‘Magos Winze – broadcast a repeating signal via your satellite network that Ixya is Terra Perdita. Then do all that is necessary to ensure that you overload the geothermal grid. We shall use Aes Metallum’s very power source, the beating heart of this Emperor-given world, to split it asunder. This base, and everything in it, shall be destroyed in a volcanic eruption the like of which Ixya has not seen in ten thousand years. We may die this day, but so shall the undying legions of the necrontyr!’

Hesperus’s tone was all vehement righteousness.

‘In time our battle-brothers will visit this world and our deaths shall be avenged. But for the time being we shall tear this planet apart and blow this place sky high, in His name!’

Sergeant Hesperus stood atop the inner curtain wall of Aes Metallum, with the battle-brothers of Squad Eurus at his side.

Behind them were gathered the remnants of the local militia, indentured miners and Mechanicus-mustered servitors, battle-weary but resolute the lot of them. The Imperial Fist’s rhetoric had lent them the strength they needed to face the end with courage and resolve. Every man, tech-adept and servitor was ready to sell himself dear if it meant they might deny the necrontyr this world and, through their own deaths, bring about the destruction of their hated enemy.

Bowing his head, Hesperus led his battle-brothers in prayer. ‘Oh Dorn, the dawn of our being. Lead us, your sons, to victory.’

Hesperus stared, his immovable gaze focussed beyond the limits of the ice-field. As far as his occulobe-enhanced eyes could see, to both left and right, the far horizon glinted silver. The ice storm had blown itself out at last, revealing the necrontyr in all their morbid might as they advanced in a solid line of living metal.

Hesperus hefted his hammer in his hand, the blackened storm shield already in place on his left arm, and heard the hum of Brother Verwhere’s energising plasma pistol, accompanied by the clatter of bolt pistols being primed and the growl of chainswords running up to speed.

‘In the name of Dorn!’ Hesperus bellowed, his eyes still locked on the seething tide of dark metal.

‘And Him on Earth!’ his fellow battle-brothers shouted, giving the antiphonal response, their battle-cry almost drowned out by the roar of turbofan engines as the Fortis roared overhead, to meet the enemy head-on and make the first strike against the xenos hordes.

Through the cockpit of the craft Brother-Pilot Teaz could see the advancing horde in all its terrible glory. Truly could the term innumerable be applied to the host. Where the Imperial Fists had faced hundreds of the mechanical warriors during the initial attack on Aes Metallum, here thousands advanced on the right flank, thousands on the left, thousands more forming the central block, an unstoppable mass of moving metal. From this height individual necrons looked not unlike the scarab swarms that now turned the sky black above them as millions of the beetle-form constructs took to the air.

Hesperus cast his eyes from the soaring Thunderhawk to the seething mass of silent metal warriors that stretched from the ancient sepulchre complex to the very gates of the devastated refinery, covering every centimetre of the ice wastes in between.

The planet’s ancient masters had returned: the necrontyr. Their number was legion.

And they would show no mercy to the servants of the Emperor – not that the Imperial Fists would have sought it – for their name was death.

And today, Sergeant Hesperus decided, was a good day to die.

That we, in our arrogance, believed that humankind was first among the races of this galaxy will be exposed as folly of the worst kind upon the awakening of these ancient beings. Any hopes, dreams or promises of salvation are naught but dust in the wind.

Excerpted from the Dogma Omniastra

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Cavan Scott is the author of the Space Marine Battles novella Plague Harvest, along with the Warhammer 40,000 short stories ‘Doom Flight’, ‘Trophies’, ‘Sanctus Reach: Death Mask’ ‘Flayed’ and ‘Logan Grimnar: Defender of Honour’. He lives and works in Bristol.

L J Goulding has written many stories for Black Library, including ‘The Lords of Borsis’, ‘The Word of the Silent King’ and ‘Kaldor Draigo: Knight of Titan’ for Warhammer 40,000 and ‘The Oberwald Ripper’ and ‘The Great Maw’ for Warhammer. He also wrote the Space Marine Battles audio drama Mortarion’s Heart. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Vulkan Lives, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio drama Censure. His novella ‘Feat of Iron’ was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. For the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, including Rebirth, the Space Marine Battles novel Damnos, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Time of Legends novel The Great Betrayal for the War of Vengeance series. He lives and works in Nottingham, and has a rabbit.

Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Deliverance Lost, as well as the novellas Corax: Soulforge, Ravenlord and The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs. He is particularly well-known for his Dark Angels stories, including the Legacy of Caliban series, and the ever-popular novel Angels of Darkness. His Warhammer 40,000 repertoire further includes the Path of the Eldar series, the Horus Heresy audio dramas Raven’s Flight and Honour to the Dead, and a multiplicity of short stories. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the Time of Legends trilogy, The Sundering, and much more besides. He lives and works in Nottingham.

David Guymer is the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned, along with the novella Thorgrim and a plethora of short stories set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Awards for his novel Headtaker.

Jonathan Green’s contributions to the Warhammer 40,000 universe include the Black Templars books Crusade for Armageddon and Conquest of Armageddon and the novel Iron Hands. In the Warhammer World, he wrote Magestorm and The Dead and the Damned. He is also the author of numerous short stories. He lives and works in London.

An extract from The World Engine.

‘That was the Perilous,’ said Sheherz. Through the viewscreen mounted on the bridge of the Tempestus, he watched the slow disintegration of the fleet’s flagship. Its long, ridged hull, crowned with a wedge-shaped prow and covered in hundreds of close-defence emplacements, was skewered on a silver lance of power that flashed into existence and fizzled to nothing a moment later. The Perilous simply drifted apart as if some keystone had been removed and the ship had fallen to pieces of its own accord. The prow tumbled away, the sides of the hull peeled off and the entrails of the ship poured out in a waterfall of sparks. In that torrent were the seven thousand souls who crewed the Perilous. One of them was Lord Admiral Corus, the supreme commander of the Varv Deliverance Fleet.

‘How many Stormfronts does that leave?’ asked the shipmistress of the Tempestus, Lady Demi-Admiral Gereltus. Around her the bridge crew continued to work their navigational cogitators and communication helms, trying not to stare mesmerised at the death of the flagship. Their despair was all the more intense for being silent and hidden.

‘She was the last of the Stormfront class,’ replied Sheherz.

He could not show emotion in front of these crew members, not even the shipmistress. He was an Astral Knight, a Space Marine, and not a berserker of the Space Wolves or morbid monk of the Dark Angels. Roboute Guilliman had written in the Codex Astartes of what the ordinary men and women of the Imperium must see when they look on a Space Marine – a creature impassive and unshockable, weathering defeat and victory the same, as relentless and eternal as the human race had to be in this galaxy of war.

He could not show his anger.

The silvered arc of the planet breached the edge of the viewscreen. From the void some worlds looked unholy and terrible, some mottled with disease, others blistered with volcanoes or cracked apart by the anger of their core. This world was shrouded with clouds eternally churning in an electrical storm, criss-crossed with lightning. Every visual probe had been obscured by an information haze, as if the planet knew it was being watched and clouded every eye that looked at it.

But it was not a planet – at least not a sterile and dead world such as ninety per cent of the planets in the galaxy. Somewhere beneath that mantle of cloud was a weapon that could knock a starship, even an Imperial battleship like the Perilous, out of the sky like an arrow through a bird. Sometimes it took the form of the silver lance that had speared the Perilous. Sometimes it had summoned, through some teleporter technology or warp magic, masses of rock within the target, tearing apart the Lycomadean and the Viridian Sun. Smaller ships it had crushed as if by a giant invisible fist, hull plates buckling as plasma vented in ribbons of fire.

Twelve times the Imperial fleet had engaged the World Engine. Eleven times it had been thrown back in disarray, leaving a trail of shattered spacecraft, and the World Engine had not taken a scratch.

Do not show anger. They will see it as impotence and despair. Give them something to follow, because to them you are like gods. Thus had Guilliman written. Sheherz kept his anger inside him, and felt its heat boring into the pit beneath his heart.

One of the crewmen looked up from a communications helm, his pale face lit by the green glow of the pict screen. The face was drawn and grey, the eyes dark. These men and women had not slept for a long time, because the World Engine did not sleep either. ‘Captain Sheherz, Chapter Master Amhrad hails us for your attention.’

‘What does he command?’ asked Sheherz. He knew full well what the message said, but communications protocol had to be followed.

‘The Chapter Master requests your presence,’ said the crewman.

‘Stay alert,’ said Sheherz to the shipmistress, ‘and look to the crew. Despair will poison them, you must stem its flow. I shall return to the bridge soon.’

By the time Sheherz reached the Chapel of Intolerance, the commanders of the Varv Deliverance Fleet were already there, some with their honour guard as if showing the might they brought with them still mattered when the World Engine was ploughing through their fleet at that very moment. Some Space Marine Chapters had sent only a handful of battle-brothers and were represented by a single officer, but most had not come alone. In all, fifteen Chapters were represented there.

Captain Venetius of the Ultramarines took the fore – he and his honour guard wore the characteristic deep blue armour of their Chapter, but so embellished there was more gold than blue. Instinctively, it seemed, the other Chapters had accepted Venetius as a de facto leader. Opposite him stood the Astral Knights delegation, led by Chapter Master Amhrad. Amhrad had brought with him the three veteran squads attached to his command, the most impressive body of men among them.

That was Amhrad’s right. This was an Astral Knights ship.

‘Captain Sheherz,’ said Amhrad as Sheherz entered. ‘It is well that we have the Master of the Fleet in attendance. Matters of war in the void demand your expertise.’

‘My lord,’ said Sheherz.

‘You have seen the latest development, I take it?’ said Venetius. He had the face and manner of a patrician who had gone his whole life getting his own way.

‘We lost the Perilous,’ said Sheherz.

‘And the Magna Pater,’ added Venetius. He folded his arms as if any argument had just been settled. ‘This weapon swats us from the void at will. It is apparent that your formation approach failed.’

The last words were directed at Sheherz. He did not have sole responsibility for the positioning of the fleet, but he had a great deal of it, and with the death of Lord Admiral Corus he was probably the most blameworthy individual left. ‘I did not anticipate the manoeuvrability nor the range of the weapon,’ he said. ‘It has never before shown the capabilities it has this last hour.’

‘And every hour it changes!’ barked Venetius. ‘Each ship we lose in a new way. It learns from us and adapts to every tactic.’

‘Then what,’ said Amhrad levelly, ‘do you suggest we do?’

‘Pull back,’ said Venetius. ‘Regroup the fleet and await reinforcement from the segmentum fleet. Within two months they will be here, and if the Emperor wills it they will bring with them the Adeptus Mechanicus survey teams to tell us what this World Engine is.’

‘Out of the question,’ said Amhrad.

Venetius slammed a fist into his palm. ‘Why?’ he demanded.

‘Captain Sheherz,’ said the Chapter Master.

Amhrad had primed Sheherz on his role in the communication sent to the bridge. Sheherz switched to the bridge vox-link. ‘Shipmistress, route the tactical readout to the chapel hololith,’ he said.

The hololith device was mounted among the incense burners hanging from the ceiling. It lit up and unfolded, and shapes of static-lined light flickered into being in the centre of the room.

The hologram projected between Amhrad and Venetius was of the Varv system. It had eleven planets, with the seventh from the sun being the sparsely settled world of Safehold over which the fleet was formed. The outermost world was a ball of frozen ammonia that had never known life, but until recently the next two had held chemical mines and pioneer settlements. The World Engine had obliterated the life on those worlds without pausing in its path through the system, puncturing fortified towns with blasts of las or creating masses of rock, like planetary tumours, to rip chemical refineries apart from the inside.

‘The fourth world,’ said Amhrad. ‘I take it you have apprised yourself of its significance?’

The hologram zoomed in on the fourth planet from the Varv system’s sun. It was a blistered and blackened orb, crazed with deep artificial canyons, its surface divided into expanses of rockcrete like grey scales.

‘Varvenkast,’ said Venetius.

‘It is more than just a name,’ said Amhrad. ‘It is twenty-one billion souls.’ Amhrad now addressed all the Space Marines who had come here to speak for their Chapters. ‘We have known for weeks it would come to this. The World Engine has already claimed a dozen inhabited worlds. We have lost Imperial citizens beyond counting. But when the World Engine reaches the hives of Varvenkast, the death toll will more than triple. If ever we are to stop it, we must do so now.’

‘The loss of every innocent life pains me as much as it does you, Chapter Master,’ said Venetius. ‘Guilliman taught all his sons the value of those who toil under the Emperor’s gaze. But every attempt we have made to engage the World Engine has failed. Our weapons cannot penetrate whatever form of shields it has. Our own shields are no proof against its weaponry. We cannot even see what lies on its surface. And the fate of the Perilous shows that even trying to keep pace with it is death. As much as these words are bile in my mouth, we must abandon this engagement and regroup with the means to fight this battle on our own terms.’

‘You would leave the billions on Varvenkast to die?’ asked Amhrad.

‘If we stand and fight, we shall all be lost, and Varvenkast will be destroyed anyway. So yes, Chapter Master, I would leave them to die.’

Sheherz looked from one face to the next. When the Varv Deliverance Fleet had been convened to intercept the World Engine, the lords of the fleet had each consecrated their own shrine in the Chapel of Intolerance and the Space Marine delegates stood before their Chapter’s respective shrines. The Ultramarines shrine displayed the standard of Captain Venetius’s Seventh Company, among the spears and shields of warriors from their home world of Macragge. The Red Consuls displayed an image of Roboute Guilliman taken from a desecrated temple liberated by the Chapter, still stained with the blood of the believers who had fallen defending it. The Invaders had created a shrine of bronze shields, assembled in a gleaming pyramid, a trophy of victory from an ancient battlefield. Sheherz could see no doubt on any of their faces – they had all come to the chapel of one mind, probably led by Venetius in the decision to abandon the engagement and await reinforcements.

It was the word of the Codex, after all. If a battle cannot be won, neither throw away your lives fruitlessly nor flee in cowardice. Rather, create a new battle, one fought under your terms. Roboute Guilliman had written it in the Codex Astartes ten thousand years ago, and every good Ultramarine treated their primarch’s words as sacred.

‘Then you shall,’ said Chapter Master Amhrad. ‘Thus your conscience commands you. The Astral Knights shall not stand in your way.’

‘It is decided,’ said Venetius. ‘My brothers! Return to your commands. Make ready to break formation and…’

‘But the Astral Knights shall not,’ said Amhrad.

‘Damnation, Amhrad!’ called out Lord Zethar of the Red Consuls, who had watched the debate wordlessly but clearly in favour of Venetius. ‘This is not a game! You may have brought your entire Chapter to this battle but you cannot play games of politics when this whole mission is at stake.’

‘No politics,’ said Amhrad. ‘The Astral Knights will fight here. You have the fleet, my brothers, and do with it as the Codex demands.’

‘You play our consciences,’ retorted Zethar. ‘By threatening to throw yourselves into a last stand, you demand we die alongside you!’

‘Not a last stand,’ said Amhrad. ‘I speak of victory. While there is a chance for it, we shall pursue it. I have no intention of exposing you to the risks should we fail.’

‘And what victory will you find here?’ asked Venetius. ‘What weapon have we not sent against the World Engine?’

‘The weapon you stand on even now,’ replied Amhrad.

‘The Tempestus?’ asked Venetius.

‘And a Chapter of the Emperor’s Space Marines,’ said Amhrad.

‘Have you forgotten?’ said Captain Morgrom of the Invaders. His face was a wide, battered expanse of leather, contrasting with the polished deep green of his armour. ‘I sent three squads of Terminator-armoured brothers by teleport onto the World Engine. Its shields sent them back twisted and dead.’

‘The Tempestus will not use its teleporters,’ said Amhrad. ‘As you say, they have been tried and have failed, as have lasers, lances and torpedoes. But we have not tried one of the fleet’s ships itself as a delivery mechanism.’

‘You mean,’ said Venetius, not bothering to hide his incredulity, ‘to crash into the World Engine?’

‘The Tempestus will be obliterated!’ scoffed Lord Zethar.

‘Not so,’ said Sheherz.

The other delegates had forgotten Sheherz was there, and they rounded on him as one as if he had spoken a dire insult.

‘The Tempestus was laid down in the dockyards of Ryza,’ continued Sheherz. ‘Four thousand years ago. Only six such battle-barges were ever constructed, and only three still sail. The secrets of their construction have long been lost. But each of the Ryzan class were renowned for the steadfastness of their construction. They were built to run minefields and asteroid blockades. Impacts that would break another ship apart can be suffered by a Ryzan without destruction. That the Tempestus still takes to the void after the battles she has seen is testament to that.’

‘You could fly this ship into a planet?’ asked Venetius.

‘She would not fly off again,’ said Sheherz. ‘And to my knowledge such a thing has never been done, not deliberately. But perhaps, with great damage, she would retain enough integrity to deliver a complement of troops.’

‘Perhaps,’ echoed Venetius. ‘That is all you can give me, Amhrad? Perhaps?’

‘It is better than definitely not,’ said Amhrad. ‘Once on the surface, my Chapter’s aim will be to disable the World Engine’s shielding. If the rest of the fleet remains close by, it can take advantage of that vulnerability to finally blast the World Engine out of the void. I do not ask that it remains engaged, only that it stays within striking distance.’

‘So,’ said Morgrom, ‘one final flourish from the Astral Knights.’

‘No greater an indulgence than your teleporter assault,’ said Amhrad. ‘And I act for the sake of Varvenkast. I care nothing here for glory.’

‘An Astral Knight not moved by glory?’ said Venetius. ‘Of all the Emperor’s finest, none of us could name a Chapter more moved by laurels and acclaim than the Astral Knights.’

‘And what does it matter why?’ said Amhrad. ‘A ram attack will breach the World Engine’s shields as conventional and energy weaponry cannot. A Chapter of Space Marines is as potent a boarding force as exists in this galaxy. There is no greater chance for victory. I would say there is no other chance at all. The Codex demands much of us, but above all it demands victory, and it is to victory I must dedicate every effort unto death. I have not convened us here to ask for your permission, my brothers. I have brought you here that you might know why the Tempestus will shortly break formation, and know how to act according to whatever might follow. I must ask now that you leave my ship, for I would not presume to take you all along to such a destination.’

‘This is no more than a gesture, Amhrad, and you know it,’ snarled Venetius. He took a step dangerously close to the Chapter Master. ‘And I did not risk myself and two companies of my brethren so you could sacrifice yourselves in a grand display of superiority. This strikeforce needs this ship. You have a whole Chapter of Space Marines and it needs them too. This battle will be won, but it will be won by unity. It will be won by all of us.’

‘Do you wish to take command?’ said Amhrad. ‘It is written all over you, Venetius. Isn’t that what the Ultramarines do best?’

‘Better, it seems, than you.’

‘Then take it!’ retorted Amhrad. ‘The Codex is clear on how it is to be done, be it bare hands, or blades, or bolt pistols at fifty paces. Best me and take command of the fleet, and do with it what you will. But that is how you will have to do it, because I will not relinquish the fulfilment of my Chapter’s duty while I still stand. And Captain Venetius Oricalcor of the Ultramarines, take what glory in it you can, because shortly there will be nothing left to command!’

The holo-display shifted to a streaming list of data. It resembled a roll call of the dead from some great battle, but each line did not represent a single soldier. It represented dozens – hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions of lives.

‘The Penitent,’ said Amhrad. ‘The Magna Pater. The Siege of Korv, the Malicious, Sabre Group Omicron. Should I go on? The World Engine will not stop just because you back away and hand it Varvenkast as an offering. And what then? Will you move in to destroy it once it has finished its feasting? Or run again, and watch it devour one world after another? There will be no sudden epiphany that tells you how to defeat it. Your choices will be to yield before it, or stand and fight and be destroyed. I alone have suggested any other choice, and I will take it if I can. But if you wish to preside over this disaster, for that is what it is, then now is the time. We have no lack of weaponry in this room and no shortage of brothers to witness it. Take my command, Venetius, but be sure first that you want it.’

Sheherz did not know Captain Venetius of the Ultramarines. Perhaps he was the sort of man who was willing to cross that threshold, to take up arms against another Space Marine. Perhaps he believed so completely that the fleet would find some way to battle the World Engine without being knocked out of the sky first. If that was the case then the two would fight, because Sheherz knew his Chapter Master would not back down.

Venetius turned away from Amhrad and walked back to join his own honour guard. ‘You’re insane, Amhrad,’ he called across the chapel floor.

‘We all have our reputations,’ Amhrad said.

The moment passed. Sheherz could feel the danger bleeding out of the room. The other delegations could feel it, too, as they released tensed muscles and held breaths. Venetius did not look like a man who had just backed down, but that was what he had done.

The conclave broke up in silence, for there was nothing now left to say. The Astral Knights had chosen their path and none were willing to take the steps required to turn them from it. Venetius led the delegations out, glowering at anyone who looked at him.

‘This is the first battle I will fight today,’ said the Chapter Master at Sheherz’s approach. ‘To these other Chapters it is typical of the Astral Knights to go our own way and expect them to accommodate us. The Red Consuls strip away everything they were before recruitment, they are soldiers and no more. The Invaders have no time for politics at all, they would far rather be up to their elbows in the dead. And the Ultramarines think themselves the model of a Space Marine Chapter and anyone who does not follow the Codex as they do is wayward or worse. We shall have to leave them to their convictions, captain. We do what we must do.’

‘I ran the machine-spirit models of the World Engine’s shielding,’ said Sheherz, ‘and I saw that a low-velocity body might breach it. But I had no idea this was what you had in mind, Chapter Master.’

‘Do you agree with Venetius, that this plan is insane?’

‘Not insane, my lord, but…’

‘But what?’

For a moment, Sheherz could not find the words. ‘The Tempestus will not survive.’

‘Indeed she will not. Even if she retains her hull integrity she will never sail again. If the World Engine is destroyed she will go with it. Is this the basis for an objection to our course of action?’

‘I know it should not stand in the way of our duty. But my lord, the Tempestus is the most ancient of our fleet, and one of the finest ships any Chapter can muster. Her machine-spirit is as old as the forge world where her keel was laid. She has weathered storms greater than perhaps any other ship in the Imperium could survive. Though I shall follow your orders, as every Space Marine must the commands of his Chapter Master, yet I cannot contemplate the death of this ship without feeling as if I am watching the death of a friend.’

‘I understand, captain. The Tempestus has always been as a brother to the Master of the Fleet.’ Amhrad turned to Sheherz – his skin was dark and battered, with a dozen long-service studs in his forehead and a flat, oft-broken nose. His was the face of a pugilist as well as a commander, and it carried as much authority with a glance as Venetius might with a speech. ‘But my orders are my orders. Though they pain me and those who must execute them, they serve a cause beyond ourselves. Place your misgivings at the back of your mind, to be faced when the battle is won. Until then, there is nothing but to serve.’

‘Of course, my lord. If we are to move immediately, I must tend to the machine-spirit. It must be counselled in navigating our approach.’

‘See to it, captain,’ said Amhrad. ‘And it will not go forgotten that few would have the courage to speak of their doubts.’

‘I would not do so before the brothers of my company,’ said Sheherz. ‘But from the master of my Chapter, there can be no secrets.’

The last of the delegates had left the Chapel of Intolerance, hurrying to rejoin their ships before the Tempestus broke formation with the rest of the fleet. Sheherz and Amhrad took different paths, Amhrad towards the command bridge, and Sheherz towards the armoured core deep within the ship.

The magi of Ryza had forged the very first part of the Tempestus around the ancient cogitator that contained its machine-spirit. Even before they had laid the first beams of the battle-barge’s keel, they had constructed a housing for the cogitator that dated back to the pre-Imperial history of Mars itself. Such spirits were rare and irreplaceable, relics of the Dark Age of Technology where other such spirits had, legend had it, became a threat to the very species that had made them. Now only the wisest and most trustworthy had survived the purges of the Age of Strife, and were numbered among the oldest relics of humankind.

Around that spirit had been built the Tempestus, a voidgoing war machine granted by bonds of ancient fealty from the priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to the Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes. The ship became the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the Astral Knights, and a succession of Masters of the Fleet took her as their flagship. While her weaponry was of ancient and powerful marks and her structure made sound with alloys and techniques all but lost to the Mechanicus, it was her spirit that made her the weapon she was. Locked in the stacks of datamedium was battle-wisdom from wars that had vanished from the memory of mankind.

Every move the ship’s crew made was shadowed by the spirit, assisted or even ignored in accordance with that wisdom. The Master of the Fleet had to treat the spirit of the Tempestus as another member of the Chapter or they would find their helm commands ignored as the spirit made its own decisions. When they showed the ship the respect due to such an ancient warrior, they found in the Tempestus an ally as close as any battle-brother.

The cogitator core was kept hot, to maintain the liquidity of the crystalline medium that ran through the cylindrical datastacks. The stacks formed transparent stalagmites and stalactites through which the black datamedium pulsed, so as Sheherz walked between them it seemed he was walking through a set of enormous jaws filled with black fangs. The cogitator’s valve banks rose and fell overhead like floating islands, exuding clouds of steam and scalding droplets.

Sheherz approached the tangle of looped cables and steel spines, the image of an exploding star created by an artist in hot metal and wire. It was the closest thing the Tempestus had to a heart, where the machine-spirit interfaced with the systems of the ship.

‘If you can hear,’ said Sheherz, ‘then I must speak with you. I have never done this before. Perhaps the Masters of the Fleet who went before me have, I do not know. But I would not send a brother into a battle from which I did not expect him to return, without telling him so to his face. And so I must tell you, as well.’

The Tempestus did not reply. The machine-spirit exercised its will in subtle ways, a few degrees of yaw or a per cent higher or lower in reactor output. To respond directly would be beneath the ancient machine.

Sheherz activated a holomat unit on the front of the machine-spirit core. Here was the output for the machine-spirit’s simulations, taking billions of fragments of data and collating them into a prediction of how a fleet engagement would play out. This was the means by which the machine-spirit communicated its wishes and intentions, sometimes constructing wild and improbable simulations, or pointedly demonstrating how a particular course of action would lead to disaster.

The disposition of the Varv Deliverance Fleet appeared in glowing shapes of light. The gravitational threshold of the nearest planet, Safehold, glowered darkly some distance across the chamber. The World Engine was a scarcely less imposing presence, a moon-sized aberration picked out in bright silver and surrounded by a halo of information noise illustrating how little intelligence the fleet’s sensors had divined.

With the loss of the Perilous the fleet had scattered out of its previous formation. It was anchored around the three remaining capital ships – the Tempestus herself, the Oberon-class Fall of Horst, and the ancient grand cruiser Vengeant Aeternam. Almost fifty smaller ships – escorts, frigates, transports and sensor-ship outrunners – made up the rest of the fleet. As a battlefleet it was depleted and ragged. Before it had begun the first engagements with the World Engine it had been more than twice as large. Almost its entire fighter fleet had been destroyed by early attempts to bombard the equatorial weapons port from which the World Engine’s ship-killer had fired. Since then the fleet had kept a wide formation in a crescent around what they presumed to be the World Engine’s stern, out of the weapon’s scope, but as had been illustrated with the death of the Perilous there was nowhere any ship could truly be safe.

‘We must break formation,’ said Sheherz. ‘The rest of the fleet will fall back. We will approach. Full engine burn, all speed ahead. Bow-first into the enemy, Tempestus. That is our course.’

The holomat’s projection shifted. The rest of the fleet broke apart and reformed thousands of kilometres away while the Tempestus flew in high over the World Engine’s northern pole. The World Engine spun on its axis in response, bringing the Tempestus closer to its kill-arc.

‘Can we make it?’ asked Sheherz.

The Tempestus met the outline of the World Engine, and vanished in a burst of information static.

‘Master of the Fleet,’ came a voice from the chamber entrance. Sheherz dismissed the hologram and turned to see Librarian Hyalhi walking between the datamedium stalactites. ‘I was told you would be here, ministering to our ship.’

‘I go to the source,’ said Sheherz. ‘I command my ship from the helm, but on this occasion I decided to ask her opinion in person.’

‘And what does she say?’

‘We should reach the World Engine,’ said Sheherz. ‘We have the speed. But there is no simulation that can say what will happen when we get there.’

The glimmers of light from the datamedium caught the edges of Hyalhi’s blue armour. The colours of the Astral Knights were silver-white and blue, but Hyalhi’s was the deep blue of a Librarian to mark him out as a psychic weapon on the battlefield. One shoulder pad bore the horned skull of the Chapter Librarium, and several books locked with gilded clasps hung from his waist. He wore the demi-cloak of an Astral Knights officer, and his face was half-hidden in the psychic protection circuits of his armour’s aegis hood. What could be seen of Hyalhi’s face was dark and old, the eyes pale grey.

‘I have never seen this place,’ said Hyalhi.

‘I rarely suffer another to enter,’ replied Sheherz.

‘Then forgive my trespass.’

‘I take it you do not come here on a whim,’ said Sheherz. ‘Librarian Hyalhi is not one given to conversation. I have not shared more than a hundred words with you in all my service, though we are both officers of the same Chapter.’

‘I keep my own counsel,’ said Hyalhi, ‘and offer it only when it is asked. The Chapter Master suggested I offer you that counsel now.’

Sheherz straightened up, immediately defensive. ‘The course of the Tempestus has been set,’ he said, ‘and she is at full battle orders. The ship is ready, and so are her crew.’

‘Yet,’ said Hyalhi, ‘you have misgivings.’

When it came to his ship, Sheherz was proud. He knew that. He had earned it, for his mastery of the fleet and kinship with the Tempestus was a powerful war asset for the Chapter. His first instinct was to brush off any suggestion of doubt, and send Hyalhi back to the mustering deck with a new appreciation for the Master of the Fleet’s authority on board. But there was no point, he told himself, in lying.

‘We were created to know no fear,’ said Sheherz, ‘but that does not mean we cannot feel sorrow, or even doubt. I have long been ready for my own death, Brother Hyalhi. That has never held any apprehension for me. I would welcome it if it was in the Emperor’s service. But now I know I have never been ready for the death of my Chapter. If we reach the surface of the World Engine, how many of us will leave it alive? We have no understanding of what lies down there save that it has the power and the will to destroy worlds. Will we face an army? An unsurvivable world that kills us as soon as we set foot on it? And into this complete unknown will fall my entire Chapter. We will be blind and beset by Throne knows what enemies. We left barely thirty battle-brothers on Obsidia. Not nearly enough to refound the Chapter. If we are swallowed up by the World Engine the Astral Knights will be gone. Our history will end. That is what causes me to doubt.’

‘It is a rare honesty that causes an Astral Knight to admit to doubt,’ said Hyalhi.

‘You are a psyker,’ replied Sheherz. ‘There isn’t much point in trying to hide it.’

‘It is more than our Chapter that is at stake,’ said Hyalhi. ‘You know where we are, captain. Varvenkast lies in the World Engine’s path.’

‘And our duty is to save its citizens,’ said Sheherz. ‘But at the cost of all of us? With no guarantee there will even be a battle to fight, let alone victory? If Varvenkast is lost it will be a tragedy, but if we are lost, all those who might be saved in the future will be lost with us. I will obey my Chapter Master, as is my duty, but I fear he is being short-sighted in condemning all our futures to save a single world.’

Hyalhi examined the intricate machinery of the machine-spirit core as if it was a strange sculpture to be appreciated. ‘If you were to boil down the essence of our Chapter,’ he said, ‘what would you be left with?’

‘Valour,’ said Sheherz. ‘Strength. Glory.’

‘And without those?’ asked Hyalhi. ‘If we were left without strength, and stripped of our courage. If all our glory were erased. What would we have left, Captain Sheherz?’

Sheherz thought for a moment. It was impossible to imagine the Astral Knights weak and afraid. Such a thing was obscene. If it were not for Hyalhi’s rank, his words would be insubordinate. But a single concept caught in his mind, something that could never be taken away. ‘Our honour,’ he said.

‘Honour,’ repeated Hyalhi. ‘We might be broken down and rendered helpless, but we will always have our honour. When all else is lost that honour is our proof against defeat, for there can never be complete catastrophe if honour is satisfied. The Astral Knights keep our word. We stand beside our brethren.’ He stopped examining the core and looked right at Sheherz, and his grey eyes seemed to strip away the layers of Sheherz’s mind. ‘And we make right our failings.’

‘The failure to destroy the World Engine is not ours alone,’ said Sheherz. ‘And it is far from certain we will make it right.’

‘I am not speaking of the World Engine,’ said Hyalhi. ‘It is evident to me that Lord Amhrad has not told you of the matter of honour we face. But given your doubts, I believe you need to know. If you will hear it, Sheherz. It is not something that can be unheard.’

‘If it gives me a cause to take my brothers and this ship to their deaths,’ said Sheherz, ‘then yes, I must hear it.’

The Varv Deliverance Fleet followed the formation orders sent out from the bridge of the Tempestus. They fell back to leave the Tempestus as the tip of the fleet’s spear, its flanks unprotected by the escort squadrons and sensor-ships.

The Tempestus adopted a high polar attitude to the World Engine, on the opposite side from the projected location of its primary weapon. The fleet’s few remaining fighter squadrons accompanied the battle-barge to the edge of the World Engine’s gravity well, then peeled off into a wide picket as sensor blips flickered across their tac-readouts. Hundreds of fragments of information billowed from the World Engine’s equator like a swarm of insects from a hive.

In the earliest engagements with the World Engine, this scene had been repeated many times. Approaching ships were accosted by flights of fighter craft launched from somewhere beneath the sensor-proof shielding of the World Engine, and terrible tolls had been reaped among the crews of the Varv Deliverance Fleet. But while the fleet could rarely replace lost fighters and crews, the World Engine’s swarms seemed to vanish beneath its shielding and emerge with their numbers replenished. The battles had been abandoned as pointless, and it was only now that the Imperial fighter crews flew in anger again.

The Tempestus’s sensor-broadcasts became intermittent as junk information filled the void. As communications threatened to cease completely, the fleet’s other ships all sent their message to the Tempestus, knowing it might be the last message they ever sent to their sister battleship.

Emperor’s speed, Tempestus.

Shed their blood, Tempestus.

Return to us in victory, sister.

Whatever you find, kill them all.

‘Hard to port ventral!’ ordered Sheherz and in response the ship lurched under him, the grav-units on the Tempestus not quite enough to compensate for the sudden change.

On the viewscreen, its image enhanced with constant sensor updates, the silvery flocks of enemy fighters drew a wide crescent above the Tempestus. Friendly craft edged in green rose up to meet them, hurtling past the nose of the battle-barge as they moved to engage.

‘Tactical counts five hundred enemy in the void,’ came the voice of one bridge crewman. The information pouring in formed rows of figures and symbols on secondary viewscreens. Sheherz preferred to keep most such information in his head, picturing the unfolding engagement as if it were projected into his mind by the machine-spirit’s holomat.

The friendly fighters numbered rather less than two hundred. Half of them were from the escort carrier squadron Sabre, the Vengeant Aeternam, and the carrier platform Merciless. The rest were orphan squadrons, fighters whose parent carriers had been destroyed.

‘Power to dorsal batteries,’ said Sheherz. ‘Bring our nose up, we’ll hit them bow-on. Damage control parties to forward stations.’

Most of his orders were being followed before he gave them, the inevitabilities of void combat compelling the crew to prepare the ship for bloodshed.

Most of the crew did not know the true nature of their destination. The bridge crew did by necessity, for they had created the charts and vectors that put the Tempestus on an intercept course with the World Engine. If any of them had voiced horror at the prospect, it had not reached Sheherz’s ears. These were crew bonded to the Astral Knights Chapter, and were expected to face death in the void if the Chapter demanded it. Shipmistress Gereltus would not permit anyone on her bridge who would show dismay at the prospect of this suicide mission, but that did not mean none of them felt it now.

The crew would die. Sheherz knew that. It had been a thought flickering at the back of his mind the moment Amhrad voiced his plan to use the Tempestus as a weapon. A Space Marine, especially the Master of the Fleet, could not let that thought get in the way of the choices he had to make. It was not something he was proud of. It was just the way he had to be.

‘Lord captain,’ said the crewman at the ship’s security helm, a leathery old stalwart who usually kept silent when the Tempestus was in combat. ‘Are we prepared for boarding?’

The World Engine had never sent out boarders before – if it had, the Astral Knights would have some idea about just who or what commanded it. That did not mean, of course, that it had not been saving that trick for just such an occasion as this.

‘Keep the security details back to assist damage control,’ said Sheherz. ‘If a Chapter of Space Marines cannot deal with boarders, then nothing can.’

In the muster decks of the Tempestus the whole Chapter was gathered. There had barely been room for the hundreds of battle-brothers, almost three times the complement a battle-barge typically carried. The Chapter had the barest minimum of vehicles and other heavy equipment, because no one could say how useful they would be down on the surface.

One bridge screen showed composite pict-grabs of the alien fighters. They were crescent-shaped with the points of their curved wings set forward. They had twin engines and cannon, and no obvious cockpit or entry hatches. Their metal had a strange shifting quality, squared spirals rippling across the surface. They had no livery or markings on the bare metal.

‘Brace!’ came the warning from the sensorium helm. The crewmen on the bridge dropped onto the deck or held on to the architectural carvings on the walls. The viewscreen showed the images from the sensors on the prow of the Tempestus as the shoal of enemy fighters split into three squadrons and spiralled towards the ship, livid green blasts of energy already streaking across the void.

The deck shuddered as the fighters peeled off and hurtled down the flanks of the Tempestus. Las-fire hammered against the hull plating. The image shuddered and broke apart into static as the prow sensors were shattered by the fire rattling against the ship’s nose. Damage warnings were already blaring somewhere in the ship nearby.

Sheherz recognised the vibrations of the plasma batteries and las-broadsides firing in response, punctuated by the thin roar of missile turrets disgorging their payloads. The turrets covered the sides of the Tempestus, and firing in their close defence configuration created a distinctive thump through the structure of the ship. It felt like the anger of the machine-spirit, a distant roar of rage.

Sparks flew from one of the many bridge cogitators as a power surge burned out its circuits. One of the bridge crew sprayed an extinguisher over the fire. The lights on the bridge, already kept dim, flickered low as the power fluctuated again.

‘Report!’ ordered the shipmistress.

‘Port turrets down to seventy per cent,’ came the reply from one of the damage control helms.

‘Starboard at sixty-five.’

‘Tactical helm!’ demanded Sheherz. ‘Where are the enemy?’

‘Astern,’ replied the crewman at the tactical helm. He had been scorched by the short-lived fire but remained at his post. ‘They’re staying in our wake.’

Then the enemy knew what it was doing. The wake of the ship, directly behind the engine, made for hazardous flying but hampered the laser turrets’ targeting. ‘They’re going to hit us again,’ said Sheherz. ‘They’ll come in before our damage control teams get into position.’

‘They’ve done for enough Imperial ships to know their weaknesses,’ said the shipmistress.

‘Astral Knights do not have weaknesses,’ said Sheherz. ‘Order the fighters to engage. All of them. All stop, reverse thrusters engage. Turn us hard to port.’

It was a bizarre order, but the crew of the Tempestus obeyed without pause. Even if he had not been the Master of the Fleet, he was the only man the machine-spirit trusted. That on its own would have been enough.

The ship yawed violently. Anything not stowed was thrown around the bridge. Helm crew too slow to brace were thrown off their feet. The engine pitch, that ever-present thrum that became inaudible after months on board, shifted to the high whine of the prow thrusters. The ship decelerated and again it lurched.

In the intricate game of voidbound combat, the rules of physics were there to be bent. The Tempestus had the agility of a far smaller ship, enough for it to slow suddenly and turn to present one side of its hull to bear. The firepower of the battle-barge was in its broadsides, its long-range lance batteries and arrays of laser turrets. The enemy fighters had first aimed to hit the upper hull, and Sheherz had given them the prow. Now they wanted to strike the engines and plasma reactors near the stern, but Sheherz had no intention of becoming such a target. Instead he would give them the full power of a battle-barge’s bombardment. If the hostile fighters wanted another swing at the Tempestus, they were going to have to earn it through a gauntlet of fire.

The static on the viewscreen cleared. In place of the pict-grabs from the prow the machine-spirit now presented images taken from the Imperial fighters engaging the host of enemy craft. The Imperial fighters were outnumbered and Sheherz saw they were dying already, bursting in silent explosions of silver to the longer-ranged enemy fire.

‘Man the broadside!’ ordered Sheherz. ‘Everything we have!’

The port flank of the Tempestus slewed round to face the fighter battle. More Imperial ships were knocked from the void, imploding into showers of wreckage like bursting fireworks.

‘Tactical, give me targets!’ said Sheherz.

‘Twenty per cent of the enemy in barrage range,’ was the reply.

The lances were not accurate enough to pick off a fighter craft, but in enough numbers the weight of their fire would shred a significant percentage of fighters in close range.

‘Have the fighters break towards us,’ said Sheherz. ‘Draw them in.’

Already almost a quarter of the Imperial fighters were gone. A face-to-face engagement could only ever result in the destruction of the fighter force, but it was necessary.

Sheherz’s mind turned to the men and women of the fighter crews. A handful would live through the battle, if that. But he quickly recalled what Librarian Hyalhi had told him, the enormity of it. The sacrifice was grave, but there was never any question of its worth.

‘Forty per cent!’ called out the tactical crewman.

‘Fires on decks nineteen through forty-one,’ reported the damage control helm.

‘Despatch damage control,’ said Sheherz. The shipmistress immediately began reeling off a series of orders for containing the fires. They were close to the ship’s plasma reactors. In any other situation they would be Sheherz’s priority. Not now.

‘Sixty per cent!’

Three out of every five enemy fighters were within the kill-box created by the broadside weapons. When the Imperial fighters were gone, the enemy would break formation and loop out of that zone to attack from the stern. If, that was, they were still flying.

‘Broadsides fire!’ ordered Sheherz. ‘Everything! Everything we have!’

The Tempestus rocked under the force of its scores of lasers and turrets erupting at once. The viewscreen filled up with firing angles, illuminating the void with a cross-hatching of light.

‘We’re going to lose reactor nine!’ said damage control.

‘Shut it down and seal it off!’ ordered the shipmistress.

Another volley shuddered through the ship. The enemy fighters were caught in its web and ships were sheared in two or spitted lengthways by blades of las. The survivors broke and fled, weaving through the firestorm, all formation gone.

The Imperial fighters were caught in it, too. They fared better, for they had a few seconds’ warning before the broadside was launched. But many were simply too close to break out of the kill-box. They spiralled to destruction as their hulls were punctured or their fuel cells ripped open.

Sacrifices. They all had to make them, Imperial Navy crewman and Space Marine. The fighter crews had known that the moment they first strapped themselves into a trainer’s cockpit. Sheherz acknowledged the winking of the viewscreen icons from green to black, and put them out of his mind.

‘Bring us back on course,’ he ordered. ‘Full power.’

‘Nine is down,’ said damage control. ‘Fires in the generatorium chamber. Sealed off.’

‘How many inside?’ asked the shipmistress.

‘Twenty-three,’ said damage control.

There were twenty-three men and women locked up in the chamber where reactor nine was burning. The shipmistress should not have asked the question, thought Sheherz. Their sacrifice was no different to that of anyone else on the Tempestus.

The ship’s attitude pitched and its main engines flared again, putting it back on course for the World Engine. The World Engine itself was turning to catch the Tempestus in the arc of its main weapon. Even without making all the calculations, Sheherz could see it was close. Pausing to break up the fighter assault had cost them enough time for the World Engine’s controllers to react.

The enemy fighter force had been cut in half. It was regrouping now, individual fighters wheeling around to adopt formation before making another assault. The assault would hit and this time there wasn’t much the Tempestus could do about it. Sheherz left that question in the hands of the Emperor.

‘My lord,’ said Sheherz into the Astral Knights vox-link. ‘Are we in good order?’

‘It was rough,’ replied Chapter Master Amhrad from the muster decks, where the companies of the Astral Knights were gathered. ‘But we report no losses.’

‘Impact in nine minutes,’ said Sheherz. ‘I wish I were there with my brethren, Chapter Master.’

Sheherz was technically the captain of the Sixth Company, but his duties as Master of the Fleet meant he rarely fought alongside them. Most such titles were ceremonial, and their holders bore arms aside their brethren like any other Space Marine, but the Astral Knights Master of the Fleet had always stood apart. Sheherz had always assumed, through his earning of his power armour and his career in the Sixth Company, that however far he rose he would do it shoulder to shoulder with his fellow Astral Knights. But he understood the Tempestus as few could, and the captaincy of the Sixth Company took him further from his brethren, not closer to them.

Sheherz left command of the Sixth on the ground to First Sergeant Kypsalah. His company was gathered alongside the rest of the Chapter in the cavernous muster decks, waiting for whatever might happen when the Tempestus broke through the veil around the World Engine and crash-landed on its surface. None of them knew what they might find, whether the ship would be annihilated in an instant or whether they would find themselves surrounded by a horde of enemies. A captain should be with them at such a time, preparing their souls for whatever ordeal they were to face. Sheherz told himself he would rush to join them as soon as the ship was down. The battle-brothers of the Sixth would take heart that he had descended from the distant bridge to pound through the mud with them.

‘Your duty is there, captain,’ said Amhrad. ‘The Tempestus needs guidance as much as your brothers. Lead her well.’

‘For glory, my lord.’

‘For glory, Master of the Fleet.’

Reactor nine was shut down but fires were burning right up the spine of the ship. Damage control teams were tied up keeping them from spreading. The Tempestus accelerated towards the World Engine trailing wreckage and burning plasma fuel.

‘We’re within the target’s gravity horizon,’ said the shipmistress. ‘Your orders?’

‘All stop,’ said Sheherz. The ship didn’t need its own power any more – the gravity of the World Engine would propel it fast enough. The engine drone lowered to a whisper and the ship was suddenly abnormally quiet.

Men who were born on a spaceship could be driven mad when they set foot on a planet and were suddenly without the engine noise they had heard their whole lives. They thought they had died. Sometimes their hearts stopped and they really did die.

‘Reactors four and eleven are failing,’ said damage control.

Sheherz ran the calculations in his head.

‘We won’t have enough power for the landing,’ said Shipmistress Gereltus. Sheherz had come to the same conclusion himself a moment earlier.

‘Then it will be rough,’ replied Sheherz. If there was any question of turning back, Gereltus did not voice it. ‘All reverse thrust. Brace for collision.’

Klaxons sounded through the ship. New engine notes rose as the prow thrusters burned again, slowing the ship down. It would not be enough for even a crash landing. The Tempestus was tough, but even she might not be that tough.

‘There is nothing more now that I can do,’ said Sheherz quietly. The shipmistress and her crew could not hear him. ‘Chance alone will decide. I pray I have stacked our odds high enough, but the outcome is out of my hands.’

He paused. Perhaps a reply could come through the engines and the chiming of the bridge cogitators, or formed from the static on the vox-net. He did not hear it.

‘If there is anything you can do, Tempestus,’ he continued, ‘if you can still guide us, then the helm is yours. I cannot claim to be your master now when I have put our survival at the whim of fate. And if either of us should not survive, it has been an honour.’

Perhaps the prow thrusters altered pitch a little. Perhaps the alarms going on every deck hit a higher or lower note for a moment. But Sheherz could not make out any reply from the Tempestus.

He did not even know if the machine-spirit was aware, in the way that a human mind was. Perhaps it was just a set of commands to be fired off when the sensors received the right information. His words probably meant nothing to it. But they had to be said.

‘Atmospheric breach!’ said the crewman at the tactical helm.

‘All brace! All brace!’ ordered Shipmistress Gereltus again.

With insufficient input from the Imperial fighter craft, the viewscreen had switched back to the prow sensors. The image was patchy and stuttering. It was full of the World Engine, its surface cloaked in silvery cloud. The image shook as the Tempestus breached the upper reaches of the World Engine’s atmosphere. The ship decelerated alarmingly, catastrophically, and a hundred warnings blared out as turrets and other extremities were ripped off by the sudden air resistance. The friction flared in orange tongues of fire around the edges of the prow. Hull plates stripped off, torn like paper.

The bridge crew were thrown around. Sheherz kept his footing as the mag-locks on his boots anchored him to the deck.

The prow sensors died. The last image the viewscreen ever showed was of the clouds streaking by, burned away just enough to reveal a jigsaw of soaring steel below, a world-spanning alien city.

‘Thrusters correcting!’ gasped Gereltus. She was clinging to the tactical helm. A loose piece of equipment had struck her and blood ran down her face. ‘We’re… we’re coming down ventral-first…’

The Tempestus had turned herself so she would crash belly-down instead of spearing into the World Engine prow first. It was the best she could do in the circumstances. She had ratcheted the chances of success a few per cent higher.

Chance. That was all it was.

The din was awful. Hull plates were being torn off to expose the decks beneath, and they were being stripped by the shrieking wind and washed with flame. Sheherz heard a plasma reactor going critical, the boom of its vaporising coolant almost lost in the howl.

There was only room in his mind for one thought.

We must all make sacrifices. Every man’s will be different. But they will be made.

Sheherz was willing to die. He had even come to terms with the whole Chapter being lost. But it was hearing the Tempestus dying that was the worst. His body could take pain, he could mourn and avenge brothers he lost… but the ship was an icon, a home, a fellow warrior and a relic of a glorious past. Could he sacrifice that willingly? Or would it have to be torn from his hands by fate?

Doubt struck him. Was there something he was not willing to give up, after all?

The ship crunched through the tallest structures. Sheherz could hear the spires puncturing the lower hull and snapping off.

‘Ventral three is compromised!’ came a vox from one of the crew, screaming to be heard over the roar of tearing metal. ‘Pods deploying! Pods…’

The transmission was cut off. Some of the Astral Knights had been sealed in drop pods, in case the landing was such that it was safer for them to be deployed in the ten-man assault pods than to remain sheltered within the ship. There had been room for barely a company’s worth in the pods, and those Astral Knights were now plummeting from the crashing ship to land wherever fate saw fit to scatter them. The vast majority of the brethren would have to weather the landing on the Tempestus.

The ship’s thrusters were still firing, arresting her descent. She had slowed enough to make a collision potentially survivable. There was a chance. Not great, but it existed.

‘It has been an honour,’ said Sheherz, and he felt the machine-spirit slipping away from him, sinking into darkness. ‘Goodbye.’

The floor blistered up, tearing the helm cogitators from their housings. A great mass of dark grey steel ripped up through it, the point of an immense metal spear, its engraved surface hurtling past into the ceiling of the bridge and up through the decks above. The bridge of the Tempestus was sternward, towards the middle where collision and enemy fire would struggle to reach the command systems. Suddenly its armoured shelter seemed hopelessly fragile. The scale of the ship became apparent through the endless labyrinths of torn metal opened up by the forces of the crash.

The Tempestus let out a terrible dying scream of tearing steel. Exploding fuel tanks and ammunition stashes rose like a choir hitting a crescendo. It was the sound of a dying god.

The ship lurched to the side. The bridge was a ruin of twisted metal. The building that had impaled the Tempestus through the belly was being torn down by the ship’s weight. Sheherz could do nothing but stand on his island of deck, watching the magnitude of the destruction. The ruin tore through the ship like a knife through muscle and organs, laying open the hundreds of decks, the crew quarters and sick bays, shrines, mess halls, armouries, the brig and the shipmistress’s quarters, the grey expanse of the crew’s drilling-ground and the long dusty labyrinth of maintenance tunnels.

Even the forgotten places, where no man had walked since the ship’s construction, were ripped open and exposed like the raw nerve endings.

But he could not see the steel-clad caverns of the muster decks. They were further aft than the enormous wound in the ship’s belly. There the Astral Knights were weathering the crash, and the destruction had not reached them yet.

There was hope.

The Tempestus hit the ground. The lower decks, exposed by the great wound, flattened into crushed strata of steel. Fires burst there, and showers of sparks from severed power conduits. Sheherz watched it unfold as if in slow motion and the enormity of it filled his mind. Crewmen tumbled into the abyss of ruin. Burning fuel poured from conduit breaches like blood from an artery.

The deck beneath Sheherz gave way. He fell into that black canyon, into the mass of burning steel below.

His last thoughts were calm. A great weight had been taken off, for he had allowed fate to take the Tempestus from him. He had given the old ship permission to die in the name of victory, as Sheherz himself had accepted long ago. It was not just a Space Marine’s obligation to offer his life to his duty – it was his right, as well, and he had granted that right to the ship.

It was gratitude he felt, sorrowful but accepting.

Then through the burning darkness loomed a shape like a steel skull, stretched and featureless except for deep sockets with green flecks for eyes. Its hunched metallic shape came closer and it aimed a gun of the same grey metal at him, its details obscured by a sudden glare of green energy and an accompanying burst of pain.

But it did not matter. His duty had been done. The sacrifice had been made.

Then Sheherz thought no more.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

‘Flayed’ first published in The Black Library Anthology in 2013.
‘The Lords of Borsis’ first published in The Black Library Anthology in 2013.
‘The Word of the Silent King’ first published digitally in 2014.
Veil of Darkness first published as an audio drama in 2013.
‘Mission: Annihilate’ first published digitally in 2013.
‘Cold Steel’ first published digitally in 2013.
‘But Dust in the Wind’ first published in Victories of the Space Marines in 2011.
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Kevin Chin.

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ISBN: 978-1-78251-859-4

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