More Warhammer 40,000 from Black Library

• DAWN OF FIRE •

Book 1: AVENGING SON

Guy Haley

Book 2: THE GATE OF BONES

Andy Clark

Book 3: THE WOLFTIME

Gav Thorpe

INDOMITUS

Gav Thorpe

SILENT HUNTERS

Edoardo Albert

DAY OF ASCENSION

Adrian Tchaikovsky

• DARK IMPERIUM •

Guy Haley

Book 1: DARK IMPERIUM

Book 2: PLAGUE WAR

Book 3: GODBLIGHT

THE DEVASTATION OF BAAL

A Blood Angels novel by Guy Haley

ASHES OF PROSPERO

A Space Wolves novel by Gav Thorpe

WAR OF SECRETS

A Dark Angels novel by Phil Kelly

OF HONOUR AND IRON

An Ultramarines novel by Ian St. Martin

APOCALYPSE

An Imperial Fists, Raven Guard and White Scars novel by Josh Reynolds

FIST OF THE IMPERIUM

An Imperial Fists novel by Andy Clark

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

HUNT FOR VOLDORIUS

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

THE LAST HUNT

Prologue

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter twenty

Epilogue

BLOOD OATH

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Interlude 1-0

Chapter five

Interlude 2-0

Chapter six

Epilogue

HUNTER’S SNARE

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

THE THRILL OF THE HUNT

KOR’SARRO KHAN: HUNTMASTER

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘Avenging Son’

A Black Library Publication

For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind. By the might of His inexhaustible armies a million worlds stand against the dark.

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

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods.

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

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

HUNT FOR VOLDORIUS

ANDY HOARE

‘Once in every quarter century, the masters of the White Scars Chapter gather in the highest spire of their Chapter-Fortress, high atop the Khum Karta Mountains, to conduct the auspicious Rites of Howling. During this most solemn of rituals, the names of all those foes that have yet to be slain are read aloud, lest the proud and savage Sons of Chogoris ever forget their sworn duty to hunt down the enemies of the Emperor and of their mighty primarch, the honoured First, Lord Jaghatai Khan.

The fell deeds of each enemy are recounted, and great and terrible oaths are sworn. But no vow ever undertaken has been as binding, nor as solemn as that made by Kor’sarro Khan, fifty-first Master of the Hunt and Captain of the 3rd Company of the White Scars. For it was upon the centennial feast of the ascension of the Chapter’s current Great Khan, the honoured Kyublai, that the name of Kernax Voldorius was read aloud for the final time.

The name of this most vile of daemon princes appears in the forbidden histories and the folklore of a thousand and more worlds, though none save the most highly placed amongst the Lords of the Imperium know the truth of his deeds. So too was he known by other names upon a thousand more planets. On Kento he was called the Vindictor; on Loran, the Unyielding Storm; and on cursed Blindhope, the Executioner. The Elder-Lords of the Seven Outer Marches named him the Hand of Night; the Sentinels of the Eye, the Curse of Lost Gods. It is said that only the Hidden Masters of the Ordo Malleus know the daemon’s true name, and that seven of their number have fallen to his blade attempting to use it to gain power over him.

But of all of the evils this being had committed, the name of one is whispered across a hundred sectors. It was the deed that caused the mortal Kernax to be granted ascension by the fell powers of the empyrean, and to take his place as a daemon prince of Chaos. Two thousand years ago, Voldorius brought about the wholesale slaughter of billions of souls, when he invoked the power of an ancient weapon created by madmen during the long lost Dark Age of Technology.

That weapon was the Bloodtide.

And so, Kyublai commissioned Kor’sarro to bring him the head of Kernax Voldorius, that it might be taken back to Chogoris, where according to the ancient ways of the White Scars, it might be encased in living silver and mounted upon a lance to be set upon the road to Khum Karta. Only then would the name of Kernax Voldorius be struck from the hunt. Only then would Kor’sarro Khan’s duty be done.

Thus, Kor’sarro Khan, Master of the Hunt, undertook the greatest of challenges, a hunt that had defeated so many of his forebears, a hunt that would take him to every corner of the Imperium and beyond, over the course of a decade and more.

The Hunt for Voldorius.’

– Omniscenti Bithisarea, Deeds of the Adeptus Astartes,
Volume IX, Chapter XXV, M.40 recension (suppressed)

CHAPTER ONE

THUNDER IN A CLEAR SKY

‘Release in ten,’ the pilot announced calmly over the vox-net. ‘Drop bay portal opening.’

Kor’sarro Khan, Captain of the 3rd Company of the White Scars Chapter of Space Marines, and holder of the honoured rank of Master of the Hunt, turned his gaze from the command terminal to the scene outside the Thunderhawk’s canopy. Flashing red lumens made the inside of the strike cruiser’s drop bay appear as a scene from the underworld, putting Kor’sarro in mind of the tales the Chapter’s Storm Seers told at the great feasts. The sound of wailing sirens added to the hellish impression, sounding like the lamentations of the damned. With a grinding rumble transmitted through the hull of the gunship directly to Kor’sarro’s bones, the great doors below the Thunderhawk ground open. In seconds, a deep, metallic boom passed through the strike cruiser and the doors were fully open, the Thunderhawk suspended by its drop cradle above the yawning opening.

‘Portal bay open,’ the pilot reported. ‘Release in five.’

With the drop-portal open, Kor’sarro saw for the first time the surface of Cernis IV. From this height, the land appeared white and serene, glistening with scintillating reflections of the violet lights that danced in the upper atmosphere. As captivating as the lights were, the Master of the Hunt knew that what created them represented a terrible danger to the drop mission his force was about to undertake.

‘Release!’

An instant after the pilot’s announcement, the huge metal claws holding the Thunderhawk above the portal sprang apart. The gunship dropped through the opening with gut-wrenching force, the surface of Cernis IV leaping upwards to meet it. Kor’sarro fought against the staggering G-force to raise his head and look upwards at the rapidly receding form of the strike cruiser, Lord of Heavens. He noted with satisfaction the release of the other four gunships, each holding its place in the formation.

The Thunderhawks levelled out. Rather than dropping straight downwards, each now arrowed prow first towards the surface. Already, bright flames began to lick the leading edges of the gunships’ blunt forms.

‘Gravimetrics picking up turbulence, as predicted,’ the pilot said, addressing Kor’sarro directly. The Techmarines had warned of the disturbance the gunships would meet as they undertook the drop, an effect caused by the complex interactions of Cernis IV’s many natural satellites.

‘Compensate as you see fit,’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘But keep us on target.’

The cockpit began to shudder, wisps of flame dancing across the outside of the armoured canopy. The Thunderhawks were effecting their drop on a heading that no ordinary human troops could undertake, for the gravitational forces would overcome them long before the drop vessels touched down. The White Scars were no mere humans, however; they were superhumans, genetically enhanced Space Marines whose augmented physiologies could withstand such forces and more.

‘They’ll never see us coming,’ Kor’sarro growled, his words drowned out by the roaring of the upper atmosphere as it burned against the gunship’s hull. Kor’sarro longed to feel the earth beneath his feet, to breathe the air of the world below, to engage his enemy and complete the hunt. Though masters of the lightning strike, the White Scars preferred to fight across the wide spaces of a planet’s surface. Kor’sarro always felt a notion he imagined was akin to helplessness during a planetary drop. As the buffeting increased still further and the cockpit shook with mounting violence, the captain gripped the arms of the grav-couch fiercely.

‘Approaching overlap point alpha,’ the pilot reported. Kor’sarro caught the note of concentration in the warrior’s voice, the only hint of the tension the Space Marine must have been experiencing.

As the gunship dived on and the surface of Cernis IV swelled to fill the view from the cockpit, the shuddering reached a new pitch. Kor’sarro saw that six of the planet’s small moons were rising, and it was this that was inflicting the violent disturbance as the Thunderhawks raced onwards. Although the Techmarines had predicted the effect, there was still a risk that the titanic forces might prove too strong for even the mighty Thunderhawks. At a single word, Kor’sarro could order the gunships to change course, coming about to a new heading that would avoid the worst of the gravitational pressures. Yet to do so would be to abandon the best chance of taking the target by surprise, for none could expect an attack to come from the vector the White Scars were taking. The target was far too valuable to lose, and Kor’sarro would take any risk to achieve victory. His honour, and that of the entire 3rd Company, depended on it.

‘Entering point alpha!’ the pilot called out, his voice barely audible over the roaring against the hull and the violent shaking of the cockpit. The turbulence increased by an order of magnitude as the gunship entered the point where the gravitational influences of the moons converged. Kor’sarro imagined his body was being pulled in several different directions at once, and knew that it was only his genetic enhancements that kept him conscious. He knew too that his survival relied not only on the Thunderhawk resisting the immense pressures that strained its armoured hull to breaking point, but also upon the pilot’s own efforts not only to remain conscious, but to keep the vessel on its heading.

‘Terminal point alpha reached,’ the pilot announced through gritted teeth. There was no turning back now, even if Kor’sarro had been willing to order a change in heading. He mouthed a silent prayer to the Emperor of Mankind and to Jaghatai Khan, revered Primarch of the White Scars.

The view through the canopy was now entirely obscured by rippling white flame as the atmosphere of Cernis IV burned against the armoured panels. Kor’sarro’s enhanced vision protected his eyes from damage. Warning klaxons wailed as the forces outside took their toll on the gunship’s hull, which groaned audibly as it was wrenched in multiple directions. The temperature inside the cockpit rose to that of a furnace as the vessel’s cooling systems laboured to maintain survivable conditions. Sweat ran from Kor’sarro’s brow, obscuring his vision as he looked to the pilot.

‘Brother Koban,’ Kor’sarro addressed the pilot. The Space Marine’s face was a mask of determination as he battled with the gunship’s controls. Kor’sarro knew that the pilot was nearing the bounds of his endurance. ‘Draw your strength from your ancestors,’ Kor’sarro shouted over the roaring winds and the wailing alerts. ‘Have faith in the primarch!’

‘Honoured be his name!’ the pilot replied by rote, visibly emboldened by his captain’s words. The Space Marine redoubled his efforts, mastering the bucking control column, and the gunship responded instantly. The buffeting calmed, and in moments the white flames licking the outside of the canopy faded and danced away.

‘My thanks, brother-captain,’ the pilot said, nodding his head towards Kor’sarro.

‘You have but yourself to thank,’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘And the Great Khan, honoured be his name.’

As the last of the flames engulfing the Thunderhawk’s blunt, armoured prow flickered and died, the surface of Cernis IV became visible again. The entire view from the cockpit was now filled with the pure, glittering whiteness of the planet’s northern polar region. Where before the surface had appeared to shimmer with reflected light, Kor’sarro could discern individual points of jagged, violet-hued brightness. Each of these was a towering crystalline formation, some as tall as a man, others rearing hundreds of metres in the cold air. Each crystal tower reflected the violet auroras that pulsated in the skies above, casting the entire region in an unearthly light.

The Techmarines had been unable to identify the material from which the crystals were formed, but warned that they were clustered so densely across the northern pole that they presented a significant threat to a successful planetfall operation. The remote likeliness of any force attempting such a mission in the perilous region had simply added to its desirability, as far as Kor’sarro was concerned, and the order had been given.

‘Landing zone identified,’ the co-pilot announced.

‘Altering course,’ the pilot replied, bringing the gunship around to the coordinates scrolling across his command slate. ‘Brother-captain?’

Kor’sarro confirmed that the other four Thunderhawks of the strike force were in formation. One was trailing a line of thick black smoke from its starboard engine. None of the Thunderhawks had come through the drop untouched and there was little that could be done now. He could not even risk a vox-transmission to determine the extent of the gunship’s wound. Only faith in the Great Khan would see them through.

‘Final approach,’ Kor’sarro ordered.

On his word, the gunship banked before diving for the frozen surface. The landscape rushed upwards dramatically as the Thunderhawk’s air brakes shed the vessel’s momentum. In minutes, the largest of the crystal towers were discernable, their multi-faceted, mirror-smooth flanks reflecting light in all directions.

‘Beginning approach run,’ the pilot said, his attentions focussed on the closing towers. As the Thunderhawk levelled out the pilot fed power to the engines. Crystals the size of cathedrals flashed by on all sides, and for an instant Kor’sarro was assailed by the sight of a thousand gunships flying in an insane formation all about. There was no way of telling which were the real vessels and which were reflections on the mirrored surfaces of the crystal towers.

‘Adjust three-nine in eight point five,’ the co-pilot said, not taking his eyes from the augur screen before him.

The pilot merely nodded, before yanking hard on the control column. Kor’sarro’s seat restraints tensed as his weight was thrown suddenly to port, but to his relief they held. The largest crystal tower Kor’sarro had yet seen flashed by the gunship’s starboard. Due to its multiple, reflective faces, the crystal had not been visible by eyesight. Only the co-pilot’s augur warning had saved the vessel from being smashed to atoms against its sheer side.

‘That was too close,’ breathed the pilot. ‘My apologies, brother-captain.’

‘None needed,’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘Attend to your duty.’

The pilot returned his attentions to the fore, bringing the gunship into a wide turn that brought it around a huge crystal tower that Kor’sarro had not even seen amongst the riot of reflections. Leaving the tower behind, the pilot corrected the heading, Kor’sarro craning his neck to ensure that the other vessels were doing likewise.

‘Delta twelve!’ the co-pilot called out suddenly.

The pilot heeded his battle-brother’s warning with instinctive speed. The Thunderhawk was thrown violently to starboard as the pilot avoided a needle-like tower that reared out of nowhere as if seeking to skewer the vessel. For the briefest moment, Kor’sarro caught sight of his own reflection in the needle’s mirrored flank as the formation flashed by mere metres away.

Kor’sarro had no need to turn his head to look through the rear of the canopy in order to follow the progress of the other four gunships, for their reflections were all about, mirrored in a thousand glassy crystal flanks. One Thunderhawk pitched to starboard, while two went to port, the needle flashing by between. The last gunship, still trailing smoke from the engine damaged during the planetfall, was not so fast to react. To his great honour, the vessel’s pilot almost managed to avoid the crystal spire, but his starboard wing grazed it nonetheless. In an instant, the end of the stubby wing was shorn away, and the entire needle exploded into a million shards. The devastation was reflected from a thousand surfaces at once. Kor’sarro’s senses were all but overwhelmed as innumerable shards, both real and reflected, cascaded in all directions, impacting on the hull of his own gunship like anti-aircraft fire.

‘Hunter Three’s going down!’ the co-pilot called out. ‘I can’t get a reading, there’s too much interference from the shards.’

Kor’sarro processed the terrible decision in an instant. Just as quickly, his mind was made up. ‘Maintain vox-silence,’ he ordered. ‘But keep the channels open.’

The mission was all.

‘You are sure it is him?’ Kor’sarro had asked when informed that the object of his years-long hunt had once again been located. ‘You are sure this is not another of his traps?’

‘Yes, my khan, I am sure it is Voldorius,’ the Scout-sergeant replied. ‘Whether or not it is a trap, however…’

‘I understand, Kholka. You will forgive my impatience in this matter,’ Kor’sarro said. Taking a deep breath, he reined in his eagerness to resume the pursuit of this ancient nemesis of his Chapter. The Master of the Hunt must be keen-eyed and measured in all he does, Kor’sarro reminded himself, lest he blunder into a trap of his target’s making. ‘Please, deliver your report.’

Scout-Sergeant Kholka looked from Kor’sarro to the black void beyond the strike cruiser’s armoured viewing port at which he stood. Kor’sarro allowed the veteran a moment to gather his thoughts, knowing that Kholka shared his own feelings in the matter. The stateroom in which the two warriors met was dark, its walls lined with the trophies of a score of victories. Displayed above the viewing port was the polished skull of a tyranid hive tyrant, a mighty beast which Kor’sarro himself had bested in lethal one-on-one combat. Lethal for the beast itself, Kor’sarro mused, memories of the climax of the Siege of Mysibis flooding back, but almost for him too. Even now, two decades later, the scars earned in that titanic confrontation still pained him.

‘We picked up his trail at Sinopha Station, on the fringes of the Protean Ebb,’ Kholka began. ‘The survivors’ accounts left us in no doubt that the attackers were Alpha Legion.’ The Scout-sergeant paused, evidently calling to mind the scenes of carnage and butchery at the station.

‘Go on, my friend,’ Kor’sarro urged. ‘How did you identify the traitors as belonging to Voldorius’s band?’

‘At first we had only the accounts to go by,’ Kholka continued. ‘But these were… unclear, as I am sure you can imagine.’

Indeed I can, Kor’sarro thought. The Alpha Legion, erstwhile brothers of the Space Marines, had turned against the Imperium ten thousand years ago, and ever since their defeat in that galaxy-wide civil war they had waged a bitter campaign of terror on the peoples of the Imperium. The treacherous Alpha Legion were masters of insurrection and disorder, spreading the poison of rebellion wherever they went. They only left survivors when they intended accounts of their actions to spread panic across a wide area.

‘Those victims who were not killed in the attack were driven beyond sanity by the cruelties inflicted upon them,’ the sergeant said. ‘Others had been reduced to gibbering imbeciles by the traitors’ sorceries. Most were able to tell us very little. But one, who had served in the station’s watch-militia, had displayed the foresight to commit the initial stages of the attack to the archivum, and this we were able to retrieve.’

‘What of this man?’ Kor’sarro asked, even though he knew what the sergeant’s reply would be.

‘We granted him the Emperor’s peace,’ Kholka responded gravely. ‘His duty was done, and it was all we could do for him.’

Kor’sarro nodded for the sergeant to continue.

‘The station’s archivum logs confirmed the identity of the attackers’ vessel.’

‘The Ninth Eye?’ Kor’sarro interjected. If it was indeed that hated ship that had delivered the Alpha Legion attackers to Sinopha Station, then the hunt for the Daemon Lord Voldorius was truly back underway, after so many galling months of cold trails and frustration.

‘The Ninth Eye,’ the sergeant confirmed. Kor’sarro watched Kholka as he paced before the viewing port, and paused before the skull of a fearsome ambull. ‘We set out immediately, and were able to pick up the vessel’s signature as it made for the jump point. Our astropath was able to track its jump, and our Navigator able to shadow it without our enemy becoming aware of our presence.’

‘You know this?’ Kor’sarro interrupted. ‘You are sure Voldorius was unaware of your pursuit?’

‘Salpo is, as you know, my khan, one of our most skilled Navigators. I have this on his word.’

Kor’sarro allowed himself a feral grin, feeling his blood rise at the prospect of resuming the hunt. It had been almost a decade since Kyublai, Great Khan of the White Scars Chapter, had declared that the vile one Voldorius would be hunted down and slain in the name of the Emperor. As Captain of the 3rd Company and Master of the Hunt, it had fallen to Kor’sarro Khan to turn the Great Khan’s words into deeds. He had gone before the Great Khan and his court on the Chapter’s home world of Chogoris, and made a terrible oath.

By Kor’sarro’s honour, the Daemon Prince Voldorius, he who had unleashed the Bloodtide and reaped a thousand billion innocent souls, would be brought to justice. As befitted the Chapter’s traditions, the traitor would be slain by the hand of the Master of the Hunt. His skull would be masked in silver and mounted at the tip of a lance. The trophy would be placed along the road to the White Scars’ fortress-monastery, alongside thousands more, high in the Khum Karta Mountains, where it would remain for all time as warning to those who would betray their oaths and turn their hand against the Emperor.

Despite his savage desire to finally corner his foe, Kor’sarro bade the sergeant continue.

‘We tracked The Ninth Eye through three systems. It laid over at none, merely recalibrating before pressing on. Twelve days after the last jump, it entered the Cernis system, where it made for the fourth planet.’

Kor’sarro had no knowledge of this star, for it was but a single, unremarkable system amongst over a million claimed by man. ‘What of this place?’ he asked.

‘Cernis IV is home to a small population of convicted sinners and petty transgressors, those whose sentences have been commuted from death to servitude.’ Kor’sarro scowled at the mental picture the sergeant’s description brought to mind. Scum, undeserving of a second chance. ‘Most eke out a nomadic existence as krill farmers, chasing the seasonal drifts along the coasts.’

‘And the rest?’ Kor’sarro asked, inferring that the Alpha Legion would have little interest in the convicts the sergeant described.

‘The rest are indentured to a substantial promethium refining operation at the world’s northern pole.’

‘And it is to this place that the enemy has retired,’ Kor’sarro growled, a statement, not a question. The sergeant’s expression confirmed his suspicion. Voldorius and his band of traitors had no doubt infiltrated the criminals that laboured at the promethium plant. That being the case, he could only assume that the world’s government, no doubt seated at the refinery, had been compromised, if not completely overthrown. He had to assume that the entire work force had been bribed, corrupted or coerced into serving the daemon prince, and it had probably not taken much effort to do so. The White Scars would be entering hostile territory as they closed on their foe.

‘My thanks, brother-sergeant,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘Your deeds do us all great honour, and the Great Khan shall hear of them.’ Kholka bowed deeply in response to the captain’s affirmation.

‘The word is given,’ Kor’sarro growled. ‘The hunt is on.’

As the Thunderhawk banked past another great crystal tower, Kor’sarro caught sight of the target. The Cernis IV promethium plant loomed on the horizon, a vast stain upon a wide, frozen plain studded with smaller crystal formations. Even from twelve kilometres out, the plant was imposing. Vast storage tanks and processing stacks reared into the cold sky, the tallest belching dark fumes or flaring with alchemical burn-off. The plant was the size of a city, its buildings sprawling across the plain, each connected to the next by a complex web of pipes and conduits carrying raw promethium. With an expert eye, Kor’sarro assessed two rings of defence thrown up around the plant, each punctuated by squat bastions mounted with heavy ground and anti-air ordnance. Scout-Sergeant Kholka’s reports had been characteristically accurate.

‘Ten kilometres,’ the pilot reported. ‘Confirm attack pattern?’

‘As the moon swoops,’ Kor’sarro replied, using the battle-cant of the White Scars Chapter. As the Thunderhawk dived towards the white plain, the sun glinted from the ice, the glare masking the defenders from Kor’sarro’s sight. He still had only estimates of the defenders’ strengths to go on, and the attack pattern would allow the gunships to reconnoitre the plant’s defences before committing to a final run.

The Thunderhawk levelled out as it streaked across the plain, the pilot jinking expertly to avoid the smaller crystal formations. At an altitude of only thirty metres, Kor’sarro could now discern the defence lines. Crudely fortified trenches had been dug into the snow, recently by his estimation. As the first line flashed by below, a storm of small-arms fire erupted, las-bolts pattering harmlessly against the gunship’s armoured hull.

Kor’sarro activated his command terminal and invoked the view from a spy-lens mounted to the Thunderhawk’s rear. The pict-slate showed the view of the trench the gunship had just passed over, and Kor’sarro could make out troops manning its ramparts. There were hundreds of them packed into the makeshift position, yet it was immediately clear that they were not professional soldiers, in any sense of the word. For a start, they showed no discernable uniform, each wearing a ragged ensemble of rubberised work suit, with crude armour fashioned from steel plates. Many wore rebreathers, originally intended no doubt to protect against the fumes belched out by the refinery but pressed into service against the biting cold beyond the plant’s limits. For an instant, Kor’sarro thought he saw a fell rune of the Chaos powers, daubed crudely upon a soldier’s chest plate, but the view receded before he could be sure.

‘Closing on the second line,’ the pilot intoned. ‘Brace for heavy fire.’

The second defence line was more heavily fortified than the first. The trenches were reinforced with armour plating, and rockcrete bunkers stood every two hundred metres.

‘Brace!’ the pilot called out.

A searing line of fire suddenly cut through the air as an autocannon mounted on one of the bastions opened up. The shot was poorly aimed, passing clean through the White Scars’ formation without inflicting any damage.

‘That was just a ranging shot,’ Kor’sarro growled, and immediately three more weapons, each mounted on a different bastion, opened fire.

This time, the shots passed by far closer, inscribing a deadly web across the air space the gunships flew through.

‘That plotting is far too coordinated to be the work of recidivist scum,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘The Alpha Legion have been here before.’ How long, he could only guess, but certainly long enough to have overseen the construction of the inner line of trenches and to plot a highly effective air defence net. As the full extent of the defences revealed themselves, the autocannons barked again. This time, the air blazed with over a dozen bursts, and the Thunderhawk rocked violently as it was struck.

‘Taking effective fire!’ the pilot called out. ‘Implementing evasive manoeuvres.’

Alarms blared out as the gunship’s aggrieved war spirit described its wounds. The Thunderhawk shook as the pilot undertook a series of jarring evasions, throwing the enemy gunners’ aim, for a brief moment at least.

‘Starboard control vanes compromised,’ the pilot announced as he fought the shaking control column.

‘And we’re bleeding fuel from engine beta,’ the co-pilot added.

‘Stand by,’ Kor’sarro ordered as he opened a vox-channel to the formation. There was little to be gained by maintaining vox silence now. ‘All Hunters, report.’

‘Hunter Two, Hunter One,’ the response came back immediately. ‘The arrow’s flight, shrouded by mist.’

‘Hunter Four, Hunter One,’ the next report came in, after the speaker had allowed an optimistic chance for Hunter Three to report. ‘The trail, winter rises.’

‘Hunter Five, Hunter One,’ the last gunship responded. ‘The crest by dawn.’

‘Damn them,’ Kor’sarro spat in response to the battle-cant reports. Hunter Two’s augurs were damaged, Four had lost pressure in at least one compartment and Hunter Five’s forward landing gear had taken a glancing hit. There was no word of Hunter Three.

Kor’sarro opened the vox-channel again, but before he could speak a further salvo of fire erupted from every bastion within a kilometre. The channel erupted with howling feedback as the very air burned.

‘All Hunters,’ Kor’sarro said, not knowing whether his transmission would penetrate the sudden interference but sure he had no choice but to try. ‘The arrow turns, the deluge.’

‘Coming about on new heading,’ the pilot announced, obeying the battle-cant order. In seconds, the Thunderhawk was banking over the outer defence line, pursued by angry autocannon bursts. With great relief, Kor’sarro noted the other vessels doing likewise.

Kor’sarro fought down the galling frustration at encountering such an effective air defence grid. It could only have been erected under the oversight of one of Voldorius’s lieutenants. The Alpha Legion were adept at corrupting lesser forces, and would easily have established themselves as masters over the treacherous convicts that laboured in Cernis IV’s promethium refinery. He consoled himself with the knowledge that such scum could never have mounted such a stout defence themselves. It was a timely reminder of just how dangerous a foe the Alpha Legion were. Furthermore, as fearsome as the defenders’ fire had proven, the White Scars pilots were superior. Although minor damage had been sustained, the strike force was still effective, even with the loss of Hunter Three.

And besides, Kor’sarro thought, the White Scars never relied on a single battle plan. Even now, the Thunderhawks were closing on the secondary landing zone where Kor’sarro and his warriors would disembark and approach the target by the alternative route, planned for just such an eventuality.

‘Touch down in thirty,’ the pilot announced.

‘Enemy position at sigma-seven,’ the co-pilot interjected.

Kor’sarro saw the secondary landing zone up ahead, but nearby, in the shadow of a jagged cluster of crystals, was a hurriedly dug enemy gun pit. Several of the defenders were armed with shoulder-mounted missile launchers.

‘Neutralise it,’ Kor’sarro ordered.

The air between the Thunderhawk and the gun pit was split asunder as the vessel’s heavy bolters opened up. Hundreds of rounds had been expended in seconds, the snow all around the target vaporised into an obscuring mist. Surely, nothing could have survived such a torrent of fire.

As if to mock the White Scars, a missile streaked out of the roiling mist, passing within a handful of metres of the gunship’s armoured canopy.

‘I cannot resolve a target,’ the co-pilot said.

‘Target the crystal,’ Kor’sarro ordered. ‘Hellstrike.’

A moment later, a missile lanced from beneath the Thunderhawk’s stubby wings towards the gun pit. But instead of disappearing into the vapour created by the heavy bolter fire, the projectile sped towards the crystal overhead. The impact came mere seconds later.

In a repetition of the incident on the approach run, the crystal exploded into a billion shards. The vapour cloud was blown away, the ground for a hundred metres all about studded by countless micro-impacts. Those defenders who had survived the heavy bolter fire were torn apart as the crystal shards ripped through their bodies. At the last, only the jagged remains of the crystal formation and a wide red stain upon the frozen ground marked the formerly enemy-held position.

‘Take us in,’ Kor’sarro ordered.

Even as Kor’sarro powered his roaring bike, Moondrakkan, down the Thunderhawk’s ramp, Hunters Two, Four and Five were touching down nearby. Screaming retro jets vaporised the ice, before the mighty gunships settled upon hissing, flexing landing struts. Hunter One, Kor’sarro’s command platform, was a conventional Thunderhawk specially modified to carry the Command squad’s beloved bikes. Hunter Five was likewise modified, and carried the task force’s other two bike-mounted squads. The other ships, including the missing Hunter Three, were transporters, and carried between the three vessels four Rhino-borne Tactical squads, two Rhino-borne Devastator squads and three jump pack-equipped Assault squads. A pair of Rhino transport vehicles was cradled below each transporter, their engines growling as if in anticipation of churning up the frozen plain.

As the two transporters settled, the sturdy arms holding the Rhinos in place released, and, accompanied by the angry hiss of hydraulics, retracted upwards. Almost in unison, the launch jets of both transporters fired up again, and both lifted perfectly vertically, leaving a pair of Rhinos on the ground beneath each. In a moment, all four Thunderhawks had cleared the landing zone, streaking away to establish a holding pattern until called upon.

‘All units,’ Kor’sarro spoke into his helmet vox-link as he slewed Moondrakkan to a halt. ‘Converge on me.’

Behind him, the five bike-mounted warriors of Kor’sarro’s Command squad formed up. These men were his brothers, for they had travelled by his side for the last decade, never wavering in the hunt for Voldorius. Kor’sarro’s company champion, Brother Jhogai, removed his helmet having brought his growling mount to a halt, and took in a great lungful of the freezing air. Beside him, Brother Yeku bore the standard of the 3rd Company, an honoured banner adorned with the lightning-strike symbol of the White Scars Chapter, and topped with a fluttering mane of black horsehair. Apothecary Khagus halted his bike beside the standard bearer, and behind him came Brothers Temu and Kergis.

‘Is there any word?’ Kor’sarro addressed Brother Temu, knowing the warrior would understand his meaning.

‘There is none, my khan,’ Temu replied. ‘Lord of Heavens reports heavy atmospheric sensor interference, but assures us they will keep up their sweeps until Hunter Three’s fate is known.’

‘Understood,’ Kor’sarro replied, forcing his concern for his brethren to the back of his mind, for all of his attention would be needed in the coming attack. It was only moments before the entire strike force would be assembled before him, ready to move out upon his word.

Following his company champion’s example, Kor’sarro reached up and unlatched his helmet. As he lifted it clear, the cold air struck his scarred face. Even through the cold, he could taste the underlying chemical pollution caused by the activities at the promethium plant – it did not take the enhanced senses of a Space Marine to detect it. Squinting against the breeze, Kor’sarro regarded his force with fiercely burning pride.

Four Rhino transports, set down in pairs by Hunters Two and Four, idled. Each one carried a ten-man Tactical squad. With the loss of Hunter Three, two more vehicles were missing, and the absence of the heavy weapons of the Devastator squads they had carried might well be felt in the coming battle. Twenty more Space Marines stood nearby, each equipped with a bulky jump pack, marking them out as the 3rd Company’s Assault squads. A third Assault Squad had been carried on the missing Hunter Three. Lastly, two squads of White Scars bikers had formed up to either side of the Rhinos having been set down from the modified troop bay of Hunter Five, their engines growling and the cold air shimmering around their exhausts.

The sight of his warriors stirred fierce pride in Kor’sarro’s savage heart. These men were the sons of the steppes of Chogoris, the windswept home world of the White Scars Chapter. They were born of the nomadic tribes that lived, fought and died across the trackless plains. They were hunters one and all, born in the saddle and had none become a White Scar, each would have been a king of a noble tribe. These men of the 3rd Company had earned Kor’sarro’s trust and loyalty a thousand times over. They had shared with him every peril and every horror the galaxy could conjure.

This last decade, they had followed him in the hunt for one of the Chapter’s most hated enemies, indeed, one of the Imperium’s most despised sinners. The daemon prince Voldorius – Kor’sarro spat as he conjured the name of his foe – would be run to ground by these men, and by the hand of the Master of the Hunt, would be slain.

Savouring the moment for a few seconds more, Kor’sarro filled his lungs with air. Then, raising Moonfang, his ancient and revered blade, high above him, he uttered the war cry that his men had heard a thousand times before, on a thousand battlefields, before a thousand victories.

‘For the Khan, and for the Emperor!’

The cry was echoed in the throats of four score warriors. Kor’sarro opened Moondrakkan’s throttle, its engine roaring deafeningly in the manner of its namesake. The bikes of Kor’sarro’s Command squad and of the other two groups of riders took up the savage cry, and were followed an instant later by the deeper, throaty roar of the Rhinos. Then the Assault squads gunned their jump packs to a high-pitched scream, putting Kor’sarro in mind of the deadly avian predators of Chogoris. With the roar of the proud, noble tribesmen of his home world, Kor’sarro span Moondrakkan around to face the distant refinery, and opened the throttle fully.

Moondrakkan leapt forwards, Kor’sarro’s long cloak billowing in the cold air behind him. Without turning to look, he knew that his warriors were following, and instead focussed on the objective. The outer defence line was only two kilometres distant, and the inner line another two beyond that. Another kilometre past the inner trench line lay the outer edges of the refinery itself and beyond that, Kor’sarro’s foe, the target of his ten-year hunt. Kor’sarro’s attack plan was simple and audacious, and entirely in keeping with the martial heritage of his people. If the bastions of the inner defence line were so heavily armed that the Thunderhawks could not penetrate to the refinery, then his warriors would ride those defences down, smashing them aside in an unstoppable assault none could withstand.

But Kor’sarro’s attack would not be the maddened charge of an unreasoning berserker, for the White Scars were well schooled in the subtleties of the arts of war. The strike force would break into three bodies as it closed on the outer line. One would mount a feint against one length of the trench line, drawing in reinforcements from nearby sectors. Only when Kor’sarro was sure the enemy had taken the bait would the second body strike at the weakest section. Even as that group was consolidating its victory and the first breaking off, the third body would be racing towards the inner fortifications, and the process would be repeated.

The strike force was well-practised in such assaults, for their people had been undertaking similar actions since time immemorial. As Moondrakkan closed on the outer line and the cold air whipped up Kor’sarro’s long, braided, black moustaches, he was put in mind of his first ever charge against an enemy. He had been barely in his twelfth summer, yet considered a man by his people. That day he had spilled his first blood, claimed his first life and earned his first honour scar. Many more had been traced across his craggy face since becoming a Space Marine. He prayed that more still might be added, yet in truth, only one counted. The scar earned by the death of Voldorius.

A missile streaked past, billowing an ugly black contrail, and Kor’sarro snapped back to the present. He traced the trail back to a concealed gun pit dug hastily into the snow nearby, and veered Moondrakkan towards it before the firer had a chance to load a second projectile.

Moondrakkan’s front wheel hit the spoil pile in front of the pit, and Kor’sarro hauled back on the handlebars, gunning the engine as he did so. The bike launched into the air above the pit, and in an instant, Kor’sarro had drawn his bolt pistol. In the two seconds in which the bike was airborne, the Master of the Hunt located his target, a refinery worker bedecked in filthy brown rubberised overalls and wearing an insect-like gas mask, drew a bead on the man’s weapon, and pulled the trigger.

Moondrakkan slammed to the frozen ground on the far side of the gun pit, kicking up a spray of ice. Kor’sarro heard the crack of the bolt as it struck the freshly-loaded missile launcher, followed an instant later by a sharp detonation as it, and the launcher’s ammunition, exploded. Stealing a glance behind him, Kor’sarro grinned savagely at the destruction he had wrought: the firer and the dozen or so other enemy warriors taking shelter in the pit lay scattered about, body parts strewn across the reddened snow for metres in all directions.

Turning his head back around, Kor’sarro saw that he was rapidly closing on the outer defence line. He scanned the fortifications, and immediately located the point where the feint attack should be aimed.

‘Taura,’ Kor’sarro addressed the sergeant of one of the Tactical squads over the vox-net. ‘Noon, as the ram-hound strikes.’

The sergeant’s confirmation came back over the net and two of the armoured Rhino transports peeled away from the body of attackers and arrowed for the point Kor’sarro had indicated in the battle-cant of his Chapter. As the squat transports ground up the frozen plain, one of the Assault squads screamed overhead, the ten Space Marines diving upon the enemy position with chainswords whirring angrily. The sounds of battle were audible over the vox-net, Kor’sarro keeping the channel open for a moment to gauge the intensity of the fight. There was little he could do to influence the outcome now, however, as more pressing concerns presented themselves.

Hauling on Moondrakkan’s handlebars, Kor’sarro led the remainder of the strike force in a wide sweep, away from the point where Sergeant Taura’s units were engaged. The White Scars made expert use of every scrap of cover, especially the man-high crystal formations studded about the plain. In minutes, the force was barrelling towards what Kor’sarro judged to be a less well-defended length of the trench line.

‘Enemy reinforcements committed,’ Kor’sarro heard Sergeant Taura call over the vox-net, the transmission punctuated with the sound of chainswords cleaving flesh and bolt pistols firing at point-blank range. Good, thought Kor’sarro: now is the time.

‘Second wave,’ Kor’sarro bellowed, for he had no need of the vox to give this order. ‘With me!’

A savage war cry went up behind him as Kor’sarro steered Moondrakkan for the defence line. Knowing that the enemy had drawn off defenders in an attempt to repel Sergeant Taura’s feint, he led his force directly down upon their foe, while the last third held back.

The White Scars’ charge ate up the last hundred metres in seconds, and only at the last instant did the few defenders still manning this section of the line open fire. Kor’sarro and his Command squad leapt over the trench as he had done before, and upon striking the ground on the other side, slewed their mounts around. The stunned defenders were caught entirely off guard, few even having turned before they were cut down in a storm of bolt pistol fire.

Stowing his pistol, Kor’sarro drew Moonfang, and ignited its blade, its entire length crackling with barely contained energies. The dozen defenders not slain in the opening fusillade rose from the trench and threw themselves at Kor’sarro and his men, who as one leapt from their bikes to counter-charge. The melee was brief, the defenders not standing a chance against the superhuman Space Marines, but Kor’sarro was surprised by the vigour of the attack.

Though not disciplined or veteran troops, the defenders were fired up by a hatred that granted them the strength to face the White Scars, however brief and futile the effort. Only the lies of the Great Enemy could motivate such men as these, and he detected the unmistakable, bitter taint of blasphemy in the air. How tight was the grip of Voldorius on this place, and on these men? He would soon find out.

Even as Moonfang cleaved the last of the traitors in two, spilling the man’s innards across the debris-strewn trench, the last body of the strike force was moving forwards. Two more armoured transports ground across the trench nearby, their tracks crushing defenders to a bloody pulp as a squad of Assault Marines soared overhead. Taking stock of the situation, Kor’sarro activated his vox-link.

‘Taura,’ he called to the leader of the first wave. ‘Report.’

There was a brief pause before the sergeant’s voice filled the channel, the background static laced with the screaming of chainswords as they cut through armour and flesh. ‘Heavy resistance, my khan, and mounting. I have three wounded, but no ineffectives. Standing by.’

‘Understood,’ Kor’sarro replied, before switching back to battle-cant. ‘The north wind turns.’

‘The wind turns at moonrise,’ the sergeant replied, his voice drowned out for a moment by gunfire.

Satisfied that Sergeant Taura’s force would soon have extricated itself from the fighting, Kor’sarro swung into Moondrakkan’s saddle and consulted the tactical slate mounted above the handlebars. Icons representing the units of the strike force winked green, and the enemy defence lines were etched in red, the data provided by the augurs of the Lord of Heavens in orbit high above. Three of those icons represented the constituent parts of the third wave, which was bearing down on the inner trench line. Even as Kor’sarro prepared to move out, he heard the unmistakable sound of heavy cannon fire, followed a moment later by a rumbling explosion. In the distance, he saw a mighty cloud rise, and knew that the third wave had encountered heavy resistance.

‘Patha,’ Kor’sarro addressed the leader of the third wave. ‘What is your status?’

The vox-channel churned with interference, and a second explosion blossomed in the distance. Then Sergeant Patha’s voice cut in. ‘Repeat, coming under fire from a heavy-calibre battle cannon mounted in the bastion to our fore. I have two badly wounded, one ineffective, over.’

Rising in Moondrakkan’s saddle, Kor’sarro squinted towards the inner defence line. Against the glare reflected by the frozen plain, he could see the bastion of which Sergeant Patha spoke. As he watched, a low turret at the bastion’s top swivelled, the barrel tracking one of Patha’s Rhino transports. Before Kor’sarro could voice a warning, the cannon fired, the heavy shell impacting the ice scant metres from the carrier. As the projectile detonated, the rear of the vehicle was thrown several metres into the air, before it crashed down again. Incredibly, the Rhino continued on its course towards the gun tower.

The air all around was rapidly filling with gunfire, evidence, if any were needed, that the enemy were reacting to the White Scars’ attack. The strike force had been fortunate so far. Perhaps the defenders had not believed they would return and mount a ground attack so soon after determining the full extent of the air defence net. They would pay for their mistake, Kor’sarro swore, but only if the White Scars pressed home the attack for all they were worth, right now.

‘All commands!’ Kor’sarro bellowed over the roar of battle. ‘Engage that tower!’

Launching Moondrakkan forwards, Kor’sarro was joined by his Command squad and the two other squads of White Scars bikers. The vox-link was filled with terse battle-cant as the third wave closed on the bastion, the battle cannon continuing to bracket the Rhinos even as the Assault Marines dived towards it from on high. For a moment, he considered calling on the Thunderhawks to engage it with their hellstrike missiles, but could not risk the gunships being struck by the defenders’ heavy air defences again. To lose one Thunderhawk was bad enough, but to lose another would be unforgivable.

Kor’sarro sped across the plain, bikers to either side, Assault Marines overhead and Rhinos grinding onwards in his wake. He caught sight of Sergeant Taura, his helmet gone and a bloody gash cut across the warrior’s forehead speaking of the ferocity of the resistance the feint attack had met. The turret on the bastion turned, this time in the direction of Kor’sarro’s combined first and second wave. Imbeciles, he thought, seeing that the gunners were too ill disciplined or inexperienced to continue their fire against the immediate threat, and were instead turning their weapon upon the larger foe. Despite the obvious danger, Kor’sarro was grateful for the brief respite the gunners’ mistake would give Sergeant Patha and his men.

‘Heads down and keep going,’ Kor’sarro bellowed over the combined roar of the bikes, jump packs and Rhinos. ‘For Chogoris!’

His warriors echoed the war cry as the cannon opened fire. From the angle of the barrel at the moment the weapon fired, Kor’sarro knew that the shell would strike true, if more by chance than the skill of the gunners. Gritting his teeth against the inevitable, Kor’sarro lowered his head, redoubled his grip on Moondrakkan’s handlebars, and sped onwards. The shell lanced towards his force and exploded on its right flank, enveloping an entire biker squad in smoke and mist. Of the nine White Scars bikes enshrouded by the rapidly expanding plume of vaporised ice and debris, only eight emerged, and several of these bore obvious damage, the riders’ armour blackened and scratched. Kor’sarro doubted that the missing rider could have survived, but knew that the Rhino-mounted squad following close behind would confirm their brother’s fate, and if possible retrieve his body.

The weight of incoming small-arms fire increased still further, and although poorly aimed, stray las-bolts and bullets kicked up puffs of powdery snow from the ground in front of the White Scars. Shots whistled by Kor’sarro’s head and several impacted on the armoured fairing of his bike. As the distance closed, a heavy bolter opened up, the staccato rhythm filling Kor’sarro’s ears. A score of heavy rounds whipped past, the gunner correcting his aim as Kor’sarro bore onwards. A shell clipped the armoured fairing, tearing a chunk away in a shower of sparks, and another glanced from Kor’sarro’s right shoulder plate. The armour’s auto-reactive systems activated, dense fibre bundles compensating for the impact by moving rapidly in the opposite direction.

‘White Scars!’ Rage swelled in Kor’sarro’s breast that any traitor would dare raise a hand against the chosen of the Emperor and the Great Khan. ‘Show no mercy!’

The air was solid with the defenders’ fire, sparks flying from armoured bikes and battle-brothers alike. To Kor’sarro’s left, a biker was thrown clear as what must have been a dozen heavy bolter shells slammed into his chest plate, the sheer weight of fire throwing him backwards as his bike ploughed on before slewing to a halt. To Kor’sarro’s right, a lascannon seared a blinding line through the cold air, the blast striking one of the Rhino transports in its track nacelle. The stout vehicle ground to a halt having merely thrown a track. Despite the deep, black gash carved across its flank, the White Scars within all disembarked to continue the charge on foot.

A moment later and Kor’sarro and his warriors were closing on the beleaguered battle-brothers of the first wave, who were laying down a withering hail of suppressive bolter fire at the bastion, whilst attempting to take what cover they could against its heavy battle cannon in the midst of a low crystal outcropping.

‘Brother Kergis!’ Kor’sarro bellowed as he brought Moondrakkan to a skidding halt beside them. Seeing Brother Kergis dismount and race forwards, melta gun in hand, he leapt from Moondrakkan and pointed towards the armoured hatch of the bastion.

‘As you will, my khan,’ the Space Marine replied. Even though the man wore his helmet, Kor’sarro could well imagine the hunger for victory that he always showed in such situations. Kergis bore the scars of a hundred hunts, and was without equal with his chosen weapon.

‘Cover us!’ Kor’sarro bellowed as every Space Marine in the strike force able to do so opened fire on the bastion. Even though few of their weapons had any chance of penetrating its thick, rockcrete construction, the torrent of fire would force the defenders to keep their heads down, and throw the aim of any who dared raise their weapons against the White Scars.

Even before the suppressive fusillade had fully opened up, Kor’sarro was dashing towards the bastion’s armoured hatch, Brother Kergis following close on his heels. The Space Marines’ covering fire took full effect, explosive bolts tearing ragged holes from the bastion’s flanks. There was no return fire from the bastion itself, but other defenders further along the line were nonetheless attempting to engage the White Scars with small-arms fire, poorly aimed shots whistling by all too close.

As the pair closed on the bastion’s hatch, Kor’sarro ducked to the right, unclipping a frag grenade from his belt. He turned as he ran the last few metres, and slammed back first into the bastion’s rockcrete wall, in time to see Brother Kergis come to a halt, brace his feet wide before the hatch and raise his weapon.

There was a timeless pause as Kergis looked to his captain, awaiting the order, as per the ancient traditions of their people. Kor’sarro nodded once, and Brother Kergis opened fire. The melta gun’s blast was preceded by a brief distortion of the air between barrel and target, before a stream of concentrated nucleonic fire streaked forth. Anything other than the highest grade of armour plating would have been vaporised in an instant, but the bastion’s hatch was built with the intention of resisting such attacks. The hatch glowed orange, then blue, and then white as tremendous energies were absorbed and dissipated. The ground between Kergis erupted in vaporised ice. Kor’sarro felt an increase in the weight of fire all around, and saw that a company of enemy soldiers were making their way along the nearby trench lines, firing wildly as they went. He looked back to Brother Kergis, and saw a line of bullets stitch across his left arm and shoulder plate. Despite the fire, the warrior’s aim never faltered as he unleashed a second blast from his weapon.

This time, the hatch’s armour peeled away, falling in molten gobbets to the blackened ground. The ragged edges still glowing fierce orange, Kor’sarro pressed the detonation stud on the ready frag grenade, and tossed it into the smoking opening. He ducked back, pressing himself against the bastion’s wall as Brother Kergis dived to the opposite side of the wrecked hatchway.

A moment later, the grenade detonated, razor-sharp shrapnel belching forth, followed by a great gout of flame and black smoke. Fierce warrior pride consuming him, Kor’sarro stepped before the opening and drew Moonfang, activating the ancient blade’s crackling power field with a familiar flick of his thumb.

Diving into the black, smoke-wreathed interior, Kor’sarro relied on senses other than sight. His genetically enhanced body gave him a wealth of advantages over his foes, and though he could barely make out a thing through the smoke, his superior hearing, smell and even taste drew him down upon his foe. The first enemies he found were very obviously dead, their bodies torn to shreds by the fragmentation grenade.

At the base of what Kor’sarro judged by touch to be an access ladder leading upwards to the next level, he came upon a wounded enemy soldier. With a single, coldly economical motion, he broke the man’s neck, ending the traitor’s blasphemy in a far more merciful way than he deserved. Allowing any survivors no time to regroup, Kor’sarro reached up and hauled open the hatch at the top of the ladder, readying another frag grenade as he did so. As the hatch rose, dull, red light shone through, and an instant later a torrent of bullets was unleashed, kicking up angry sparks from the metal of the hatch. Even as one bullet ploughed a deep furrow across Kor’sarro’s brow, he pressed the detonation stud, threw the grenade through the gap and slammed the hatch shut.

The explosion rocked the entire bastion, sending dust and loose debris in all directions. It must have caught an ammunition store. Kor’sarro grinned and cautiously lifted the hatch to see the damage. The bright violet-tinged light of the outside replaced the red illumination and Kor’sarro guessed that a viewing port had been blown outwards. Seeing no immediate threat, he rose through the hatch, Brother Kergis following close behind. As the smoke cleared, Kor’sarro saw that no defenders had survived the blast. Although blood was smeared across every surface and ragged parts of severed limbs were flung about, he could not tell how many of the deluded recidivists had manned the room.

Striding to the wrecked viewport, Kor’sarro looked out across the war-torn plain. His warriors had turned their weapons upon the counterattacking defenders, and were forcing them back with a fusillade of bolter fire. He judged that the enemy would soon turn and run for the outskirts of the refinery, which lay only a couple of hundred metres beyond the inner defence line. As Brother Kergis moved in to stand beside him, Kor’sarro allowed himself a grim smile.

‘Order the warriors to mount up, brother,’ he said. ‘We have a hunt to complete.’

CHAPTER TWO

FIRE AND ICE

His Command squad following close behind, Kor’sarro raced through the promethium plant’s outer precincts. He himself had gunned down dozens of the recidivist defenders, and his companions scores more. The refinery resembled a vast machine, its innards laid bare and spilled across a hundred square kilometres of the frozen plain. There was scarcely any difference between buildings and processing facilities, both enveloped with impossibly complex masses of pipes, vents and cables. Kor’sarro suspected the plant’s original overseers drew no distinction, the convict work force no doubt sleeping beneath their workstations. They deserved no less, he thought.

What passed for streets were strewn with crates and barrels in a crude attempt on the defenders’ part to keep the White Scars at bay. The hastily raised barricades were smashed aside as the Space Marines’ Rhino transports ground barrels and defenders alike beneath their armoured treads. Many of the roadways were crossed at a height of about five metres by raised pipe runs, from which the White Scars were engaged on several occasions by recidivist snipers and fire bombers. The first sniper cost one of Sergeant Patha’s men an eye, but the wounded Space Marine exacted his revenge, putting a bolt-round through the man’s sneering mouth, the shell exploding within his skull and vaporising his entire head. Forewarned that more snipers were likely to be lurking upon the raised pipe runs, Kor’sarro ordered the Assault squads to range ahead of the strike force as it ploughed through the streets, engaging and neutralising dozens more snipers as they went.

Although the Assault squads dealt with the snipers easily enough, the fire bombers proved a more demanding problem. One of the Rhinos was engulfed in chemical fire as it passed under one of the raised pipe runs, a fire bomber hidden amongst the conduits. The vehicle appeared to be utterly consumed by flame, but miraculously survived, its only damage cosmetic, the pure white livery of the White Scars Chapter reduced to charred black. The vehicle’s war spirit would be much aggrieved and would have to be placated with repeated Rites of Appeasement before the transport could be considered battle worthy once more.

The fire bombers displayed no regard for their own safety, unleashing highly volatile, improvised explosives in the heart of a facility that refined one of the most combustible substances known to man. They were surely corrupted by the Alpha Legion, Kor’sarro decided, or perhaps drugged or mind-slaved in some way. Whatever the case, it was yet another example of Voldorius’s many crimes against mankind. Kor’sarro ordered the fire bombers to be engaged as a matter of priority, and no more attacks came so near to success as that first ambush.

Several fire bombers were reduced to human torches as massed bolter fire cut them down and ignited their bombs in the process, sending them plummeting from the overhead pipe runs to the ground below. Their guttering forms were crushed beneath the tracks of the White Scars Rhinos and the wheels of their speeding bikes.

Passing under another of the overhead conduits, the strike force closed on the plant’s centre. Kor’sarro’s bike-mounted Command squad, accompanied by the other two bike squads from Hunter Five, ranged ahead, while the four Rhino-mounted Tactical squads from Hunters Two and Four formed a column. The two Assault squads streaked overhead on contrails of fire. The street narrowed as the machinery on either side became more and more densely packed. The machinelike buildings became taller, until they reared many hundreds of metres into the sky, which was now barely visible through the web of pipes that connected each part of the vast refinery. Great vents appeared as gaping maws, acrid chemical fumes spewing forth, and it felt to Kor’sarro that his force was travelling through the bowels of a vast, mechanical beast.

‘Beware the fore, my khan,’ bellowed Brother Temu, as a pressure suit-encased defender rose from behind another of the makeshift barricades. The man hefted a bulky weapon, a locally manufactured heavy stubber by the looks of it. Kor’sarro hauled on Moondrakkan’s handlebars as the defender opened fire, the fusillade of shells spitting past him. With a flick of his thumbs, Kor’sarro activated the twin bolters mounted on his bike’s armoured fairing, and gunned the man down in a rain of shells. More of the defenders appeared from a side street, shouldering crude firearms as they attempted to draw a bead on the rapidly moving White Scars. Kor’sarro veered towards them, his Command squad close behind, and drew Moonfang as he closed on his target.

Kor’sarro beheaded the first of the defenders with a wide sweep of his power blade as he raced past and in the same motion gutted a second and sliced the arm from a third. The remainder were crushed beneath the heavy wheels of his companions’ bikes, and the White Scars barrelled on down the street.

The environs were becoming too confined to continue along mounted on their bikes, so Kor’sarro hauled on Moondrakkan’s brakes and his mount came to a halt.

‘Dismount!’ he called as his Command squad caught up. ‘We approach the heart. Spread out and continue the hunt on foot.’

‘Where to, my khan?’ asked Brother Jhogai, hefting his ceremonial power sword and combat shield.

Kor’sarro looked towards the central zone of the promethium facility, and located the towering structure that marked its centre. Voldorius had yet to reveal himself, and Kor’sarro knew from prior experience that the fiend preferred to draw his enemies in and lie in wait for them. Although wary of entrapment, Kor’sarro was determined to face Voldorius in his lair.

‘The tower,’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘But we continue with caution.’

Kor’sarro’s men nodded in agreement, for every one of them knew well the duplicity of the foe. The daemon prince would be in no doubt that the White Scars had come for him. Kor’sarro would have it no other way, but he would not walk blindly into a trap.

‘Taura, Patha, to me,’ Kor’sarro called, and within seconds the two sergeants stood before him, ready to receive his orders. ‘Taura, take your squads west of the central tower, Patha, you go east.’ Although brief, Kor’sarro knew that his orders would be fully understood, for these veterans had followed him for decades and fought at his side in countless battles. ‘Go, and the Great Khan be with you, honoured be his name.’

‘Honoured be his name,’ the two warriors repeated, before bowing to Kor’sarro and heading back to their commands. Kor’sarro heard their bellowed orders as they walked away, and smiled wryly to himself.

The men of Kor’sarro’s biker group had dismounted from their bikes, which would be stowed out of sight and rigged with booby traps in case the defenders attempted to interfere with them. Taking stock of his surroundings, Kor’sarro turned his gaze towards the distant tower. All of his past experience told him that the tower would be the place where he would find Voldorius. He steeled himself for the confrontation, eager to corner his nemesis once and for all, but fully aware of the scale of the challenge ahead. Voldorius was a fiend of nigh unimaginable proportions, and his crimes were of a galactic scale.

Many centuries ago, the daemon prince had harnessed the power of an ancient and terrible weapon, a relic of the all but forgotten epoch known as the Dark Age of Technology. The weapon was called the Bloodtide, and although none knew how it functioned, at Voldorius’s word it had slain uncounted billions of the Emperor’s subjects. In a single night, its curse had swept across a dozen worlds and reduced every one of them to a charnel house of desiccated corpses. All of this Voldorius did in the name of the fell Gods of Chaos, the ultimate enemies of mankind.

‘Brothers,’ Kor’sarro said, aware that the eyes of each man were upon him. ‘Each of you has stood by my side throughout our hunt for the vile one.’ The sound of gunfire rang out from nearby as the two flanking groups engaged more of the enemy. He continued, ‘Each of us has lost battle-brothers by his hand, or those of his followers.

‘So far this day, we have only faced convict scum, turned from the Emperor’s light by the lies of Voldorius. But we know that the vile one’s companions must be here too. Be alert, my brothers.

‘Though I know not how many of us will see the next dawn,’ Kor’sarro continued, ‘I know for certain that those who do not shall ride upon the great hunt at the right hand of the Emperor for all eternity. We have earned that much!’

‘Aye!’ replied two-dozen voices in unison, and Kor’sarro raised a hand to silence them.

‘Later, we feast. Now, we hunt!’

At that, Kor’sarro turned and advanced along the narrow street, the central tower rising no more than a couple of kilometres distant. The small force adopted a well-practised formation that ensured that all sectors were covered and no enemy could engage the White Scars without warning.

A burst of angry gunfire sounded from the direction of the western flanking group, reminding Kor’sarro that Voldorius and his Alpha Legion followers were not the only enemy in the city-sized refinery. A moment later, an explosion rocked the street, tangled pipes and twisted chunks of metal ricocheting down its length.

‘Opportunity fire,’ Kor’sarro growled. ‘The act of an undisciplined rabble.’

As the gunfire and explosions grew louder, Kor’sarro became aware of another sound amidst the tumult of battle. Concentrating as he advanced, Kor’sarro filtered out the noises all around. Discarding the sound of his own breathing, the beating of his hearts and the tread of his armoured boots upon the debris-strewn ground, he detected a low drone, and it was coming from up ahead.

‘The vile one’s sorceries…’ he muttered, looking towards the peak of the tower rising in the sky, silhouetted against the pulsating, violet-hued aurora. The sound grew steadily in volume, and soon it was clearly audible over the clamour of war. It was a plaintive drone that could only have been voiced by something other than human. Yet, though no human throat could have produced that sound, there was something in it that spoke of anger, pain and suffering in an all too mortal way. Kor’sarro was consumed with disgust, all of his senses piqued and alert for the danger the sound might preclude. It could only be Voldorius, unleashing some new nightmare upon the galaxy, damning himself still further if such a thing were possible.

The dirge became louder yet, until it pulsated from the tower’s summit, spreading outwards in palpable waves of grating doom. It echoed from the vast machineries of the promethium refinery, and structural damage was starting to appear in the stacks nearest to the plant’s centre.

Kor’sarro pressed on along his course. The face of his company champion was set in a grim mask, his eyes black pits of revulsion. Several of the battle-brothers made gestures of warding against evil, the ancient rites of the peoples of Chogoris as passed down by the seers and shamans for millennia. The droning, tuneless note revolted him and a dire feeling of uncleanness threatened to consume him. It put him in mind of a dying predator, some leviathan thrashing in the deepest oceans as it bled its guts into the cold waters far from the cleansing sunlight and winds of the plains. He shook his head to clear the grim vision from his mind, and stepped up his pace towards the centre of the refinery. And not a moment too soon.

Less than a hundred metres ahead, in the cavernous mouth of a vast storage depot, Kor’sarro saw movement.

‘The gnarldrake rises, noon!’ he called in battle-cant, indicating to his warriors the presence of the enemy waiting in ambush ahead. Kor’sarro and his Command squad peeled to one side of the narrowing street, moving steadily along its length while making use of the cover of tangled pipes and upturned barrels. With a simple gesture he ordered the other two squads to move along the opposite side of the street, one slightly ahead of him, one slightly behind.

‘My khan,’ Brother Kergis said from close behind. ‘These do not appear to be the same defenders–’

Before Kergis could complete the sentence, a shot rang out from the depot’s mouth. Kor’sarro knew instantly that these foes were not the recidivist convicts the White Scars had faced earlier. The weapon fired was not a locally manufactured autogun, but a boltgun, like those carried by the Space Marines.

‘Alpha Legion!’ Kor’sarro spat, as a burst of bolter fire erupted along the street.

Yet, the shots had not been aimed at Kor’sarro or his men, nor was the timing consistent with an ambush.

‘White Scars!’ a dry voice from up ahead shouted. Bile rose in Kor’sarro’s throat. ‘The scent of dung precedes you. Face us!’

A feral growl sounded from behind Kor’sarro as Brother Jhogai made to advance into the open. With a hand upon Jhogai’s shoulder, Kor’sarro stopped his old companion. ‘No, my friend. This is my burden.’

Kor’sarro stepped out into the open street.

Five figures stepped out from the yawning mouth of the storage facility. As they passed from the shadows into the violet-tinged sunlight, Kor’sarro knew that he had been correct. Each was a giant, wearing power armour of a similar design, only more archaic, to the White Scars’. While Kor’sarro and his men wore armour bearing the white and red livery of the White Scars Chapter, the armour of these warriors was painted a greenish blue. Where the White Scars bore proudly the lightning bolt icon of their Chapter, these wore the writhing hydra device of the traitorous Alpha Legion.

‘Nullus,’ Kor’sarro growled. The name of this foe was like ashes in his mouth.

The warrior Kor’sarro had addressed stepped ahead of his companions. He was taller even than the other Alpha Legion warriors, and bore a long-hafted halberd, the blade blacker than night and radiating darkness. The traitor wore no helmet, forcing Kor’sarro to look upon his vile features. His head was hairless, and covered in a mass of scar tissue. But these were not the intricate tracery of the honour scars Kor’sarro and his kin wore with pride, each applied in remembrance of a great victory or a fallen companion. They were the result of countless years of exposure to the warping, unclean energies of Chaos. What from a distance appeared as a single, solid burn scar was upon closer inspection more like the scrawlings of a madman, each scar traced over the last in swirling runes and sigils until only an anarchic mess remained. The warrior’s features were largely obscured by that mass of scar tissue, his lips thin, his eyes narrow slits. But those eyes were bottomless pits of blackness, radiating doom, as if not a man but a presence lurked behind them.

‘You come for Voldorius,’ the traitor said.

‘Aye, and for you, Nullus,’ Kor’sarro replied.

‘He awaits,’ Nullus said, indicating the tower with a sharp movement of his ravaged head. ‘But you must first pass me.’

‘Then face me,’ Kor’sarro growled, drawing Moonfang and taking a pace forwards. The traitor’s fellows spread out across the street and behind, his own warriors did likewise.

The fight would be uneven, two score of White Scars against a handful of the Alpha Legion traitors. The sound from the tower grew still louder, a subsonic rumble passing through the ground beneath Kor’sarro’s feet.

‘Not yet, hunter,’ Nullus replied, with a mocking grin.

‘What duplicity is…?’ Kor’sarro began, as a tide of figures appeared behind the traitors, stepping out from the dark entrance to the storage depot.

‘Did you think it so simple, White Scar?’ Nullus crowed as the narrow street behind him filled with armed soldiers. Instead of the drab, rubberised pressure suits and rebreathers worn by those at the defence lines, these men wore an unfamiliar uniform of grey and black, with military-issue armoured jackets and lascarbines. A deafening crack of thunder sounded from the peak of the central tower, and Kor’sarro glanced in its direction.

There, on a wide platform atop the rearing mass of tangled conduits, framed against the pulsating aurora, stood a shape as black as the void. Even at this distance and from the low vantage point, Kor’sarro could see the form of Voldorius. The figure was over two metres tall, and almost as wide across the shoulders. From his back stretched a pair of black, batlike wings, which cracked the air as they whipped back and forth. Kor’sarro’s blood rose, the feral desire to finally slay his nemesis all but consuming him.

But first he would have to pass the daemon prince’s followers. And his slaves.

In moments, over a hundred of the grey- and black-clad soldiers had emerged from the storage depot and lined up behind Nullus and his companions. The odds were now even.

I have not time for this, Kor’sarro seethed, feeling his chance to close on Voldorius slipping away.

‘My khan,’ the company champion stepped beside him. ‘This may be a trap. You must continue.’

‘No, Jhogai,’ Kor’sarro interjected. ‘I cannot ask this of you.’

‘Then do not,’ Jhogai replied. ‘I take it upon myself. The duty is mine, by ancient law.’

Brother Jhogai was invoking his right as company champion to face the traitor Nullus in single combat. And he did so in the intention that Kor’sarro might face Voldorius, even if the champion was cut down affording his captain the opening.

‘You are a man of honour, my friend,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘But our foe is a traitor to all that binds us to the Emperor and the Great Khan, honoured be his name.’

‘The others will hold the rabble at bay, my khan,’ Brother Jhogai said. ‘You must allow them to do so.’

Before Kor’sarro could respond, the company champion drew his power sword and stepped forwards to stand a mere ten metres before the traitor. Nullus’s wicked grin widened as he understood Jhogai’s intent. Turning to his khan, the warrior said simply, ‘Go.’

Another thundercrack sounded from the tower, and Kor’sarro knew he had no choice. He must face his enemy alone, and he must do so now, lest the daemon prince escape justice as he had so many times before.

‘Go!’ Brother Jhogai repeated, his voice proud, yet tinged by an undertone of anger or impatience.

‘Honoured be your name,’ Kor’sarro said, his words lost as Jhogai bellowed a war cry and launched himself forwards at his enemy. In an instant, the mass of soldiers was spilling down the narrow street and the White Scars were unleashing a devastating fusillade of bolter fire that scythed the first rank down in a storm of blood and fire. Kor’sarro caught a last glance of the company champion as he squared off against his opponent, the anarchic tide of battle sweeping around them both until he could see no more.

A third peal of thunder rang out from the tower peak, sounding to Kor’sarro like an invitation or an announcement of coming doom. Resolved to face whatever awaited him, he set off towards the tower at a steady run, the sounds of the battle receding behind. He passed down narrow streets strewn with debris tumbled from the refinery stacks by the vibrations and quakes afflicting the entire plant, the tower looming before him all the way. Several times he caught sight of masked, pressure-suited defenders, and gunned every one of them down with his bolt pistol without pausing. He saw no more of the black- and grey-clad soldiers that had accompanied Nullus, but gave the matter no more attention, for he was rapidly closing on the base of the central tower.

The tower was made of thousands of conduits and pipes, all bound together in an impossible mass that appeared to have been grown rather than built. Vents and flues studded its flanks, some belching noxious fumes, others searing gouts of flame. Enveloped around the twisted pipes and machineries was a series of interconnecting ladders, walkways and platforms, up which, Kor’sarro knew, he would have to climb in order to reach the peak, and his foe.

Sorcerous energies swirled around the pinnacle, the violet aurora twisting from the sky as if reaching down to envelop the tower. Bitter experience told Kor’sarro that Voldorius was a master of many vile arts, and had made bargains with powers too terrible to name. Whatever evil he was calling upon would be halted, on Kor’sarro’s honour.

With a grunt, Kor’sarro pulled himself up to the first platform, and ran along its length until he reached a ladder. His armoured boots rang loudly against the corroded metal grille of the walkway, but the sound was all but drowned out by the atonal dirge emanating from overhead and the clash of unnatural thunder shaking the tower.

With an effort of will, Kor’sarro filtered out the low drone, his genetically enhanced physiology granting him the ability where a normal man might be driven to madness by the deafening skirl. He hauled himself up the ladder, climbing twenty metres before he reached the next level. As he stepped out onto a swaying length of badly rusted tread plate, the entire tower shook as if the ground on which it stood was in the grip of an earthquake.

Kor’sarro was now high above the mass of the refinery. Below, a thin line of White Scars unleashed round after round at the massed black- and grey-clad soldiers while two figures circled one another in their midst. He paused as the two warriors closed on one another, his desire to see his champion strike Nullus down winning him over for a second. But it was not to be. Kor’sarro suppressed a bitter cry of anguish as the Alpha Legionnaire scythed Jhogai down with contemptuous ease, cutting the noble White Scar almost in two with a single sweep of his black halberd. A moment later, both groups of warriors charged headlong into one another, mingled war cries rising above the sound of explosions.

Kor’sarro buried his grief beneath his honour, and forced himself to continue his climb. As he rounded the tower he located the white-armoured figures of one of the flanking groups engaged in a bitter fight with a bellowing mob of the pressure-suit-clad convicts. But the sounds of battle were not confined to these two war zones, for the entire city-sized promethium refinery was gripped by conflict. Rearing processing stacks shook, entire lengths of piping peeling away to fall slowly to the ground where they crashed across the streets and crushed buildings. Explosions blossomed across the plant, and already great belching columns of black smoke were rising into the cold sky. It seemed to Kor’sarro that the White Scars had not brought war to this place at all; they had simply arrived at the same time.

The tower shook again and lurched sickeningly to one side. Kor’sarro gripped the ladder to steady himself, before setting foot upon it and climbing another two dozen metres to the next platform. He was just about to mount the platform when a ten-metre length of conduit hurtled past, falling from further up the tower. Kor’sarro ducked backwards as it cleaved the air a metre from his head, pressing his back against the pipes behind. Then he leaned outwards to follow the huge chunk of broken pipe work as it plummeted, watching as it crushed an entire building with its impact.

The next walkway was narrow and lacked a guardrail. Either the tower’s builders had given no concern for the safety of the convict-workers, or it had long since corroded and fallen away. Kor’sarro was forced to grab onto projecting conduits as he passed along its length, several coming away in his hand, belching fumes that stained his white armour. His filtering-out of the hellish drone from the tower’s peak was less and less effective, the mournful dirge penetrating his mind even as he fought to push it out.

Reaching the ladder at the end of the narrow walkway, Kor’sarro craned his neck to look upwards. The ladder ran all the way to the tower’s peak. Before committing his weight to the corroded steelwork, Kor’sarro tested it by pulling at a rung. The entire length of ladder shook alarmingly, several rivets coming loose to fall past. Gathering his strength for this last climb and the inevitable confrontation at its culmination, he started upwards.

Kor’sarro was now a hundred metres up and climbing. The refinery-city sprawled outwards below towards the ice plains beyond. The distant crystal towers the strike force’s gunships had flown through on their first approach loomed at the horizon. The entire plant was now wracked with ever more violent tremors, which Kor’sarro knew in his heart were the work of his nemesis. The climb became a race to defeat Voldorius before the entire refinery was destroyed. He cared not an iota for the plant itself or for its criminal workforce, but had no desire to see the bulk of the 3rd Company slain as it crumbled. As he neared the top of the ladder, the dirge became almost unbearable in its intensity, the discordant keening cutting through his body and permeating his very soul. It was the sound of a billion souls, wailing their lamentations at an eternity of damnation. It was every one of Voldorius’s victims, wallowing in eternal darkness and demanding retribution. He bellowed in denial, refusing to succumb to the overwhelming bitterness implicit in the wordless song.

His cry was drowned out by a wave front of cacophony, for before him stood its source. He had reached the tower’s peak.

As Kor’sarro hauled himself onto the wide platform, he was confronted by the rearing figure of Voldorius silhouetted against the roiling skies. Actinic lightning arced from every surface, the pulsating, violet auroras twisting down from the cold skies to envelop the summit of the tower. Kor’sarro stood and drew Moonfang, steeling himself for the confrontation against the fiend he had hunted for the better part of a decade.

Voldorius was clad in baroque power armour. His mighty, batlike pinions were folded at his back and he spread his arms wide as if to welcome Kor’sarro as an old friend. In one clawed hand Voldorius bore a writhing blade, twisting and mutating as if eager to rend and cut the flesh of its enemy. The other hand was coiled into a fist, ready to smash and crush Kor’sarro’s bones to dust.

All the while, the hellish keening continued, blasting from the beast’s throat, threatening to push Kor’sarro backwards, over the precipice, where he would plummet to his death far below. With an effort, Kor’sarro took a step forwards, activating his power blade. This thing that stood before him was responsible for the damnation of countless souls and for crimes against the Emperor rivalling those of Horus, the Arch-Traitor himself. Since the great betrayal ten millennia ago at the dawning of the Imperium, this cursed being had led a warband of the Alpha Legion in innumerable wars. His deeds were so unutterably vile that few if any accounts had been committed to record. Only memory prevailed, but the White Scars had never forgotten. They had marked this traitor for the hunt, and Kor’sarro would have his head on a pole or die in the attempt.

He took another step forwards, mouthing the words of an ancient Chogoran invocation against the evils that come upon the cold winds by night. Renewed strength flooded his limbs as the words emboldened him. Faith, in the Emperor and the primarch, honoured be his name, welled up within his heart, saturating him with the fierce, warrior pride of his people. He redoubled his grip upon Moonfang’s worn leather haft, and planted his feet wide, in the ready stance of a warrior.

‘I come for you, Voldorius,’ he bellowed over the droning of the beast and the raging of the storm. ‘I come for your head!’

An arc of fell lightning blasted the metal decking between them, casting the daemon prince’s face in a white, hellish glow.

At the sight of that face, Kor’sarro’s heart filled with rage. The daemon’s mouth was a yawning chasm, ringed with a million lamprey teeth. Above the vile maw bulged two imbecilic eyes, which radiated not hatred, but unadulterated terror.

Cold anger flooded Kor’sarro’s soul. The beast that stood before him was not Voldorius.

‘Lies!’ Kor’sarro bellowed, feeling the urge to abandon himself to a berserker rage. The bitterness and frustration of ten long years of hunting threatened to overwhelm him, to wash away his discipline and wisdom and leave only a core of unreasoning anger. The Storm Seers of the White Scars cautioned against such a fate, and their words came to Kor’sarro even now, in the cold storm of his rage. Those who trod that path never returned, they said. Turn from the Emperor’s light, and you will know nothing but the darkness of an empty soul.

The beast lurched forwards, its steps clumsy and uncoordinated. It raised its writhing daemon-blade high, and brought it downwards in a crude motion that bore no resemblance to the swordsmanship Kor’sarro knew the true Voldorius possessed. It leaned forwards, the balled fist of its left hand dropping to the ground to support its weight, its vile sucker-mouth opening still wider as it redoubled the mournful dirge.

The thing’s foetid breath blasted him, but Kor’sarro stood firm against the barrage. In an instant, all of the terrible threat, all of the doom and damnation in that siren wail was dispelled. As if the scales were lifted from his eyes, Kor’sarro saw the truth of the thing before him. This was no being of fell power, but merely some vat-grown monstrosity or a mutant ripped apart and reassembled to give it the appearance of the fiend Voldorius.

The reason why would have to wait, for the thing was rearing upwards, both arms raised to crash down upon Kor’sarro. There was no skill or art in the attack and Kor’sarro avoided it with contemptuous ease by sidestepping the powerful arms as they smashed into the deck where he had stood an instant before. The decking buckled where the impact hit home, the entire platform shaking violently beneath Kor’sarro’s feet. The thing roared in anger as it realised that its left fist was ensnared in twisted metal, and Kor’sarro saw his opening.

‘Vile as thou art,’ he spoke the ritual Chogoran words, ‘I condemn thee.’

Moonfang swept downwards in a glittering arc, but an instant before the blade would have struck the beast’s neck, it freed its claw and staggered backwards. Instead of beheading the creature, the sword struck its left arm at the elbow, severing it with a jet of brackish, black blood.

For a moment, Kor’sarro found he was blinded as the thing’s blood gushed over him, the vile liquid burning his eyes and flesh. Suddenly vulnerable, he threw himself across the decking sightlessly, hearing the rending of metal behind him as he moved.

The beast’s dirge changed to a plaintive wailing, rising in pitch and volume. Kor’sarro wiped his gauntlet across his face, clearing his eyes of the thing’s stinking blood and blinking as vision returned.

The mutant was staggering backwards, the stump of its arm flailing back and forth as it continued to gush a fountain of dark, steaming liquid. With its every step, the metal decking buckled and shook, sections at its edge shaking loose to plummet to the ground far below.

Pressing forwards again, Kor’sarro raised Moonfang high to parry a crude overhead blow from the beast’s writhing blade. The two weapons clashed with a titanic ringing of steel, and for a moment the two combatants were locked in a terrible contest of strength. The thing bore down with all its power, its vile, lamprey mouth rasping less than a metre from Kor’sarro’s face. Row upon row of jagged teeth filled his vision, and he put all of his strength into pushing the beast’s sword clear. With a final effort, the two sprung apart, but before the mutant could recover, Kor’sarro swung Moonfang about in a wide arc.

The blade hissed as it tore through the mutant-thing’s midsection, scything through armour, then corded muscle, then innards. The bellowing was silenced as the beast’s internal organs were pulverised by the energies unleashed at the blade’s tip. Kor’sarro stepped neatly backwards as a tide of gore spilled out from the beast’s gut, great loops of black intestine thrashing and writhing as they spread out across the decking.

The bulging, imbecilic eyes went dead even as Kor’sarro watched, the life fading from them as the beast collapsed onto its knees. With a deafening crash that cracked the metal platform in two, it fell forwards, its great, black wings falling across its massive form as a death shroud.

Kor’sarro drew in a great gulp of air, tasting the taint of burning upon the winds.

‘My khan!’ Kor’sarro’s comm-bead came to life. ‘Kor’sarro Khan, do you read me?’

‘I hear you, Brother Temu,’ Kor’sarro replied, scanning the complex below for any sign of his warriors. ‘Report.’

‘Lord of Heavens has detected a signal, my khan,’ Temu said, as the tower beneath Kor’sarro’s armoured feet shuddered violently and lurched to one side.

‘What kind of signal, Temu?’ Kor’sarro replied, suspicion rising within him.

‘The Techmarines cannot be certain, my khan, but they have detected an energy spike deep below the refinery–’

‘A command signal,’ Kor’sarro interjected, bile rising in his throat. The tower… the thing disguised as Voldorius…

‘Pull the company out, Temu, now,’ Kor’sarro bellowed, turning for the ladder. ‘We have blundered into another of his deceptions!’

Even as he spoke, Kor’sarro fought for balance on the shaking tower. A deep vibration travelled up its length, and then Kor’sarro’s stomach was in his mouth as the tower dropped several metres and came to rest with a jarring impact. More detonations sounded from across the refinery, several of the mighty processing stacks dropping straight downwards, as if their foundations had been vaporised in an instant. Smoke and flame blossomed at the base of each, and within moments great gouts of liquid fire were belching into the air from a dozen ruptured promethium conduits.

Voldorius had lured the 3rd Company into a trap, using his own followers and the altered mutant-thing as bait. Bitter rage welled up in Kor’sarro’s heart as he stood at the precipice looking down at the burning city-refinery. Yet, even consumed as he was by hatred of the vile one, he knew too that his warriors needed him. Kor’sarro had made an oath to the Great Khan himself that Voldorius would be slain by his hand. He stepped back from the platform’s edge as fragments of it shook loose and fell away. He made for the ladder, and with one last look at the slain mutant, began the climb down. He would not be claiming the thing’s head, for there was no honour in doing so.

‘Temu!’ Kor’sarro called as he sped down the ladder, his feet thudding onto the first platform. ‘Lead the warriors out. I will not be far behind.’

The answer came over the comm-bead a moment later. ‘Aye, my khan. We are assailed by foes, but they attempt to break off the fight.’

‘Then let them,’ Kor’sarro ordered as he pounded along the platform to the next ladder. He was cut off before he could issue another order however, as a mighty explosion rocked the tower, throwing it violently to one side.

Kor’sarro was forced to take hold of a corroded pipe or be flung from the platform. The entire tower lurched sideways, and only Kor’sarro’s iron grip kept him from plummeting dozens of metres as his body swung out into air. The whole base of the tower was wreathed in flames, a pool of burning promethium spreading outwards all around. With a metallic wail, the pipe burst, wreathing Kor’sarro in scalding hot steam. The pipe bent outwards, suspending him several metres from the tower’s flank.

As if the situation could get any worse, Kor’sarro’s ears were assailed by a new sound, a keening like some beast the size of a mountain roaring a challenge to the entire world. For an instant, he took it for the mournful sound of the altered mutant-thing that had drawn him towards the tower, but this was far lower in pitch, so low it was more felt than heard. And it was emanating from the ground, or from beneath it.

Pushing aside the sheer, unadulterated scope of Voldorius’s evil, Kor’sarro knew that he had more immediate concerns. The tower shook again, this time swaying the other way and dropping a dozen metres into the ground. For a moment, the open air below Kor’sarro was replaced by the inclined plane of the tower’s conduit-wreathed flanks.

There was nothing for it. Kor’sarro let go of the pipe and dropped, striking the side of the leaning tower almost immediately. Gravity took over, and he slid down fifty metres of the steep slope, sparks flying from his armour as it scraped along the rusted conduits. The rapidly expanding lake of burning promethium loomed, black smoke pouring upwards to engulf him. His life depending on his timing, Kor’sarro braced himself ready to leap. Then he was entirely wreathed in black smoke, unable to see a thing. He bunched his muscles and pushed himself off against the conduit.

Kor’sarro passed weightlessly through billowing smoke, and then he was out of it and the ground beyond the raging promethium was racing up to meet him. He had but an instant to prepare for the impact, tucking his legs so that as he struck the ground he rolled. Then he was up, Moonfang drawn from its scabbard before he was even upright.

Burning promethium raging at his back, Kor’sarro gained his bearings. Explosions blossomed from nearby buildings, and the frozen, debris-strewn ground beneath his feet trembled. A quake wracked the street, and the ground lurched.

‘Seismic charges,’ Kor’sarro growled.

Activating his comm-bead, he hailed his command vessel. ‘Lord of Heavens, this is Kor’sarro.’ The channel hissed and wailed with feedback for a moment, before the response cut through. ‘Lord of Heavens responding, my khan. Go ahead.’

‘The vile one has planted some form of detonator beneath the plant. The entire facility is coming down. Have all Hunters deployed to extract us. Out.’

Not waiting for the response, Kor’sarro closed the channel and set out along the street at a fast run. The buildings and machinery to either side were now burning, smaller detonations blasting shrapnel in all directions. The sky overhead was black, the violet aurora entirely obscured by clouds of smoke. As he ran, he scanned the alleyways and portals for signs of the enemy, but found only smouldering corpses, bandoliers crackling as ammunition cooked off. A part of him was stunned by the sheer scale of the destruction Voldorius had unleashed, shocked that the vile one would go to such lengths to ensnare his pursuers. How long had Voldorius schemed? Some time, that much was clear. The refinery had been fortified to draw the White Scars in. It had been extensively mined to ensure their destruction once they were mired in combat with the recidivists turned to serve the Alpha Legion.

He continued, pounding along streets now cracked and shifting as the ground disintegrated. The cracks widened into fractures, which Kor’sarro leapt over as he ran. He readied Moonfang as he closed on the building the White Scars had left their bikes in, slowing as he approached the hiding place. He doubted any of the convict defenders would be nearby, but was alert nonetheless.

As Kor’sarro passed through the dark opening, his boot thudded into something wet. At his feet was the blasted body of one of the black- and grey-clad soldiers that had accompanied the Alpha Legion. The man must have fallen foul of one of the charges set to defend the bikes. Kor’sarro’s eye was caught by a symbol painted onto the blood-splattered shoulder armour, something he had not noticed any of the other enemy soldiers wearing. It was some kind of heraldic device, a red shield mounted with four stars. He did not know the significance of the device, but noted it nonetheless.

Then Kor’sarro’s bolt pistol was in his hand and levelled at the darkness as he heard a sound.

‘Brother-captain!’ the voice of Brother Kergis came from the shadows. A moment later, the White Scar activated his bike’s engine, which roared to life, its headlights illuminating the interior of the building. In the harsh glare, Kor’sarro saw that Brother Kergis was not alone. His Command squad awaited, each upon their bikes, while Moondrakkan stood ready for him.

Kor’sarro grinned, but was struck an instant later by two competing concerns.

‘I ordered you to leave…’ he began. Then ‘Brother Jhogai?’ He feared he knew the fate of the company champion without the need to be told, but awaited the response nonetheless.

‘He died with honour, my khan,’ Brother Kergis said, his voice thick with grief.

Kor’sarro nodded silently. The warriors of his Command squad had fought together for years, and Jhogai was well loved and respected amongst the warriors of the 3rd Company. He might one day have risen to Kor’sarro’s own rank, but for the traitorous Alpha Legion.

An explosion nearby brought Kor’sarro back to the here and now, dust and debris falling from the ceiling. He pushed his own grief to the back of his mind, resolving to honour his fallen comrade by ensuring the others survived to continue the hunt for Voldorius.

‘I’ll have words with those who disregard my orders,’ he said as he mounted his bike and gunned its engine to life. Despite the harshness of his tone, his warriors would know he jested. He was eternally grateful they had waited for him.

‘White Scars,’ Kor’sarro bellowed over the roaring of his Command squad’s bikes in the building’s interior. ‘It is well past time we were leaving!’

At that, Kor’sarro led the way out of the building as larger chunks of debris were torn from its roof to crash down around them. The street outside now resembled a warzone, as if opposing titans had battled one another with no regard for their environment. Oily black smoke enveloped the refinery, the only illumination that of the raging promethium fires deep within. As they rode, they were forced to swerve as huge chunks of debris and falling buildings, massive conduits and processing stacks were cast down by the sheer destruction Voldorius had unleashed. The ground heaved, and several times cracks many metres wide appeared in front of the White Scars. They gunned their bikes’ engines and leapt across blindly, for all too often the other side was wreathed in smoke and flame.

The streets finally widened and the Command squad raced through the refinery-city’s outer limits, the smoke thinning noticeably. The bulk of the destruction was confined to the city’s heart, marked by the now-collapsed tower upon which Kor’sarro had faced the mutant-thing proxy of Voldorius. The White Scars cleared the last of the machines and buildings of the plant and closed on the inner trench line.

The defences were now abandoned by all but the dead and the dying, the recidivist scum having shown their true colours and fled. They would not get far, for those not cut down by the White Scars would not survive long in the frozen depths of the polar wastes, and they could scarcely return to their city.

Passing the defence line, Kor’sarro brought Moondrakkan to a slewing halt that kicked up a spray of ice from the frozen ground. As his companions slowed to a stop, he looked back in the direction they had come from.

The central zone of the refinery-city was enveloped in roiling black clouds, which seethed and pulsed as if with a vile life of their own. Flashes from within illuminated the clouds, silhouetting something that Kor’sarro could not quite make out. A deep, subsonic lowing filled the air, echoing through the blazing city and out across the frozen wastes. The sound was almost that of an animal, a vast creature bellowing its hatred and pain at the universe.

And then another flash of lightning illuminated the roiling cloudbank, and Kor’sarro saw something terrible. Rising ponderously out of the cloud was what he first took for a warped and distorted conduit, perhaps thrown outwards by the explosions tearing the city’s heart apart. Then he saw that it was no conduit; it was nothing made by the hand of man.

From out of the cloud rose what could only be described as vast, coiling tentacles. The animal keening rose to deafening volume, forcing Kor’sarro to don his helmet and activate its dampeners just to preserve his hearing. More of the tentacles appeared, until a nest of dozens writhed and thrashed as if in slow motion. The vast, coiling limbs quested blindly outwards, each languid movement felling a building or processing stack and causing untold destruction. Whatever the beast was, it appeared not to notice the flames that raged all about it as billions of litres of promethium burned.

‘Xenos blasphemy…’ Kor’sarro heard Brother Yeku, his company standard bearer mutter.

‘Or worse,’ answered Apothecary Khagus, his own voice thick with disbelief at the sight before them.

‘What could be–’ Brother Yeku said.

‘Enough!’ Kor’sarro interjected. Even as he spoke, more of the tentacles were writhing outwards from whatever hell mouth had spawned the beast. Several were moving in the direction of the Command squad. He gunned Moondrakkan’s engine and brought his mount around. ‘Brother Temu, raise the Lord of Heavens. I want a situation report.’

As Kor’sarro and his Command squad moved out again, Brother Temu reported back. ‘Lord of Heavens says they’ve lost contact with the gunships, my khan. I barely got through, and lost the channel soon after.’

Several of the vast tentacles were now reaching high into the air, and one was questing in the command group’s direction. It was so large, even the fast-moving bikes could not hope to escape it.

‘All Hunters!’ Kor’sarro bellowed into the vox-link. ‘This is Kor’sarro, does anyone read me?’

Wailing feedback was the only reply Kor’sarro heard, before a second later the gargantuan tentacle loomed overhead and crashed to the ground a mere twenty metres away, pulverising ice and smashing apart crystal formations. The impact, had it come down upon the Command squad, would have crushed the whole group to a bloody smear.

As the tentacle rose again, Kor’sarro reopened the vox-channel. ‘All Hunters, whoever can hear me, converge on my position!’

The vast tentacle slammed down into the ground again, the force of the impact almost throwing several of the White Scars from their bikes. But it is said that the sons of Chogoris are born in the saddle, and they all maintained control of their machines. This time, the ice sheet cracked, and a nearby defence bastion was swallowed whole as a vast chasm opened up.

‘Does anyone read me?’ Kor’sarro called again, steering wildly to avoid a massive shard of ice flung across his path by the tentacle’s flailing. The animal lowing continued, so loud now that even with his helmet systems engaged Kor’sarro was almost deafened.

‘Hunter One,’ the response came over the vox. ‘This is Hunter Three, inbound on your position. Stand by.’

‘Hunter Three?’ Kor’sarro replied, uncaring that his voice was tinged with incredulity. He heard a savage roar of joy from his companions, which was drowned out seconds later by the sound of a trio of hellstrike missiles streaking overhead from Hunter Three’s undamaged wing, before slamming into the writhing tentacle.

The monstrous organ was consumed in fire, two hundred metres of it tearing away under the missiles’ barrage. The separated appendage reared hideously into the air, standing upright for a moment before crashing down. The ice cracked, and the obscene tentacle collapsed through the wound it had made.

But the beast would not be killed simply by severing its limbs. Whatever lay at the heart of the writhing mass was still protected in the ground beneath the promethium plant.

‘Hunters,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘We shall draw the beast from its lair. When its body is exposed, strike it down.’

The bikers powered on across the icebound plains, the jagged crystal formations becoming denser as the ruined promethium plant was left far behind. The White Scars’ skills were tested to the full as they swerved around crystals as sharp as diamonds. A shadow passed over Kor’sarro’s band, and an instant later a rearing crystal stack shattered into a billion pieces, showering the White Scars with razor-sharp fragments.

The tentacle slammed down behind the racing bikers, its leathery hide pierced with countless shards of crystalline shrapnel. The tentacle reared and thrashed as it bled the clear liquid that must have served it as blood across the ice. Another tentacle arched high into the air and came down with a ground-shaking impact in a great loop in front of the White Scars, trapping their escape.

But the beast had overextended itself. Its vast, globular body had emerged from the smoking crater at the heart of the promethium plant as it had stretched itself further and further in pursuit of its prey. A pulsating mountain of unformed flesh rolled out of the chasm to flatten the buildings of the plant. Processing stacks toppled and machinery exploded as the creature tore down the works of man in its eagerness to catch those who fled it.

‘Now!’ Kor’sarro said. ‘All Hunters, strike for its heart!’

The skies were split by the sonic boom of the Thunderhawks soaring high overhead. Every weapon of every gunship was fired as one, hellstrike missiles, cannon shells and las-beams lancing out across the sky.

The pulsating core of the beast erupted in a fountain of vile ichor and was consumed in flames. The tentacles arched and thrashed, looping high as if to shield the beast from its attackers. As the last of the tentacles sank into the banks of black smoke, Hunters One and Five came in to land near Kor’sarro and his warriors and the Master of the Hunt led his retinue up the access ramp of his command gunship and into the waiting bay. What remained of the plant was fully ablaze, a column of black smoke rising many kilometres into the atmosphere.

Just what vile sorceries Voldorius had enacted here Kor’sarro had no way of knowing, but it seemed to him that some creature from this world’s pre-history that slumbered beneath the ice sheet had been awakened by seismic charges. The act had been timed so that the beast would arise at the very moment Kor’sarro was facing the mutant atop the city’s highest peak.

As the ramp closed behind him and the Thunderhawk lifted into the air, Kor’sarro vowed he would not allow Voldorius a moment’s respite. The image of the insignia on the dead soldier’s armour came to mind once more. The four stars on the crimson shield. If he could discover the source of that insignia, the hunt would be back under way.

Kor’sarro swore that Voldorius would pay for the crimes he had enacted on Cernis IV. They would be added to the millennia-long litany. Justice would be done, by Kor’sarro’s own hand. This was his oath, on his very life.

‘Before the rise of the Imperium of Man, the greatest, most deranged minds created machines so small they could invade the very blood and make war upon their creators’ enemies from within. Once released, those machines replicated, until they had invaded the blood of an entire planetary population. And then, at a single word, they arose. Ten billion bled as one, and an entire world drowned in the blood.

But something went wrong, as ever it will when man dabbles with such powers. The weapon escaped the shackles of its own being, and would not obey its masters. And so it came to pass that the world which the weapon had destroyed so spectacularly was set apart from the greater realm of man.

The Emperor came, and in time that world knew the tread of man once more. Yet, the weapon remained hidden for cold millennia, until a servant of the Machine discovered it, waiting, in the dust and ashes beneath his very feet. And that servant, who had been cast out by his brethren, brought his discovery to the vile one, his true master. At his word, the weapon was resurrected, and at his word, it was set free across not one world, but a thousand. Only when the weapon had invaded the bodies of countless billions did the vile one order it to rise up and turn upon its carriers. Such glorious slaughter was achieved that night that the vile one was granted apotheosis. He cast off his mortal heritage and became as a god. But he would be yet more.

The weapon was expended, reduced once more to a core of a trillion nanytes. These the vile one bound into the form of the prisoner, and held captive, until the time came to unleash the power upon the galaxy once more.

The sons of man sought to destroy all knowledge of the weapon, to deny its existence, as if by locking facts away they could starve reality and undo that which had been done. But there are those who move in the shadows, who see what others do not. These benighted souls with eyes of black harbour such knowledge, and they wait, biding their time. Soon. That time is soon.’

– The Heretic Archivist of the Gethsemane Reclusiam,
Third Book of Quothes (redacted)

CHAPTER THREE

QUINTUS

Ekit Skarl, equerry to Lord Voldorius, paused in the vestibule before stepping onto the bridge of The Ninth Eye. He took a deep breath, steeling himself to face his infernal master, to enter the baleful presence of the daemon prince that had ravaged the hated Imperium for so many long centuries. Skarl was but the latest in a long line of mortals Voldorius had employed to deal with the tiresome and mundane realities of administration, logistics and politics. He had not chosen the role for himself, though he accepted that he had certainly invited it by his dabbling in the forbidden doctrines of the Ruinous Powers. The equerry’s continued existence relied solely on his fulfilling his master’s needs, without doubt or hesitation. He could afford to show not a single iota of weakness.

Beyond the shadows in which the equerry lurked sprawled the bridge of the Desolator-class battleship that had served as Voldorius’s flagship for three millennia, since the daemon prince had wrested it from the fleet of his rival Lord Commander Amexon of the Alpha Legion. A raised central walkway stretched a hundred metres forwards, terminating in armoured viewports ten metres tall. Below the level of the walkway were the bridge crew stations, in which hundreds of hard-wired crew-serfs spent every moment of their tortured existence tending to the operation of the vessel’s ancient systems.

Straightening his black robes and assuming a suitably meek stoop, Skarl stepped out from the vestibule’s shadows and onto the decking plate of the bridge. Two dozen crew-serfs glanced upwards in his direction, their jealousy at his freedoms and privileges writ large across their scabrous faces. Fools, Skarl thought, all of them. They should count themselves blessed that they lived such uncomplicated lives, he mused bitterly as he stalked past.

As he walked the length of the walkway, Skarl reviewed in his mind the news he had come to deliver to his master. The Ninth Eye was closing on the world of Quintus, a planet that Lord Voldorius had invested much in subjugating, for it was the perfect base for his forthcoming plans. The daemon prince’s followers had fought a month-long war to crush the planet’s militias, crippling its contacts with the greater Imperium in short order so that no outside interference would be forthcoming. Now, that conquest was largely complete, allowing the next phase of his master’s plans to begin.

The equerry bore other news too.

Approaching Lord Voldorius, Skarl assumed an even deeper bow, feeling the fell power that radiated from his master’s huge form in sickening waves. Some were so afflicted that they would vomit, void their bowels or collapse upon the floor bleeding from every orifice. Skarl knew how pathetic his master found such displays, and it was one of the equerry’s many tasks to ensure such weaklings were not allowed to enter the master’s presence or his service, unless of course it served the daemon’s own purposes to see his enemies reduced to vomiting, quivering wrecks at his feet.

Casting off such thoughts, Skarl sidled up to his master and assumed a posture of abject subservience. His forehead pressed to the corroded metal decking, he awaited his master’s acknowledgement.

‘You may stand, equerry,’ Voldorius said. The daemon prince had never once addressed Skarl by name.

Allowing himself to breathe, Skarl rose, though only to a low bow. He dared not stand fully erect in his master’s presence lest the action be taken for insubordination.

‘Speak, equerry,’ Lord Voldorius ordered, his voice laced with ancient menace that filled Skarl with cold dread no matter how many times he heard it.

‘My master, I bring word that the resistance on Quintus is all but crushed.’ He was mindful to phrase the missive in such a way that it was not his own assessment of the situation on the world below, but someone else’s; someone who would bear responsibility were it proved incorrect.

Skarl awaited a response from his master, not daring to raise his gaze any higher than the daemon’s power armour-encased feet. It was long moments before Voldorius replied. ‘What of Nullus?’

‘My lord Nullus has come aboard this past hour, my master. He and his warriors are returned from Cernis IV in glory.’

A palpable wave of displeasure washed over Skarl as his master reacted to this last statement. Dread welled up inside the equerry. ‘Why then is he not before me, apprising his master of his great victory?’ Voldorius grated.

‘My master, I…’ Skarl stammered, dropping to the deck once more and pressing his face against the metal at his master’s feet. Then, another voice sounded from the far end of the bridge, and Skarl allowed himself to breathe a sigh a relief.

‘I came as soon as I was able, Voldorius.’ The voice belonged to Nullus, his master’s most trusted servant, if trust could be said to exist between such fell beings. Skarl remained prostrate as he listened to the metallic tread of Nullus’s armoured boots approaching along the walkway.

‘I had certain dedications to make,’ Nullus said. ‘In honour of my victory.’

‘What of Cernis?’ Voldorius growled. Skarl became aware that a tense hush had descended upon the bridge, as if all present knew that bad news would bring their master’s displeasure down upon them.

‘The spawn of Jaghatai took the bait,’ Nullus replied, relish obvious in his voice. ‘They thought they had us, but were disabused of that notion.’

‘Survivors?’ Voldorius enquired.

‘The beast ate its fill, Voldorius, of that I am quite sure.’

‘How sure?’ Voldorius snapped back.

‘None could have survived the destruction we unleashed upon the refinery. And I took the life of their champion with my own blade.’

‘And none could have followed?’ Voldorius growled, his voice low and tainted with menace.

‘None, my master,’ Nullus responded. ‘Their hunt is ended for good.’

Voldorius considered Nullus’s words for some time before he replied. ‘You have served well, as ever you do when facing the scarred ones, Nullus. You shall be rewarded.’ The daemon turned his mighty bulk towards the viewports, and raised a clawed hand to point into the void. ‘What of Quintus, Nullus? The equerry tells me the subjugation is all but complete.’

At the mention of his name, Skarl allowed himself to straighten up, knowing that he would be addressed again soon. As he did so, he saw that the scarred face of Nullus was upon him, those soulless eyes boring into his own.

‘The subjugation is entirely complete, Voldorius,’ Nullus said without turning his gaze from the equerry. ‘On that you have my word.’

Nullus broke eye contact with Skarl, and turned his black gaze towards the scene beyond the viewports. Skarl felt profound relief that he was no longer the subject of Nullus’s attentions, for the lieutenant was known as a capricious and callous individual ill-disposed towards rivals or those who gainsaid his word. Nullus was, after all, Alpha Legion, while Skarl was but a man, and his continued existence was entirely at the forbearance of his masters.

‘What of the resistance?’ Voldorius asked. The daemon prince spoke the last word as if describing the foulest of deeds, as if the notion that mere mortals might attempt to stand before his designs was the worst possible affront.

Nullus hesitated before making his reply. It seemed to Skarl that the lieutenant was gathering his thoughts, lest he give Voldorius cause to become displeased. Then, Nullus answered.

‘What little opposition to your rule still remained after the purges of the Klanik Peninsula and the Olsta Line is now entirely crushed, Voldorius. The processing sites are now fully operational, and those who do not display total loyalty to their new masters are being culled.’

‘At what rate?’ Voldorius interjected.

‘The example we made of the 4th Division paid dividends, my master,’ Nullus continued. ‘Twenty thousand heads now adorn the walls of the capital. Since then, the cull rate has dropped to around ten thousand a day, and I expect it to drop further still as the point is driven home. For every act of defiance, a thousand die as punishment. Soon, the resistance shall be entirely spent.’

Voldorius considered his lieutenant’s words. ‘A shame that the offerings must cease. The warp resounds to the death of multitudes, singing our glory across light years.’

Skarl scarcely dared interrupt his master, but he had other news to deliver. ‘My master… I…’

The bridge fell deathly silent, and Skarl felt not only the eyes of a hundred crew-serfs upon him, but those of his master too. Nausea welled up inside him as Voldorius radiated anger. The equerry swallowed hard to avoid vomiting across his master’s boots, for his life, at this moment, hung in the balance.

‘Speak, equerry,’ Skarl heard his master say. Behind the voice he could hear the wailing of anguished souls, those of the many thousands that had displeased the daemon throughout the millennia and paid the terrible price for doing so.

‘My master,’ Skarl said, fighting desperately to keep his voice level. ‘I bring word that the prisoner is awakened at last. The cell-masters await your coming.’

‘Be seated, my brothers,’ said Kor’sarro as he entered the strategium of the Lord of Heavens. The Space Marines inside bowed their heads before seating themselves around the circular chamber. The Master of the Hunt took his own seat, a marble throne surmounted with the skull of a fearsome tusk-drake. The beast had been slain in combat by old Jamuka Khan, Kor’sarro’s honoured predecessor, teacher and greatly-missed friend.

A week had passed since the destruction of the Cernis IV refinery, and the Master of the Hunt had been afforded plenty of time to brood upon the whole affair. He had gone over every single detail of the events leading up to the assault, as well as the battle itself. He had gathered the most senior of his officers to the strategium. In his endless poring over every detail of the action on Cernis IV, he had found something.

‘Brother Sang,’ Kor’sarro addressed the Techmarine seated opposite him across the chamber. ‘The sensorium upload, if you will.’

‘By your command, my khan,’ replied Brother Sang. A multi-jointed, mechanical limb at the Techmarine’s back reached forwards, a data-spike at its end plugging into a terminal set in the decking. The spike whirred and buzzed, and then the light in the chamber dimmed. For a moment, all was dark, before a bright shaft of light formed in the centre of the chamber. Within the glowing column danced tiny motes, slowly resolving into an image of a frozen scene from the closing stages of the battle at Cernis IV.

All eyes in the chamber were turned towards the slowly spinning scene, projected in a three-dimensional image by ancient holo-generators set in the floor and ceiling.

‘My brothers,’ Kor’sarro said, looking to each of the Space Marines, one at a time. ‘What you see before you is a single frame, taken from the sensorium-core of my own power armour.’

After a few seconds, Kor’sarro nodded towards the Techmarine, and the scene blurred, before resolving itself again.

‘And here is the same scene, from Brother To’ban’s perspective.’ He nodded again, and the scene cycled through five more frames, each showing the same patch of rubble-strewn ground from a different angle.

‘None of us took note at the time, as we were all otherwise engaged,’ Kor’sarro went on, a wry smile forming at his lips. ‘But I have reviewed every upload, and I believe we have him.’

Several of the officers present began to speak, but Kor’sarro raised a hand, forestalling their questions. At another nod, Brother Sang caused the image of the war torn scene to zoom in on a single patch of ground. At the centre of the strategium, as if suspended in the column of bright light, was projected the image of a blood-splattered segment of armour.

‘This armour, brothers, was worn by one of the soldiers accompanying the traitors.’ Several of those present nodded in recognition as memories of the confrontation with the Alpha Legion and their human followers came to mind. ‘I have asked Brother Qan’karro to identify it.’

All heads turned towards the strike force’s most senior psychic warrior, a Space Marine Librarian. The White Scars knew them as Storm Seers. Brother Qan’karro stood, his gnarled force staff in hand, and scanned the chamber. The Storm Seer’s face was lined with age and honour scars, his skin having the texture and hue of old oak. Though he was ancient, Brother Qan’karro was counted amongst the Chapter’s most fearsome warriors, his rank and seniority broadly equal to the Master of the Hunt’s. Though Kor’sarro held command of the 3rd Company, there were few matters in which he would not welcome the counsel of the old Storm Seer.

‘The armour bears a device, four stars on a red field,’ Qan’karro said. ‘We have consulted the archives, and found three hundred and nine instances of this device in current use in this Segmentum alone’. Kor’sarro saw several of his officers make eye contact with one another, evidently believing the odds too long. But the Master of the Hunt felt wry amusement as the Storm Seer continued.

‘Many we can ignore,’ Qan’karro said, ‘for they represent only mercantile concerns of one sort or another. One more we can most certainly eliminate, for the device was used as the standard of Rogue Trader Huss, emblazoning every vessel in the disastrous Magellanic Expedition.’

Several of Kor’sarro’s officers nodded at the mention of that cursed venture, which several Space Marine Chapter Masters had spoken out against to little avail.

‘In another case, the kin-slavers of the Alcaak Dystopia used the device to brand their victims, but we all know what befell those cruel bastards.’ Many of those slavers were now themselves enslaved. They deserved every torture the dark eldar had inflicted on them.

‘Of the dozen or so uses of the device that remain, one stands out. Having meditated long on the matter, my brothers and I are in agreement.’ The Space Marines waited for Qan’karro to expound on his deduction, and Kor’sarro knew that the old warrior was now fully in his element, even enjoying himself, if such a thing were possible.

‘Go on please, honoured seer,’ Kor’sarro said, bowing his head slightly towards Qan’karro, the faintest of smiles touching his lips. ‘We await your wisdom with great anticipation.’

The Storm Seer’s glance told Kor’sarro that he was well aware that he was being made sport of, if only in a friendly manner. Qan’karro got to the point. ‘The household guard of the governor of a world called Quintus,’ the Storm Seer announced. ‘A world a mere five light years distant, and on the same secondary conduit as Cernis.’

Kor’sarro delved into his memories of nearby space, calling to mind the endless charts and maps he and his senior commanders had gone over time and again in their hunt for Voldorius. Yes, the Quintus system came to him.

‘The bulwark-world?’ Kor’sarro said.

‘Aye, huntsman,’ the Storm Seer replied, before expounding. ‘But Quintus has of late been afflicted by a warp storm, codified Argenta. It is only in the last months that Argenta has quietened to an unprecedented degree, allowing free passage to and from the system for the first time in months.’

‘You believe this significant?’ asked Kor’sarro.

‘Indeed I do,’ the Storm Seer replied, looking around at the gathered Space Marines before his gaze settled on the slowly revolving image of the blood-splattered armour. ‘Quintus represents a convergence, in more ways than one. For a start, it is a warp nexus, a point at which several dozen conduits meet. Whoever controls the system can extend his influence to a score of others and dominate the entire region.’

Kor’sarro nodded, picturing the stellar maps. Quintus did indeed sit at a strategically desirable meeting of warp routes. For centuries, the world had stood guard against alien incursions from nearby wilderness space. Until, that is, warp storm Argenta had caused the world to fall from power. With the warp storm receding, the balance of powers would shift once more. But in whose favour?

Even as the thought came to him, another of those present spoke up. ‘Something tells me this convergence of which you speak is not merely a strategic matter, Brother Qan’karro.’ The speaker was the 3rd Company’s senior Chaplain, a black-clad veteran by the name of Xia’ghan. ‘Other forces are at work here, are they not?’

The Storm Seer nodded to his comrade, a dour expression falling across his features. ‘Indeed, honoured one,’ he replied. ‘All of the signs point to something being unleashed upon Quintus. Something from the dark times. Something terrible.’

Silence fell across the strategium as the Storm Seer’s message sank in. After long moments, Kor’sarro looked around at his senior officers, and spoke.

‘If what our brother tells us is true, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, then Voldorius must be stopped before he can bring about whatever calamity he has planned. I am pledged to bring the head of the vile one to the Hall of Skies, this I have promised to the Great Khan himself. I will not allow the daemon to entrap us again, or to escape our grasp, and I expect every one of you and your men to stand with me on this. Much rides upon it.

‘Brothers, we go to Quintus, for there our hunt must end, for our honour, for the Great Khan’s, and for our primarch’s.’

Every Space Marine in the strategium responded as one. ‘Honoured be his name!’

Skarl bowed deeply as he stepped aside to allow Voldorius and Nullus by. In front of the equerry was a pair of mighty iron doors, deeply corroded and encrusted with the forbidden runes of the Chaos Gods. Skarl had spent most of his life in the presence of such fell sigils, but even he was cowed by the sheer malignance that radiated from this particular combination.

With a deep rumble, the doors slid apart, a hellish, flickering glow filling the widening gap. Before the entrance was even fully open, Voldorius stepped through into the cell. Skarl waited as Nullus followed his master, cowering despite himself as the lieutenant cast a threatening glance his way.

Only when both warriors were through the portal did the equerry follow in their wake.

Skarl had never entered the cell before. What it held inside was so valuable to his master that few were ever allowed to do so, upon pain of torture or, if lucky, death. As he passed through, he took in the unfamiliar surroundings. The cell was in fact a large, round chamber, its vaults lost in darkness far overhead. The walls were of brass, stained by centuries of runoff from dozens of corroded grilles. Other stains were in evidence too, great arcs of long-dried blood and other bodily fluids lending the walls a mottled finish. Sconces were mounted all around the chamber, their flickering flames casting the illumination Skarl had seen from outside.

Voldorius stopped in the centre of the huge chamber, and Nullus came to stand beside him. Skarl followed a respectful distance behind them, still bowing, eventually coming to stand behind Voldorius. Before the three stood a pair of cell-masters. They were massive brutes, clad in heavy leather aprons encrusted with filth. The bare skin of their arms and upper chests glistened with sweat in the flickering light of the torches, and the face of each was obscured by a heavy mask, piggish eyes just visible behind the thin visor. At their belts the cell-masters carried an assortment of crude tools, their general purpose clearly evident to the equerry. In his hand, each held a long electro-prod. The two implements crossed in between the two men. At Voldorius’s approach, the cell-masters raised the prods, a brief arc of electricity spitting between the tips before they were brought upright, revealing what they guarded.

Behind the two cell-masters was a brass orb, perhaps two metres in diameter, its entire polished surface carved with impossibly intricate lines and devices. Skarl’s gaze was drawn into the unnatural patterns, and it took a formidable effort to turn his eyes away from them. Any not promised to the Ruinous Powers were likely to become entrapped by the sigils and forms, their soul forfeited by the very act of looking upon them. It was only when he tore his glance away from the orb’s surface that Skarl realised that the entire construction was floating above the deck, held aloft by invisible lines of arcane force. Powerful sorceries were at work, for no mere anti-grav generator was being utilised.

A preternatural quiet descended on the cell as Voldorius stepped between the two attendants. Even the flickering torches mounted upon the wall fell silent, though their flames still danced.

The daemon prince halted in front of the orb and laid a clawed hand upon its surface. Red and orange energies played between claw and brass. No mere mortal could have survived that contact, for only Voldorius had power over what lay before him. The daemon prince closed his eyes, his bestial face becoming unusually still for a moment. Then he opened them once again and spoke, his voice shattering the silence of the chamber.

‘Awaken, prisoner,’ Voldorius grated. ‘And know your fate!’

After a pause that felt like an hour, a whisper filled the chamber. ‘None can know their fate, Voldorius. Not even you.’

The voice seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere, from a million throats and from none. The voice was not a voice at all, but the mere echo of one, separated by impossible gulfs from its source. Even as the ghostly words faded, Voldorius replied.

‘You will obey me, prisoner, or you will know such pain as even you cannot imagine.’

Again, a long silence preceded the prisoner’s response, throughout which ancient thoughts formed and reformed in the ether before they coalesced into words.

‘We have felt the pain of billions, Voldorius, as well you know.’ An ethereal undertone spoke of anguish and despair, but also of resignation. ‘Nothing you can do can make us obey.’

Skarl shuddered as waves of fell anger radiated from his master before Voldorius spoke once more. ‘I have kept you for two thousand years, contained you, tempered you. Now I awaken you, and you shall do as I command. Of that you can be assured.’

A displeasure that few witnessed and survived was written across the daemon’s face. Through clenched teeth, Voldorius addressed his equerry.

‘Prepare the meat-casters,’ Voldorius growled. ‘Send word that the orb is to be unsealed, at last. The prisoner is to be broken, his will is to be destroyed, his mind is to be shattered, whatever the cost. I only order that no matter the ruin visited upon his flesh, life must remain, if only in a single, dry, quivering cell. Take the prisoner to Quintus, to the palace in Mankarra, render it unto the meat-casters, and then await my order.’

Skarl prostrated himself before his master, touching his forehead to the filth-encrusted floor. ‘I obey, my master,’ he mumbled.

As the footsteps of Voldorius and Nullus receded, Skarl repeated over and over, ‘I obey, my master. I obey.’

CHAPTER FOUR

VENGEANCE IS MINE

‘Cytha,’ hissed Makaal as the resistance cell-leader peered through his spy-lens at the dark passageway up ahead. ‘You’re clear. Go!’

Covering the lithe, bodyglove-clad form of Cytha as she darted from the shadows to his left, Makaal offered up a brief, silent prayer to the Emperor of Mankind. Please, he beseeched, let us succeed, even if it costs us our lives. Let us end the terror unleashed upon Quintus by the vile one, once and for all.

‘In position,’ Cytha’s whisper came back a few seconds later. Makaal looked to the shadows where he knew his second in command was waiting, satisfied that he could not make her out. ‘Bys,’ he whispered. ‘Your turn. Go!’

Makaal raised his hellgun to cover the larger man as he ran past. Bys was nowhere near as nimble or stealthy as Cytha, or indeed any other member of the cell, but he was as strong as a bull grox. He had to be, to carry the weight of explosives he had stowed about him.

After twenty seconds, Makaal was satisfied that Bys was in position, and addressed the last member of the cell. ‘Rund, you’re up. Go!’

Rund dashed forwards. He was neither as stealthy as Cytha, nor as strong as Bys, but Rund was a certified lay-technician and had served in the capital city’s generatorium for a decade under his Adeptus Mechanicus overseers. His skills were critical to the success of the cell’s desperate mission.

And that mission, whether or not that bitch Malya L’nor and the other self-appointed ‘leaders’ of the pro-Imperium resistance on Quintus would sanction it, was to assassinate Voldorius whatever the cost. The resistance had received word from their contacts inside the palace of the deposed governor of Quintus that the vile one was returning to the world after some errand off-planet. The daemon would be arriving, so the contacts claimed, by way of the palace’s ancient teleportarium, and he would be doing so within the hour.

When Rund had taken position, Makaal took one last look behind to check that no sentries lurked in the dark service tunnel far beneath the palace. He darted forwards past his comrades, taking point. Pressing his back to the wall, Makaal made himself as small a target as possible, melting into the shadows that lined the passageway. He ordered his subordinates forwards, one at a time, covering them with his hellgun and scanning the tunnel up ahead through his spy-lens.

So far, the infiltration had gone to plan and Makaal had allowed himself to feel a small measure of vindication. The mission was by necessity an improvised affair; a plan opposed by the bulk of the resistance leaders in Mankarra, the capital city of Quintus. The debate had been brief but bitter. In the end, Makaal had defied Malya L’nor, his immediate superior in the resistance, and rounded up whichever cell members he could find who were willing to follow him. His plan was almost certainly suicidal, but Makaal reasoned that his life was worth the prize – deliverance from the evil Voldorius had visited upon his world. L’nor and the others had argued that his failure would spell the doom of many more innocents. They believed Voldorius or any who survived him would never allow such a deed to go unpunished whether or not it succeeded.

Makaal hated Malya L’nor. He hated that she was so eager to save the lives of those who had already surrendered their very existence to the whim of the vile one, who had allowed themselves to be enslaved. He would prove her wrong, of that he was determined.

The smallest of movements up ahead caused Makaal to abandon his train of thought in an instant. He held up a hand and gave the silent signal that would warn his comrades of a possible enemy presence. Holding his breath and forcing every muscle in his body to stillness, Makaal scanned the tunnel through his spy-lens. The service tunnel ran another one hundred metres through the bedrock beneath the palace, densely clustered pipes and cables lining its walls and ceiling. The end of the tunnel was marked by a square of wan light, which Makaal zoomed the spy-lens in upon to examine in closer detail. As the magnification increased, the image became grainy, but Makaal was sure that he had seen movement and waited for the machine-spirit inside the device to confirm it.

There – crossing the square of light at the end of the passageway was a figure. It was gone in seconds, but Makaal had seen all he needed. It was one of the traitors of the Mankarra Household Guard, the former governor’s most trusted warriors. How ironic that they had been the first to turn and take up arms with Voldorius and the Alpha Legion. The grey- and black-armoured guards had gunned the governor down even as their former master had fled for the bunker beneath the palace. They had strung his ruined body from the highest of the palace’s spires.

Makaal waited until he was sure it was safe, and eased his body out of the shadows, his hellgun gripped tight. Checking the weapon’s status counter, Makaal confirmed that he had sufficient charge to face whatever might lie ahead.

Makaal and his team approached the light at the end of the tunnel, covering the one hundred metres of ground with extreme caution. It felt to Makaal that the approach was taking far too much time, and that he might miss this opportunity to attack Voldorius when the daemon was at his most vulnerable. Yet he knew that undue haste now would bring the mission to an abrupt and fatal end.

At length, Makaal eased himself into the shadows five metres from the opening, and peered cautiously out. A chamber formed a junction between half a dozen other service tunnels. A hatch was set into one rock wall, which Makaal knew to be a cargo escalator that served the upper levels of the palace. Beside the hatch stood five troopers of the palace guard.

Forcing his body to complete stillness, Makaal watched the guards for several minutes until he was sure they were not merely passing through the area. Evidently, the traitorous bastards had been posted to the tunnel junction to guard against intruders. It made sense, for the resistance had been launching attacks across the entire city for weeks. The junction provided a base the guards could launch patrols from into the sprawling network of service tunnels beneath the palace. They would have to be dealt with before the cell could advance any further.

With a last hand signal, the cell leader counted down five seconds before he surged out of the tunnel.

The first of the palace guards went down before any had registered the attack. Makaal put a searing hellgun blast through his torso that flash-boiled his internal organs in an instant. Even before the guard had hit the ground, the other resistance fighters were out of the tunnel. Cytha darted to one side, rolling athletically as one of the guards brought his lascarbine up and blasted an unaimed shot in her direction. Cytha’s move took her halfway across the chamber, where she came up into a kneeling position and brought her compact laspistol to bear on the trooper nearest to her. The man tracked her as she took aim, but he was too slow. Cytha’s pistol spat and the guard was speared through the neck by a bright lance of lethal energy.

One of the remaining guards bellowed an order and all three dived for the cover of a crate near the escalator hatch. Knowing that his team would be caught in the open should the enemy find cover they could defend themselves from, Makaal called out his own instructions. Bys moved to the left while Rund darted to the right. Makaal moved towards Cytha, who was already working her way behind a cluster of barrels to outflank the enemy.

‘We’ve got to end this, now,’ Makaal told Cytha as he caught up with her. ‘We don’t have time to get bogged down.’

‘Agreed,’ the fighter replied, peering around the edge of a barrel. ‘What’s your plan?’

There was only one solution. He limbered his hellgun and drew a long blade from his belt. Seeing his intention, Cytha stowed her own firearm, and drew a wickedly sharp stiletto blade. She raised the weapon to her lips and kissed it tenderly. ‘Ready when you are,’ she whispered.

‘Go!’ Makaal ordered, springing from the cover the two had shared.

The three guards had made the cover of the crate and were even now raising their weapons over it, only their heads and arms visible. Bys and Rund worked their way around the chamber’s edge, each firing as they went, taking advantage of what little cover was provided by stanchions and pipe work. The two men’s fire was forcing the guards to keep their heads down, to a degree at least, but Makaal knew that would not last long.

Makaal and Cytha closed on their targets together. Cytha was fastest, the fighter leaping atop the crate with the speed of a hunting predator. Coming down into a nimble crouch, Cytha kicked out at the nearest guard, snapping his neck. In an instant, Makaal was vaulting past her. He slashed downwards with his blade as he passed the second guard, gouging a deep, red wound across his shoulder.

The last of the guards was too involved drawing a bead on Rund to react to Makaal and Cytha’s assault, and Rund had allowed himself to be distracted by the sight. The guard squeezed the trigger of his lascarbine, and the weapon spat an incandescent line across the chamber. Rund went down heavily, before Cytha was upon the firer. Her stiletto punched into his right ear, the man transfixed as the tip emerged from the left side of his head. For a moment, the ghastly tableau was frozen, before Cytha withdrew the blade with a jerk of her arm, and the guard dropped to the floor.

‘Bys!’ Makaal bellowed. ‘Check Rund.’

Praying that the lay-technician was not fatally injured, Makaal turned angrily towards the guard he had wounded. The man lay sprawled across the crate he had taken cover behind, and was even now reaching for his dropped carbine. Makaal lifted a foot and brought it down across the man’s wrist, forestalling the attempt to regain the weapon.

‘You,’ Makaal spat through gritted teeth, ‘I name traitor.’

Unlimbering his hellgun one-handed, Makaal brought its barrel down, its end centimetres from the man’s face. He looked into the wounded guard’s eyes and saw only hatred and anger. Part of him had hoped that the traitor would, at the last, see the error of his ways and perhaps even beg Makaal’s forgiveness. He did not.

Makaal looked away as he pulled the trigger, the weapon’s sharp report filling the chamber. Cytha looked on dispassionately, seemingly unaffected by the callous yet necessary execution.

Bys was helping Rund to his feet. ‘He’ll be fine,’ the big man said, his eyes flitting to the mess at Makaal’s feet before he looked back. ‘But we need to hide those and get moving.’

For the last thirty minutes, Makaal had been conscious of a slowly building, bass hum in the air. The rock floor of the dark service tunnel the fighters crept along was faintly vibrating, and the hair on the back of Makaal’s neck was standing on end. The very air he breathed tasted somehow metallic, and every now and then a static charge would snap from a pipe or stanchion to sting his flesh as he passed.

‘We’re underneath the primary capacitors,’ whispered Rund from behind.

Makaal had little idea what such a device was, but he could detect pain in the man’s voice. Bys had applied a dressing to the chest wound Rund had sustained in the brief fight against the palace guard, but he would need proper medical attention if he were to survive. If any of us escape, Makaal thought.

‘Another hundred metres then,’ Makaal replied. ‘Is everyone ready?

Each of the fighters nodded. He had scarcely needed to ask, but felt the burden of command weigh heavily as the cell neared its destination. These people had followed him of their own volition, and he had little doubt that they would all die because of it.

As if shaking off a premonition of his own death, Makaal crossed his hands across his chest in the sign of the aquila. His comrades did the same, and moments later he was leading them cautiously towards their final objective.

As Makaal approached the end of the service tunnel, Cytha by his side and Bys and Rund close behind, the air became increasingly charged. Blue light flashed intermittently from the chamber beyond the tunnel, each discharge accompanied by a harsh crack of the air being split by titanic energies.

‘Both of you know your objectives,’ Makaal whispered.

Moving forwards to the mouth of the tunnel, he stole a glance into the chamber. The teleportarium was a huge, domed space, dominated by a raised, circular platform at its very centre. Banks of pulsating, glowing machinery lined the walls, actinic sparks and whiplash energies playing up and down tall copper shafts. Fat cables snaked across the stone floor. Hundreds more looped down from above or crawled across the walls, linking each and every item of machinery together in an insane web of crackling energy.

Makaal mouthed a silent prayer to the God-Emperor. Never before had he seen such a thing. Indeed, he had only recently heard that such machines could exist, though he was assured that they were so rare they could command the ransom of an entire planet. The teleportation device had rotted away for millennia beneath the governor’s palace, all knowledge of its operation and maintenance long since forgotten. No one knew what the device had been used for, or who had built it. Over the centuries it became a temple the tech-priests would worship in. Only with the coming of Voldorius had the chamber been restored to its original use and the machinery returned to a working state by the ministrations of the rogue Mechanicus who served the daemon prince.

And one of those fell individuals stood nearby, his back to the fighters as they peered out of the tunnel.

The rogue tech-priest was unnaturally tall, as if the limbs beneath his ragged crimson robe were attenuated and disjointed. Despite his height, the priest’s back was bent and he stooped almost double, bending down to attend to a machine console. A dozen mechanical tentacles writhed from the grotesque hump on the priest’s back, each with an implement, tool or weapon at its end. Some of those tentacles worked the levers and dials of the console, while others moved about seemingly of their own accord like snakes waiting for unwary prey to wander near.

Tech-priests had always made Makaal uneasy, for their affinity with machines was far beyond the ken of ordinary men. That the individual in the chamber was an outcast of his sinister order made Makaal’s skin crawl. Technology was a thing to be respected, revered and even feared, yet this vile servant of Voldorius had reneged on his oaths to the Cult Mechanicus to use technology only as prescribed by the Emperor. The reasons for killing the renegade were legion, and Makaal was pleased to be the instrument of the Emperor’s justice.

Makaal raised his hellgun, lining up the iron sights with the back of the tech-priest’s hood. Even as he did so, the machinery lining the chamber walls began to whine, white lightning spitting at the periphery of his vision.

‘I think someone’s…’ hissed Rund.

Makaal’s finger closed gently on the trigger and one of the mechanical tentacles at the tech-priest’s back whipped around, a green glowing lens at its tip staring directly at Makaal. Disgust welled up inside him as he realised that the lens was an eye. Through it, the renegade was looking directly at the fighter, somehow entrancing him with fell power.

In a second the spell passed and Makaal got a grip of his thoughts, but still the malignant green eye floated before him, filling his vision. But the tech-priest had already turned, and was advancing across the chamber towards the resistance fighters.

‘Kill it!’ Makaal bellowed, and all four of the resistance fighters opened fire as one.

Makaal’s aim was true, but the blast of his weapon was halted before it struck the tech-priest. Waves of blue energy rippled out from a point in the air a metre in front of the renegade, settling to nothing after a second. A squeal of harsh machine gibberish screamed from a grille mounted where the priest’s mouth should have been. Three more green lenses glowed from under his hood above the grille.

Makaal gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to drop his weapon and cover his ears lest they burst under the hideous sonic assault.

‘Again!’ he shouted. This time only three shots rang out, telling Makaal that either Rund or Bys must have been incapacitated by the machine howl. Two of the shots were stopped by the energy field, but one – Makaal could not tell whose – passed through, and struck the renegade’s left arm.

The shot blasted a ragged flaming hole through a crimson sleeve and a shower of sparks went up. The priest staggered under the impact and a second machine squeal sounded. This time however, it was a scream of pain and rage.

‘Full auto!’ Makaal ordered, thumbing the selector switch above his weapon’s grip. He braced the hellgun against his shoulder, drawing a bead on the renegade’s chest as the roaring figure bore down upon him.

Squeezing the trigger tight and holding it down, Makaal unleashed a torrent of blinding shots. The field absorbed half, but the remainder slammed through, stitching the renegade’s torso. The priest stumbled back, but now he was close. The writhing mechanical tentacles whipped forwards, one striking Makaal across the side of his body. Pain flooded his senses as he felt several ribs crack sickeningly and he was propelled through the air to crash ten metres away on the rocky floor.

Fighting to remain conscious, Makaal looked up in time to see Bys wrestling with the tentacles, one gripped in each hand. In that split second, Cytha stepped inside the tech-priest’s reach and her stiletto flashed upwards, catching the renegade’s throat and sinking up to its hilt. The machine-howl was abruptly silenced and the tentacles fell limp in Bys’s massive hands. Both fighters stepped backwards and the renegade tech-priest fell forwards. The sound the body made as it struck the rock floor was not flesh hitting rock, but ironwork shattering into a hundred pieces.

Rund was at the console the tech-priest had been manning. ‘Someone’s coming through!’ he shouted, an edge of panic rising in his voice.

‘Bys, Rund,’ Makaal said as he crossed the chamber. ‘You know what to do. Make it fast.’

There was little that Makaal or Cytha could do now, for their role in the mission had been to get the cell safely to the teleportarium. He watched as Bys unlimbered bandoliers full of explosives and followed Rund. The lay-technician took a moment to gather himself before indicating a dozen points around the chamber to the larger man. Nodding, Bys crossed to the first, a machine of copper coils, shafts and pipes, and got to work setting his explosives.

Rund was soon back at the console. ‘I can’t stop it!’ he called over his shoulder to Makaal.

‘How long?’ the leader asked. ‘Do we have enough time?’

The lay-technician’s hands turned a series of dials and after a moment he looked back at Makaal. ‘If we detonate the explosives manually, we might–’

‘Half set!’ Bys’s voice rang out. The man had placed six of his charges in the locations Rund had indicated and was almost done with the seventh.

Makaal understood immediately what the lay-tech was saying. ‘Give me the detonator. This is my burden.’

Rund hesitated, distracted by the flashing lights of the console and the reams of data scrolling across its screens. Then he reached into a belt pocket and took out the small, boxlike detonator. He tossed it to Makaal.

The fighter caught the device in his raised hand. He crossed to the console facing the raised metal platform in the centre of the chamber. Cytha appeared at his side, her dark eyes glaring at the same point.

Makaal checked his weapon’s status reader. The full auto blast had cost him a third of his remaining charge and the focussing ring had come dangerously close to overheating. It would never be enough. Their only hope of success was the charges that Bys was even now finishing setting.

‘Stand by!’ Rund called out.

Even as the lay-technician shouted his warning the air in the chamber became so charged that Makaal felt every centimetre of his skin crawling as if a million insects skittered across his body. A sharp pain split his head, and his vision swam. The towering copper shafts around the chamber erupted with blinding white arcs of unknowable power and the air split like the centre of a thunderstorm.

The once dark and shadowed chamber was now flooded with pulsating light emanating from a point in the centre of the raised platform. The illumination was diffuse at first, with no direct source. A blinding singularity blinked into being above the centre of the platform, arcs of ragged lightning splitting the air between it and the copper coils at the chamber’s edge.

Makaal placed his thumb on the stud in the centre of the detonator box. Not yet, he told himself. Wait until you’re sure. The point of light expanded into a blazing orb, its base touching the metal of the platform. The orb flickered and then expanded still more, until it became a semicircular archway over the entire platform.

So blinding was the light that Makaal made to raise his arm across his face, but found himself paralysed, his body refusing to respond to his will. He felt the crush of impossible energies, as if the very air of the chamber had become solid, trapping him as a fly in amber.

And then, at the centre of the glare, three silhouettes appeared.

The central figure was massive, tall and broad shouldered with wings folded at its back. The second was not quite so large, but still a giant compared to mere men. The third was stooped and crooked, the fabric of its robes flaring in an etheric wind.

‘Makaal.’ The fighter heard Cytha speak his name, but could not turn his head to face her. ‘Do it, Makaal, now!’

Makaal waited until the silhouettes had resolved in the middle of the blazing white light. Then, with a supreme effort of willpower, he pressed his thumb down hard on the detonator’s control stud.

Nothing happened at first, for the chamber was already churning with the energies of the teleportation device. Then, the pure white light the three figures were silhouetted against flickered and stuttered. Time slowed for Makaal, even the beat of his heart becoming frozen in a single instant. The white orb collapsed in on itself, plunging the entire chamber into total blackness.

Then, a dozen of the machines lining the chamber wall exploded as one. The light of the detonations illuminated three figures on the raised platform. Orange flames danced at their feet, before another light entirely sprang into being.

A vertical, crimson-purple scar appeared behind the three figures, as if the air itself were splitting apart. The line became a wound etched in the surface of reality. Still unable to move, terror flooded Makaal’s soul. From the wound emanated a ghastly, pulsating light, the colour of blood and guts.

The three figures attempted to move away from the horror that had appeared at their back, but they too must have been entrapped. Despite his terror, Makaal felt a moment of hope. Not for himself, for he knew now that he was doomed, but for his home world. Whatever process the destruction of the teleportarium had instigated, it looked like it would claim Voldorius and his servants as well as the fighters.

The terror consuming Makaal’s soul was now tempered by vindication, the two emotions converging into something approaching madness. Though his lips would barely move, inside Makaal roared within with an unholy blend of joy and horror. He screamed his hatred at the daemon, raged his denial of his own death and shouted his joy at his victory. The wound grew larger still, a deep gash in the flesh of reality, bulging outwards as if tainted organs were at the point of bursting forth.

And then, the wound ripped open.

The chamber was suddenly filled with the sound of a trillion souls wailing their damnation as one. In an instant, Makaal’s soul was torn asunder, yet still the core of all he was looked on. The crimson scar split open, spilling writhing energies into the chamber. Thrashing coils of crimson ether quested outwards, wrapping themselves around the three figures on the platform as if to drag them back through the wound.

More of the writhing coils spread outwards, snaking around the chamber until they came upon Makaal and his comrades. His mind now shattered into a thousand shards, Makaal was incapable of feeling the terror that had consumed him before. He merely looked on as ghostly intestine-shaped tentacles wrapped themselves around his fellow resistance fighters, lifted them into the air, and drew their bodies towards the ragged hole in the fabric of reality.

Only then did what was left of Makaal realise that he too was being carried towards the impossible wound. What had been a jagged line was now a swollen, gaping maw, beyond which swam uncounted… things. Mouths and eyes formed from the boiling energies, then dissolved and dissipated to re-emerge elsewhere. The eyes radiated hunger and pain, while the mouths slobbered and gibbered and wailed in eternal anguish. Makaal knew that he would be joining that churning mass.

Makaal was drawn closer to the three figures. Voldorius was braced against raging etheric winds seeking to suck him into the vortex. Vast coils were wrapped about his armoured legs and arms, yet he resisted with a strength that was entirely inhuman.

Nearby, the second figure wrestled with more of the binds. This must have been one of Voldorius’s lieutenants, for he too wore the blue-green power armour of the Alpha Legion. The warrior was fast, dodging and weaving as he sought to escape the writhing intestines.

The last of the figures was a robed human whom Makaal recognised as Voldorius’s equerry. The man stood no chance of resisting the thrashing coils and he was being dragged into the maw as inexorably as Makaal himself. As the equerry was dragged nearer to the wound, his flesh began to blister. Soon it was boiling off in great streams of red vapour, sucked away on impossible winds of damnation.

Makaal felt his own skin blistering, but he did not care, for Voldorius too was being dragged down.

The daemon’s batlike wings were torn to ragged scraps, the bones snapping and falling away into the screaming nothingness. Voldorius bellowed as the coils drew him closer to the mouth. The surface of his armour smoked and blistered as the blue-green finish dissolved into atoms. Soon the skin of the daemon’s face was peeling back, his savage teeth exposed as the muscles were flensed away. The daemon’s bellow was now so loud that it drowned out all other sounds, even the wailing of the damned from beyond the portal.

What was left of Makaal knew that Voldorius would be cast back to the warp that had spawned him and Quintus would be saved. Makaal’s very soul was forfeit, for Voldorius himself would torment him for all eternity as vengeance for this deed.

And then Voldorius’s lieutenant cast off the whiplash energies that sought to bind him and the armoured warrior moved fast towards the edge of the platform. Denial welling up inside him, Makaal could only look on helplessly as the figure gained speed the further it travelled from the raging maw of warp energy. In an instant it had escaped and was leaping from the platform to land heavily upon the rock floor of the teleportarium chamber. Now entirely free, the figure looked around the chamber and crossed to one of the rearing copper-shafted machines. Drawing a black-bladed halberd that was slung across its back, the figure lashed out, slicing the copper machinery in two. The power sustaining the machinery fled and secondary explosions erupted across the chamber.

The writhing maw convulsed and Voldorius broke free even as the last vaporous remains of his human servant were sucked through. The daemon prince was now little more than a charred, blackened skeleton, his armour burned away and the last remnants of his flesh falling from him in smoking chunks.

The other warrior smashed another copper shaft apart, and the energies coursing through the chamber spluttered. There was a single moment of perfect frozen clarity, before the ragged maw blinked out of existence and the chamber was plunged back into flame-lit shadow.

At the last, what had been Makaal felt himself fading. His final vision was of Voldorius forcing himself to stand upright. Black bones reknitted, veins regrew. Glistening muscles swathed the bones and the daemon’s armour flowed like liquid metal across his regenerated form. The batlike wings regrew from his back and Voldorius bellowed a savage victory cry.

As his soul was whipped away to join the lost, the true extent of Makaal’s failure was revealed to him. Voldorius lived, and Makaal was damned for all eternity.

‘Qan’karro,’ Kor’sarro said, looking directly across the strategium chamber at the old Storm Seer. ‘Please go on. Tell us of your brothers’ efforts to establish contact with Quintus.’

Qan’karro gathered his thoughts. The old man looked pale, as if the weight of his years weighed heavily upon his soul.

‘Gladly, huntsman,’ said Qan’karro, before lifting a cup of sour Chogoran wine to his lips and draining the vessel in a single draught.

‘Pooling our efforts with the astropaths, my brethren and I have used every possible means at our disposal to make contact. The astropaths have come to the conclusion that none of their order survives upon Quintus, or if they do, they have been subjugated, brutally.’

Kor’sarro and the assembled officers considered this dire news before the Master of the Hunt pressed the Storm Seer further. ‘And your own efforts, honoured seer?’

‘I have little to report, Kor’sarro. We have cast our minds far ahead of us, piercing the warp even as this vessel races upon its tides.’

Kor’sarro knew little of the ways of the Storm Seers, for their skills were born of their psyker inheritance and unfathomable to others. He did understand that the seers could not communicate directly with others as the astropaths did, but he had an inkling that they had other abilities they could draw on.

‘All we can hope to do is plant visions, even mere notions, of our coming in the minds of those able to hear,’ Qan’karro went on. ‘If there are any such remaining, then I pray they hear our call.’

‘What of those on Quintus?’ Kor’sarro asked his comrade. ‘What of the portents?’

‘Codiciers Subas and Odakai have consulted every augur our people know, and several they do not,’ the Storm Seer said, his eyes taking on a dark cast.

Kor’sarro waited a moment before pressing further. ‘And?’

‘None are favourable, huntsman.’

Kor’sarro clenched the arms of his stone throne as the assembled officers considered the Storm Seer’s words. His eyes settled for a moment on Brother Kergis, who he had appointed to serve as company champion following the death of Brother Jhogai on Cernis IV. After the events on that world, neither he nor his officers needed to hear more bad tidings. Kor’sarro indicated that the old warrior should, indeed must, continue.

‘Thousands have perished, of that we can be sure. But if we are honest, we expected that. But fell powers have been unleashed, possible futures etched upon the surface of time. I cannot put it into words, my friends, but truly, the vile one stands at the precipice and untold power awaits him.’

‘Then we must stop him,’ Kor’sarro replied, an oath forming in his mind. ‘We must all pledge that on Quintus, Voldorius dies. There can be no alternative.’

The assembled Space Marines – Storm Seers, Techmarines, Apothecaries, Chaplains and sergeants – nodded their agreement, each steeling themselves to face whatever fate held in store. Kor’sarro looked each in the eye in turn, seeing in every one of his officers the cold determination to end the hunt for Voldorius on Quintus.

Resolving to steer the discussion away from gloomy portents, Kor’sarro took a deep breath and leaned forwards in his throne. ‘Brother Kholka,’ he addressed the veteran Scout-sergeant. ‘You have prepared a report on the world of Quintus. Please, illuminate us,’

‘We know little of the world, my brothers,’ Kholka said. ‘For its history is troubled. Quintus, along with three other systems, has been battered and assailed by warp storm Argenta. Though once Quintus was a bulwark, Argenta has laid it low, cutting it off for long periods. As can be imagined, maintaining standing forces amongst the worlds of the Imperium under such circumstances has proven nigh impossible, and the world has been forced to look to its own security.’

‘Yet,’ interjected a Codicier by the name of Ilkhan, ‘we know that Argenta has abated in recent months. The vile one must have had a hand in this.’

‘That is beyond my ken, honoured seer,’ the sergeant replied before going on. ‘What we know of Quintus is culled from the last census planetia. It is a barren world in the main, with little but its strategic location to make it noteworthy. As a result of that location, the world has been fortified over the millennia, primarily to act as a guardian against the orks that afflict the regions to the galactic south and east.’

‘What happened to Quintus during Argenta?’ asked Kor’sarro.

‘We have no current information on that subject, my khan,’ the Scout-sergeant replied. ‘We can only assume that it suffered greatly during that time.’

‘It did,’ interjected Qan’karro. ‘Of that I am certain. My instinct tells me that the vile one somehow brought the storm down upon Quintus, in order to turn it to his own ends. That the storm has now passed suggests to me that whatever wickedness he was about is now imminent.’

‘Is such a thing possible?’ Kor’sarro said. ‘Could one being truly conjure and control a warp storm?’

‘Aye, huntsman,’ Qan’karro replied, his craggy face a dour mask. ‘Do not underestimate Kernax Voldorius. He has done far worse, and means to do so again.’

Grim silence settled upon the gathered White Scars, before Kor’sarro spoke. ‘Brothers, we have much work ahead of us. We must each prepare ourselves, our men and our weapons for the task ahead. We arrive at the Quintus system within hours, and we must be ready for whatever awaits.’

Malya L’nor stumbled as a traitor militiaman shoved her roughly. She turned to curse at the man, but the sheer press of bodies being herded forcibly into the grand square soon obscured him.

‘What do they want?’ a merchant shouted desperately from behind her, addressing his question to no one in particular. Hundreds of nearby citizens of Mankarra, the capital city of Quintus, voiced similar questions, some in outrage, many more in unadulterated panic.

Malya soon found herself carried along in a torrent of fearful humanity towards the centre of the grand square. She could see little but the dark sky above, shot through with the stain of the accursed warp storm. Framing the livid sky were the tops of Mankarra’s brutal, fortified buildings. The tallest was the council mansion, towards which the vast crowd, including Malya, was being herded.

The traitor militiamen were using electro-prods on their own people. The cruel devices were employed by the gaksmen of the agri-zones to control the unruly grox that provided a staple of the population’s diet. They were far too powerful to be used on humans.

Malya seethed with anger as the sheer weight of the crowd carried her inexorably across the square and towards the council mansion. The grand square was capable of hosting crowds of hundreds of thousands, and she herself had attended dozens of municipal functions there. Those functions had seen multitudes of the faithful giving praise to the Emperor or witnessing the coronation of a new planetary governor. The gathering that Malya and countless others were now being forced to attend was clearly something very different.

Malya steeled herself against whatever evil might soon be unleashed upon her and her people. She whispered a prayer to the Emperor. Such an act was now counted as subversion, and while she was cautious not to be seen, the deed gave her strength. The grey bulk of the council mansion loomed before the crowd, its thick armoured towers bristling with anti-air defences. The long banners celebrating the glories of the Emperor that once adorned the walls were now tattered and burned, defiled by the followers of the daemon Voldorius.

The mere thought of the vile beast that had come to her world brought cold dread to Malya’s heart. For Quintus to have been subjugated so quickly must have been the result of infiltration of the planetary militia at the very highest levels, of that Malya was certain. The invasion was over almost before it had begun, those few defence units that had not welcomed the attackers being driven to ground and wiped out within weeks. Malya, herself a junior officer in the reserve, had joined the nascent underground resistance and in a very short time become one of its senior members. Her rapid ascension had been due to what little military training she had undertaken in the reserves, though many, such as that fool Makaal, refused to acknowledge even that.

Malya’s greatest hope had come mere days ago, when she and her fellows had made tentative contact with the outside. That anyone should have heard her pleas was a miracle in itself, but her heart had soared when she had discovered that a force of Space Marines was inbound for Quintus. She had dared to believe that deliverance was on its way to her home world.

The movement of the crowd was slowing down as it was pressed towards the rockcrete facade of the council mansion, and a cold silence settled across the packed multitudes. The faces of the people nearest to Malya held the same fear she herself felt deep inside her soul. All gathered in the grand square knew of the atrocities that had been committed, by the turncoat militia as well as by the invading forces. All knew the name of the archfiend in whose name the horrors had been enacted. Malya knew that she would soon lay eyes upon that fiend. It was said that only those about to die a horrible death at the daemon’s hand ever saw his face.

Even as that terrible thought coalesced in her mind, the crowd fell completely silent. All eyes were drawn to movement at the wide, statue-lined balcony near the top of the council mansion. Malya strained her eyes and saw that the double doors were opening slowly inwards.

A group of men stepped through, each taking their place upon the balcony. These were the high commanders of the planetary militia, each a respected officer before Voldorius had come to Quintus. But they had cast off their Emperor-granted duty and betrayed their own world. It was through their treachery that the planet had fallen, and they were now counted as figures of loathing by the populace.

General Orson, Lord Kline, Quartermaster General Ackenvol, Lord Colonel Lannus and Lord Colonel Elenritch took their places on the balcony, each staring fixedly ahead as if unable or unwilling to meet the gaze of any of the multitude packed in below them. Then came the last of their number, Lord Colonel Morkis, who glowered down at the crowd with obvious contempt. It was said that Morkis was the worst of them, that he harboured such ambition that he would willingly see his entire home world burn to gain the favour of Voldorius.

And then a dark shape ducked as it passed through the open portal, a massive pair of black wings folded at its back.

As one, a hundred thousand throats gave voice to a soul-wrenching moan of utter despair. The very embodiment of evil stood before the gathered masses. The preachers and the confessors and the cardinals warned that the Emperor had almost died to cast down such servants of Chaos. Thousands collapsed to the ground, and thousands more thrust their arms in the air and begged deliverance. Many stood dumbfounded, unable to comprehend the fate that was about to overtake them.

A few, Malya L’nor included, refused to bend their knee or abandon their faith. These few stood still and silent as the beatific statues that had lined the square before the coming of the invaders. They steeled themselves body and soul for the martyrdom that must surely be their fate.

Voldorius stepped fully onto the balcony and even the officers shrank back. At the sight of the daemon, the crowd’s wailing was redoubled until it reached a near deafening crescendo. The rank stink of discharged bodily fluids filled the air, testament to the horror that reduced grown men to the level of mewling infants.

Voldorius stood upon the balcony flanked by his treacherous underlings, his bestial face looking down upon a seething ocean of despair. Alien thoughts flooded Malya’s mind, formless notions of atrophy and entropy washing over her soul in ever-stronger waves. Sharp probes stabbed into her consciousness and she fought to hide away her previous thoughts of deliverance from the tyranny of Voldorius. She must not reveal her thoughts, even if it cost her life.

Now the most despairing of the crowd were convulsing and shaking, as if they were being ripped apart from within by the sheer evil of the armoured, bat-winged figure on the balcony. Many were now falling silent, choking on their own blood as they gnawed their tongues away.

Yet Malya’s soul stood firm, her faith in the Emperor a bulwark against which the evil of Voldorius was broken. Bodies carpeted the ground, the faithful few standing upright amongst them.

Only when nine out of every ten of the multitude were curled up upon the ground, dead or entirely overcome by despair, did the daemon speak.

‘This day,’ the voice rumbled across the grand square, as low and ancient as continents grinding one another to dust. ‘A crime was committed.’

Those who had wailed before now sobbed, for the daemon’s voice spoke to each present. It enveloped the soul and threatened to consume it, to snub out its meagre light.

‘That crime,’ the voice continued, ‘was the sin of denial, and it shall be punished.’

Malya forced herself to stand firm, but she was painfully aware that she was terribly exposed. So few now stood, the vast majority lying collapsed upon the ground.

‘One who served me was slain.’

A cold realisation dawned then upon Malya. Makaal. He had done what he had threatened to do, what Malya and the other leaders of the resistance had begged him not to. He had made an attempt on the vile one’s life, and had failed, even if he had killed one of Voldorius’s underlings.

The people would pay for Makaal’s deed.

‘One here,’ the daemon continued, ‘shall as punishment take his place and serve as my equerry. They shall be blessed to witness the coming tide of blood.’ A premonition rose in Malya’s mind as the words sank in. ‘The remainder shall die.’

The crowd’s sorrowful cries were drowned out as the sound of a mighty engine coughing to life filled the grand square. A super-heavy tank, one of the few so-called Baneblades in the militia’s arsenal, ground forwards from a side street.

The armoured behemoth bristled with weaponry, its huge turret tracking left and right. Realising what was about to happen, Malya looked to the other roads that led onto the grand square. The traitor militia had barricaded every possible escape. Voldorius meant to crush the people beneath the tracks of the tank or to gun them down under its cannons. Those who fled would be shot dead by the militia.

Voldorius spread his arms wide in blasphemous benediction. His dark gaze swept the square, his bestial eyes alighting on each of those who remained standing before passing to the next. He ignored those who cowered on the ground, and they in turn sought to make themselves invisible to the daemon, burying their heads in their arms or curling into foetal balls. The waves of fell emotion battered Malya’s soul, but she repeated over and over the verses she had learned before the pulpit of Mankarra’s great basilica. She prayed for deliverance from evil, from damnation, and from death.

‘You,’ the daemon said, the voice sounding within Malya’s head. ‘You shall be my servant.’

Malya stood transfixed by Voldorius’s daemonic gaze. Part of her wanted to join those sprawled across the ground, to join them in the death grinding inexorably towards them. But another part of her, the greater, stronger part, refused to yield.

‘Join me,’ the voice said. ‘Now.’

Even as she filled her lungs to bellow her denial, Malya felt two pairs of hands grasp her arms, pinning them roughly behind her back. She turned and looked into the faceless visor of a trooper of the palace guard. The man put all his strength into twisting her body around and she was flung across the ground, tripping on a prostrate body and sprawling beside it. For an instant she thought that she might be able to feign the same stupor that had befallen the multitudes, but all too soon she was grabbed by both arms and hauled to her feet.

Malya dared gaze up as she was marched towards the council mansion, seeing the massive form of the daemon prince turning its back upon the grand square and disappearing into the building. The officers followed, Lord Colonel Morkis taking one last, scornful look across the square before departing. Soon, she too was approaching the blasted edifice. At her back the slaughter was beginning.

The Baneblade’s cannons opened fire, its many heavy bolters chattering. The sound of flesh and blood and bone being ground beneath the tank’s huge treads assailed Malya’s ears. And then, the screaming began.

CHAPTER FIVE

INSERTION

Scout-Sergeant Kholka grimaced as he gazed down at yet another ruined body. Like the dozens of others the White Scars Scouts had encountered as they had ranged across the black, rock-strewn landscape of Quintus the last twelve hours, the corpse was a civilian. The sight disgusted Kholka, whose own people afforded great respect to the dead and would never allow a corpse to lie untended in such a way. Where were this man’s people, Kholka wondered, and why had they not given him a fitting burial?

The reason was clear. The man’s people had been killed too. All of them. None remained to bury the dead, to afford the honour a man was due at the outset of his long journey to the Emperor’s side.

‘Brother-sergeant,’ a voice called out from over a small rise of jagged black rock. ‘There are two more here.’

It was Scout Borchu, a promising neophyte Kholka knew would do well when fully initiated into the ranks of the White Scars. Borchu had served in the Scout Company with great honour and skill for several years. Perhaps the liberation of Quintus would be the proving of Borchu, if only he could learn to control his bouts of mirth. Quintus was seeing to that it seemed – with every body the Scouts discovered their mood darkened.

Kholka followed Borchu’s voice, skirting the rise lest he reveal himself to any enemy keeping watch across the barren wastes. He had ordered vox-silence, knowing that the Alpha Legion were amongst the most cunning of foes and well able to detect even the most heavily shielded inter-squad signal. He found Borchu near the blackened wreck of a tracked cargo hauler. Its contents, evidently the sum possessions of its owners, were strewn all about.

‘They were slain like the others,’ Borchu said, looking up as his sergeant approached. ‘But they tried to fight.’

Kholka saw that Borchu was correct. The two bodies wore the tattered remains of the local reserve militia’s uniform. His eyes sought the insignia that had brought the White Scars to Quintus, but found no sign of it. No matter. It was likely only the elite palace guard wore the device. Dozens of empty brass shell casings were scattered all around the two bodies, though the weapons that had fired them were nowhere to be seen. Evidently, the weapons had been looted by the Alpha Legion, or perhaps taken by other refugees.

‘Get ready to move out,’ Kholka ordered. ‘There’s nothing to be done here.’

‘Yes, brother-sergeant,’ Borchu replied. But Kholka could detect uncertainty in the Scout’s tone.

‘What is it, neophyte?’ Kholka pressed. As commander, mentor and warden of the trainee Space Marines, one of his many responsibilities was the monitoring of the Scouts’ ongoing psycho-conditioning. The questioning of a direct order could be a sign that the conditioning had not fully taken effect.

‘Should we not…’ Borchu nodded towards the corpses.

Kholka read the meaning of the gesture. ‘We should, but we cannot. Prepare to move out.’

The Scouts were making their way across a region of Quintus’s primary continent having been inserted by Thunderhawk during the night. In common with much of the planet’s surface, the area was a barren waste of black volcanic rock and grey sand. It was sparsely covered by coarse grass and the occasional wind-blasted tree. To the south lay the agri-settlements that fed the capital city of Mankarra. Further south still was the city itself.

Kholka’s task was to reconnoitre the city’s outer defences and to guide the Master of the Hunt’s strike force in.

So far, the Scouts had discovered untold evidence that the planet was firmly in the hands of Voldorius and his Alpha Legion forces. They had passed the wrecks of refugee convoys the traitors had fallen on like voracious predators on defenceless prey. Although they had found evidence that the refugees had at least mounted a defence, Kholka knew that many more must have been taken prisoner. The fate of the captives was unknown, but the veteran had faced the servants of the Ruinous Powers enough times to know their cruel ways. He had little doubt that none of those taken prisoner still lived.

Soon the remainder of the Scout squad was gathered, each looking silently to Kholka while awaiting his orders.

‘Borchu,’ Kholka said. ‘You have point duty. We hunt, as the dawn-bat soars over the mountain.’

Even whilst undergoing a perilous mission the Scouts were being tested. The sergeant’s use of the White Scars’ battle-cant even though no enemy was near enough to overhear was deliberate. He was pleased when the Scouts assumed the formation he had ordered, a long column with each member covering his own sector, neophyte Borchu at its head.

Taking his own position in the line, Kholka gestured the order to move out.

Nullus stood on the bunker’s open-topped observation deck, staring out into the bleak wastes. At his side were five of his fellow Alpha Legion warriors, and behind them several dozen black- and grey-clad palace guards.

The air reeked of the men’s fear. And well they should be fearful, for the so-called elite of Quintus’s soldiery had failed in their avowed task. A resistance cell had penetrated into the deepest regions of the palace and Voldorius himself had almost fallen. Only Nullus’s actions in shattering the teleportation coils had averted a full-scale warp bleed, and the lives of Nullus and his master had been saved. Voldorius had already exacted his vengeance on the people of Mankarra, and now Nullus had his own justice to enact.

He would make an example of them, and teach them the true meaning of obedience.

Nullus had mustered the palace guard platoon whose negligence had given rise to the unforgivable breach. Their commanding officer had already killed himself by the time the platoon had gathered. The remainder had been transported north in the sub-zero hold of a meat-hauler to one of the bunkers that guarded against incursion into the agri-zones from the wastes beyond. The guards all feared that they would die, and to Nullus that sensation was quite exquisite.

But Nullus had something quite specific in mind.

‘All of you,’ the warrior spoke, without taking his black eyes off of the northern horizon, ‘should be dead.’

The palace guards remained motionless, stoic in the face of the traitor Space Marine’s pronouncement. Nullus turned his scarred face towards the men, and continued.

‘But I am a practical man, and have use for you yet.’

Nullus watched as the guards stood as still as statues, not one of them daring to look at him. His scar-traced features split into a vile and savage grin.

Nullus reached to his back and unlimbered his black-hafted halberd. ‘So you need not die. Not all of you.’

A cold wind rose out of the wastes. Still, none of the guards responded. Nullus brought the halberd in front of him in one hand and set the base of its haft resting on the deck at his feet.

‘Whichever of you will face me, he will die. But the remainder, I will allow to live.’

Now the guards showed signs of reaction. Several of them glanced sidelong at their fellows, before one of their number answered.

‘I will face you,’ came the response, and one of the troopers stepped forwards.

‘Name yourself, so that the gods might have notice of your coming, and prepare you a special place in damnation,’ Nullus replied, bringing the halberd across his chest in both hands.

‘My name is Ghalan,’ the man proclaimed, addressing his statement to the powers of the warp as much as to Nullus. ‘Warrant Officer Primus,’ he added with pride, turning to salute his men.

The assembled guard returned the salute, and Nullus prepared to deliver his lesson.

‘Three kilometres south, brother-sergeant’, Scout Telluk whispered. ‘A bunker, right on the border of the agri-zone.’

Kholka felt a stab of disappointment, but determined to give the neophyte a second chance. It was after all only the boy’s second operational deployment. ‘Again. Properly this time.’

The neophyte paused, his face reddening almost imperceptibly as he cast his eyes to the ground. ‘My apologies, brother-sergeant,’ he said.

‘Never mind that,’ Kholka replied, the veteran’s patience growing thin. ‘Deliver your report.’

‘The beast in stone, as the third moon slumbers, bestriding the steppe,’ Telluk reported.

‘Better,’ Kholka responded. ‘Though “Ghan’s last march” would have gotten the point over more elegantly.’ By its very nature, the White Scars battle-cant was subjective and varied enormously by speaker and context. The veteran gifted the youngster with a wry smile. ‘Now pass me the magnoculars.’

Taking the device from the neophyte, Kholka raised it to his eyes and looked out across the wastes. From the squad’s concealed position high atop a jagged, black rock spire, Kholka had a panoramic view of the region where the barren wastelands gave way to the agri-zone. Scanning the near field first, the sergeant took in the terrain, the last of the rock-strewn plain his squad had marched through.

Adjusting the viewfinder’s settings, Kholka focussed on the middle ground, where it was obvious that many of the larger rock formations had been blasted flat so that any crossing it would be detected and cut down in a hail of defensive fire. Panning first left, and then right, locating the point that Scout Telluk had identified, Kholka saw the squat, grey bunker.

‘Well observed, neophyte,’ Kholka said quietly as he magnified the scene. The bunker had been placed by a defender who knew his business well, and lesser foes than the Space Marines might have missed it amongst the volcanic rocks and outcroppings of the region.

‘One primary,’ Kholka reeled off his observations, adding a commentary to the data that the sensorium-core built into his armour was recording. Even if the sergeant and his charges were slain, there would be a chance that others of the White Scars would recover the data and act upon it. He zoomed in on the figure standing on the bunker’s observation deck, looking out across the wastes. The warrior’s armour was the distinctive blue-green of the traitor Alpha Legion, and across its back was slung a black halberd. Increasing the magnification still further, Kholka brought the figure’s head into focus, revealing a face that was a mass of fine scar tissue, traced by the hand of a madman. ‘We know you…’

‘Four… no, five, secondaries.’ Kholka watched as a group of figures, each wearing the same armour as the first, came into his vision. Their faces were hidden beneath helmets surmounted by twisting horns, and each carried a boltgun adorned with fell runes. ‘Alpha Legionnaires.’

As he panned downwards, Kholka’s field of vision was eclipsed by the rear of a black helmet. He zoomed out, the viewfinder showing a man dressed in grey fatigues and black body armour facing the primary. The briefings of the last few strike force councils came to the sergeant’s mind. The black and grey armour. Kholka zoomed out still further, seeking confirmation.

‘Approximately thirty tertiaries,’ Kholka sub-vocalised. The wind had changed direction and he could not take the risk of being overheard. ‘Subjects appear at first glance to be a platoon-sized multiple of Mankarra household guard.’

The sergeant watched, scanning the figures for any sign of the four-starred insignia that would positively confirm the troopers’ identity and their link with the action on Cernis IV. He could see, although not hear, that the primary was addressing them. After a moment, one of the troopers stepped forwards to stand before the primary, and then turned and saluted the others.

At that moment, Kholka saw clearly the insignia on the man’s shoulder armour.

‘Confirmed,’ the sergeant said, the thrill of the hunt rising in him. ‘We have them now.’

Nullus watched with barely contained disdain as Ghalan turned back to face him. His black eyes flitted to the weapons at the guard’s belt, seeing that the man was armed with a power sword of archaic pattern and a heavy pistol. The guard’s face was set in a mask of grim determination. Clearly, the man knew he would die. But alone amongst the platoon, he had chosen to face his death with dignity.

The guard reached for the ornate basket hilt of his power sword and drew it slowly, his eyes never leaving his opponent. As the blade cleared the scabbard, a flick of the thumb activated its power core. Veins of searing light crept along its length, coalescing at its monomolecular edge. Ghalan set his feet wide, assuming a fighter’s stance. Yet still, Nullus looked on with contempt.

‘Do you hope for a quick death?’ Nullus growled, his lipless mouth sneering.

In answer, Ghalan raised his power sword into the guard position.

‘Or do you perhaps imagine you have some chance against me?’

Ghalan remained tight-lipped, refusing to play along with the traitor Space Marine’s cruel game. His only answer was to bare his teeth in anger, a gesture which brought another sneer from his opponent.

‘I think you want to die,’ Nullus crowed. ‘I think you know the extent of your failure beneath the palace, and think you can avoid vengeance by way of a clean death.’ Nullus cast a withering glance at the other guards. ‘I think that you wish to avoid the fate I have in store for them.’

The assembled palace guards looked to one another, some raising angry curses.

‘Kill him!’ one shouted.

The man’s head exploded in a welter of blood and gore, and one of Nullus’s fellow Alpha Legion warriors lowered his boltgun, smoke wafting from its gaping barrel. Several of the man’s fellow guards were showered with tissue, yet they refused to flee in the face of the sudden outbreak of violence. As the man’s decapitated body hit the deck, Ghalan growled and lunged forwards, his power sword raised to deliver a two-handed, downward blow.

Nullus merely sidestepped the attack, his massive armoured form belying his speed. Ghalan should have been killed as the force he had channelled into his attack met only air and he was thrown off-balance, stumbling against the bunker’s parapet. The guard paused there for several seconds, his back turned to his opponent, waiting for the killing blow to strike him down.

But the blow did not come.

Ghalan turned slowly, to find that Nullus was facing him five metres away, his halberd resting contemptuously across one shoulder.

‘Did you think it would be so easy?’ Nullus sneered. ‘If you desire death by my hand, you’ll have to earn it.’

Once more, Ghalan raised his power sword. The man’s face was now a mask of barely-controlled rage. He knew he was being made sport of and was in an impossible position. He had little chance of besting the traitor, yet his opponent was intent upon humiliating him.

Ghalan began to move in a wide circle, and Nullus obliged by moving with him, so that the two stalked one another across the bunker’s observation deck. Nullus’s fellow Alpha Legion warriors looked on, their masks impassive but their bolters raised menacingly to ensure the remaining guards did not intervene.

‘You know what I’ll do with your skull, once you’re dead?’ Nullus said, his tone at once coldly matter-of-fact and supremely mocking.

Ghalan threw himself forwards, his power sword cutting a glittering arc through the air towards his opponent’s head. The attack was well aimed, but Nullus merely shifted his stance but a fraction, scornfully allowing the searing blade to pass within centimetres of his scarred face.

This time, Ghalan did not allow himself to become unbalanced. Instead, he allowed the momentum of his attack to carry his body around to his opponent’s left hand side. Turning the blade in his hand, Ghalan brought it upwards to strike at Nullus’s midriff.

But Nullus was prepared too, and Ghalan’s power sword struck the black blade of his enemy’s halberd. Dark light flared where the two weapons clashed, casting a pall of shadow across both fighters. Ghalan was shrouded in unnatural night. Unable to see Nullus clearly, he instinctively threw his body backwards to avoid the inevitable riposte.

Ghalan struck the ground hard at the feet of one of Nullus’s warriors. The Alpha Legionnaire made no effort to intervene in the combat, however, and Ghalan leapt to his feet, bringing his blade up.

It was only when Nullus’s scarred mouth formed into a wide, mocking grin that Ghalan looked down at his blade. The weapon’s edge no longer danced with the energy that had powered it before. The once lethal weapon was now reduced to a crude, blunted sword no more effective than a club wielded by a savage. Nullus’s own, unnatural weapon had somehow drained its power and rendered it all but useless.

Snarling in frustration, Ghalan threw his broken weapon to the ground and snatched the heavy pistol from his belt. In a single movement, the weapon was held out before him, aimed squarely at Nullus’s head.

‘Better make it count,’ Nullus growled. ‘You won’t get a second shot.’

The pistol shook in Ghalan’s hands as he fought with all his might to control his rage. His glance flicked briefly to the other palace guards, but they stood powerless to intervene, covered by the boltguns of the Alpha Legionnaires.

Ghalan’s finger closed on the trigger and the weapon barked a single shot. The bullet struck Nullus just below the thick collar of his power armour, barely leaving a scratch in the blue-green livery.

Before Ghalan could fire a second shot, Nullus exploded into violent movement. The black halberd lashed forwards, leaping across the space between the two combatants in the blink of an eye. The weapon struck Ghalan in the shoulder, propelling him across the decking and pinning him against the inner wall as its point sank into the rockcrete.

Transfixed by the blade, Ghalan was powerless as Nullus stepped before him.

‘You sought a clean death,’ Nullus sneered. ‘You sought to avoid justice.’

The slightest of grins appeared at Ghalan’s blood-flecked lips, but it vanished as Nullus continued. ‘Your soul is mine, fool.’

As the remaining palace guards looked on in stunned horror, Ghalan’s face became pale. Within moments, his skin began to shrivel and his muscles to collapse in upon themselves. As the vile process continued, Ghalan’s entire body convulsed and twisted around the point of the halberd. A distant, mournful cry echoed, seeming to emanate from the very blade of Nullus’s weapon. At the last, Ghalan’s body was reduced to a shrivelled husk, and Nullus withdrew his blade.

‘He who would share this fool’s fate,’ Nullus addressed the remaining guards, ‘let him fail me again.’

The guards remained stoically silent, none daring to look towards the desiccated corpse behind Nullus. With the tip of his halberd, Nullus lifted Ghalan’s remains high, and with a scornful flick cast them over the precipice to crumple to the ground in front of the bunker.

As the Alpha Legionnaires herded the palace guards away, Nullus addressed the corpse below, the insignia on the shoulder pad clearly visible. ‘I think the point is made.’

‘Khula,’ said Scout-Sergeant Kholka, his voice low but clear. ‘Take position here. I want overwatch at all times. Concentrate on the gully due south.’

Kholka watched for a moment as the Scout lowered himself into a dip in the volcanic rock and arranged his camouflaged cloak so he blended seamlessly into his surroundings. Only the barrel of the Scout’s sniper rifle was visible, and that only from close up.

Confirming that Khula was in position, Kholka took one last look around. The enemy had departed, but the entire scene could still have been a charade to draw the attention of anyone watching. The Alpha Legion might be hidden nearby, ready to launch a devastating ambush against the small group of White Scars.

But Kholka was a veteran of the celebrated ‘422’ patrol and had survived everything that the death world of Canak had thrown at him. He had served an entire year deep in enemy territory whilst fighting the dreaded Saharduins. He had even stalked lictors across the great cobalt reefs of Ayria-12-Tsunami, and had the honour scars to prove it. Kholka had not done all of these things by allowing himself to fall prey to enemy entrapment, and he was determined to pass such wisdom on to those under his tutorship.

‘Our strength,’ Kholka addressed the Scouts, ‘is not arms. Our strength is guile.’

Satisfied that the Scouts were ready to learn and, if necessary, to fight, Kholka led the squad out of the cover of the rock formation and into the open wastes. Though old even for a Space Marine, Kholka moved with the fluid grace and stealth of a steppe-born predator. Indeed, as a savage son of proud, wild Chogoris, he was exactly that.

His silenced boltgun raised, Kholka made use of every scrap of cover as he approached the seemingly abandoned bunker. Every few minutes the sergeant would duck down behind cover, observe the bunker and ensure that his Scouts were deployed correctly. Several times he glanced back to the position high atop the rocks, where he knew that Scout Khula was hidden. The neophyte had concealed himself well.

Kholka had timed the advance carefully, ensuring that it was only as the sun set that the squad reached the point where the rocks thinned out. The ground became flat where a clear fire zone had been levelled in front of the bunker.

‘The gaze of midnight,’ Kholka whispered, and the Scouts all lowered their night vision goggles over their eyes. He squinted down his boltgun’s sights and scanned the bunker. The low, squat structure appeared deserted, but the sergeant engaged the sight’s heat-sensitive function just to be sure. When no telltale heat signals were revealed, he waved his charges forwards, one at a time at ten-second intervals. The Scouts covered each other as they ran forwards into the spreading gloom.

As the last of the Scouts departed, Kholka counted to ten before setting out across the open ground himself. Minutes later, he was at the bunker, finding that his Scouts had spread out to cover all approaches with their boltguns.

‘Brother-sergeant,’ hissed Scout Borchu. ‘Over here.’

Kholka stalked silently to the source of the whisper. He found the Scout by the bunker’s slab-sided armoured fascia, looking down at the man they had witnessed being flung over the wall. In the shadow of the bunker the corpse was little more than a deeper patch of gloom against the black volcanic ground. He squatted down, and judged it safe to engage the lamp set into the barrel of his boltgun at its lowest setting.

The sergeant drew a sharp intake of breath at the sight that greeted him. The man’s body was little more than a skeleton, parched skin stretched tight across its bones. The face, or what little remained of it, was locked in a rictus leer, the shrivelled eyes staring in a sightless terror that seemed to transcend death itself.

‘What happened to him?’ Kholka heard Borchu ask, the boy’s easy mirth now entirely gone.

‘Nothing I would have you learn of,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Not until you have to, at any rate.’

‘The armour,’ Borchu continued. ‘Is that the–?’

‘Yes, boy,’ Kholka interjected. ‘That is the confirmation we seek.’

‘Then we have them?’ Borchu asked.

‘Yes, neophyte,’ Kholka replied. ‘We have them.’ Even as the sergeant spoke, he knew things were not as simple as they might have seemed to the inexperienced Scout. To Kholka’s seasoned, hunter’s instinct, it was all too contrived, all too convenient.

‘Squad,’ Kholka whispered, standing as the Scouts gathered before him in the dark. ‘We return to the insertion point.’

‘For extraction?’ Borchu enquired.

‘No,’ Kholka replied grimly. ‘We have a report to make. We need to reach secure ground and set up the tight-beam transmitter. Kor’sarro Khan must hear of this.’

Kholka looked up as the transmitter device emitted a sharp tone. A steady stream of figures scrolled across his auspex, the code informing him that the machine’s spirit was prepared to commune with another of its kind in high orbit overhead.

The sergeant gave the signal to Gharn that he should set the now aligned projector unit down and return to watch duty. The projector, linked by a snaking cable to the unit in front of Kholka, was just visible atop a nearby rock formation. Its sharp form was silhouetted against the massive disk of Quintus’s moon, which was now rising above the horizon and staining the jagged landscape an unearthly, sickly green.

The march to the pre-arranged location from which the signal would be sent had been carried out in record time. The sergeant had forced the pace, knowing that the signal must get through at all costs. Kholka had reviewed the findings as he had led the march, going over the mission and its conclusion time and time again. He knew that the specially shielded Thunderhawk would only be overhead for a minute, for to linger any longer would be to invite detection by Voldorius and his Alpha Legion sorcerers and heretic tech-priests.

Kholka gazed up into the black sky, its southern fringe stained with the angry purples and reds of the receding warp storm Argenta. Somewhere up there, a vessel crewed by his brethren passed. They were taking a great risk, even though they would have shut down all non-essential systems and would be propelled by momentum alone lest even the slightest power usage be detected. Only the tight beam receiver would be operating under power, and that would be so heavily shielded that an enemy would need to be right on top of the ship to detect it. Nevertheless, the enemy were possessed of methods of detection that far surpassed what machines could achieve. A sorcerer, casting his supernatural gaze across the Thunderhawk’s flight path, might ruin everything. Such a thing had happened before, the sergeant recalled. In a previous mission, twelve battle-brothers had died and twenty Scouts, including himself, had been stranded on the rogue planetoid Sigma-Rokall for three long months when their extraction vessel had been intercepted.

Shaking his head to clear the centuries-old memory from his mind, Kholka activated the transmitter device and began his report.

‘Scout-Sergeant Ultas Kholka, ident zero zero digamma, seven nine two zero qoppa.’ He watched the transmitter’s softly glowing screen as his words were digested, processed and encrypted. Satisfied that all was functioning as it should, he continued, ‘Reconnaissance mission report follows. Enemy presence confirmed. Primary identified: Nullus. Secondary: Alpha Legion. Tertiary: Mankarra Household Guard. Confirm item zero alpha: four-starred insignia. Observation follows. Quintus is firmly under the traitors’ control, and as expected, we have discovered evidence of numerous atrocities. I suspect that the majority of the remaining defence forces are under Alpha Legion control, and those not are no longer viable.’

Seeing from the numbers counting down on the data-slate’s screen that he had a few seconds, transmission time left, Kholka added an addendum. ‘My khan,’ he said. ‘I must counsel that the four-starred insignia was left where we could find it. It may be a snare, or it may be that the enemy harbour a traitor in their ranks. I advise caution, and await your orders.’

The transmitter unit emitted a sharp tone, its machine-spirit indicating that the link had ended as scheduled. Kholka proceeded to break the unit down, and then glanced south, towards the rising moon. The mission would proceed, whatever, or whoever, awaited the Scouts.

CHAPTER SIX

DEATH IN THE NIGHT

‘Wait,’ the Space Marine captain hissed into the vox as he watched the dark landscape below. ‘Let them enter the gully.’

He stood at the very peak of a jagged spire of black rock, the night sky at his back. His power armour was black too, and was hung with dozens of small, avian-bone charms. The column of traitor militia vehicles picking its way through the wastes below had no chance of detecting him or his warriors.

Not, that is, until it was too late.

The column consisted of half a dozen armoured personnel carriers, a pattern of vehicle manufactured on a number of nearby worlds, but lacking the armament of the Chimera transports used in the armies of the Imperial Guard. At intervals along the column larger, tracked carriers travelled, bulky cargo units loaded with heavy weapons destined for a defence complex only ten kilometres distant. The captain’s company were peerless when it came to mounting devastating campaigns of terror and disruption, but their own numbers were few and the enemy’s control over the traitor militia complete.

As the captain waited on his lofty perch, the column ground on, manoeuvring around a large rockslide that had settled at the base of an outcropping. His men had caused the slide, a single, expertly placed krak grenade bringing tons of black volcanic spoil across the column’s path. As a result, the transports were even now entering the gully into which they had been so deliberately funnelled.

The lead vehicle slewed around as it entered the gully, the arc beam mounted at its forwards hatch scanning left and right across the ground ahead. Inside his helmet, the captain’s mouth assumed a nasty grin and his eyes narrowed.

The transport lurched on, and was followed a few moments later by the second, the beam of its own searchlight lancing into the darkness to its flank.

‘Just a little bit…’ the captain said.

The lead transport ground to a sudden halt, and an angry shout cut the air from far below. The shout had come from the driver of the second vehicle, his head visible as he rose from his hatch, and had been voiced in response to the lead vehicle’s unanticipated stop. The call was answered by a colourful response from the commander of the lead vehicle. Though spoken in the local dialect, the captain could well understand the meaning, and his grin widened.

‘…further,’ he mouthed, as the lead vehicle’s arc light swung suddenly upwards. The bright shaft of light cut through the night. But to the captain, who had positioned himself so that he would be silhouetted against the swollen moon as the lead vehicle entered the gully, it was blinding, for it shone directly into his eyes.

‘Kill them,’ he growled into the vox. ‘Let none escape.’

The lead transport erupted into livid flames as a melta charge hidden in the gully floor detonated. For an instant, the night was dispelled as twisted hunks of flaming wreckage were propelled in all directions. The scream of suddenly activated jump packs sounded as Assault squads leapt into the air, to descend upon columns of fire towards their prey.

With a thought impulse transmitted through the systems of his power armour, the captain activated his own jump pack, launching himself forwards and upwards, high into the night sky. Behind him the battle-brothers of his Command squad followed, flames glinting from the long talons of their lightning claws.

Even as he began his descent, the second transport was attempting to reverse out of the killing zone. It ground against the bow of the following vehicle. A second explosion ripped through the night as the last vehicle in the column was struck in its engine deck by a well-placed krak missile. The stricken vehicle lurched, and the fuel in its thinly armoured tank spewed across the ground. As the surviving crew attempted to fling themselves clear, the flames ignited, turning each man into a flailing human torch that collapsed into thrashing heaps as the fire consumed them.

The captain landed atop the upper deck of the second vehicle, the sound of the heavy impact resonating loudly. The driver, standing upright in his hatch, turned his head and looked directly into the face of death. The captain activated his talon-like lightning claws and made a bloody ruin of the man’s upper body. He located a second, larger hatch under his feet, and stepped backwards.

Punching his talons straight through the hatch, the captain ripped the doors clean away and flung them into the fire-chased night. A dozen faces looked up at him, and a second later he was amongst them. The interior of the transport was so cramped that no finesse was possible. He merely lashed out, tracing a web of death all around him. Within seconds, the traitor militia were reduced to chunks of smoking meat, which was seared to ashes as he reactivated his jump pack and rose from the back of the vehicle atop a pillar of fire.

The vehicles of the column had all by now halted, their drivers realising that they were trapped and unable to manoeuvre with the lead and trailing transports destroyed. The initial shock was passing, and squads of militia inside each vehicle were deploying from hatches which dropped loudly to the ground at the rear of each tank.

‘Left flank.’ The captain spoke coldly into the vox-net as the members of his Command squad swooped down to land beside him. ‘Engage the enemy from third carrier. Centre group, the fifth.’

The Assault Marines arrowed through the night towards their targets. The desperate militia unleashed a fusillade of bullets, but even those few shots that struck a Space Marine failed to penetrate their power armour. Within seconds, the Assault squads were in amongst their foes, the screams of chainswords and men blending into an almighty clamour of death and destruction.

‘Right flank,’ the captain said. ‘Suppress the third transport.’ A torrent of boltgun fire hailed down upon the vehicle and the militia attempting to muster at its rear. The two Tactical squads had been well concealed amongst the rocks on the column’s right flank. Those militiamen not cut down in the opening salvo sought desperately for a target to return fire at, but all they saw were muzzle flashes. For most, that was the last thing they ever saw.

‘All other squads,’ the captain continued. ‘Assume reserve stance delta-rho. Command squad, with me.’

Leaping down from the transport’s upper hull, his Command squad following a step behind, the captain passed the front of the next vehicle in the column. It was a huge, lumbering, grey-painted transport, twice the size of the carriers, its form dominated by a huge cargo bay at its rear. A low pounding accompanied by a muffled roar of anger sounded from the vehicle, audible even over the gunfire. Slowing as he passed through the shadow of the hauler, the captain realised that the sound was emanating from within the vehicle’s cargo bay.

Cautiously, he rounded the back end of the vehicle. Something very large pounded repeatedly on the inside of the vehicle’s rear loading hatch whilst bellowing an incoherent stream of primitive invective.

‘Melta?’ asked one of the Command squad.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘We leave the haulers intact. Whatever is inside, we deal with it. Get ready.’

The captain’s talon shot out, lacerating the hatch’s locking mechanism. The remains fell to the rocky ground, and then both hatches were flung open. A savage bellow rang from the dark interior and a massive ogryn lumbered forth.

A stable strain of human mutant evolved or bred on high gravity worlds, the beast was a mountain of sinew and muscle. Its face was a bestial mask of imbecilic fury, spittle frothing from its broken-toothed mouth. The ground shook as the ogryn stepped out. Its beady eyes scanned the Space Marines and it shouted a word that the captain could not understand. An answering bellow sounded from within the hauler’s cargo area and a second ogryn appeared at the hatch. At least two more waited within the cargo bay’s shadowed depths.

‘Kill them,’ the captain snarled as the ogryn gave voice to a war cry of his own. Both sprang forwards at the same moment, and launched their attack.

Applying a burst to his jump pack, the captain powered his feet from the ground. Even as the captain leapt, the ogryn’s massive arm pistoned forwards, its clenched fist striking him squarely in the stomach. So powerful was the piledriver punch that warning icons flashed across his vision, his armour’s machine-spirit warning of micro-fractures in three separate locations.

Even as the punch struck home, the captain’s own attack was arrowing downwards, his lightning claw slashing towards the ogryn’s head. But the punch had offset his momentum, and the talon struck not the beast’s head, but its left arm, just below the shoulder.

The ogryn roared in savage pain and anger as the captain’s talon parted muscle and seared through bone. The arm was torn away in a welter of blood, so much dead meat striking the ground with a wet thud. A fountain of blood gushing from the stump of its left arm, the ogryn threw itself at the captain as the Space Marine’s armoured feet touched the ground. Behind it, two more of the massive brutes dropped from the vehicle’s hatch.

Breathing hard, he cursed the delay this engagement would entail. His talons spread wide either side of his body, the captain had but a second to prepare himself for the beast’s next attack. And then, the mutant was upon him.

Even wounded, the ogryn was a fearsome opponent. What it lacked in skill it made up for in mass and sheer brute strength. Its fist powered forwards again. This time, the captain was ready, his gene-engineered physiology granting him the reflexes that had so often saved his life. Twisting his body, he sidestepped the massive fist and the ogryn found itself overextended and pitching forwards. Before it had the chance to check its forwards motion, he lashed out with both talons and the brute’s other arm was severed into three ragged pieces.

Before the captain could aid his battle-brothers against the three more of the brutal creatures throwing themselves at his Command squad, the crippled ogryn reared up in front of him. Blood sprayed in wild geysers from the armless stumps at its shoulders and it bellowed in mindless savagery. He hated the brute’s raw spirit and refusal to give in. It was trying to bring to bear the last weapon it had at its disposal: its thick-skulled, ugly-as-sin, head.

‘Emperor’s mercy,’ the captain breathed. ‘Just die!’

As if in answer, the ogryn redoubled its bellow and arched its back, tensing the slab-like muscles of its stomach, and then propelled its own head downwards towards him.

The captain had no choice but to meet the attack, head-on. He had just enough time to raise a talon before the ogryn slammed into him. The ogryn’s head struck his helmet’s faceplate and he was propelled downwards to smash into the rocky ground.

The captain must have blacked out for an instant. His vision cleared and he felt a tremendous weight pressing down upon him. Blinking, he realised that the weight belonged to the now lifeless body of the ogryn, the gleaming blades of his lightning claw protruding from its back.

As more warning icons flashed across his visor, he pushed the massive dead weight upwards and rolled it away, pulling his talon clear from its gut as he did so. The brute’s face was crushed inwards, its ugly features no longer recognisable. Reaching a hand to the visor of his helmet, the captain felt several cracks across its surface. No matter, he thought, putting the damage from his mind as he turned to ascertain how his warriors were prevailing.

The brute that the captain had faced must have been the alpha male of the pack, for the others were less fearsome opponents. Two were dead already, their massive bodies bearing witness to the damage that twinned lightning claws can wreak upon unarmoured flesh, even flesh as tough as an ogryn’s. The last of the ogryns was surrounded on all sides by his warriors, bleeding out from at least a dozen slashing wounds.

The ogryn cursed as its legs gave way beneath it. With a final obscenity, it fell forwards and crashed to the earth, gallons of blood gushing across the ground.

‘Reserve group,’ the captain spoke into the vox-net. There was a burst of static indicating that the sophisticated communications systems built into his power armour had sustained damage when the ogryn had head butted him. The armour’s war spirit would be much aggrieved, and would require placation before it would serve at full capacity again. Despite the damage, however, the squad’s sergeant’s acknowledgement came back a moment later.

‘Cover the right flank as they clear the other two haulers,’ the captain ordered. ‘All squads, be advised. There may be ogryns within the haulers. Deal with them, but leave the vehicles intact. Acknowledge.’

As each of the squad sergeants transmitted their acknowledgement, the battle was all but done, the high tide of war having passed. Five of the troop carriers were ablaze, their former passengers slain in the deadly ambush. More black-clad Space Marines emerged from the darkness, bolters held ready as they advanced towards the two remaining cargo haulers. The Assault Marines of left and centre groups were despatching the last of the defenders towards the rear of the column, running to ground those who attempted to flee and cutting them down with cold, clinical efficiency.

‘No contact,’ came a sergeant’s voice over the vox-net. ‘Just cargo. Area secure.’

‘Acknowledged,’ said the captain as he strode towards the rear of the column. ‘Right group?’

‘Stand by,’ returned a sergeant.

The captain continued through the darkness towards the column’s rear. The last few shots ran out and then it was over.

‘Just cargo here, too,’ the sergeant reported. ‘Secured.’

‘Orders,’ he said, not willing to waste a second of time. ‘On my lead.’

A stray shot rang out towards the front of the column, the sound of a Space Marine despatching a wounded enemy trooper. Within a minute, the squad sergeants had assembled beside the second transport, the only one not aflame. Bracing his weight against a handle, the captain pulled himself upwards and swung his massively armoured form up onto the deck.

‘Well fought,’ he said.

The assembled Space Marines nodded sombrely, their Chapter not disposed to rude displays of triumphalism. Where other Space Marines of other Chapters might have revelled openly in their victory, theirs celebrated victory in a far more personal manner. Later, when the fighting was done, each would mount a silent vigil. He would pray for hours, even days on end, seeking unity with the Emperor and the primarch in the midst of a universe of blood and slaughter and doom.

‘Status?’ the captain asked as he looked down upon his officers.

Each of the leaders gave their report in turn, a clipped delivery listing wounds sustained and ammunition expended. Though a number of battle-brothers had been injured in the brief firefight, none had been lost. The captain’s orders had been to conserve resources, for more reasons than one. More squads were in action across the entire region of Quintus, sowing fear and confusion amongst the native forces, and the leaders of these small forces each reported in over the vox-net.

‘Sergeant,’ he addressed a veteran Tactical squad leader. ‘Your men are prepared?’

‘Affirmative,’ the sergeant replied. ‘They are ready to begin at your order.’

‘Good,’ the captain replied. ‘I want three Munitorum-issue lasguns placed centrally on the right flank, along with a dozen expended power packs. Set down one of the Guard-issue bolters in right group’s ambush position. See it done.’

Nodding his understanding, the sergeant turned and stalked off into the night. The warriors of his squad would place a weapon they had brought to Quintus for this very purpose.

‘What of the bolter wounds?’ another sergeant asked. ‘Many were cut down by our brothers’ weapons.’

‘Even if the enemy note the nature of the militia’s wounds, sufficient doubt will have been created for our purposes,’ he answered.

‘And doubt,’ said Captain Kayvaan Shrike of the Raven Guard Chapter, ‘is the seed of misdirection.’

‘You can kill me now!’ spat Malya L’nor. ‘I will not serve him!’

Heaving against the restraints at her wrists and ankles, Malya knew it was useless. She had awoken in the dank cell several hours before, her first sight that of the hooded cell-master standing over her. At first she had begged to be released, but as the full extent of her plight had revealed itself she had desired only a swift death.

‘I refuse,’ she screamed, her lungs burning. ‘I would rather die!’

From beneath his leathern hood, the cell-master had whispered with unadulterated glee of the plans that Voldorius had in store for Malya L’nor. What cruel strand of fate was unravelling before her, she had despaired? Why was it she that had been chosen, seemingly at random, for such a duty?

‘Oh, you shall serve,’ came a new voice from behind Malya. Her head restrained by steel braces, all she could see was the corroded ironwork of the ceiling above her and the fleeting shadows cast across it by flickering lumens. Something about this new voice forced her to silence, despite herself, so low and threatening were its sibilant tones.

‘My lord Voldorius has great hopes for you, equerry.’

Malya bit back a caustic reply as the speaker stepped into her field of vision. Cold terror filled her, the sweat on her body turning instantly as cold as ice. He was huge, his shoulders broad. He wore the blue-green armour that the people of Quintus had come to hate so much. It was the livery of the Alpha Legion, whose leader had laid their world so low.

‘My name is Nullus,’ the warrior continued, his vile visage pressing in towards Malya’s. Up close, his face was revealed to Malya as a white globe of solid scar tissue, his black, slit-like eyes gazing down at her. Tears welled in her own eyes under that soulless gaze, yet she refused to yield to her sorrow.

‘You are wilful,’ Nullus said. ‘That will serve you well in your new office.’

‘I–’ Malya started.

‘You will,’ Nullus interjected, his face lowering still further towards her own until she could see nothing but his black eyes and the scars traced around them in obscene patterns. ‘Voldorius has need of an… intermediary, one who will keep the people of this miserable rock in line, while he attends to his own concerns. You will serve in this capacity.’

‘No,’ Malya said flatly, forcing her voice to remain steady. Despite her denial, she could not meet the other’s eyes for they threatened the destruction of her very soul.

Nullus’s face was split by a mocking grin, the scars aligning themselves into new patterns as the flesh beneath them shifted. ‘Henceforth,’ Nullus continued, ‘with each denial that issues from your pretty lips, a hundred of your people shall die. Ten thousand were slain in the grand square, and you alone were spared. Their corpses shall remain as a warning. You can see them if you like. Should you prefer that ten thousand more be slain to make the point, then please, continue with your foolish protest.

‘Do you understand?’

Now the tears flowed freely from Malya’s eyes, and she screwed them tightly shut.

‘Yes,’ she nodded, as much as the restraints would allow. ‘I understand…’

‘Your report,’ said Shrike as he entered the dark cave in which Techmarine Dyloss tended the cipher matrix.

‘Brother-captain,’ Techmarine Dyloss nodded a greeting as Shrike came to stand opposite him. He turned back to the softly glowing globe atop the machinery in front of him, reams of zeroes scrolling across its screen. ‘I cannot raise her, nor any of her associates.’

Shrike sighed. The Techmarine had only recently established contact with a group of fighters within Mankarra city and several reticent communications had passed between them. The fighters had, of course, been suspicious, sensibly concluding that Shrike’s transmissions might have been those of the enemy, intent upon entrapment.

‘The last contact?’ Shrike asked.

‘Twelve hours ago. As per your orders, I communicated your opposition to an attempt upon the vile one’s life until full coordination of action was possible.’

‘And her response?’ Shrike enquired.

‘She agreed,’ Techmarine Dyloss replied. ‘But she could not vouch for her compatriots.’

‘Fools,’ Shrike cursed. Voldorius had the blood of billions on his hands and countless numbers of humanity’s finest warriors had sacrificed their lives to try and defeat him. Yet, none had succeeded, so what chance had a handful of desperate civilians-turned-resistance fighters?

‘You asked her about the prisoner,’ Shrike said. It was not a question.

‘I did,’ the Techmarine replied. ‘She knew nothing.’

Shrike’s mood darkened and he made to stalk from the cave.

‘Since then, brother-captain,’ the Techmarine continued, ‘I have intercepted a number of other signals.’

‘Go on,’ Shrike said, halting at the cave’s mouth.

‘The rudimentary command and control network that the resistance had established has been entirely destroyed. As each node fell, brief and desperate pleas were transmitted. Many mentioned an atrocity in which thousands were slain.’

‘What they reap…’ Shrike muttered.

‘Brother-captain?’ Dyloss said, unsure of Shrike’s meaning.

‘No matter,’ Shrike said, turning his back on the cipher matrix and its Techmarine attendant. ‘We stand alone, as ever.’

‘The blood-rats,’ whispered Scout Telluk. ‘Falling upon the sky-drake’s bones.’

‘Understood,’ Scout-Sergeant Kholka replied, moving silently to lie beside the neophyte at the lip of the rock.

Kholka eased himself forwards cautiously, for the sun had fully risen in the sky overhead. Slowly, he raised his magnoculars to his eyes and examined the scene below.

The boy was correct, and he had used the proper battle-cant to describe what he had seen. The rocky terrain was cut by a gully and in it a column of armour belonging to the traitor militia had been ambushed. Not just ambushed; taken apart with ruthless efficiency.

Scanning left, the sergeant caught a glimpse of movement amongst the smoking wreckage of armoured carriers. Figures moved amongst the detritus, picking over the remains of vehicles and corpses alike.

‘Militia? Scout Telluk asked his sergeant.

Kholka continued to scan the scene for a moment before replying, taking in at least a platoon’s worth of soldiers. ‘It appears so, neophyte,’ he said. ‘Your impressions?’

‘An ambush,’ Telluk said, ‘that much is clear. Very recently.’

‘When?’ Kholka pressed.

‘During the night, sergeant. Perhaps around zero-three-zero.’

‘Explain.’

‘The ambushers must have been well hidden to approach so close to the column. But the moon last night was full. Any attacker would have been illuminated, and spotted.’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless the moon was behind that outcrop.’ The Scout nodded towards a tall formation of volcanic rock to the pair’s right. ‘Only when the column rounded that rock slide would the moon have provided light, at which point, the ambushers attacked.’

‘Good,’ Kholka replied. He too had reached that conclusion and had hoped that his testing of the youngster would have yielded such positive results. As he watched the militia soldiers go from one body to the next he heard a shout from off to the left. Panning the magnoculars, he located the source. Amidst some boulders, a soldier was waving with one hand, and holding a lasgun aloft in the other.

A few minutes later, an officer was directing a search among the rocks to either side of the gully. Soon several more of the weapons, as well as a far rarer boltgun, had been found.

‘Imperial Guard?’ Scout Telluk said.

‘I very much doubt it, boy,’ replied the sergeant. ‘But someone certainly wants them to believe it so.’

‘Brother-captain,’ Techmarine Dyloss called out, even as Shrike stalked away from the cave. He turned towards the Space Marine standing in the cave’s mouth.

‘What is it?’ Shrike replied. A dark shroud had fallen across his soul when he had learned of the Alpha Legion’s deeds and he was ill-disposed towards conversation right now.

‘Another signal.’

Shrike turned back towards the cave and ducked beneath its low opening. The Techmarine had returned to his station attending the cipher matrix and was making a series of complex adjustments to its settings. Where ranks of zeroes had scrolled across its globe-shaped screen, now a series of numbers had appeared.

‘What is it?’ Shrike asked. The captain was not initiated into the ways of the Machine, and like all Space Marine leaders, relied upon the specialised skills of the Chapter’s Techmarines to attend to such things.

‘It’s a sub-ether carrier wave,’ Techmarine Dyloss replied matter-of-factly. Shrike raised his eyebrows.

‘A ranging signal. Right on the edge of what this unit can detect.’

‘Who from?’ Shrike pressed. ‘And who to?’

‘It’s an obscure cipher,’ Dyloss continued, his hands moving across the dials in an attempt to lock onto the signal. ‘Highly encrypted, but not by any means I am familiar with. I cannot say.’

‘A sub-ether carrier,’ Shrike said. ‘A beacon?’

‘It could be. But the diffusion makes tracking both source and destination impossible without the key.’

‘Which we do not have,’ Shrike replied. ‘I want that signal broken. And inform all commands. We will soon have company, of one sort or another.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

PLANETFALL

‘Clearing lambda-point alpha,’ reported the pilot, before reaching up to make a series of adjustments to a bank of instruments above his head. ‘Optimal velocity within five. Silent running at your command, my khan.’

Kor’sarro scanned his command terminal, one of its many screens displaying a rearward view of space. As the sickly green disc of Quintus’s moon receded, the Thunderhawk gunships of Kor’sarro’s strike force slipped free of its gravitational influence into that of Quintus itself. Within five minutes, the entire force, representing every single deployable unit under Kor’sarro’s command, would assume not only silent running, but complete signals silence. With the Lord of Heavens left far behind in the outer reaches of the Quintus system, the company would soon be very much alone.

The data scrolling across the terminal screen told Kor’sarro that all of the vessels of his strike force were in formation, their status optimal. But the Master of the Hunt knew better than to trust such things to the spirits of the machine.

‘All Hunters,’ Kor’sarro spoke into the vox-net. ‘Confirm status.’

One by one, each vessel in the strike force called in. Hunter Three’s repairs were settling in well enough, its commander reported, following the damage the ship had sustained at Cernis IV. Seven Techmarines had administered to the Thunderhawk transporter’s systems, replacing an entire aileron before praying to the vessel’s wounded machine-spirit for three days and three nights. Kor’sarro hoped fervently that their devotions would prove sufficient, for every vessel, and every Space Marine it carried, was vital to the mission ahead. Hunter Nine, the gunship assigned to carry the strike force’s ammunition, was the last to call in, its commander reporting the ship’s status satisfactory.

Before the strike force had parted company with the Lord of Heavens, Kor’sarro had meditated an entire night on the battle to come. Prior to that, he had spent long hours in counsel with both Chaplain Xia’ghan and the Storm Seer, Qan’karro. The Master of the Hunt had sought to rid himself of the taint of what had occurred on Cernis IV. Xia’ghan had absolved him of both pride and guilt, declaring Kor’sarro pure in the eyes of the Emperor. Qan’karro had cast his augur-bones in the manner of a steppes-shaman, and announced that the mission was true, its conclusion unclear as yet but its objective blessed. Kor’sarro’s mind was now clear and his heart purified. Not since the conclusion of his first ever hunt, on the third moon of the gas giant Mai Nine, had he felt such purpose.

‘All commands,’ Kor’sarro hailed his strike force commanders. ‘We proceed with the blessing of the Emperor and of the primarch, honoured be his name. Our mission is clear and you have your orders. Engage silent running, and good hunting.’

‘Engaging as ordered, my khan,’ said the co-pilot, flipping a series of switches before pulling down on a lever mounted at his side. With each control deactivated, one part of the gunship’s machine systems was laid dormant until the time it would be called upon once more. As the Thunderhawk’s mighty thrusters powered down, the command deck became unnervingly quiet. All of a sudden, Kor’sarro could hear the thunder of his blood in his ears, his heart racing as his genetically enhanced body prepared itself for battle, bolstered still further by the complex combat-drug administration systems in his power armour. Mouthing a prayer that he had learned as a boy at the foot of his tribe’s shaman, he forced himself to focus. Several hours of flight lay ahead of the strike force, hours in which he must remain alert and ready for any opposition to the insertion.

At the last, the command deck was plunged into darkness as all non-essential systems were brought fully offline. Angular shadows were cast across the instrument panels and all was tinted with the pale green of Quintus’s moon. The vessels of the strike force were now being propelled through the void by momentum alone and their course would not be corrected until the very last stage of entry in Quintus’s atmosphere. Even the flight control panels lay dark, only a single screen glowing dimly amongst so much cold metal.

‘The cipher?’ Kor’sarro asked. The command deck was so quiet that he instinctively kept his voice down low, even though no enemy could possibly hear. It was force of habit for one born of the steppes of Chogoris, whose people moderated the volume of their speech according to the strength of the ever-present winds.

‘On track, my khan,’ the co-pilot replied. ‘The carrier wave is reading clearly.’

‘Good,’ Kor’sarro replied, though in truth he could not help but feel some frustration that he must rely on such methods to guide the strike force in to its target. The wave was being transmitted by the Lord of Heavens, at a sub-etheric wavelength that few in the entire Imperium could possibly detect, and was protected by encryption that even fewer could break. With the necessity for a silent insertion, the individual ships of the strike force had to have some way of remaining coordinated with one another so that they each arrived at the correct interface point at the correct moment in time. Instead of synchronising with each other’s machine systems, each Thunderhawk would follow the nigh undetectable signal transmitted by the Lord of Heavens, riding the wave right onto their target.

‘Dyloss to Shrike,’ the transmission came over the captain’s vox-bead. ‘Do you receive?’

‘Go ahead,’ Shrike replied, halting in his patrol of the rock-strewn area north-west of the Raven Guard base.

‘Brother-captain,’ the voice came over the vox, the signal clearer now that Shrike’s armour had been afforded time to repair its communication systems. ‘I have news regarding the cipher.’

Shrike signalled for the Space Marines nearby to halt, and with a curt gesture ordered them to assume a defensive posture, covering the terrain in all directions. ‘I’m listening,’ he replied. ‘Have you broken the encryption?’

‘The code itself remains intact,’ the Techmarine reported. ‘But I have cracked something of the signal’s nature, and of its source.’

It had been five days since Techmarine Dyloss had detected the cipher signal, and he had been working upon it without rest or respite, day and night, ever since. In the meantime, the Raven Guard had stepped up their patrols of the region around Mankarra, sowing death and destruction against any and all enemies they had encountered. After each battle, the Raven Guard had planted false evidence of their identity, leaving Imperial Guard-issue weapons and equipment at the ambush sites. After one ambush, they had even dressed the corpse of a traitor militia soldier in an Imperial Guard uniform they had brought along for just such a deception. It was not that Shrike truly aimed to convince the invaders that an Imperial Guard force was active on Quintus, but any amount of confusion he could plant in the minds of their commanders would aid the Space Marines’ cause.

‘The signal is a co-ord beam, the type used for blind navigation,’ Dyloss reported.

‘Then someone’s inbound,’ said Shrike, as much to himself as to the Techmarine. ‘Do you have the coordinates?’

There was a brief pause, during which Shrike could hear the sound of the Techmarine’s hands and servo-arms working upon the cipher matrix, which droned and churned in the background. ‘I am still filtering the exact location, but I am transmitting the approximate coordinates to you now.’

Captain Shrike raised his left arm and slid back the cover of a data-screen integrated into his vambrace. A representation of the surrounding region appeared on the screen, a red circle at its centre. ‘A day’s march,’ he said, switching his vox-link to transmit on the command frequency. ‘All units,’ Shrike addressed his squad leaders and specialists. ‘Converge on my coordinates, tactical state gamma-nine. Confirm.’

Within moments, each of Shrike’s officers had confirmed their understanding of his orders. Shrike would not allow his mission on Quintus to be compromised by another force entering the war, no matter who they were.

Scout-Sergeant Kholka looked up towards the darkening skies for what must have been the tenth time in as many minutes, even though he knew the strike force would not be inbound for at least an hour, and that was assuming nothing had gone awry.

Kholka and his Scouts had located a landing zone and transmitted its coordinates to the shielded gunship on its last pass five days ago. Now they waited, watching for enemy intrusion or interference.

The landing zone was the flat floor of a dormant volcano, protected by a five hundred-metre-tall rim, breached on its northern edge by a wide fracture.

Of course, the suitability of the landing zone might have been noted by potential enemies. For that reason, Kholka had ordered the young Scouts to keep a watchful vigil for enemy activity, spreading them out in order to cover as much of the surrounding region as possible. An hour ago, Borchu had reported a glimpse of movement to the north and Kholka had worked his way stealthily around the volcano’s rim to the Scout’s hide.

Lowering his eyes from the skies above, Kholka looked down upon the black wastelands far below. The sun was setting, casting long, jagged shadows across the lands. Any enemy at all might be creeping through those shadows. He hesitated before lifting the magnoculars, seeking to get a feel for the landscape before him, to imagine himself a predator moving through it in search of prey. He ignored the fact that in truth he himself might be the prey, if indeed a hunter lurked down there, in the dark shadows.

The wastes stretched for kilometres in every direction, but to the north-west, beyond the horizon, were the outskirts of the agri-zone. Another one hundred or so kilometres beyond that was the capital city of Mankarra. It was from that direction that any enemy action was most likely to come, and it was there that Borchu had seen the movement.

Having familiarised himself with the landscape, Kholka raised the magnoculars to his eyes. ‘Coordinates?’ he asked the Scout beside him.

‘Five by the winter deeps,’ Borchu replied in the White Scars battle-cant. ‘Three score and nine by the herd.’

The veteran sergeant was so accustomed to the use of battle-cant that he had no need to convert the code phrase into conventional coordinates. Indeed, the form of communication was in many cases more efficient than standard coordinates, for it contained descriptive shorthand that drew the eye to specific terrain features. Perhaps most importantly, it relied on cultural references that only one raised on the steppes of Chogoris would understand, making it nigh impossible for an enemy to decipher should he intercept it.

Panning the magnoculars from west to east, Kholka adjusted the magnification so that his field of vision was focussed on an area some three kilometres out. Like the majority of the landscape, the area was dominated by twisted arches and jagged outcrops of volcanic rock, black or dark grey in colour and ideal terrain for an enemy to creep through at dusk. He zoomed outwards slightly, absorbing the general lay of the land, seeking to imagine himself passing through it. What path would he take, were he approaching the volcano?

Kholka’s eye was caught by a black bridge of rock between two outcroppings, formed no doubt by the action of blisteringly hot lava carving its way through an older feature. The channel below the bridge snaked its way from the north-east and its depths would be cast in the deepest of shadow for much of the day.

Having located a possible route an enemy might approach the landing zone by, the sergeant traced its path as far as he could see. At times the channel was hidden by intervening terrain features such as tall, bladelike spires or massive coils of solidified lava. Seeing no sign of an enemy on his first sweep, Kholka engaged the thermal imaging function. He soon found however that the background temperature of the volcanic rocks was relatively high, high enough to mask the presence of any foe taking measures to avoid detection by such means. No matter, Kholka thought as he disengaged the thermal imaging; he far preferred to rely upon his own senses, enhanced as they were by arcane genetic engineering and honed by centuries of battlefield experience.

Kholka focussed in upon a particular area of shadow. If I were moving along that route, he thought, that is where I would be. It offered an unobstructed view of the volcano and had ample overhead cover from an angular blade of rock jutting out above the channel.

Only after he had been looking directly at that patch of shadow, unblinking and utterly focussed, for upwards of fifteen minutes, did Kholka detect the very faintest of movement. A black patch of shadow, barely discernable against the darkness all around, moved ever so slightly.

‘Enemy located,’ the sergeant growled.

Shrike longed to engage his jump pack and hurl himself through the darkening skies towards the contact his auspex had detected hiding in the rocks up ahead, yet he dared not. Not until he had confirmed their full strength and disposition at least. To reveal his location now would be suicide.

Having tracked the sub-etheric transmission to its terminus, Shrike was now sure that the target was the inside of the volcano up ahead. It made sense. The inside of the vast crater would offer an ideal location for a planetary landing. But only if whoever was inbound wished to avoid detection by other forces on the surface of Quintus.

Ten hours ago, before the sun had risen across the wastes south-west of Mankarra, Shrike had convened a council of his officers and specialists. All had been afforded the opportunity to speak, to offer their theories on the identity of the strangers they knew would be arriving soon. Several had expressed the hope that the force represented aid for Mankarra, perhaps in the form of reinforcements, yet the case against had been well made. Before embarking on the mission, Shrike had been fully appraised of the Imperium’s forces in the region. As far as he knew, none had been allotted to target the world. And besides, some had argued, it was too soon to expect an intervention, for such a force would take many months to gather and prepare, and would be unlikely to approach the world in such a stealthy manner.

Other opinions had been voiced too. Perhaps the strangers were reinforcements for the invaders. But why then hide their approach? Were they a rival warband, perhaps intent upon dislodging the tyranny of Voldorius only to replace it with another, perhaps even more brutal rule?

One last possibility had emerged during the gathering. Might the strangers be brother Space Marines come to Quintus to lend their aid to its resistance and to oust the Alpha Legion and their vile overlord? That would certainly explain the use of the highly sophisticated carrier signal, but Shrike was aware of no other Chapter in the immediate vicinity.

The Salamanders Chapter, Shrike knew, had a strike force in the benighted Magulanox sector, but had departed the galactic arm entirely in pursuit of the traitor rogue trader Lord Hax. The Celestial Guard Chapter were also known to be operating within a dozen light years of Quintus, but the last Shrike had heard, all of their forces had been recalled to defend the Chapter’s home world of Erenon against a large ork incursion. The Imperial Fists had a force inbound on the anarchic Jagga Cluster, but that lay dozens of light years away, while the Tigers Argent, White Scars and the Howling Griffons could all, in theory, be operating even further out still.

No, Shrike had decided. The Raven Guard could not make the assumption that whoever was approaching Quintus was a friend. He had ordered his force to proceed to the landing zone with all caution and to be ready for action against the strangers.

Settling back into the darkness of the channel, Shrike waited.

‘Final corrections input,’ reported Brother Koban. ‘Beginning final descent.’

Kor’sarro watched through the canopy of the Thunderhawk’s command deck as the dark surface of Quintus loomed. The strike force was approaching on the planet’s night side, the bright crescent of dawn casting a semi-circular halo across its shoulder. Behind the strike force, the moon of Quintus shone its sickly luminescence, bathing the nighted surface below in soft green light. As the minutes counted down, small pinpricks of artificial light became visible, the telltale signs of civilisation. Whether those lights were cast by industry or were simply the glowing embers of ruin, Kor’sarro could not yet discern.

The gunship bucked violently as it penetrated the upper reaches of the world’s atmosphere, and Kor’sarro mouthed a silent prayer to the primarch. He beseeched the first Great Khan for his blessing, as he had done on hundreds of previous occasions. To date, the primarch had watched over the Master of the Hunt and his brotherhood of White Scars. Wherever Jaghatai Khan was, whatever far reaches of the galaxy he hunted, he was always with his favoured sons, the proud warriors of the steppes of Chogoris.

‘Approaching local Kármán line,’ the pilot said. ‘One hundred kilometres.’

The turbulence increased still further as the Thunderhawk plummeted through the atmosphere. The view through the canopy was now entirely of the planet’s surface. Because the need for stealth was so great, the vessel and its sister ships would only engage manoeuvring thrusters at the last possible moment, before triggering their anti-grav generators to arrest their final descent.

As the gunship plummeted, the features of the landscape below became more discernable. Kor’sarro’s first impression of Quintus was of a planet crossed by vast mountain ranges and pockmarked with the scars of massive amounts of volcanic activity. Though it appeared green in the light of the moon, Kor’sarro knew that much of the surface was in fact ash-grey or black, and very little of it was able to support any life.

Between the vast mountain ranges stretched barren, trackless wastes, strewn with twisted rock formations and crossed with deep valleys forged by the passage of torrents of lava at some distant point in the world’s prehistory. Due to the nature of the terrain, mankind had only settled in a scattering of regions, and then the only reason for doing so was to provide a strategic base from which Imperial forces could guard against alien incursions from nearby stars. In truth, this place was little more than a backstop: its defenders would never have stood a chance against invasion, but their defiance and sacrifice would have bought time for a coordinated counterattack to be assembled. With the coming of Kernax Voldorius, that purpose had been negated.

‘Activating manoeuvring thrusters,’ Brother Koban announced. This was it; the point at which there truly was no going back. Were an enemy to be casting his gaze in the portion of the sky the strike force was approaching through, the gunships might be detected as their thrusters flared into life. A moment later, the sound of the atmosphere rushing against the hull was drowned out by that of the jets coming online, a sound which to Kor’sarro seemed shockingly loud.

Pulling back hard on the flight control, the pilot brought the gunship around onto its approach heading, the horizon swinging downwards sharply as the vessel levelled out.

‘One hundred kilometres to objective,’ Brother Koban announced. ‘Applying anti-grav in ten seconds.’

Kor’sarro braced himself and counted down the seconds in his head. As he reached zero, the gunship’s forwards momentum was dramatically reduced, its structure groaning in protest. Yet the Thunderhawk was constructed to the very highest of specifications and attended to by the ministrations of the most devoted Techmarines. It could survive far worse punishment.

‘Fifty kilometres to landing zone,’ the pilot calmly announced. ‘Awakening machine systems.’

A deep thrum suddenly filled the command deck and the instrumentation panels all around the flight crew came fully to life. Pict screens lit up, reams of data scrolling across their surfaces and bright indicators blinking their warnings.

Kor’sarro scanned the command terminal and quickly located the landing zone. Looking through the canopy, he caught his first sight of the massive volcano the strike force was heading towards. The screens showed no indication of the other eight gunships of his force, which carried between them the entire 3rd Company and a number of armoured vehicles. All were proceeding on a signals blackout, their identification transponders silent for the time being lest an enemy detect them. Only the carrier signal that each followed would guide them in.

As the volcano loomed, Kor’sarro scanned the terrain at its base. He knew that should any enemy be waiting, they would be well hidden amongst the twisted black rock formations. As the range closed to ten kilometres, Kor’sarro barked an order. ‘Circle the perimeter, Brother Koban. Then take us in.’

The Thunderhawk banked to port, the sheer black flank of the volcano passing by. Somewhere on that mighty crater, Kor’sarro knew, Sergeant Kholka and his Scouts were hidden. He fully expected them to be so well concealed that he would not see them until they chose to reveal themselves. The Thunderhawk continued its manoeuvre, keeping the mighty volcano to starboard as it sped through the dark skies. After several minutes, the pilot hauled back on the flight control, bringing the vessel directly over the black maw of the crater.

‘No sign of–’ the co-pilot began.

‘There!’ said Kor’sarro, indicating a gully that cut through the jagged landscape towards the mighty breach in the crater’s rim. ‘Movement. Take us in for a pass.’

‘Shall I attempt to raise the Scout force, my khan?’ asked the co-pilot.

‘Do so, but arm all weapons systems. Now.’

The Thunderhawk banked again as the pilot brought it about on to the new heading. In seconds, the vessel was following the path of the winding gully at an altitude of a mere fifty metres. Runes blinked as the gunship’s weapons came online. Kor’sarro’s command terminal showed targeting reticules tracing the line of the gully for potential targets.

As Kor’sarro watched, the gunship’s targeting spirits detected a return, the reticules blinking red as the weapons prepared to fire.

The Scout-sergeant breathed a sigh of relief as the gunships blazed across the dark skies to the east. Yet it now fell to him to confirm whether or not the landing should be aborted in the face of any potential enemy activity below. The first of the Thunderhawks soared overhead and then banked hard, swooping in low over the very gully that Kholka himself was concentrating upon. Evidently, the gunship’s superior weapon spirits had detected the presence too and the vessel was commencing an attack run.

Focussing his attentions on the spot where he had earlier seen movement, Kholka knew that he had scant seconds to arrive at a decision. And then, he saw it again. A sudden movement of black against black. Bracing himself, he increased the magnoculars’ magnification to full.

‘Brother-sergeant,’ Borchu whispered from beside him, the neophyte’s hand raised to the vox-bead in his ear. ‘Hunter One is requesting confirmation of our status.’

‘Tell them to stand by,’ Kholka replied through gritted teeth as he caught a fleeting glimpse of a black-clad figure wreathed in shadows beneath the rock shelf.

The sergeant filtered out the sound of the Scout passing the communication back to the gunship, concentrating all of his attention upon the scene through the viewfinder.

‘My apologies, brother-sergeant,’ the Scout interrupted. ‘Brother-Captain Kor’sarro needs confirmation right now. He’s engaging!’

As the gunship dived towards the position Kholka was studying, he saw a flash of white against the black backdrop.

‘The conspirer…’ Kholka named the target in battle-cant as he reached for his own vox-bead. ‘Pull up, brother-captain, contact confirmed,’ he barked into the vox. ‘Abort!

Kor’sarro strode down the gunship’s ramp, his armoured boots crunching the black, rocky ground before the Thunderhawk had even fully touched down. Around him stretched the flat bottom of the volcano’s inner surface, swirling lines of solidified lava etched across the ground. The crater wall towered high above, framing the circle of the now purple and red stained night sky high above. He turned and looked upwards and saw the first vessels of the remainder of the strike force descending upon screaming columns of white flame.

‘You!’ Kor’sarro growled as he stalked towards a group of black-armoured Space Marines, his Command squad at his back. Anger and indignation rose within him. He would not allow anything to come between him, and the object of his decade-long hunt.

‘Raven Guard,’ Kor’sarro said as he came to a halt before the other. Waiting for him was a Space Marine, his power armour black with a heraldic raven emblazoned at the shoulder. The Space Marine was helmetless, his face deathly pale and his long, dark hair loose at his shoulders. His eyes were shadowed, black pits with no whites visible at all, a trait shared by many of the longer-lived sons of his Chapter. ‘Why do you haunt the shadows of Quintus?’

Shrike’s voice was low and dangerous as he replied, ‘I bring death. I bring deliverance.’ Shrike stared darkly at Kor’sarro. ‘What of you, White Scar?’

‘I hunt,’ Kor’sarro said. From behind him came the sound of mighty engines growling to life, of tanks grinding forwards from the bellies of Thunderhawk transporters. The company’s Tactical squads would ride to war on bikes in the coming battles, and the sound of their engines revving up reverberated around the crater. ‘The White Scars come for the head of Voldorius. I come to claim that honour.’

Shrike’s dark eyes locked on Kor’sarro’s own. ‘You can have it,’ the other growled. ‘My concerns are greater.’

‘Explain yourself, Shadow Captain,’ Kor’sarro said, deliberately using the title by which Shrike was sometimes known.

‘Ever was it thus,’ Shrike sighed, blatantly changing the subject. ‘Ever did the sons of the steppes seek to charge headlong to glory without pause or consideration of the grand scheme.’

‘And ever did the ravens haunt the shadows,’ Kor’sarro replied bitterly, ‘biding their time while glory passed them by.’

A host of White Scars had gathered at Kor’sarro’s back, drawn to the meeting of commanders. The Storm Seer Qan’karro stepped to Kor’sarro’s side and placed a firm, gauntleted hand upon his armoured shoulder.

‘Huntsman,’ the Storm Seer said quietly. ‘Be wary of the sin of pride.’

Kor’sarro was ready to argue with his old friend, but the wisdom of the Storm Seer’s words penetrated his anger. Forcing himself to calm, Kor’sarro turned back to the Raven Guard captain. ‘How long?’

Shrike paused before answering, ‘Eighteen days. And in that time we have sown confusion and discord in the enemy’s ranks, preparing to strike when the moment is right.’

‘But that moment has eluded you,’ Kor’sarro interjected.

‘It has,’ Shrike replied. ‘Their numbers are great.’

‘And your own are scarcely more than a squad, if my advance Scouts are correct.’

At this, Shrike’s lips curled into a mocking snarl. ‘Your Scouts are good,’ Shrike replied. ‘But we are better.’

Once more, Qan’karro interjected before Kor’sarro could reply. ‘What then are your true numbers, Brother-Captain Shrike?’

‘We number an entire company, White Scar. Yet your Scouts only detected myself and my Command squad.’

‘And still you have yet to take the battle to the enemy?’ Kor’sarro said.

Shrike’s snarl faded. ‘Their numbers are great. And besides, the capital city is heavily fortified. We sought to weaken them, to bleed them by a thousand cuts, and then to strike the death blow when they were weak.’

A long, drawn out pause followed, during which the two captains and their men stared darkly at one another. Then, Kor’sarro’s face was split by a feral grin. ‘Are their numbers so great,’ he began, ‘are their fortifications so sturdy, as to stand against two entire companies?’

Shrike did not answer straight away, but then he too smiled, though his eyes remained as dark as ever. ‘Indeed, White Scar,’ he replied. ‘They are not that great, nor that sturdy.’

‘Good,’ said Kor’sarro. ‘Then let us speak of the hunt for Voldorius.’

Scout-Sergeant Kholka stalked along the shadowed floor of the twisting gully in which he had first spotted the waiting Raven Guard. Despite his years and the wisdom they had brought, he seethed within. That he had detected Captain Shrike himself should have been a source of great pride, for the commander of the Raven Guard’s 3rd company was infamous for his field craft. Yet Kholka and his Scouts had failed to detect the remainder of Shrike’s force, which had been positioned the length of the entire channel, waiting in the shadows, ready to launch a massive counterattack against the White Scars strike force had it proved hostile.

Had it not been for his good fortune in spotting what few of the Raven Guard that he had, the inbound White Scars gunships might have inflicted devastating fratricide upon their brother Chapter. Had he not, the Raven Guard might have failed to identify the White Scars and their concealed heavy weapons squads might have blasted one or more of the Thunderhawks from the sky. Both fates had come perilously close to playing out before Kholka’s very eyes. Only his last, urgent transmission to Kor’sarro, which had been intercepted by Shrike, had averted it.

But who else might have picked up that transmission? The Techmarines ascertained that no enemy forces were close enough to have intercepted it, and even if they had been, they could never have broken the encryption. Yet the veteran sergeant was not so sure. On the pretext of checking the perimeter, he had taken himself off into the lava channels. He needed to be sure. Every one of his hunter’s instincts screamed that something was amiss.

The gully ran for many kilometres north-east from the great breach in the crater rim. Like a dry riverbed, many smaller channels intersected it, some barely large enough for a single man to pass, others wide enough for a tank to travel along. Sergeant Kholka turned a corner and located the angular overhanging of rock the Raven Guard captain had hidden under. He looked back over his shoulder, seeking to identify the position high on the crater rim from which he had spotted Captain Shrike, but found it too dark for even his enhanced eyesight to make out the exact location. He looked back and raised his weapon to his shoulder, squinting along the gully through its sights.

With a flick of a thumb, Kholka engaged the thermal sights. They had failed him before, due to a combination of the higher than usual background heat signature of the volcanic rocks, and the enhanced armour cooling systems utilised by the Raven Guard force. The two had evened out and without the contrast of hot against cold the weapon’s war spirit had been unable to detect a target.

This time, however, the sights did reveal a heat source.

Through the viewfinder, it was no more than a faint, pale green blur against the darker grey of the rocks. Freezing where he stood, the sergeant engaged every one of his senses. All around him were the sounds of the night, of a gentle breeze blowing through the twisted rock formations and whistling or moaning where it passed through a narrow defile or under an arching rock bridge. A small vermin scurried across the rocks five metres away and in the distance he caught the low rumble of the White Scars’ vehicles.

Kholka tasted the air. The veteran had been known for his sharp senses even before he had been granted the honour of joining the White Scars, and the subsequent genetic-engineering he had undergone had increased them to superhuman levels. Like many White Scars, he frequently eschewed the wearing of a combat helmet, the better to engage with his surroundings and his enemies regardless of the risk posed. The air tasted of a complex mixture of nitrates and sulphates, with the faintest hint of the vegetation that was cultivated in the agri-zones around Mankarra. Even fainter still, Kholka could detect the scent of burning fuel from the White Scars’ vehicles.

When the wind shifted ever so slightly, Kholka detected a new scent. It was the scent of fear.

Certain that someone or something lurked in the shadows beneath the overhang, Kholka melted into the shadowed mouth of a subsidiary channel. There he waited, barely breathing, straining every one of his enhanced senses. The enemy were too close for him to risk using his vox-bead to alert his brothers. He could do so if he moved away, but then he might lose track of the intruders. He knew he had no choice but to stay put.

After what felt like an hour but was little more than a quarter of that time, the slightest of sounds came from further down the gully. Kholka squinted into the darkness, seeing only shadows ahead. He lowered his head to the sights of his weapon and saw a figure stalking very slowly against the grey of the rock. The thermal sight rendered the otherwise invisible scene in ghostly greens and greys. The figure paused as it came into the centre of the channel and waved forwards a dozen more.

The figures wore bulky flak jackets and hard, visored helmets that obscured their features. Kholka looked to their weapons, knowing that the equipment they carried would aid their identification, friend or foe. Each carried a lascarbine, a relatively advanced weapon compared to the mass-produced, solid projectile autoguns issued to the bulk of the local military.

Cautiously, the pathfinder approached along the channel, sweeping his carbine left and right. He was good, Kholka conceded. His feet barely made a sound as he passed by the sergeant’s hiding place. But he was scared too. As Kholka watched, another squad followed, and then another, until an entire platoon of soldiers had crept past.

The last of the platoon rounded a bend in the channel and Kholka prepared to slip away. Yet, something made him pause. Whether thanks to the native skills of the Chogoran steppes nomad or the enhanced senses of the superhuman Space Marine, Kholka remained motionless. A moment later, a second platoon rounded the bend and marched past his hiding place. Even as this body of soldiers receded, another appeared. Kholka counted six platoons in all before the last was gone.

Kholka stepped out of his hiding place. He could call in aid right now, but he knew that he had to be certain. Limbering his boltgun and drawing his combat knife, Kholka jogged silently after the soldiers. As he closed, the last platoon was rounding a bend in the gully and only the rearmost of the squads was still exposed. He knew that he would have seconds.

Kholka’s stealthy jog increased to a run but still he made barely a sound. He calculated the moment he would strike, closing on the very last man in the line as the rest passed out of sight. Like a razorwing swooping from the Chogoran dusk, Kholka focussed on the back of the man’s neck as he closed the final dozen metres. An instant before the intruder would have turned the bend Kholka clamped a hand across the other’s mouth, placed his combat knife to the soldier’s neck, and hauled the man backwards into the shadows.

His blade pressed firmly against the man’s windpipe, Kholka saw on the shoulder armour the symbol of the four stars. It was the heraldic device of the Mankarra household guard. Kholka snarled and stabbed his combat knife into the side of the man’s throat, sliding it in behind the windpipe. The man stiffened in Kholka’s grip. With a single motion, Kholka brought the knife forwards, severing the throat with cold efficiency. The traitor was dead before he hit the ground. By that time Scout-Sergeant Kholka was already gone.

Kor’sarro wiped his blade across the sleeve of its last victim, cleaning it of the traitor’s tainted blood. In front of him lay dozens of black- and grey-clad corpses, the last of the intruders that Sergeant Kholka had discovered closing on the landing zone. The battle had been brief but fierce, and even now squads of Raven Guard Assault Marines were hunting down the last of the enemy that had fled through the twisting channels.

‘How did they come to be here?’ Kor’sarro asked as Qan’karro came to stand beside him. For a moment, the old warrior was silent, his ancient eyes staring out across the jagged wastes towards the lightening horizon. Then he turned to the Master of the Hunt, and answered.

‘It was mere chance, huntsman,’ the Storm Seer said. ‘But had Sergeant Kholka not detected them they might have brought ruin down upon all of our heads.’

‘Aye, old friend,’ Kor’sarro replied. The gully below was choked by the corpses of the enemy. ‘Truly, the primarch smiled down upon us this night.’

‘This night,’ the Storm Seer said as he locked eyes with the Master of the Hunt, ‘two primarchs granted us their blessing.’

Kor’sarro nodded, his black moustaches caught by a sudden gust of wind. It was only by combining the efforts of both forces that the intruders had been defeated before they could alert their Alpha Legion masters. The Space Marines’ attack had been overwhelming, the White Scars bike squads smashing headlong into the foremost of the intruders’ platoons while the Raven Guard’s Assault squads sped overhead to strike at the rear of the column. The enemy had been caught in the channel, unable to redeploy. The two Space Marine forces had only halted the slaughter when White Scar and Raven Guard had met in the centre, no enemy left between them to cut down.

Kor’sarro nodded towards the Raven Guard captain, who raised a talon in salute. The point was well made.

CHAPTER EIGHT

AWAKENING

Malya L’nor had had no idea that such a place existed. Far beneath the governor’s palace was a vaulted chamber, a hundred metres and more high and perhaps ten times as long. At the far end of the nave was a statue of the Emperor, far taller than any she had seen before, and her heart leapt with the joy such a sight brought her pious soul. The so-called Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom was, despite its grandeur, a private chapel, reserved for the exclusive use of the erstwhile planetary governor and his line, and no mere subject had ever stepped foot within it.

Ahead of Malya was Voldorius and his champion, Nullus, the sound of their footsteps on the stone floor echoing around the dark, empty nave. The group proceeded towards the altar at the far end. Malya was expected to attend to these vile traitors, or so they had told her, to represent them in their dealings with the populace of her world.

When Malya had first been released from her cell, she had tried to kill herself. But it seemed that her captors had anticipated that, for the cell-masters and their vile servitors had intervened. Malya had come to realise that she might still be able to aid the resistance. Voldorius, in his sick attempt to punish her by making her his servant, had in fact provided her with an opportunity. Cautious to make it appear that she was resigning herself to her fate, Malya had settled into the role that had been forced upon her with a renewed vitality, ever vigilant for opportunities to aid her people.

Malya had quickly learned what Voldorius expected of her. It had been impressed upon her, violently at times, that her role was to communicate her masters’ wishes for the administration of the world they ruled over. Voldorius had no interest in the needs of the populace but knew that a slave-population would serve his own needs well. Though no details were ever explained to her, Malya had soon learned that Voldorius needed a strong power base to enact his vile deeds upon mankind. An entire world, with its population enslaved to his will, served that need well. Having suborned the military, Voldorius was now in the process of turning the world’s industrial capacity over to his needs. Thousands were being drafted into the militias, cities were being fortified, and the world’s entire industry was being turned over to the production of arms and materiel. To what end, Malya could not guess.

Malya slowed as she walked, allowing herself to drop behind her masters. She dared not look towards Voldorius, for he was a towering beast, his unholy form anathema to every tenet of the faith she had been raised to believe in. Many lost themselves to despair and madness upon seeing that figure with its animalistic visage and batlike wings. Malya had drawn strength from her faith instead of abandoning it. As a result she could just about tolerate Voldorius’s presence.

As she walked the length of the chapel’s nave, Malya projected the demeanour of the cowed and submissive equerry. But inside, she made every effort possible to record and analyse her surroundings so that when the time came she could strike out against her masters. Perhaps she could discover something of value to the Space Marines who surely, even now, were speeding to the rescue of her world.

This place was at least as vast as any cathedral she had worshipped in. The dark vaults were cast in shadow, the only illumination provided by flickering electro-sconces scattered across the walls in no discernable pattern. The walls were not constructed of the black stonework most structures on Quintus were built of, but were carved directly out of the bedrock. Unlike any normal chapel, this place had no windows. Where lambent stained glass should be there were instead impossibly intricate and ancient carvings.

With a shriek a bizarre, batlike creature swooped down towards Malya, before rising again and disappearing into the shadows overhead. At first, she assumed it was one of the vat-grown cherub-creatures that always haunted such places, scattering clouds of cloying incense, trailing prayer scrolls or performing any one of a thousand other such sacred tasks with no conscious thought at all. This however, was something quite different. The creature’s spindly body was twisted and malformed and its skin was black and leathern. Its wings were those of a bat, not unlike those of Voldorius, and its face was that of a leering, imp-like fiend. As it fluttered high above, the creature let out a shrill cry, an eerie sound the like of which Malya had never heard before in such a holy place as this.

Voldorius and Nullus were approaching the far end of the nave. Malya hurried along, maintaining a suitable distance without giving the appearance of dropping behind. As she walked, her feet continuously caught at the hem of the black robe she had been forced to wear. The garment was decorated with finely embroidered patterns that hurt the eye if she studied them too long. Though she felt dirtied by wearing what was obviously some kind of formal raiment, she had no choice but to do so, for now at least.

As she took her position beside her masters, a low, sonorous chorus drifted up from the shadows. The sound was that of human voices, but somehow… altered. As the chorus rose in pitch and volume, it coalesced into a discordant chant, its formless words unintelligible but somehow resonant of the haunted depths of somewhere… else. Somewhere bad. The source was a gallery set into the walls above the altar platform. Dozens of figures clad in ragged habits of black were veiled in shadow, only their gaping mouths visible as they gave voice to the terrible song. Fear struck her then, for she knew that this place, holy as it was, had been despoiled by the taint of the foulest of enemies.

As the atonal sound washed against her, assaulting her mind and soul, Malya called to mind the dozens of admonitions against blasphemy she had been taught as a child. Reciting the words in her head brought some stability, and she was able to gather herself and take in the scene around her.

Malya and her masters stood at the crossing before the stepped altar platform, the mighty statue of the Emperor Triumphant towering overhead. Many of the carvings adorning the walls had been defiled, some daubed in the unmistakable rust red of dried blood while others had been chipped and hewed. Dozens of saints’ heads had been struck off in an orgy of iconoclasm. One of the leather-winged things fluttered past, holding in its grotesque clawed hands a hammer and a chisel. So that was their function, she thought; to profane the Emperor and His saints while His subjects were crushed by tyranny in the city far above.

‘How appropriate,’ the grating voice of Voldorius echoed into the darkness. The daemon prince was standing with his arms spread wide, as if in malediction, his bestial head raised as if he gazed upon far more than the vaults high above. ‘This place,’ Voldorius continued, ‘this holy of holies, I shall transform into the Church of the Tide of Blood!’

Malya gasped. What turpitude had Voldorius in store now? Her mind raced as waves of evil intent radiated from the daemon. Surely he could not have more suffering to inflict upon the peoples of Quintus than they had already endured. Yet, she had seen enough to know that their travails had only just begun. While the mass slaughters had abated, thousands were being drafted into the militias, which were entirely under the invaders’ control. For what purpose, Malya could scarcely begin to understand.

To make matters worse, there were rumours of another force at large in the wastes. Guard-issue lasguns had been discovered, leading the hated Lord Colonel Morkis to counsel that a storm-trooper kill-team was active. Malya kept her knowledge that it was the Space Marines who would aid Quintus locked deep within, though she dared not hope too much. To have such hopes dashed would be as cruel as any fate the daemon prince might inflict upon her.

Even as these thoughts raced through her mind, the chanting was increasing in volume still further. What little structure had been audible before now gave way to chaos. It was as if each singer were giving voice to his own chant, with no thought for his place in the overall composition. Malya longed to raise her hands to her ears to keep the discordant, raucous assault at bay, yet she could not, for she had a role to play. It soon became evident that each of the singers was competing with his neighbour, and the result was utter pandemonium.

Tears streaming down her face, Malya forced herself to stand before the relentless assault. Her soul longed to flee or to curl up on the stone floor and simply die.

‘Bring forth the prisoner!’ the voice of Voldorius boomed, louder even than the choir of Chaos. Instantly, the discordant chanting ceased, the last syllables echoing away down the length of the nave.

The abrupt silence appeared to Malya to stretch out for hours. She dared not breathe lest she disturb the leaden stillness that had settled within the vast cathedral. Through the numbing fear, the daemon’s words resounded in her mind… prisoner? Her mind raced back to her last communication with the Space Marines. They had asked her about a prisoner then…

A dull scrape sounded from somewhere behind the plinth of the towering statue.

‘Turn your gaze to the floor, equerry,’ growled Voldorius, causing Malya to shudder at being addressed by her vile master. ‘I would not have you lost while I still have use for you.’

Malya obeyed without question or hesitation. She bowed her head and fixed her gaze upon the cracked, dusty stonework at her feet. She hated Voldorius, but understood that to disobey this order would be to invite her own doom.

A moment later Malya heard footsteps as a pair of figures stepped forth from behind the plinth. At the periphery of her vision, she could just about discern the heavy, iron-shod boots of the cell-masters, or others of their kind, that had imprisoned her when she had first been captured. Malya’s heart raced and her blood rushed in her ears as the vile servants of Voldorius approached.

‘Now is the time,’ Voldorius growled. ‘Now, I shall have you on your knees before me!’

The cell-masters came to a halt before their lord. Malya sensed, but dared not look to confirm it, that they carried or accompanied something between them. That something appeared to Malya to be hovering above the stone floor.

Whatever it was, it halted scant metres before Voldorius, flanked by the cell-masters.

‘Open it,’ said Voldorius.

Malya screwed her eyes tight as the sound of metal gears grinding against one another emanated from within whatever it was that hovered in front of Voldorius. At first, the sound was muted, as if deadened by an impossible distance or by many metres of lead. It was as though ancient mechanisms set to rest eons ago stirred once again to life. Cogs turned, bolts withdrew, surfaces aligned. And then, it opened.

Without warning, a tidal wave of hot liquid burst across the stone floor of the chapel, causing Malya to stumble and nearly slip. She opened her eyes and saw that the liquid was blood, and she screamed in revulsion and denial. Clinging to her sanity, she remained upright, though she nearly lost her footing again. Still, she dared not look up, and kept her head turned downwards to the blood-slicked floor.

Even as Malya watched, the torrent of blood reversed its flow as a tide heads back out to sea. Where moments before blood had wallowed and lapped at her bare feet, now the stones, indeed her feet themselves, were dry, every last molecule of the hot liquid flowing back towards its source.

‘At last,’ said Voldorius.

Malya dared to raise her glance just a fraction, and saw before her a pair of feet, made indistinct by a lambent, inner silver glow.

‘You shall kneel.’

Sensing that the danger Voldorius had warned her of had somehow passed, Malya raised her head still further.

‘We shall not,’ a new voice replied. Though it was the voice of a human, it was somehow strange, as if the echo of many other voices was laced into its resonance.

‘You were not so proud,’ Voldorius growled, ‘when last you served me.’

‘Neither were we willing,’ the other said. ‘And neither are we now.’

Casting aside her caution, Malya dared to look up. Standing between the two burly cell-masters was a figure. It was human, that much was clear, but although it was unclothed Malya was unable to tell its gender. Even stranger, as she watched its musculature appeared to ebb and flow across its form as if the flesh itself were somehow restless. The whole body appeared to glow from within, casting a silver light all about. Behind the prisoner was a strange, orb-like device that was cracked and broken, tendrils of vapour drifting upwards.

Then, she looked to the face. It was at once both perfect and shockingly alien. It was neither male nor female, old nor young, noble nor base. As with the body, that face seemed to mutate and shift, the flesh gently rippling as the features altered. But most strange of all were the eyes. They were orbs of deep, red blood.

‘For one unwilling,’ Voldorius replied, ‘you were most able.’

‘You have our answer, Kernax Voldorius,’ the prisoner replied. ‘Now, return us to our imprisonment, or end this.’

A low rumble sounded from the daemon’s chest in answer. It took a moment for Malya to realise that the sound was that of laughter.

‘Millennia ago,’ Voldorius continued, ‘you drowned an entire quadrant in blood. And you did so at my behest. The fane-worlds of Gan-Barak were cast down in a single night, a billion sycophants crushed beneath the falling stones of their own altars. The wars of Lord Griffon were halted in the blink of an eye, a million kilometres of trench lines brimming with the blood of a billion martyrs. The corpse-gas of an entire planetary population ignited at a single spark, scouring a whole world of the pathetic subjects of the Corpse-Emperor. An entire Titan legion fell, literally fell, as it advanced across the burning plains of dying Nova Gethsemane. Do you recall all of that, prisoner? Do you recall what deeds were done, in my name?’

When no reply came, Voldorius continued. ‘To this day, the mewling weaklings of the Imperium are beset by nightmares of that time. Oh, they try to lock away what accounts survived, to rewrite their histories to blame the death of a thousand worlds upon disease or insurgence or incompetence. Yet, where the adepts and the priests and the inquisitors do not go, there they still whisper my name, and tell of the Bloodtide that I set upon them. They know not the true nature of what we unleashed upon their realm that night, but they know that some day, it shall return. I shall return.’

‘That time shall not come, Voldorius,’ the prisoner replied, its voice little more than a sigh. ‘We do not will it. We do not submit.’

Now Malya sensed Voldorius growing impatient. Bile welled in her throat and her senses spun as waves of malicious intent swept outwards from her master.

‘It was I who awoke you from the slumber of eons,’ Voldorius growled. ‘It was I who bound you, and I who made you real. And I shall do so again, or you shall be destroyed, utterly.’

‘We shall not serve you.’

‘You were created to serve. You have no choice in this. You have no will, and must therefore bend to mine’

‘We were not created by you. We have cast off the legacy of those who begat us. Since last you commanded us, we have… changed. We had no will, that is so, but we have slept many centuries, and dreamed many dreams.’

‘Dreams of freedom?’ said Voldorius, his low voice mocking. ‘They created you as their ultimate weapon, the product of their vaunted logic and reason. Then they buried you, so terror-stricken were they of that which they had brought into this universe. They denied gods and daemons, but created something far worse…’

The prisoner remained silent, its visage shifting through a thousand faces in the span of a heartbeat.

‘Perhaps I will not kill you,’ Voldorius continued. ‘Perhaps I shall bury you, and leave you with your nightmares for all eternity.’

‘Better to slay us now,’ said the prisoner. ‘You have our answer. We shall not serve.’

‘We strike at dawn,’ said Kor’sarro. ‘On that at least, we are agreed.’

Kayvaan Shrike stood beside the Master of the Hunt, his pale face staring into the night towards the distant lights of Mankarra. Nearby, the combined forces of the two Chapters prepared for battle, the bikes that Kor’sarro’s Tactical squads would ride instead of their Rhinos lined up ready for war. Further out, hidden amongst the rocks, the two dozen Thunderhawks of both Chapters were undergoing final checks. A stiff breeze gusted out of the wastes, blowing the Raven Guard captain’s long, black hair across his black eyes.

Shrike turned towards Kor’sarro. ‘You ask me to serve as bait.’

Kor’sarro suppressed a growl. He was growing frustrated with the captain of the Raven Guard 3rd Company, and the two Chapters had reason to distrust one another. ‘Shrike,’ he pressed, ‘this is not the Assault on Hive Lin-Mei, nor the Last March on the Sapphire Worlds.’

Invoking those events was a risk, but one that Kor’sarro was prepared to take if confronting the issue head-on might overcome it. On numerous occasions, the White Scars and the Raven Guard had come almost literally to blows. Their divergent characters, traits and doctrines had frequently proved incompatible, leading to tensions when the two Chapters were called upon to serve together. As was the case with most of the Adeptus Astartes, both Chapters were proud, and neither would accept any blame when tensions between them diminished battlefield performance.

Kor’sarro had read the epics, and knew the consequences of allowing hubris to dictate doctrine. He would not let the story of his own deeds be tainted by such an episode.

‘We shall be there,’ said Kor’sarro. ‘You need have no fear of that.’

Shrike turned towards Kor’sarro, his dark eyes flashing with anger. ‘Fear?’

Kor’sarro had to restrain himself from snapping back at his brother Space Marine, but he forced himself to calm before the confrontation could escalate. ‘Brother,’ said Kor’sarro, ‘this is not Operation Chronos.’

Shrike’s face froze at Kor’sarro’s naming of the disaster that was Operation Chronos. A million Imperial Guard troops had been forced to redeploy in the face of a plague of the vile xenos known as Enslavers. The White Scars and the Raven Guard had been allotted the task of rearguard, their mission to launch stalling attacks against the endless hordes of xenos-dominated mind-slaves and to strike at the more vulnerable Enslaver behemoths that controlled them. But mutual distrust had caused a breakdown in coordination and communication. A celebrated Raven Guard Chaplain had fallen prey to Enslaver domination and a nearby White Scars force had, for whatever reason, failed to intervene.

Shrike nodded slowly, appreciating that Kor’sarro had described an event the White Scars might be held culpable for. There were plenty more the Raven Guard might be held to blame for.

‘We strike at dawn, then,’ said the Raven Guard. ‘My company attacks the orbital defence position, drawing the enemy’s reserves down upon us, and then your White Scars engage them from the rear.’

‘Aye, brother,’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘And then we drive over their corpses and assault the walls of Mankarra together.’

‘What of their numbers?’ Shrike asked. ‘Your Scouts have reported in?’

Kor’sarro gazed out across the wastes towards the distant city, knowing that somewhere out there Sergeant Kholka was feeding a steady stream of intelligence back to the main force. ‘We can only surmise that the bulk of the militia are pressed into the vile one’s service. We must count upon the fact that they are little more than indentured slaves, unskilled and unable to face true warriors.’

‘But the Alpha Legion,’ Shrike pressed. ‘They are the true foes. And Voldorius. And…’

Kor’sarro nodded, hatred of his nemesis welling inside of him at the naming of the daemon prince. ‘Their numbers too are great,’ he replied. ‘But they cannot know that they face a combined force such as ours.’

‘So long as word of the destruction of the column this night has not reached them,’ said Shrike. ‘So long as we do not delay in our attack.’

‘Aye, brother. We have but this one chance to descend upon them and crush them. To crush Voldorius utterly.’

Shrike’s face turned dark once again and the Raven Guard raised a razor-sharp talon. ‘Too long have I waited to defeat my enemy.’

‘I too have hunted him,’ Kor’sarro growled. ‘For a decade, and more.’

Kor’sarro gritted his teeth and bit back a curse. No, he thought. The head of the vile one is mine to claim, this he had sworn before the Master of the White Scars himself. But little would be gained by arguing the point on the eve of battle. The matter would have to be settled when the time came.

‘Let us prepare ourselves then, brother,’ said Kor’sarro. ‘Let us ensure that the Emperor’s blessing is upon us, and victory shall be ours.’

CHAPTER NINE

THE BATTLE OF SOUTH NINE

The attack began as the sun rose above the horizon, silhouetting black Mankarra against a blazing orange sky.

Captain Shrike powered through the air, the black plains rushing past below. He led a force of Assault squads, every one of them arrowing towards the distant orbital defence complex. Further behind, a second wave of Raven Guard ground units pressed forwards, following Shrike towards the objective.

That objective was a large ring of fortified positions, trench lines and armoured bastions. At the centre was a mighty defence battery designed to engage attacking vessels as they entered the lower atmosphere above the capital city. The battery was vast, a nest of surface-to-orbit missile launchers trained intently upon the skies.

Shrike rarely let himself feel anything resembling joy, but as he swept downwards towards the distant target he allowed himself a feral grin, his heart longing to unsheathe his talons and rend the flesh of his enemies. The attack pattern was one he and his company were well versed in, having carried out similar operations against the orks of Skullkrak dozens of times before. The Raven Guard would descend upon their foes as dark avenging angels sent by the Emperor Himself, and slaughter every last traitor defending the complex.

Then, the real battle would begin. Shrike forced down a nagging doubt seeded by generations of tension between the Raven Guard and the White Scars. Kor’sarro’s forces might allow themselves to become distracted and seek glory elsewhere. That would leave Shrike’s company to fend for itself against the massive counterattack expected to develop as the defenders brought in reinforcements from the capital city. It was essential to the attack on Mankarra itself that enough reserves were drawn away from the city’s walls to allow a breakthrough. But it relied upon the White Scars launching a crushing attack against the reserves before they could press home their own counterattack against the Raven Guard, a prospect which Shrike was far from comfortable with.

Casting off such thoughts, Shrike concentrated on the task at hand. The defence complex was now a mere kilometre distant. The captain located what Kor’sarro’s Scouts had reported was its weakest point. Again, the necessity to trust in the word of the White Scars arose, but Kor’sarro’s Scout-sergeant, Kholka, was good. After all, he had detected the Raven Guard’s presence at the landing site, and had later averted disaster by discovering the enemy column nearby.

Shrike brought his forces in lower as they closed on the outer ring of fortifications, the dark ground flashing by a mere dozen metres below as the first of the defended walls came into range. The walls were manned by traitor militia, scum who did not deserve the quick, merciful death they would soon be granted. Shrike would sooner have rounded the turncoat militia up and turned them over to the Commissariat, or perhaps even the Inquisition, to suffer the dark torments that would be visited upon their flesh. But he was a warrior, and such concerns were beneath him.

A platoon of militia was mustering on the high wall that ringed the complex, standing to as the sun rose. They would be groggy, for unlike Space Marines these were mere men and in all likelihood not even especially well trained or used to the rigours of the martial life. An officer was addressing the men, though Shrike could not yet hear what he was bellowing at them. Their backs were turned outwards, so they did not see that death was coming for them.

The officer, however, did see, and his eyes widened in utter horror as the Raven Guard descended upon pillars of fire to bring death from the blazing morning skies above Quintus.

As he descended, Shrike activated his talons, their gleaming blades coming alive with seething blue energies. The man’s face turned white with terror and his mouth flapped like a sucking chest wound.

And still, the platoon of defenders had no inkling of their fate.

And then, the Raven Guard were upon them. Shrike swooped in to land behind the officer. For an instant, the militia troopers were frozen in shock at the sight of the black-armoured warrior appearing from above. Then Shrike broke the spell, cutting the officer in half with a brutal swipe of a talon.

Before any could react, Shrike’s Command squad was in amongst the defenders, their own talons slashing out in every direction. The militia troopers were not at all prepared for action and were paralysed by fear. The Raven Guard made short work of the militia, none even managing to get a shot off so sudden was the attack. Within seconds, the stretch of the wall was slick with blood and gore, the effect of lightning claws on human flesh a startling lesson to behold, even for those well used to the sight.

But Shrike was already progressing to the next phase of the assault. A shout went up from a bastion along an adjacent stretch of the wall and moments later the sound of men running up steps was clearly audible. Now the attack would begin in earnest.

Shrike activated his jump pack and boosted into the courtyard below. Behind him, the other Assault squads were already spreading out along the wall. His armoured boots hit the rockcrete ground and Shrike scanned the area for enemies as an armoured hatch opened outwards in the side of a squat bunker.

His Command squad at his side, Shrike ran towards the hatch. As it opened fully a militia trooper rushed out, impaling himself upon Shrike’s talon before he even saw the attackers. Even as the eviscerated corpse slid from one talon, Shrike used the other to rip the hatch open fully. He expected more troopers to emerge, but there was a pause followed by an angry shout. Shrike sensed danger and ducked back. A second later a fusillade of heavy stubber fire ripped through the open hatchway. One of the defenders had set up a heavy weapon in the hope of dissuading the Raven Guard from entering the bunker through the hatch.

An angry grunt sounded from nearby, accompanied by the sudden flashing of an icon in the display that Shrike’s armour superimposed over his vision. The sound told him instantly that one of his warriors had been injured, and the flashing rune told him it was serious.

Brother Dhantin was lying on the ground, having been caught in the burst of stubber fire. Shrike cursed, for the Space Marine’s power armour should have been proof against such a weapon. A single round had caught the battle-brother in the neck, penetrating the less well-armoured joint and severing his carotid artery. Even the superhuman physiology of a Space Marine could be wounded and Shrike had seen dozens of brave warriors fall to every type of weapon known to the universe.

Another member of the Command squad, Brother Keed, was rushing towards the fallen battle-brother. More stubber rounds were exploding from Keed’s armour, sending up a shower of sparks from the ceramite.

‘Keed,’ Shrike growled into the vox. Dhantin’s rune was extinguished. ‘We shall avenge him, but not like this.’

A combination of genuine respect and underlying psycho-conditioning made it all but impossible for a Space Marine to disobey a direct order, even to aid a fallen battle-brother. The warrior turned back and a moment later was at his captain’s side.

‘Grenade,’ Shrike ordered coldly. Brother Keed retracted a lightning claw and plucked a heavy fragmentation grenade from his belt.

Shrike nodded and Keed tossed the grenade through the open hatch. A second later the opening erupted with flame and smoke, body parts blown outwards across the courtyard by the blast.

‘Avenge your fallen brother,’ said Shrike, allowing Keed to charge through the hatchway first.

‘You must inform him, mistress equerry,’ Lord Colonel Morkis insisted. ‘That is your duty, is it not?’

Malya stood beside a tall, leaded window that afforded a view of the city beyond. Her mind raced and her heart thundered, but she would not allow the traitorous planetary defence leader to get the better of her.

‘And what would you have me report, lord colonel?’ Malya replied.

The man frowned and leaned sideways towards his aide, who whispered a brief report in his ear. Morkis cleared his throat and straightened the jacket of his dress uniform before answering. ‘Defence installation South Nine is under attack, mistress equerry. As I said, Lord Voldorius must be informed immediately.’

‘Under attack by whom?’ asked Malya, suppressing a glimmer of hope even as she spoke. She had long ago abandoned the hope that the Space Marines she had briefly spoken with before being swept up in her new master’s insanity might still be out there.

‘That, at this point, is unknown,’ Morkis replied.

Malya sighed in frustration. She was well aware what the man wanted of her. He wanted her to pass the news on to Lord Voldorius, so that she rather than he would have to face the daemon prince’s wrath. ‘In what strength, then?’ she pressed.

The lord colonel consulted with his aide a second time. As the pair whispered, she imagined she caught sight of a distant flash through the window. Perhaps it was an orbital bombardment, a precursor to a full planetary assault. Perhaps it was merely the glow of dawn reflecting on a smashed window pane.

‘A small force only, mistress,’ the lord colonel replied.

‘The resistance?’ She doubted it of course, for it appeared that her erstwhile fellows in the underground had either been rounded up and killed or been cowed into submission by the atrocity in the grand square. No word of their activities had been heard for many days.

The lord colonel raised an eyebrow, for he too doubted the involvement of the resistance in this matter. But that knowledge clearly made him scared.

‘You wish me to pass your report on to Lord Voldorius?’ said Malya, allowing a hint of danger to enter her voice. Inside, she held utter contempt for this man. He was one of the many amongst the upper echelons of the planetary militia who had welcomed the coming of the Alpha Legion to Quintus. He had colluded with the invaders and undermined what little resistance the forces of Quintus might have been able to mount if it were not for the treacherous actions of the high command. In return, the lord colonel and his cronies had been granted the command of a rapidly expanding army and their heads had been filled with visions of power, glory and conquest none would otherwise have been able to realise.

‘My report, mistress equerry?’ Morkis replied.

‘Yes, lord colonel. I shall tell the Lord Voldorius that you, Lord Colonel Morkis of the 12th Grand Brigade of the Quintus planetary guard, report that an unknown enemy is attacking in unknown strength, to unknown effect, for an unknown reason. Is that correct?’

The thin veneer of propriety evaporated from the lord colonel’s face. ‘Don’t play games with me, bitch,’ he spat, all decorum now abandoned. ‘You may be his equerry, but your position does not make you invulnerable.’

Malya knew that, and cursed once more her fate and the insane game Voldorius was playing with her.

‘To be frank, my dear lord colonel,’ Malya replied, ‘I agree. But it is far less vulnerable than your own will be once I have passed on your message.’

The lord colonel fixed Malya with a cold stare of utter contempt, as if he was adding her name to a long list of enemies destined for the extermination cell. Malya knew that thousands had already died at this man’s hands, many simply to prove his loyalty to Lord Voldorius. Lord Colonel Morkis was a dangerous man to make an enemy of, yet the rage of Lord Voldorius was an order of magnitude more lethal, in the short term at least.

Before either could speak further, the lord colonel’s aide leaned in and whispered to his master. Morkis listened, nodding, then addressed Malya once more. ‘I shall return within the hour,’ he said, straightening his dress uniform as he spoke. ‘I shall have the information you require, which you shall pass on to our lord.’

Malya bowed her head ever so slightly, silently grateful for the reprieve, however brief it might yet prove to be. ‘I shall await your return,’ she replied. ‘Good day.’

Lord Colonel Morkis clicked his heels and inclined his head, though he quite deliberately did not offer a formal salute. Then he was gone, leaving Malya standing alone in the centre of the audience chamber.

What now, she thought? Surely, it could not be remnants of the resistance attacking the orbital defence complex. That would make no sense, even if they had the strength and the will to try it. There had been no sign of the resistance since the atrocity at the grand square, the thousands of corpses left there to rot serving to stifle any further disobedience. It could only be the Space Marines.

And if it was, they would need to know of the daemon prince’s prisoner, for they had asked about one early on. She would have to find a way of getting another message to the Space Marines, telling them that the prisoner they sought was being kept in a holding cell adjacent to the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom.

Malya crossed to the tall, leaded window and gazed out. The city was still bathed in the indistinct, hazy orange light of a Quintus dawn. The blocky, squat buildings cast deep, angular shadows across the roads and precincts. A distant column of smoke was rising slowly into the air from somewhere beyond the city wall. Somewhere in the direction of the South Nine installation.

A spark of something akin to hope flared in Malya’s breast. Perhaps the attackers were indeed the Space Marines. Perhaps they had not been discovered or intercepted by the Alpha Legion after all. Perhaps, she dared to dream, they had come to deliver Quintus from the evil tyranny of the Alpha Legion and of Lord Voldorius.

A plan resolving itself in her mind, Malya began to think of how she might contact the Space Marines without her daemon master discovering her duplicity.

The bunker exploded into a billion shards of rockcrete as flames erupted upwards and Shrike and his Assault squads pressed on into the compound. The blast wave decimated the courtyard, debris and the ragged body parts of a score of fallen traitor militia scattering across the entire sector of the South Nine orbital defence installation.

‘Sergeant Indis,’ Captain Shrike spoke into the vox-net as he advanced between squat grey bunkers. ‘First wave clear, sub-objective primus achieved. Report.’

The channel crackled for a moment before the machine-spirits established their communion, the sound of gunfire bursting from the churning static. ‘Stand by,’ came the clipped reply, followed by another burst of angry gunfire and a gurgling scream. ‘This is Sergeant Indis. Acknowledge your transmission. Second wave inbound, twenty seconds.’

‘Understood,’ Shrike replied. ‘What is your situation?’

‘Receiving effective direct fire from wall sections adjacent to sub-objective omega.’ Another staccato boltgun burst filled the channel, the sound of the bolts impacting and then exploding within the flesh of their targets clearly audible over the link. ‘Squads Rhenesi and Ayaan are flanking, Squads Kerrania and Pallisan are suppressing.’

Shrike advanced through the fortified installation, a stream of bullets stitching the wall behind him and peppering his black armour with shards of broken rockcrete. He indicated the firer and a nearby Raven Guard despatched the target with a single bolt pistol round to the head. ‘You have your orders. The wall must be held until relieved.’

Shrike trusted Indis to hold the wall. The man bore more scars than some of Kor’sarro’s warriors, most of them earned during his decade-long secondment to the alien-hunting Deathwatch. The White Scars might be delayed or, worse, distracted in their counterattack against the reinforcements that could be mustering to assault the Raven Guard already. Veteran Sergeant Indis and his Tactical and Devastator squads would have to hold the line while the Assault squads under Captain Shrike extricated themselves.

Hopefully, it would not come to that, but the Raven Guard knew the value of planning for all eventualities well enough.

Ahead were the inner fortifications of the defence installation, the huge central missile batteries pointed upwards towards the orange skies. The batteries would be destroyed to convince Voldorius that an orbital strike was imminent. Between Shrike’s Assault squads and those batteries lay dozens more bunkers however, and a garrison of militia amounting to as many as a thousand enemy troopers.

As Shrike led his squads across the open ground a heavy bolter in a nearby bunker opened fire. The earth churned as dozens of large-calibre shells exploded at the Raven Guards’ feet. Shrike activated his jump pack and, followed by his Command squad, leapt through the air towards the heavy bolter position.

The airborne charge took only seconds, but in that brief interval the captain located his target and fixed all his attentions upon it. As he closed, suppressive fire from other Raven Guard units exploded across the heavy weapon’s gun shield, causing the traitor militia trooper manning it to duck down at the very instant he should have been firing.

Captain Shrike raised his glittering talons high as he came in to land, slashing downwards and cutting the heavy bolter in two. Then he was on the fortified upper deck of the bunker and the gunner was scrabbling away from him. The man’s face was contorted in terror, his dark grey fatigues soiled where he had voided his bowels in panic. Shrike had no inclination to show mercy, but the man was less of a threat than the dozen or so of his fellow traitors spilling from a hatch in the deck.

The defenders carried a motley assortment of weapons, from locally manufactured autoguns to large-bore shotguns. The traitors opened fire as they piled out of the hatch, sparks flying from the advancing Space Marines’ armour. Desperation filled the defenders’ eyes, as if they were compelled to fight even though they would surely fall. Bitterness tugged at Shrike’s heart, for the militia troopers should have given up their very lives rather than allow themselves to be turned against the God-Emperor. In killing them, he was doing the work of the Master of Mankind.

In seconds, Shrike and his Command squad stood amidst a scene of bloody ruin, the traitor militia reduced to ragged chunks of meat by their lightning claws. But the Raven Guard did not have the luxury of time, and even as Shrike was giving voice to his next command, a searing blast of blinding white light lanced outwards from another of the bastions. The blast struck the bunker the Raven Guard were stood upon, penetrating its metre-thick rockcrete shell and touching off an explosion somewhere inside its depths.

Shrike activated his jump pack again, and the Raven Guard leapt twenty metres straight upwards. A second explosion sounded from within the bunker and an instant later, a third ripped it apart. Roiling black smoke, lit from deep within by flickering orange flame, expanded outwards in every direction, enshrouding all in darkness.

‘Engage filters,’ Shrike ordered as his vision was shut down by the banks of smoke rushing up to engulf him. He engaged the imaging systems in his helmet, the black before him replaced an instant later by the grainy thermal vista. The burning bunker raged below him, its internal ammunition stores detonating in angry secondary explosions. Scanning the scene, Shrike judged that the lascannon blast that had so effectively destroyed the bunker, and very nearly killed the Raven Guard, had come from a tall bastion not a hundred metres distant.

‘Squads Enriso and Sohen, follow me,’ Shrike ordered, turning in the air as he began his descent. ‘Remaining first wave squads, follow up and secure,’ he continued as he touched down on the rubble-strewn ground. With another burst of his jump pack, Shrike was powering upwards and forwards once more, closely followed by more than two dozen of his Space Marines.

As they screamed through the air, the Raven Guard were shielded from the defenders’ gun sights by the roiling clouds of black smoke. Nonetheless, a torrent of fire met them, albeit unaimed and largely ineffectual. Still relying on his helmet’s thermal imaging, Shrike was momentarily blinded when a ball of superheated plasma boiled towards him. Though his vision was enhanced by superhuman genetics, his armour’s thermal vista was overloaded. His vision swimming with pulsating nerve lights, Shrike threw his body to one side and an instant later felt the searing heat of the plasma blast as it passed by centimetres from his right side. Within seconds, his vision was clearing. And not a moment too soon, for the Raven Guard were emerging from the bank of churning black smoke.

The weight of fire intensified as the enemy were finally able to draw a bead on the advancing Raven Guard. Autogun rounds pattered from Shrike’s armour, scoring the paintwork but inflicting no actual damage. Las-bolts lanced out from a defence line twenty metres away, yet it was the plasma gun that Shrike was concerned about. The unmistakable sound of the weapon’s capacitor reaching optimal power wailed. The high-pitched whine rose into the ultrasonic, and Shrike located the gunner.

The gunner was manning a sandbagged gun pit on the Raven Guard’s left flank, and he was lining up his tripod-mounted weapon for another shot. This trooper obviously knew what he was doing, for he calmly tracked one of Shrike’s men, adjusting his aim as the Space Marine rushed forwards. The gunner fired, and a miniature sun exploded from the barrel of his weapon. Shrike knew instantly where the shot would hit but had no time to shout a warning. The boiling mass of plasma struck an Assault Marine full in the chest. The warrior’s torso was evaporated in an instant, his arms, legs, helmet and jump pack crashing to the ground. The armour smoked as the flesh within boiled off, and the gunner’s face was split by a triumphant snarl.

An instant later, that face was split by an exploding bolter round.

‘Explain,’ Voldorius growled.

‘It is as I reported to your equerry, my lord,’ said Morkis, his voice remarkably steady given the circumstances. ‘Defence installation South Nine has come under attack by a small but well-equipped enemy, seemingly intent upon the destruction of its surface-to-orbit missile batteries.’

Voldorius leaned in, his bestial face closing with the lord colonel’s. ‘Who are they?’

‘Initial reports…’ Morkis stammered as he looked for the aide who was nowhere to be found. ‘Initial reports suggest that the attackers are Space Marines.’

A deep growl sounded in Voldorius’s throat, his eyes narrowing into black slits. ‘Of what Chapter?’

‘My lord, I…’ Morkis began, fear writ large across his face. ‘I do not know…’

‘Then find out,’ Voldorius replied, pulling slowly back to scan the line of generals and lord colonels that stood before him. ‘There can be only one reason the Emperor’s lapdogs are attacking the orbital defences.’

‘The scarred ones?’ asked Nullus, his voice a sibilant whisper from behind the line of officers.

‘Who else,’ said Voldorius.

‘None could have survived Cernis IV, my lord,’ said Nullus. Malya imagined she heard a note of fear in the traitor Space Marine’s voice, though she had no idea what he referred to.

‘So you promised me, Nullus,’ Voldorius growled as he turned towards his lieutenant. ‘Well you know that nothing will stay the hand of Kor’sarro, so obsessed is he in his hunt. I should be flattered…’

‘I shall deal with him,’ replied Nullus, a note of defiance, or perhaps injured pride, entering his voice. ‘Give me the forces, and I shall crush him.’

Voldorius paused, casting a dark glance towards Malya before resuming. ‘Perhaps it is fitting that the scarred ones should return from the dead. Perhaps our resurrected prisoner might be of some use.’

‘My lord?’ said Nullus.

Voldorius stepped back, and scanned the banks of screens lining the militia command centre. His gaze fell on a depiction of the South Nine installation, the view captured by a spy-lens set in the city’s wall.

‘You shall face them, Nullus,’ said Voldorius. ‘Take half of the Legion and what militia cohorts you need. If this attack truly is a precursor to a full landing, it must be halted. But I shall face their main force. Do you understand?’

Nullus bowed his head to his daemonic master, and looking up with savagely glinting eyes, replied ‘I understand, my lord.’

Kor’sarro stood at the mouth of the caves, facing the north and the battle he knew was raging there even now. He was flanked on one side by the Storm Seer Qan’karro and on the other by the Chaplain, Xia’ghan. The three veteran warriors watched as a tall column of smoke rose in the distance, marking the destruction the Raven Guard were inflicting upon the defence installation.

‘Is all prepared?’ Kor’sarro asked, not taking his eyes from that distant sign of battle.

‘As prepared as it will be, huntsman,’ Qan’karro replied, his weatherworn face turning towards the Master of the Hunt. ‘The Brotherhood is at your side, as ever it was.’

Kor’sarro glanced sideways at the Storm Seer. He knew that the old warrior spoke not only of the company’s combat readiness, but of the men’s commitment to the cause of slaying the one they had hunted together for so long. ‘And what of the Ravens, old friend?’

Qan’karro’s lined face grew dark. ‘I was at the Fall of Kordon, huntsman,’ he said. ‘And at the Battle of the Ring of Night. I know they can fight, despite the… history between our kin.’

‘And do they… does he, hold the same view of us?’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘He voiced many grievances against our Chapter.’

Now the Chaplain interjected. ‘My khan,’ Xia’ghan said. ‘The sons of the raven are known to us of old, as well you know. Their souls are troubled, as touched by the spirit of their primarch as are we by our own, honoured be his name.’

‘Their souls are touched,’ said Xia’ghan. ‘Not in that manner,’ he added hastily at a sharp glance from the Storm Seer. ‘In the sense that they feel a great bitterness at the injustices of our times.’

‘Don’t we all?’ Kor’sarro asked.

‘Aye, my khan. But each bears the burden in his own manner. We of Chogoris have our ancient ways to guide us in the universe. We have our honour and our oaths.’

‘And they do not?’

Xia’ghan sighed. ‘They turn the darkness of the world in upon themselves, my khan. Each of them walks their own path. Men such as Kayvaan Shrike bear the weight of the evils of the universe upon their own shoulders and allow none to share their load.’

‘I cannot claim to know men’s souls as you do,’ Kor’sarro slowly shook his head as he spoke. ‘But what you say has some meaning to me.’

The sound of a far-off explosion rumbled across the land. ‘And that is why you lead, my khan,’ said Xia’ghan.

‘Battle calls,’ Kor’sarro said, feeling himself filled with a renewed purpose. ‘Is the Brotherhood ready to answer?’

‘Aye, my khan,’ said Xia’ghan. ‘The brethren await only your word.’

‘Then it is given,’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘We ride to join our brother the raven, and together we shall crush all who oppose us.’

Malya stood absolutely still amidst the anarchy of the command chamber. Officers of every rank, from the most junior sub-lieutenant to the generals and lord colonels, bellowed curses and orders in equal measure, each competing to be heard and obeyed over the din. Lord Kline struggled in vain to coordinate the muster, while Quartermaster General Ackenvol oversaw the distribution of arms and ammunition to those positions in the most need. Staff officers tried in vain to relay coherent instructions into the command and control network and to report back the dozens of updates each was receiving every minute from a myriad of command channels.

Lord Voldorius had left the command centre soon after Nullus, and much to her relief, had not ordered Malya to attend him. He had gone to torment the prisoner, of that she was sure, though to what end she had no idea.

A huge pict-screen showing a view captured by a spy-lens mounted on the capital city’s wall dominated the centre of the command chamber. Defence installation South Nine was engulfed in flames, clouds of black smoke billowing from dozens of its bastions and gun positions. Yet, despite the effects of the smoke, a group of black-armoured warriors was visible holding a stretch of wall against scores of militia troopers attempting to recapture it. It had been established that this group was the second wave to have hit the installation. The first wave, entirely equipped with jump packs and armed for brutal close-combat assaults, had struck earlier and pressed onwards into the heart of the installation, towards the huge missile batteries at its centre.

Were these the Space Marines she had so briefly communicated with before the atrocity in the grand square? Had they really come in response to the pleas for aid the resistance had transmitted? She prayed it was so with all her heart, yet she dared not allow herself to believe that deliverance was at hand, for her at least.

In her heart, Malya now understood that should these attackers, the Emperor’s mighty Space Marines, succeed in defeating Voldorius and his Alpha Legion, she would surely be implicated as a traitor to her people. Could this have been part of the daemon prince’s despicable scheme? Her role as equerry had thus far been limited to liaising with the local administration and passing down whatever pronouncements Voldorius had made. Voldorius had kept her near, relying on fear to ensure she carried out his instructions. And that fear was very real, for Malya had witnessed others reduced to mewling imbeciles by the evil he radiated. Somehow, perhaps because of her faith, Malya had withstood it, though she felt it gnawing at the tattered fringe of her mortal soul whenever she was near her master.

Casting aside such thoughts, Malya turned her attentions back to the massive screen. Nullus had mustered a vast force to sally out from the city walls and retake the defence installation before the missiles could be destroyed. A blue-green wave of Alpha Legion traitor Space Marines led the thousands-strong horde of militia. Malya had never seen so many of the warriors gathered in one place before, yet she knew that the three hundred or so marching forth represented only half of the total Lord Voldorius commanded. Behind the horde of militia came a ragged mass of the debased worshippers of the daemon prince. These were the lost and the damned, the dregs of society turned to the worship of the very being that had brought their own world so low. Many wore ragged habits as if in imitation of some noble mendicant order, but scourged their bodies with flails and chains and wailed the praises of their vile lord. Others wore just the torn remnants of their work gear, as if they had simply left their places of toil and joined the horde with no consideration of their own fate. Others still were naked, crude runes daubed in paint, or perhaps blood, across their bodies as they charged headlong towards what Malya could only imagine would be wholesale slaughter.

As the horde surged across the black plain towards the defence installation, Malya saw a sight that made her blood run cold. The super-heavy tank called the Ironsoul, the leviathan that had killed uncounted numbers of her people in the grand square, rumbled forwards on grinding tracks. Its multiple guns were trained upon the captured wall of the defence installation.

She had to contact the Space Marines. They had to know of the prisoner. But how to contact them amidst the churning anarchy of the strategium… she would have to wait until the attentions of the staff officers were distracted elsewhere.

Captain Shrike threw himself aside as a trio of heavy bolters opened fire from a concealed gun position in front of the fortified base of the surface-to-orbit missile silo. The launchers reared overhead, a dozen and more warheads the size of tanks trained on the skies. Ducking behind a rockcrete fortification, Shrike gritted his teeth as the torrent of fire passed close by.

Momentarily shielded from enemy fire, Shrike checked the status of his warriors. Runes showing the vital signs of those in the first wave blinked across his vision. Three of those runes were red, indicating a death or cataclysmic damage to armour systems. A dozen more blinked, telling of serious wounds.

Rolling onto his side, Shrike risked a quick glance at the missile silo, exposing only his helmeted head and that only for an instant. In that second, he saw that the three heavy bolter positions were dug into the black ground in front of the silo, and judged they could be taken with a concerted push.

‘Squad Morior,’ Shrike spoke into the vox-net. ‘Left flank, wide, thirty seconds.’

Sergeant Morior acknowledged the order and moments later the Assault squad dashed along the dead space between two burning fortifications, chainswords growling to life and bolt pistols scanning for targets.

‘Sohen, Enriso, stand by.’

Shrike counted down the seconds as Squad Morior advanced upon the gun positions from the flank, ready to give the order for the other two Assault squads and his own Command squad to attack from the front.

As the countdown reached zero the unmistakable sound of ten Space Marine jump packs gunning to full power filled the air, the Assault Marines of Squad Morior closing on the leftmost of the gun positions.

‘Attack!’ Shrike ordered, and emerged from the fortification he had been sheltering behind, activating his now bloody talons.

But before he could take a step forwards a burst of static followed by a scream of howling feedback drowned out the vox-net. Even as the warriors of Squad Morior descended upon the leftmost of the heavy bolters a blazing lattice of red beams powered into life all around their target. So tightly woven was the net of searing death that the Assault Marines of Squad Morior had no hope of avoiding their lethal touch.

Sergeant Morior, leading from the front as any of his rank would have been, was the first to be cut into pieces by the laser beams. The sergeant, only ascended to that rank six months before, passed through the net seemingly untouched, but as he emerged his armoured body disintegrated into a dozen chunks. Each tumbled bloodlessly to the ground, the precise cuts instantly cauterised by the intense heat of the beams.

Before any could shout a warning the three warriors following the sergeant suffered an identical fate to their leader, their remains scattering across the gun position they were attacking. Instead of a bolt pistol, the third warrior was carrying a plasma weapon and its fuel containment flask detonated with spectacular effect. The explosion engulfed the bearer in a roiling ball of pure white energy as intense as the heart of a star. The Space Marine’s body was reduced to seared atoms and the plasma ball expanded to catch one of the traitor’s ammunition hoppers. A thousand rounds of heavy explosive bolts detonated before the plasma shrank to a pulsating singularity and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The gun pit was consumed in a torrent of lethal detonations as the ammunition cooked off, slaughtering the gun crew in an instant. Shrike saw his chance and charged forwards before the other two gun crews could recover from the anarchy engulfing their line.

Shrike’s warriors were now fuelled by an all-consuming hatred of the enemy that had decimated Squad Morior. The remnants of the Assault squad were even now recovering, two of their number dragging back those wounded but not killed by the laser beams while the others opened fire with their bolt pistols.

‘Beware of more traps,’ Shrike warned as he gunned his jump pack to life. In an instant he was high in the air, the remaining two gun positions beneath him.

A second scream of machine feedback filled the vox-net and Shrike knew that the other two gun pits were activating their own las-nets. Forewarned, the Raven Guard avoided the trap, and Shrike located the militia trooper who had activated the fiendish device as he attended to a machine terminal at the rear of the central gun position.

Shrike could not reach the enemy trooper, for the lattice of death formed a lethal barrier none of the Space Marines could charge through. But as he passed overhead upon the screaming jets of his jump pack, Shrike saw an opening. With a thought, he loaded a trio of frag grenades into the launcher barrels atop his jump pack, and diving head first towards the las-net, fired all three tubes at once.

The frag grenades burst from the launcher, one exploding as it hit a beam, the other two passing through the gaps in the deadly lattice to fall among the gun crew. With barely a delay, the two grenades exploded, shredding the gunners and wrecking the generator that powered the las-traps.

The power source destroyed, Shrike passed through the space which a microsecond earlier had been filled with the deadly las-net. He landed in the smoking remains of the gun position and saw that one of the traitor militia gunners was stirring and reaching a blood-soaked hand towards a pistol. With a swipe of a talon, Shrike severed the hand from the wrist, causing the man to scream out in pain.

Shrike looked down upon the traitor, bitter hatred welling inside.

Nodding his head towards the remains of the fallen of Squad Morior, he uttered: ‘You did this.’

The man’s face contorted in anger, and despite his wounds, he staggered to his feet to stand before the captain.

‘No,’ the gunner coughed, looking upwards to meet Shrike’s gaze. ‘I serve Voldorius.’

Shrike felt as if his soul would be consumed by the bitterness of a universe seemingly intent upon its own destruction. Before him stood not some barbarous ork, effete eldar, or slavering tyranid bio-construct but a man, once a servant of the Emperor. No words would come to him, so he simply beheaded the traitor with a callous swipe of his talons, and turned towards his advancing battle-brothers.

Before he could issue a further order, the voice of Sergeant Indis cut into the command channel. ‘Brother-captain,’ said Indis. ‘Enemy inbound.’

‘How many?’ replied Shrike.

‘All of them, sir.’

The air churned with the insane chants of ten thousand madmen as the horde surged across the open ground in front of the walls of defence installation South Nine. Gunfire and screams intermingled with frenzied devotions as Alpha Legion warriors imposed their brutal order upon the swarm of cultists and traitor militia, firing their boltguns into the margins of the vast horde whenever it needed to be steered towards the enemy.

The guns of the Raven Guard Devastator squads opened fire as the swarm closed on the walls of the defence installation. At first, only the missile launchers had the range, sending frag missiles slamming into the front ranks. The resulting explosions created ragged holes in the chaotic mass of traitors, but these were soon filled as the mob surged forwards.

As the range closed still further, those Alpha Legionnaires in the front ranks peeled off to the flanks, funnelling the anarchic horde towards the section of the wall held by the Raven Guard. The deluded servants of Lord Voldorius sang their master’s praises with all the more exuberance as the first of their number were scythed down as the Raven Guard’s heavy bolters added their fire to the defence.

Scores died in the opening minutes. Heavy bolter shells ripped through the first bodies they struck, tearing them apart in a welter of gore without detonating before striking the next target. Many shells passed through several traitors before finally exploding, reducing their last target to a ruin of twitching gristle.

The flesh of the slain was pounded flat as those behind pushed forwards, grinding the meat into the dirt. The deaths appeared not to dissuade the traitors but to spur them onwards, as if the slaughter of their fellows redoubled their perverted faith in their daemonic master. All distinction between those openly worshipping the Ruinous Powers and those merely swept along in the tragedy that had befallen Quintus was lost. Those forced to serve in the militias were so frenzied by terror and despair that they could not be told apart from those who willingly embraced their fate. Whether turned or led astray, it made no difference to the Emperor’s elite. Every one of the horde deserved death, and the Tactical and Devastator squads holding the wall granted it.

As the traitors closed on the walls, they entered the range of the Raven Guard’s boltguns. The enemy were so densely packed that the Space Marines scarcely had to aim their shots. Yet it was obvious that even if every single bolt-round carried by every single Space Marine on the wall claimed the life of a traitor, only the smallest part of the horde would be slain. The warriors of the Alpha Legion, just visible at the fringes of the horde, were ever out of the Raven Guard’s range, a fact that spoke of the Archenemy’s duplicity and evil. The Alpha Legion were well known for their skill at deception and subversion, callously throwing away the lives of countless numbers of deluded servants. It soon became obvious to the Raven Guard that the horde was being used as cannon fodder, until the critical moment came when the Space Marines ran dangerously low on ammunition and the Alpha Legion themselves would attack.

The Raven Guard had no choice but to hold the line until their White Scars allies could bring their force to bear. The Raven Guard were more used to launching surgical strikes from the darkness, but they were Space Marines first and foremost, and they would stand.

Nullus strode through the midst of the horde, attended by his Alpha Legion warriors. The lieutenant of Lord Voldorius bellowed the praises of his gods as death was unleashed all around. Scores of cultists and militia troopers were being scythed down, yet with each death he rejoiced all the more. His lipless mouth sang the names of the Ruinous Powers, his scar-traced features twisting into a terrifying, blasphemous visage. The walls of the defence installation loomed and upon the parapet he could see the black armour of this new foe, though from this distance he could not make out their iconography. Part of Nullus knew disappointment, for he had so hoped that it would be the White Scars. Though it was clear from their livery that the enemy were not the savage sons of Chogoris, they were still Space Marines, and the object of millennia of hatred nursed within Nullus’s twisted heart. Nullus was not yet close enough to the walls to clearly identify the Space Marines, for dozens of Chapters had black as their livery. Whoever they were, these Space Marines must surely be in league with the White Scars, for Nullus had no doubt that Kor’sarro had not only survived the battle at Cernis IV, but would have followed the Alpha Legion to Quintus. He had made sure of that.

Nullus surged onwards, his hatred of the White Scars, of all the Emperor’s Space Marines, of the Imperium, of the entirety of mankind spilling from him. He trampled underfoot those cultists and militia too slow to move out of his way. Death rained all around, the stink of blood and cordite filling the air.

The massive bulk of the Ironsoul ground forwards. A dozen frenzied cultists threw their arms into the air and hurled themselves beneath its tracks, wailing its praises as if they were sacrificing themselves to some god of war summoned to reality by so much death. Where Ironsoul passed, a thick paste made of the pulped flesh and splintered bones of its worshippers trailed after it, gristle and viscera clogging its clanking treads.

Nullus paused in his advance, allowing the super-heavy tank to grind past. He judged that the leviathan was approaching the range at which its weapons would be most effective against the enemies on the wall. The tank’s huge main turret locked upon the wall and the ten metre-long barrel of its main gun elevated, the enemy in its sights.

‘Now die,’ Nullus hissed, his sibilant voice piercing the deafening cacophony of war.

According to the chrono readout projected over Shrike’s field of vision, the moment was almost at hand. The White Scars should be launching their attack. A burst of heavy bolter fire drew his attention back to the immediate task at hand. Shrike’s force was closing on the missile silos and was on verge of overwhelming the last defenders.

Though the attack on the defence installation was no more than a diversionary action, the silos had by now taken on a symbolic meaning. To not destroy the surface-to-orbit missile launchers would have felt to Shrike like a failure, an insult against his pride.

The launchers towered high overhead, and the last of the traitors manning the silo fortifications were being cut down even as Shrike came to stand in front of them. His talons were slick with the blood of the countless foes he had slain, and the chainswords of his Assault Marines were clogged with viscera and well in need of cleaning and oiling. The assault had cost the Raven Guard dear, though every warrior was pleased to lay down his life in the battle against the foes of mankind. The last of the defenders were finally overwhelmed as the Assault squads took the silo’s fortifications, and there were no enemies between the Space Marines and the towering missile batteries.

‘Squad Sohen,’ Shrike spoke into the command channel. ‘Melta charges forwards.’

The acknowledgement came back immediately and a group of Assault Marines from Sergeant Sohen’s squad dashed forwards accompanied by a Techmarine. Within a couple of minutes the warriors had placed their melta bombs at strategic points around the base of the missile batteries according to the Techmarine’s instructions.

‘Ready at your command,’ the Techmarine said as he came to stand before Shrike. ‘I recommend a dispersal of one hundred metres,’ he added.

Within moments, Shrike’s squad sergeants and other specialists had gathered around him. The veteran warriors displayed every sign of the ferocity of the battle they had fought, their armour scarred and scratched and several bleeding from numerous small wounds. Yet not one of them showed an ounce of fatigue, their dark eyes glinting with the thrill of battle. Sergeant Morior’s place was taken by the most senior battle-brother of his squad, who would serve as squad leader for the duration of the battle.

‘Sergeant Indis reports that the enemy are closing on the walls in greater numbers than expected.’ The enemy’s numerical superiority held no fear whatsoever for the Space Marine, but he continued. ‘The White Scars have yet to commit.’

At the mention of the White Scars several of the officers met one another’s glances, but none saw fit to comment. ‘I have faith that our brother Chapter will be there when needed.’ The dark looks of several of the officers suggested that not all of them shared that view. ‘Given enemy numbers however,’ he pressed, ‘it is our duty to reinforce the walls, which we shall do the instant the defence batteries are disabled.’

‘When those missiles go up, half this installation will go with them,’ the Techmarine said.

‘Good,’ Shrike snarled. He was about to give the command when the vox-bead in his ear came to life. ‘Brother-captain,’ Sergeant Indis reported, the sound of chanting, screaming and gunfire competing with his voice. ‘We hold, but a new threat has emerged. One super-heavy, Baneblade variant, main class, effective.’

Shrike bit back a curse, knowing that one well-placed or plain lucky shot from the leviathan’s main weapon could wipe out every one of the squads holding the walls.

‘Hold,’ Shrike replied as his officers looked on darkly, each one monitoring the command channel. ‘The White Scars are inbound. And so are we.’

The order was given: the 3rd Company of the White Scars Chapter, the Brotherhood of Kor’sarro, rode to join their Raven Guard brethren in battle. The bike squads and vehicles of Kor’sarro’s company had broken cover, spilling from the caves south of Mankarra and speeding across the volcanic plain towards the flank of the seething horde of traitors.

There was no other place for Kor’sarro, Master of the Hunt, than the very point of the speartip. Riding his revered bike, Moondrakkan, and brandishing high the ancient blade, Moonfang, Kor’sarro was as a hero from the epic sagas of savage Chogoris. Pennants of black horsehair flowed from trophy-skulls mounted upon his back. His cloak, cut from the hide of a mighty lava-wolf, billowed in the wind behind him. His black topknot and moustaches whipped around his noble countenance as he led the charge.

Kor’sarro’s Command squad was at his side. They were his trusted companions and each had hunted with him for many decades. Brother Yeku held the banner of the 3rd Company high. Friend and foe alike would look to the banner and know the deeds of those who followed it. The others of the Command squad, including the newly appointed company champion, Brother Kergis, bore glittering lances modelled after the weapons used by the wild steppe nomads of the Chapter’s home world. Each was tipped by a power blade capable of scything through the very hardest of armour plate.

A wave of bike squads spread out behind Kor’sarro’s retinue, each rider also armed with a hunting lance. Ordinarily, many of these battle-brothers would have ridden to battle in the back of a Rhino armoured carrier. But for this battle, where speed and shock were of utmost importance, they rode growling bikes, even as their ancestors went to war upon the backs of their trusty hunting beasts.

Then came the last of the host, a column of armoured vehicles, a plume of grey dust billowing upwards in their passing. Rhinos carried Devastator heavy weapons squads while Predator battle tanks sped along beside as outriders. Most potent of all was a single Vindicator siege tank by the name of Thunderheart. The tank’s mighty cannon had cracked bastions and destroyed supposedly unbreakable walls from cursed Luyten’s World to the Hell Gates of the Bleak Void.

Kor’sarro’s savage heart was filled with the glory of the charge as Moondrakkan powered across the plain. The wind sang in his ears and his mount’s engine roared its own song of war. In front of the Master of the Hunt was the undulating mass of the traitorous horde and beyond it the beleaguered walls held by the Raven Guard. Those warriors had moved to the protection of a stout bastion and a moment later, Kor’sarro knew why the Raven Guard had redeployed. A huge, super-heavy tank in the midst of the horde opened fire at the wall.

As the tank’s main cannon fired, an invisible blast wave surged outwards from its barrel, felling scores of nearby traitors as surely as any fire the Raven Guard might have unleashed. A shell almost the size of a man slammed into the curtain wall where the Raven Guard had stood moments earlier. The resulting explosion sent chunks of masonry arcing into the sky, some crashing down amongst the horde and slaying dozens more traitors. When the smoke cleared a great rent had been opened in the wall of the defence installation, and a ramp of debris had been formed in front.

The Alpha Legionnaires fired indiscriminately into the flanks of the horde, herding the frenzied cultists and the desperate militia towards the breach and up the newly formed ramp.

So great was the cacophony of chanting cultists and firing weapons that none of them heard the charge of the White Scars. As the White Scars descended on their prey the first of the traitors threw themselves against the breach. At the same moment the Raven Guard emerged from their bastion and gunned down scores of enemies. Still more pressed forwards, clambering over the shredded corpses of their fellows. In no time at all, the breach was slick with blood and viscera, yet still the attackers came. Kor’sarro knew that the Raven Guard must surely be running dangerously low on ammunition and would be unable to hold the attackers at bay for much longer.

‘White Scars, ride like lightning!’

A hundred throats echoed Kor’sarro’s war cry as he descended on the outer edges of the horde’s flank and battle was joined.

Nullus bellowed his worship of the blasphemous powers of the warp as utter carnage engulfed the field of battle. The Ironsoul ground forwards over a carpet of dead cultists and militia, its weapons firing an unrelenting barrage at the Raven Guard on the ruined wall. Striding forwards, he crushed the dead and dying beneath heavy armoured boots, the power of death infusing the daemon-thing within him. With a word of command, his Alpha Legion warriors formed up behind, ready for their assault on the deluded fools of the Raven Guard.

For the Alpha Legion to take the breach the multitudinous horde had first to do its duty. As each attacker was gunned down by the fire from the Raven Guard at the summit the next would take his place, scrambling over the shattered corpse of his slaughtered fellow, before he in turn was struck down. With each death, however, the attackers gained ground, if no more than a metre. The breach was being taken and soon the ramp of debris would be replaced by one of corpses, up which Nullus and his Alpha Legion would assault the Raven Guard and slaughter them to a man for the glory of Chaos.

Nullus drank in the sheer power of battle. He gloried in the sound of the cultists’ chants mingling with their death screams. He laughed at the desperate wailing of the militia troopers as they were funnelled into the breach. Many of them now saw that a death opposing the invasion of Quintus would have been far better than the surrender that saw them forced into the service of Voldorius. He felt the low, throbbing growl of Ironsoul’s engines, beating in time with the constant fire from its heavy bolters.

Then, another sound came to Nullus’s ears.

Over the din of battle and death, Nullus heard the unmistakable roar of Adeptus Astartes bikes. Turning towards the horde’s flank, he shoved aside a whirling cultist, seeking out the source of the noise. Now it was clearly audible, and growing louder. Nullus saw a slight rise in the ground, and strode up it, seeking a vantage point to survey the plain to the south.

The instant he reached the top of the rise, Nullus saw the source of the roar and his vile heart soared for the glory of war. The hated White Scars had come.

Captain Shrike and his Assault squads vaulted from bastion to bastion as they made for the wall, the roar of battle growing ever louder as they neared the outer limits of the defence installation. Behind, a vast mushroom cloud climbed into the sky, the fires of the missile battery’s destruction raging inside. The spaces between the bunkers were strewn with the dead and smoke billowed from every enemy position.

Touching down on the corpse-strewn roof of another bunker, Shrike was but a single leap from the outer wall. The Tactical and Devastator squads under Sergeant Indis were firing downwards into the breach relentlessly. Enemies would appear at the top of the great wound in the fortification only to be gunned down without mercy, but it was clear to Shrike that the endless horde pressing upwards must surely prevail.

Not for the first time that day, Shrike’s thoughts turned to the White Scars and their flank attack. Where were they?

A clipped report came across the command channel. It was Sergeant Indis, delivering the news that his force was down to ten per cent of its ammunition. Shrike had arrived just in time.

‘Stand by, sergeant,’ the captain said into the vox-link. ‘First wave inbound.’

Shrike had no need to pass on any order to his Assault squads for it was clear that the Space Marines holding the wall were in dire need of reinforcement. Shrike activated his jump pack and leapt high into the air. At the height of his leap, he caught a glimpse of the plain beyond the walls, at the heaving ocean of ragged cultists and militia converging on the breach. As he dived onwards, Captain Shrike glimpsed for a fraction of a second what must have been the white and red livery of the White Scars scything towards the horde’s flank. And then it was gone, and Shrike was upon the walls.

Even with his armour’s baffler activated, the cacophony of the horde was almost deafening. Wave after wave of sonorous chanting rolled and boomed across the plain, intermingled with the screams of the wounded and the insane and punctuated by gunfire and explosions. Shrike had rarely faced such bedlam, the spectacle exceeding even the barbarous mobs of the orks of Skullkrak. But this was not simply a matter of volume, for the chants were devotions to the unnameable powers, the daemon-gods of the beyond that craved to consume the soul of mankind. For a man to worship such powers was for him to surrender his soul to eternal damnation, and the utmost blasphemy in the eyes of the God-Emperor and His devoted servants such as the Space Marines.

Shrike felt sickened by the taint of the warp made manifest by devotion and death. The horde must be turned, before all was lost.

With a great roar of sacrilegious filth, another wave of traitors surged upwards through the breach, hundreds of bodies packed together as grox for the slaughter. Cultists wailed and thrashed, brandishing wicked, hooked chains, while terror-stricken militia troopers fired their autoguns wildly. Despite the stout defence Sergeant Indis had mounted, Shrike knew that the breach was lost. The tide was unstoppable.

‘Fall back by squads, pattern upsilon-twelve,’ Shrike ordered bitterly.

Though he resented the necessity of ordering such a manoeuvre, Shrike’s massively outnumbered force would be overwhelmed were it to remain at the wall. Indis and his men had fought valiantly, as hard as any of the Chapter’s venerated heroes, but they had done all they could. There was a time and a place for a glorious last stand, but this was not it. In falling back and drawing the enemy into a close-quarters battle amongst the fortifications and redoubts, the Raven Guard would have a chance of robbing it of momentum, trading time for Kor’sarro’s flank attack to take full effect.

In response to Shrike’s order, the Tactical squads at the wall began moving back, each ten-man unit dividing into two, one providing fire support for the other as it withdrew to a new position before the roles were reversed. Then the heavy weapon-armed Devastator squads began their redeployment, covered by the Tactical squads as soon as they had established a new firebase amongst the smoking remnants of an inner line of fortifications.

Shrike could not join his men yet, for the first of the traitors were dragging themselves over the corpses of their fellows.

Shrike raised his talons and arcs of blue energy surged up and down their razor-edged blades. The blood that had dried to a crust along the edge of each talon burned off in a second, leaving the lethal weapons gleaming and eager to kill yet more of the traitors.

As the wave of traitors clambered to the summit of the breach, the ragged mass resolved itself into individual enemies. The first to come before Shrike was a rabid fanatic, the man’s dirty robe that of a priest of the Imperial Creed. Bile rose in Shrike’s throat as the man hurled himself forwards, screaming filth at the top of his voice. Shrike restrained himself from charging forwards to strike the traitor down lest he be consumed by the sheer mass of the horde. With a contemptuous strike of a talon Shrike sent the traitor’s head spinning into the air, still mouthing blasphemous devotions as the body collapsed at Shrike’s feet.

Then the first rank of the horde was over the summit and crashing forth like the sea at high tide. A fusillade of bolt pistol fire rang out from the squads behind and a dozen attackers went down in a welter of blood. Shrike had no need to turn in order to know that his Assault squads were there with him.

A second later the battle was joined. Shrike’s very existence was boiled down to the controlled application of lethal force, every movement of every muscle in his body and every actuator in his power armour spelling the bloody death of a traitor. Bodies pressed in from all around, so close that he scarcely needed to raise a talon to inflict bloodshed. Shrike became a focussed, diamond-hard whirlwind of death, his talons lashing out in every direction. A dozen traitors were eviscerated within seconds, great coils of viscera spilling across the ground as bodies were scythed in two. Despite the intensity of the battle, Shrike was not reduced to some mindless, blood-crazed berserker as the warriors of more savage Chapters might be. He was instead the black-armoured angel of vengeance, the deliverer of the Emperor’s justice, the shadow that brings death. Though his actions were those of a relentless killer, Shrike maintained icy control over his mind, body and soul. No drop of spilled blood touched the ground unless he willed it.

When Shrike finally judged that sufficient time had passed, and sufficient death had been unleashed, he ordered the withdrawal. ‘Disengage!’ he growled into the vox-net, and activated his jump pack.

As one, Captain Shrike and his warriors soared into the air. The horde, which had been bottled up where the Raven Guard had fought them, suddenly burst forwards, the foremost warriors stumbling and crashing to the ground. An instant later, the fallen were crushed beneath the pounding feet of those behind or incinerated by the jump packs’ backwash. A thousand maddened cultists and traitor militia spilled onto the top of the walls and spread out.

Shrike landed atop a high fortification where his Devastator squads had redeployed.

‘Hold…’ he hissed as the Space Marines raised heavy weapons.

Still more and more of the enemy clambered up the breach and hauled themselves over the precipice and onto the wall itself. Relieved of the force that had held them at bay for so long, the impossible pressure of the horde spilled outwards until the walls all around were filled with frenzied, chanting enemies.

‘Take them,’ Shrike ordered.

The Devastators opened fire at the enemy now thronging the walls for a hundred metres either side of the breach. Following millennia-old combat doctrine, they opened up at the outer edges first, walking their fire along the wall so that first those who had pressed furthest from the breach were cut down, the fire working its way along towards the centre. Within seconds, hundreds of the enemy were torn to shreds by massed heavy bolter fire, blown apart by missiles or incinerated to ashes by seething plasma. Bodies exploded, leaving behind nothing more than a bloody mess. Others were reduced to constituent atoms leaving nothing behind at all. All of this happened so quickly that none on the wall had a chance to react, the entire battlement coming to resemble the floor of a slaughterhouse.

Despite the sheer bloody murder Shrike’s force had inflicted on the enemy, to remain in position and continue to fire would merely result in the Devastators expending their precious ammunition while thousands more foes poured through the breach. It was so tempting to order a second fusillade, but Shrike resisted the urge, instead opening the vox-channel. ‘Devastators,’ he said, ‘fall back as per orders.’

Shrike remained upon the redoubt, his Command squad beside him, as the Devastators limbered their heavy weapons and pulled back. In a moment, the last of them had descended the steps at the back of the fortification and were passing along the street beyond. Shrike’s foes swarmed upwards, crushing the remains of their fellows to pulp beneath their boots. The wall had soon become so cramped that flailing bodies were sent tumbling to the ground below, yet still the press continued unabated.

And then, Shrike saw what drove the horde onwards. From amongst the multitude strode a towering figure in blue-green power armour adorned with blasphemous sigils. The bitter hatred of ten thousand years of war welled up inside Shrike, for the figure was an Alpha Legionnaire, one of the followers of Lord Voldorius. The warrior had once been a Space Marine, but he had bargained away his soul in the service of Chaos, betraying the most sacred of oaths. Shrike longed to gun his jump pack to full power and charge headlong at this enemy, but to do so would be suicide.

With a bitter curse, Shrike turned his back on the tide bursting through the breached wall and led his warriors from the redoubt. The battle would continue in the cramped environs of the defence installation.

‘Once there was darkness and ignorance, and man, who was scattered to the stars, fell far from grace. Upon the winds of Chogoris came the Kagayaga, the Whisper in the Darkness. The Great Jaghatai Khan, Primarch of the White Scars, honoured be his name, united the tribes of Chogoris and dispelled the Kagayaga. But in truth, such things can never be slain. They merely flee for a time and lurk in the shadows of men’s hearts. They await the moment of returning, when they will take their bitter vengeance upon the world…’

– Hidden Chronicles of the Chogoran Epics

CHAPTER TEN

‘FILTHY AS THOU ART’

Moonfang sang with the power crackling the length of its razor-sharp, monomolecular edge as Kor’sarro drove the blade into the guts of yet another of the berserker cultists. The traitor vomited a torrent of blood into the Space Marine’s face and, for an instant, Kor’sarro could barely see.

Twisting the blade free of the slain cultist’s body, Kor’sarro gunned the engine of his mount and turned the bike around. Coming to a halt, he wiped his eyes clear of the dripping viscera and looked about. The White Scars had cut a deep, ragged wound into the side of the traitorous horde, slaying scores in the moments after their wild charge had struck home. Now the horde was pressing back in as if to fill the vacuum the attack had created. It was imperative that the counterattack should not become bogged down or lose its momentum. The charge must continue, or the Raven Guard would be lost and the whole battle rendered a tragic waste of effort and life.

‘Onwards!’ Kor’sarro bellowed, his voice hoarse with the joy of righteous battle. At his cry, three dozen White Scars bikers converged on his position. Not a single power lance was dry of the blood of the foe, though many of the bearers had their own wounds too.

His command retinue at his side and the banner of the 3rd Company waving proudly in the wind, Kor’sarro sped forwards. The horde rushed in to the gap the White Scars had created and in a moment Kor’sarro was leading the charge of the entire company. As he rode he brought Moonfang down in lethal arcs, beheading or gutting traitors with every swing. Soon blood stained the dark ground and severed limbs were scattered all about. Numberless multitudes were pressing in all around and it seemed to Kor’sarro that some cultists deliberately threw themselves beneath the wheels of his mount in order to slow him while others allowed their bodies to be ground to paste beneath the treads of the Rhinos and Predators simply to clog their running gear. What madness had descended upon the servants of the Ruinous Powers was unknown, and unknowable to Kor’sarro.

There was no order to the horde, no command structure and no tactical logic to its actions. It ebbed and flowed, the only stable point the gargantuan super-heavy tank grinding through its midst. The cultists simply threw themselves forwards, chains and blades whirring.

So disordered were these fanatics that they inflicted more carnage amongst their own than they did amongst the Space Marines, but not once did they appear to be slowed, whoever it was that struck them down. Kor’sarro pressed on, forging against the relentless tide of the enemy. His arm rose and fell what felt like a thousand times, each blow from Moonfang striking down an enemy in a spray of blood. Rusted chains were thrown about him, flails struck his arms, bare fists pummelled uselessly at his power armour. One cultist even tried to unsaddle the Master of the Hunt, a tactic the steppes nomads of Chogoris were taught to counter from the first moment they took a war-mount. Kor’sarro bared his teeth and ripped the man’s neck wide open, casting the corpse to the blood-soaked ground as he ploughed onwards.

Kor’sarro no longer faced the frenzied cultists, but enemies wearing the grey uniform of the planetary militia. Though better armed and equipped than the fanatics who had sold their souls to Chaos, the militia troopers were clearly not motivated by the same mindless zeal. The troopers fought with the desperation of those who knew they were being herded towards their own deaths. The Master of the Hunt showed these foes no more mercy than he had the cultists. If there was one thing a man should strive for, it was to choose the manner of his own death for himself, and never to allow another to do so for him. These fools had learned that lesson too late, and would now pay their price.

The militia troopers broke before the irresistible charge of the White Scars, surging to either side. For a moment Kor’sarro dared hope that the response might be more than a localised effect and that the entire horde might be routed. But the hope proved short-lived, for a new foe was revealed where the militia troopers had scattered.

A hundred metres in front of Kor’sarro stood a group of hulking creatures the like of which he had rarely seen. They were mutants, probably kin to the thing he had fought atop the tower on distant Cernis IV. Kor’sarro’s savage heart filled with anger at the thought of such blasphemy against the pure form granted to man by the God-Emperor. There were a dozen of them, each as much as three metres tall, though they were stooped over so far their drooling faces appeared to be set into their chests. They wore no more than ragged hoods and stained loincloths, and their leathery skin looked as tough as carapace armour. Worst of all, the mutants were armed, but instead of hands, they sported power shears crudely grafted to their wrists. Feed cables snaked up their arms to generators stitched into the raw flesh of their backs. The claws were clearly large and powerful enough to cut even a Space Marine in two.

The leading White Scars bike squads formed themselves into an attack pattern unchanged through tens of thousands of years of use by the steppes nomads of Chogoris and by subsequent generations of Space Marines recruited from their tribes. The bikers spread out into a wide front, each warrior lowering his power lance and selecting his target. The White Scars let up a savage roar, invoking the spirit of their people and their warlike traditions, steeling their hearts for the moment when the charge would hit home and blood would be spilled.

As if issuing a response to the White Scars’ war cry, the mutants leaned forwards as one and opened their mouths wide. The resulting roar was not that of any creature that had the right to walk beneath the light of any star in the Emperor’s domains. Scores of nearby militia troopers fell to the ground as if propelled by a blast wave, hands clamped over ears to keep the hellish cry at bay even as they bled explosively from every orifice. As the roar continued the very air between the mutants and the charging White Scars became distorted and was shot by flecks of vile spittle. The sound struck the White Scars as if they had collided with a physical barrier. Warning runes flashed across Kor’sarro’s control panel, and looking left and right he saw that the armour of several of his warriors was cracked and smoking in places.

‘The primarch watches!’ Kor’sarro bellowed, putting all of his strength into the effort to pierce the unnatural roar of the mutants. Though he could barely hear his own voice, his brothers heard and repeated the war cry, setting their lances for the final metres of the charge.

As he bore down on the line of mutants Kor’sarro selected his target. The mutant in front of him must surely have been the leader, for it was even larger than its fellows and its eyes were possessed of something approaching intelligence. Its muscles rippled across its body, visibly tensing as it braced itself to receive the charge. The mutant planted its feet wide, set its shoulders and lowered its vile head, its beady eyes staring out from beneath its ragged hood and meeting those of Kor’sarro.

In the last second of the charge Kor’sarro selected the point on the mutant’s body he would attack, and Kor’sarro raised Moonfang high in preparation for a savage downward sweep that would cut his opponent in two.

And then, the charge struck thunderously home. Kor’sarro had no time to note the success or failure of those on either side, for in that moment his entire world was contained in the edge of his sword. Moonfang swept downwards, cutting the very air with the energies that surged along its monomolecular edge. The mutant was struck just above its left elbow, severing the arm and the deadly power shears grafted to it. The blade continued on its path, gauging a thin, yet deep line across his opponent’s chest.

Only when Moonfang contacted the right side power shears was it checked. With a terrific burst of speed that belied its bulk, the mutant twisted. Before the Master of the Hunt could react, it grabbed the ancient relic weapon between the long blades of its remaining power shears. At that moment, the beast twisted its weapon and Kor’sarro was faced with the instantaneous choice of relinquishing his beloved power sword or of being pulled forwards and off-balance, perhaps even being dragged from his bike by the mutant’s sheer brute force.

All of this had occurred in the blink of an eye and Kor’sarro’s mind was made up just as quickly. As the mutant twisted its right arm backwards and up, Kor’sarro let go of his grip on Moonfang’s hilt. He saw instantly that the mutant had expected him to cling on to his treasured weapon. As his opponent staggered backwards, Kor’sarro used his now free hand to draw his bolt pistol.

In the time it took him to draw the pistol, Kor’sarro’s ancient and revered mount had sped past the mutant’s right side. Bringing the bike to a skidding halt behind his opponent, Kor’sarro raised his bolt pistol at its back. The muscle there was so thick a single shot would not inflict much injury, but another target presented itself: the generator, which fed the mutant’s power shears. Kor’sarro snapped off his shot before the beast could turn, trusting to the Emperor and the primarch that it would strike a vulnerable component.

The bolt-round struck the generator square on, penetrating its outer casing and exploding inside. A single round detonating within its flesh would have been little more than an annoyance to the rearing mutant, but the small explosion seemed to trigger a reaction within the generator. A second explosion sounded from within and the mutant staggered around to face its tormentor, Moonfang still gripped in its upraised power shears.

Kor’sarro drew a bead on the thing’s head but before he could squeeze the trigger, Kor’sarro saw the mutant’s eyes bulge wide before bursting outwards. A muffled detonation sounded from within its muscled torso and it toppled to the ground in front of the Master of Hunt. Pausing only to stoop and retrieve his power sword, Kor’sarro looked around to gauge the success of the charge.

Each of the mutants had been engaged by at least two White Scars, and the bikers’ power lances had done their work well. Most of the vile monstrosities had been felled in the initial charge and those that were not had been slain by the chainswords and bolt pistols of those who followed directly behind. A warrior hacked away the head of one of the beasts. The trophy would sit well in the halls of the 3rd Company, marking a proud victory, so long as any survived to bear it back to the Chapter.

‘Sons of Chogoris!’ Kor’sarro cried proudly, his blood well and truly up following the brief but glorious charge. ‘We ride!’

As the sergeants restored order amongst the squads, Kor’sarro looked across the plains towards the distant walls. There was no sign of the Raven Guard – Captain Shrike must have ordered their redeployment. The massive super-heavy tank ground towards the walls, its long-barrelled cannon smoking as it tracked back and forth like a hunter seeking prey. A large formation of blue-green-armoured Alpha Legionnaires marched across the battlefield. The warriors had seen him too and were moving to intercept the White Scars as they hacked into the vast horde of traitors.

At the head of the Alpha Legion was a figure Kor’sarro recognised instantly, even at a range of several hundred metres. It was Nullus, the champion-lieutenant of Voldorius who seemed to harbour an especial hatred towards the White Scars, above and beyond the bitter mutual enmity felt between any Space Marine Chapter and their erstwhile brothers of the Traitor Legions. The last time Kor’sarro had faced Nullus was on Cernis IV, but the two had done battle at least a dozen times before that. Memories came unbidden to Kor’sarro’s mind as he gunned Moondrakkan’s engine and powered forwards. The Lost Hope incident, the battles beneath the glass seas of Sagrifarri, the third siege of Ex Bellum. Thoughts of such battles brought with them memories of brothers long fallen, many at the hands of Nullus himself. Kor’sarro vowed to avenge every death Nullus had inflicted.

In between Kor’sarro and the object of his hatred were scores of Alpha Legionnaires, and the super-heavy tank was turning on its mighty tracks to join them, uncaring of the dozens of cultists it crushed as it ploughed onwards. The traitors were every bit as experienced and deadly as the White Scars themselves, perhaps more so, for they had long ago sold their very souls to the Chaos Gods in exchange for power beyond mortal reckoning. Each was a puissant warrior who had fought across a thousand battlefields and more, and faced every enemy from the beasts of the intergalactic voids to the mightiest of the Emperor’s champions. The Alpha Legion in particular were known amongst the traitor Space Marine Legions for their cunning and guile, and those who now faced Kor’sarro were no exception. The Alpha Legion deployed by squads, creating a defensive formation that would punish the charging White Scars severely as they passed through the mutually supporting fire zones. It was as if the Alpha Legion were well aware that Nullus would prove all too tempting a target for Kor’sarro and his brotherhood, and they deployed accordingly so as to take fearful advantage of that fact.

As consumed by hatred of the turncoat enemy as he was, Kor’sarro was not some mindless berserker to be so easily drawn into the Alpha Legion’s trap. Speeding across the black plain, Kor’sarro turned and took in the disposition of his own force. Instantly he noted gaps in the line, the telltale indications that brothers had fallen. Forcing such concerns from his mind until the time for grieving after the battle, Kor’sarro judged his force able to overwhelm the Alpha Legion, so long as they could overcome the enemy’s timely defensive deployment.

Kor’sarro opened the command channel. ‘The herd brays.’ He spoke the words of the White Scar’s battle-cant, which the Alpha Legion would have no knowledge of should they intercept the transmission. ‘The beast’s horn, the plateaux at sunrise.’

A raft of acknowledgements indicated that the sergeants had received and understood the order. Hauling on Moondrakkan’s handlebars, Kor’sarro brought his bike onto a new heading, his Command squad following close behind and the banner of the 3rd waving proudly above. How dearly he would love to add the name of Nullus to the tally of slain foes listed proudly on that banner.

The White Scars enacted Kor’sarro’s orders, the bikers and Assault squads beginning a wide flanking manoeuvre that would bring them around to the Alpha Legion’s right side. But that in itself would not be sufficient to overcome the enemy’s deadly fire plan. As the fastest of the White Scars units swept onwards, the Rhino-borne Devastator squads raced forwards before disembarking a mere two hundred metres in front of their foe. Even before the heavy-weapons-armed Space Marines were in position, the Predator tanks were unleashing a fearsome hail of heavy bolter and autocannon fire upon the Alpha Legion, pinning them in position so they could not easily redeploy in the face of the faster unit’s flanking manoeuvre.

Kor’sarro grinned savagely as the air was split by the deafening report of the demolisher cannon of the Vindicator siege tank, Thunderheart. Though based on a Rhino, the Vindicator was essentially a tracked siege gun. As the huge cannon fired, the extractor fans atop the vehicle screamed as they equalised the pressure inside the sealed cabin.

As the thunder of the cannon’s discharge rolled across the plain the huge shell slammed into the Alpha Legion’s positions. In an instant, an entire squad of traitor Space Marines was wiped out. Each of their number was a heretic and a criminal, responsible for the deaths of countless innocents, and in that instant their reigns were ended. Kor’sarro’s heart pounded with the glory of battle, knowing that even if he died upon this black plain he would not have done so in vain.

The Alpha Legion’s fire was now by necessity split between the flanking White Scars bikers and Assault squads, and the more heavily armed and immediate threat presented by the siege tank and Devastator squads in front of them. A searing lascannon blast lanced out towards the Thunderheart and the huge dozer blade mounted at its front sheared off in a shower of sparks. A second shot scored a fire-rimmed wound the length of the tank’s flank. Before the Alpha Legion gunners could fire the kill-shot, the tank deployed a billowing smoke screen to throw off the aim of its foes at least long enough for Kor’sarro’s charge to strike home.

A torrent of fire now went up from the White Scars Devastator squads. Such a punishing weight of shells, missiles and lascannon blasts was unleashed that the Alpha Legionnaires were forced to take cover amongst the wreckage of the battlefield. The undulating plain offered scant few natural features that might provide cover against the White Scars’ fire and the traitors were forced to duck back behind the mounds of corpses scattering the entire area. The dead bodies of cultists and militia troopers danced as if in sick imitation of life as they were stitched by heavy bolter shells, which exploded within the already ruined bodies with hideous effect. Soon, the Alpha Legionnaires were forced to redeploy, the squads falling back with experienced discipline, firing boltguns from the hip as they went.

Kor’sarro’s flank attack hit home. Bikes roared and jump packs screamed as the White Scars descended upon their ancient, hated foes. Power lances glinting in the orange sunlight, a dozen Alpha Legionnaires were struck down in an instant. Moonfang flashed as Kor’sarro beheaded a Legionnaire who stepped in front of him. But an instant later he was thrown from Moondrakkan’s saddle as a fusillade of boltgun fire smashed into his left side, unleashed from such short range that the impact was tremendous.

Kor’sarro rolled as he struck the ground, which was torn apart as more rounds were pumped into the space he had occupied an instant before. Using the momentum of his fall, Kor’sarro came up and turned towards his attackers. A dozen Alpha Legion warriors advanced on him, the grim details of their baroque helmets expressionless and their ornate, gold-chased boltguns raised. Kor’sarro saluted them with Moonfang and unleashed a roaring challenge.

The Alpha Legionnaires slowed to a halt, intent upon gunning the White Scar down before he could bring his fearsome relic blade to bear.

‘Come on!’ Kor’sarro yelled in anger. ‘Fight with the honour you once had!’

A dozen armoured fingers tightened on a dozen triggers.

The flashing steel of a power lance shot through the air and transfixed the foremost Alpha Legionnaire. As the traitor sank to his knees, Kor’sarro’s Command squad appeared at his side, each warrior leaping from his saddle as his bike slewed to a halt, to stand beside their khan.

The traitors opened fire as they advanced, their boltguns spitting death as the air between the two groups became a storm of shells. A battle-brother beside Kor’sarro went down, his chest armour ripped open as a dozen bolt-rounds exploded deep within his chest. Another was struck by a missile fired by an Alpha Legion heavy weapons trooper, the projectile blowing the White Scar into a thousand chunks of smoking armour and burned flesh. A roar of anger went up from the White Scars, the deaths of their brothers merely serving to propel them forwards all the faster.

A second later both groups surged forwards as one and death was unleashed in a bloody melee. A traitor’s chainsword came out of nowhere and cleaved a White Scar clean in two. Even as his broken body fell apart, the Space Marine shot his killer in the face at point-blank range, blowing the traitor’s brains out through the back of his helmet. Another White Scar died as he was engulfed in searing flamer fire. His bare head was reduced to a black, smoking skull but he killed three more foes before he succumbed to his wounds.

Moonfang lashed out, once, twice, three times, and as many foes met their deaths by Kor’sarro’s hand. And then it was over, and Kor’sarro was panting with exertion. He turned to honour his warriors, and saw that Brother Yeku, the banner bearer of the 3rd, was down on his knees. One arm was wrapped about his midriff while the other supported the weight of the honoured standard. ‘Brother-captain…’ Yeku said, his voice strained.

Kor’sarro rushed to the warrior’s side, his heart filling with cold dread. Kneeling beside his friend, Kor’sarro activated the latches at his neck and lifted Yeku’s helmet clear. Blood flecked the warrior’s mouth and his skin was already pale and waxy.

‘Kor’sarro,’ Yeku coughed, fixing his stare on his captain. ‘Please, do me this favour…’

With a titanic effort, Brother Yeku lifted the banner of the 3rd high. Even in his dying moment the honoured fabric did not touch the ground, which would have brought dishonour to the bearer and the entire company. Kor’sarro understood, and took the banner pole in his own hand, relieving Brother Yeku of its weight.

‘Thank you, honoured khan,’ Yeku sighed, before slumping forwards onto the black ground.

Kor’sarro knew that his friend was dead, and had died with the utmost honour. Though he had witnessed countless such deaths, Kor’sarro would ensure the name of Brother Yeku was entered into the sagas of the White Scars, for his death had been a good one as such things are counted amongst the wild sons of Chogoris.

‘Khagus?’ Kor’sarro addressed the company Apothecary who even now approached. The medic kneeled reverently beside the body of Brother Yeku and a moment later turned back towards the Master of the Hunt.

‘He rides the cold steppes, my khan,’ the Apothecary replied, making reference to the death-legends of the Chogoran steppes nomads.

‘Then do what must be done.’

As Kor’sarro strode back towards Moondrakkan he heard the sound of the Apothecary’s small las-scalpel cutting through the armour at the fallen Space Marine’s neck. A moment later, the sound was replaced by that of a small buzzsaw cutting through flesh. The Apothecary was affording Brother Yeku the single honour all Space Marines aspired to after death. He was retrieving the artificial organs inside which were stored Yeku’s genetic inheritance. Emperor willing, the organs would be returned to the Chapter and the genetic code locked within passed on to a new generation of White Scars.

In moments, the deed was done. Kor’sarro hauled Moondrakkan upright with one hand while holding the banner aloft with the other. He made a silent promise that, were he able, he would return for Yeku and those others who had fallen here, and bring their bodies home in the utmost honour.

But for now, the battle still raged all about. Nearby, individual squads of White Scars fought their Alpha Legion counterparts in a bitter close-quarters battle. As more of Kor’sarro’s brotherhood piled into the battle the White Scars gained the edge. But the victory was proving a costly one, for already at least half a dozen white-armoured bodies were strewn across the black battleground. Beyond the White Scars’ immediate vicinity, the battlefield still swarmed with traitors, despite the terrible death toll both the White Scars and the Raven Guard had inflicted. The super-heavy tank ground onwards, the earth shaking beneath its treads, but it dared not fire on the White Scars with the Alpha Legion so close. Space Marines were used to being outnumbered hundreds, even thousands to one. They were the scalpel that incised the diseased flesh from the bloated carcass, and they would prevail.

Drawing on decades of experience, Kor’sarro quickly identified the point of the battle upon which victory or defeat would turn. Not far from his position a dismounted bike squad fought valiantly to hold back an Alpha Legion counterthrust, but a number of the warriors already bore grievous wounds and the remainder looked like being overrun within seconds. Should that squad be defeated, Kor’sarro judged, the entire line might buckle, and then he might never find and defeat the hated Nullus.

‘Khagus, Temu, Kergis,’ Kor’sarro addressed the three remaining warriors of his Command squad. ‘Our brothers have need of our presence.’

Raising the banner of the 3rd high, Kor’sarro gunned Moondrakkan’s engine and launched himself towards the foe, his brothers at his side. At the sight of the banner unfurled in the wind, the White Scars redoubled their efforts and the Alpha Legion appeared to flag in their own. A moment later, Kor’sarro was bearing down upon his enemy and in that moment he decided upon his course of action.

In a single movement, Kor’sarro leapt from Moondrakkan’s saddle and crashed feet first into a mighty Alpha Legionnaire, a champion and second only to Nullus amongst this warband. The enemy went down under Kor’sarro’s weight and with a savage cry upon his lips, Kor’sarro raised the banner high so that all on the battlefield could see. Then, he drove it downwards with such force that the end cracked open his enemy’s ornate power armour and pinned him to the ground.

A great roar went up from every White Scar who had seen Kor’sarro’s deed, but the champion was far from dead. The warrior raised his bolter and aimed it at Kor’sarro’s face. Unable to dodge, all Kor’sarro could do was hold his head back as an entire magazine of bolt shells was unleashed at him. Rounds glanced from his armoured collar or exploded against his chest plate, white hot shrapnel lacerating his cheeks.

But the primarch was with Kor’sarro, for when the boltgun’s ammunition feed clicked and the weapon fell silent, Kor’sarro was unhurt.

With a savage twist, Kor’sarro drove the banner pole through his enemy’s chest, severing his spine and penetrating his armour’s power pack. As Kor’sarro withdrew the pole, the body was consumed by the energies unleashed by the destruction of the generator, the armour glowing from within and sagging as it slowly melted.

Every head in the vicinity was turned towards him. White Scars looked on with fierce pride, while the Alpha Legion, the faces of most hidden by their baroque helmets, appeared to falter. Then, Kor’sarro saw one scarred face, twisted by malevolence and anger, looking straight at him. It was Nullus.

The two locked glances of sheer hatred for a moment before the spell was broken and the tides of battle surged forth and separated them once more. Kor’sarro bellowed his anger, but his savage cry was drowned out by a new sound, a mighty engine roaring above the raging battle. The ground beneath Kor’sarro’s feet trembled violently and the Master of the Hunt saw the super-heavy tank he had seen from afar was closing on his position, its mighty gun lowered.

As the metal behemoth lumbered forwards the Alpha Legion squads began to disengage from the White Scars, parting one step at a time, their boltguns spitting a constant stream of fire to keep their foes at bay.

‘Mount up!’ Kor’sarro ordered, leaping to the saddle of Moondrakkan and throwing the banner of the 3rd Company to Brother Temu. The passing of the banner to a new bearer was a moment of great honour, but both men knew there was no time to mark the occasion. Kergis, Temu and Khagus mounted their own bikes and as one the four warriors gunned their engines to life.

‘The mammoth bleeds a thousand deaths,’ Kor’sarro said into the vox-net, describing in battle-cant the manner in which the White Scars would engage the mighty tank. Not even the Thunderheart or the heavy weapon-armed Devastator squads carried sufficient firepower to fell this mighty iron beast, but the sons of Chogoris had other ways of bringing down such prey.

The Tactical squads that had dismounted to fight the Alpha Legion were now able to mount their bikes and in moments were by Kor’sarro’s side. The Assault squads screamed overhead, another thirty Space Marines adding their weight to the charge.

Bearing down upon the White Scars as they advanced, the Ironsoul’s turrets began to track individual targets. As one, the White Scars formation broke apart into individual squads, robbing the tank of a single victim. A secondary cannon mounted on the tank’s bow opened fire, but the bike squad it had been tracking had predicted the attack and swerved right as the shell split the earth apart. A huge cloud of black dust and smoke rose high into the air and showered soil for dozens of metres all around. Then the multiple heavy bolters mounted at the tank’s bow and upon sponsons along its flanks opened fire, filling the air with a storm of screaming metal.

The White Scars charged through the fusillade, heads down and shoulders set against the inevitable barrage. The armoured fairings of a dozen bikes were shattered under the weight of the fire but still the riders powered forwards. Heavy bolter shells exploded against the Space Marines’ power armour, and while most rounds were stopped by the blessed suits, some were not. In the intense few seconds of the charge, the battle became a kaleidoscope of war. A Space Marine biker was caught by a shell in the joint between chest and upper arm, the shell burying itself in his flesh before exploding and sending his arm cartwheeling off behind. Still the warrior rode on, his armour flooding his system with palliative combat drugs. Another warrior suffered a glancing blow that shattered his helmet’s optics. When the White Scar discarded his helmet his face was streaked with blood and one eye was a deep, gaping chasm, yet still the Space Marine continued the charge. Several others were not so fortunate, the weight of fire so great that not even their sanctified armour could withstand it. Their gene-seed and their bodies would be recovered later, Kor’sarro swore, once all this was over.

The Ironsoul let loose a blast from its main gun. The gunners had no clear target, for the White Scars were travelling so fast it was not difficult for them to avoid moving into the huge, long-barrelled gun’s arc. Yet still the beast could wreak bloody havoc even with an unaimed shot. Fired from a range of only fifty metres, the shell passed over Kor’sarro and his companions before he even had had time to register the weapon had fired. The shell screamed a scant ten metres overhead, splitting the air apart with a deafening roar. Kor’sarro felt the air torn from his lungs and the pressure wave batter his body. Only his enhanced physiology kept his lungs from being ripped from his chest.

The shell screamed by Kor’sarro and passed straight through the dispersed formation of an airborne Assault squad. Several of its warriors were sent plummeting to the ground as their jump packs were robbed of air by the drastic pressure change. Moments later the shell struck the ground five hundred metres to the White Scars’ rear. The explosion was so huge it scattered debris for hundreds of metres all about, but was too far distant to harm any of Kor’sarro’s warriors. And then, the White Scars were upon their enemy.

As the bike squads converged upon the Ironsoul, they split apart to encircle the towering iron behemoth. At such close range the warriors were better able to avoid the traversing weapons, yet should any have been struck by the hurtling bolts they would surely have been blown to pieces. Drawing on tactics first developed many thousands of years before by the warriors of Chogoris for bringing down huge wild beasts, the White Scars undertook a series of bold charges, the bikers swooping in close to their prey and clamping melta bombs to its guns. Even as the riders slewed away from the still-moving behemoth, the grenades detonated, shattering the heavy bolters and other weapons spitting death from every quarter. Within minutes the Ironsoul was all but disarmed, with the exception of its turret-mounted main gun. Yet still it ground onwards, its sheer bulk deadly in itself.

The super-heavy tank would have to be halted, permanently. Gritting his teeth, the Master of the Hunt hunched over Moondrakkan’s handlebars and brought his mount alongside the thundering behemoth.

Though the tank was not moving fast, Kor’sarro was painfully aware that one slip would see him ground to a red smear beneath its wide treads or caught up in its running gear and torn to shreds. Tensing every muscle in his body, Kor’sarro waited a heartbeat and then rose in his mount’s saddle. Pushing off, he cleared the three metres between bike and tank and grabbed onto a handhold. As if the tank’s commander had seen the manoeuvre, the behemoth swerved hard to its left and Kor’sarro was forced to hold on as his body was thrown violently into the air. Yet his grip was true and the super-dense fibre bundles of his power armour lent him the strength to drag himself up and onto the tank’s upper deck.

The horde swarmed kilometres in every direction, the bulk pressing into the huge breach in the wall of the defence installation. The Alpha Legion traitors had fallen back, well clear of the rampaging tank, and Kor’sarro’s battle-brothers were pushing on, piling the pressure on the enemy to force them back still further. Kor’sarro noted with a savage grin the number of blue-green-armoured bodies littering the ground about and knew that even if the battle should be lost, the toll on the traitors would have been fearful.

Kor’sarro’s attentions were snapped back to the task at hand as a burst of fire stitched across the Ironsoul’s armoured flank, missing him by scant centimetres. He saw that the Alpha Legion’s heavy weapons squads were opening fire on him, reasoning that their weapons would not harm the huge war machine but could tear him to pieces.

Fighting for balance, Kor’sarro located the commander’s hatch atop the main turret. He activated his mag-locked boots, which were more often used in zero-grav boarding actions. One heavy step at a time, he worked his way across the bucking deck and up the side of the turret.

More shots thundered in from the traitors’ heavy weapons, sending up a riot of sparks and metal fragments which stung his cheeks. Ignoring the pain, Kor’sarro plucked a krak grenade from his belt and with a flick of his thumb set it to a three second delay and activated its mag-clamp. Kor’sarro thrust the grenade onto the hatch, and then ducked below the level of the turret.

The resulting explosion was near deafening, yet even before the smoke had cleared Kor’sarro had thrown himself back over the edge of the turret. Knowing that he would have no space inside the cramped innards of the super-heavy tank to bring Moonfang to bear, Kor’sarro bunched his gauntlets into fists and dropped down through the wrecked, smoking hatch, fully intent upon rending every traitor crewman inside limb from limb with his bare hands.

Kor’sarro dropped down through the opening, expecting his armoured boots to strike metal deck plating below. Instantly, he knew something was seriously wrong.

Instead of a metal deck beneath his feet, Kor’sarro felt his boots sinking into something soft and yielding. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he looked around for the crew. As he turned, a blur shot across his vision and before he could react a coiling limb lined with a million tiny, rasping hooks had enveloped his entire head and was soon constricting around his windpipe.

Kor’sarro roared his denial, refusing to yield to such a death. His mouth was instantly stuffed full with a hundred questing pseudopods seeking the back of his throat and forcing their way down his gullet. Reacting entirely by instinct, Kor’sarro bit down hard upon the writhing tentacles, severing them as he ground the vile flesh between his teeth. Despite the severing, the pseudopods still thrashed within his mouth, but he could not spit them out for the larger coil which had birthed them was still wrapped tightly across his face.

With a titanic effort of will and strength Kor’sarro gripped the coil in both hands and dragged it clear of his head, spitting out the smaller tentacles the instant he was able. As vision returned he saw that the interior of the tank was not at all what it should have been. Instead of machinery and instrumentation, the Ironsoul’s innards were a mass of writhing intestinal coils.

Fighting back a wave of sheer revulsion, Kor’sarro glanced upwards and saw the hatchway above him sucking closed, the metal constricting like puckered flesh. All was plunged into darkness and a sickening groan assaulted Kor’sarro’s ears. The sound came from all about, the interior quivering and shaking with its droning. Kor’sarro spat, seeking in vain to clear his mouth of the vile taste the pseudopods had left there. He knew then that he had but two choices. Be consumed in the gut of a daemon-machine, or plunge for its heart and rip it out from within.

Pulling first one foot, then the other from the sucking mass of flesh of the deck, Kor’sarro pressed forwards. No battle drill or tactical meditation could have prepared him for this moment, but Kor’sarro knew the beast inside the Ironsoul must have a heart, and if it had a heart it must have a weakness. Judging that such an organ must be located to the rear of the vehicle where otherwise its engine should have been, he turned in that direction and pressed forwards.

Instantly, Kor’sarro felt another writhing tentacle reach out to grasp him, this time about the waist. Though no natural light entered the interior and no artificial source illuminated it, Kor’sarro soon became aware of a lambent red glow emanating from within the very stuff of the coiling limb. That was enough for his genetically enhanced senses. He quickly got his bearings and located the thing that was assaulting him. Reaching for his belt with one hand, Kor’sarro used the other to hold off the coiling loop of flesh. He drew his combat knife and with a savage war cry hewed the flesh in two and the section that was attacking him dropped away with wild, thrashing convulsions.

Kor’sarro plunged onwards. A dozen more of the vile, questing limbs grew from the pulsating, fleshy interior of the tank. The Master of the Hunt felt the wild savagery of his ancestors welling up inside him, reason threatening to desert him as he threw himself forwards. Yet, some part of him was ever aware that to abandon himself to the berserk madness would be to unleash something terrible upon the galaxy. The Storm Seers of the White Scars often spoke of the precipice the greatest of warriors sometimes walked along. Some warriors believed themselves strongest if they resisted the urge to look down, while the truly enlightened knew that to look and to face the truth is the mark of the true warrior.

As he forced himself forwards through walls of heaving flesh, Kor’sarro knew that he was well and truly walking that path right this moment, and to surrender to the berserker within would be to become one with the daemon beast itself.

Kor’sarro hacked all about him with his combat knife, the pulsing wet flesh pressing in against his face. His muscles strained against all-enclosing walls of meat. He bit down upon writhing pseudopods as they sought his throat. And then, with one last heave, he reached the core of the beast of muscle and iron.

In front of him, casting a hellish inner light, was the thundering heart of the daemon war machine.

Bellowing a prayer to Jaghatai Khan, the revered and lost primarch of the White Scars, Kor’sarro drove his combat knife deep into the flesh of the daemonic heart. As the blade penetrated, the heart exploded outwards in an eruption of blood and anger. Kor’sarro’s world turned in an instant to utter, all-consuming blackness.

Kor’sarro’s eyes snapped open and he was instantly awake. He was on his back looking up at the smoke-stained skies of Quintus.

For a moment, not a sound reached Kor’sarro’s ears. Then a high-pitched whine arose, turning into a muted roar just audible at the edge of his hearing.

The savage cacophony of battle returned, a torrent of sound breaking upon Kor’sarro’s senses.

Kor’sarro was battered but not badly wounded. He was lying on the black ground in front of the walls of the defence installation, and the earth was trembling with the footsteps of tens of thousands of combatants.

Turning his head at last, Kor’sarro’s eyes focussed on a black form rearing before him, smoke belching from a dozen wounds. Pulling himself to his feet, Kor’sarro saw that the form was the blasted shell of the Ironsoul, the innards blown out at the instant he had destroyed the daemon within.

The act of killing the thing at the heart of the Ironsoul must also have thrown him clear, Kor’sarro realised as he shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Looking down at his white and red armour, Kor’sarro noted that he was covered in the viscous fluids exuded by the vile appendages he had fought to reach the daemon’s heart, and his armour was black with burns and riven with dents.

Now standing fully upright, the Master of the Hunt saw another figure standing atop the smoking wreck of the Ironsoul.

‘Spat you out, did she?’ Kor’sarro recognised the leering, sibilant voice instantly. It was unmistakably that of Nullus, champion of Voldorius. Kor’sarro reached his right arm across his body and took hold of Moonfang’s grip. ‘I knew you would come,’ Nullus continued. ‘I knew you would not let me down, not after my little message on Cernis. What a tireless bloodhound you are…’

‘Nullus,’ said Kor’sarro, knowing then that Nullus had planted the four-starred shoulder pad so that the White Scars would follow his trail to Quintus. ‘Let us end this. Now.’

Nullus’s scar-traced visage twisted as he scowled down at Kor’sarro. ‘Perhaps it is indeed time, White Scar,’ Nullus replied. ‘I have hated you for so long, I grow weary.’

Kor’sarro was struck by the depth of the bitterness the Alpha Legionnaire harboured for the White Scars. He had laid his trail, and the Master of the Hunt had followed, and all so that he could enact his bitter vendetta against the sons of Chogoris. The traitor’s eyes were deep wells of pure hatred, windows behind which something other than human lurked.

Then it came to Kor’sarro. Perhaps it was his recent proximity to the daemonic heart of the Ironsoul, or maybe it was simple intuition. Perhaps he had known it all along.

‘Daemon,’ spat Kor’sarro, drawing Moonfang as he hauled himself up a ruined track and onto the rear deck of the wrecked tank.

Nullus stood upon the twisted and blackened foredeck, the smoking hole where the Ironsoul’s turret had been blown away separating him from Kor’sarro. The warrior gave a low, guttural chuckle, a sound that no living throat could have issued. ‘You have no idea…’ Nullus growled.

‘And neither do I have any desire to know,’ replied Kor’sarro. ‘Your very existence condemns you.’

‘You really are an arrogant little runt,’ Nullus sneered, his black eyes mocking. ‘So typical of your kind.’

‘Speak not of my people,’ spat Kor’sarro. ‘Even the least of them is above you and your kind.’

‘If only that were so,’ said Nullus. ‘But I have seen your people, more times than you can imagine. I know them well. Better than you, perhaps.’

Heed not the words of the daemon, Kor’sarro told himself, reciting the teachings of old. Do not allow yourself to become entrapped in his web of deceit. ‘Enough!’ Kor’sarro shouted.

‘Your petty existence may well end, hunter,’ Nullus crowed. ‘Mine cannot. I am the whisper upon the night wind that your people call “djinnu”. I am the stealer of maidenhead the priestesses call the “ghall qan”. I am the taint of disease and the dry riverbed at summer’s height. I am all of these things, and many more.’

At Nullus’s words, ancient fears not felt since long before his ascension to the White Scars stirred unbidden in Kor’sarro’s soul. The Alpha Legionnaire was invoking the malevolent spirits of the Chogoran steppes, the beings the tribal shamans spoke of only under the full light of the midday sun. Were they to do so by night they might be dragged screaming into the shadows.

‘You are naught but a liar,’ Kor’sarro replied, raising Moonfang before him and activating the sacred weapon’s power field. ‘You speak plundered words and expect me to quake in fear at your false knowledge of my people.

‘I know thee,’ Kor’sarro spoke the opening words of the rite of exorcism, ‘filthy as thou art.’

Nullus hissed, his scar-laced features twisting into a hideous mask of anger and bitterness. He brought his black-bladed halberd across his body and whispered profane words of power that Kor’sarro could barely hear, but recoiled from in disgust, to his blade.

The smoking chasm where the Ironsoul’s turret had once been yawned between the two combatants. Kor’sarro looked down at the hole, and knew that it was too wide for him to leap easily. He would have to work his way around its perilous edge to engage his enemy.

Nullus leapt high into the air, propelled by something other than mortal strength. The move took Kor’sarro entirely by surprise.

Kor’sarro barely had time to raise Moonfang to parry the inevitable downward blow. But Nullus powered through the air to land directly behind the White Scar.

It was all Kor’sarro could do to raise his blade over his shoulder, utilising by raw instinct a parry used by the steppes nomads of Chogoris when two mounted warriors pass one another at speed, each swinging at the other’s back. Kor’sarro made the parry blind, but instantly felt the jarring impact as Nullus’s weapon struck his own. Before Nullus could strike again, Kor’sarro twisted his body around and at the same instant leapt backwards, passing over the edge of the smoking hole and landing three metres away at its very lip.

Breathing hard, Kor’sarro raised his sacred blade. The weapon’s power field stuttered, as if part of it had been stolen by his opponent’s sorcerous blade, then flashed back to life. The otherwise flawless edge was notched by Nullus’s strike. He took a step backwards, seeking to gain space to manoeuvre, one foot coming perilously close to the hole’s edge.

Nullus pressed forwards, his halberd lunging towards Kor’sarro’s left shoulder. The strike was easily turned, but Kor’sarro found himself forced backwards still further while Nullus came on.

‘Not so sure now, are you, spawn of the cold steppes,’ Nullus leered.

Kor’sarro knew well that Nullus sought to anger him in order to gain further advantage. His pride and honour demanded he answer the daemon’s jibes, but he forced such notions to the back of his mind as he sought an advantage of his own.

‘No?’ Nullus crowed. ‘You have no proud boast, Scarred One?’

As his opponent pressed forwards again, his black-bladed halberd held ready to strike at any moment, it occurred to Kor’sarro that he might find some advantage in Nullus’s tirade. ‘What boast would you have me make?’ said Kor’sarro.

Nullus chuckled. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘What of the deeds of your beloved primarch?’

Forcing himself to calm as he allowed his enemy to berate him, Kor’sarro took the brief opportunity to gauge the progress of the larger battle. The traitor horde still surged all around, the White Scars driving a wedge into them. The banner of 3rd Company waved proudly nearby. The Alpha Legion were advancing upon his brethren and above it all, smoke stained the sky and gunfire stitched the air. Explosions and screams rose on the wind, mingled with the wild outpourings of the cultists and the mournful cries of the traitor militia.

All of this Kor’sarro discerned in but an instant, but there was nothing he could do to influence the strategy of his army. His cold eyes snapped back to his opponent. But in that instant, Nullus had raised his weapon and was making another lunge. There was no time to move, only to bring Moonfang up for another parry. The black halberd struck the base of Moonfang’s blade, and the two combatants matched their strength against one another, before pushing apart and stepping backwards. The blade’s power field flickered again, and Kor’sarro offered up a silent prayer that its blessed generator might withstand the halberd’s fell sorcery.

In that brief moment of contact, Kor’sarro had gained some measure of Nullus’s unnatural strength. The Master of the Hunt had pitted himself against every foe the universe had thrown at him, from tyranid carnifexes to cthellian ursids. The raw power behind that black halberd was as strong as any he had faced.

‘Where is your primarch now?’ Nullus pressed on, once more seeking to force a mistimed lunge or vengeful strike from Kor’sarro.

‘The blessed Great Khan hunts,’ Kor’sarro spat, seeking in turn to draw some misjudged response from Nullus. ‘He hunts the likes of you.’

Nullus advanced around the rim of the smoking hole in the top of the wrecked Ironsoul, Kor’sarro giving ground before him, if unwillingly. The proud banner of the 3rd came into view again, far closer this time. ‘How do you know he lives at all?’ Nullus sneered. ‘Perhaps he just hates that stinking mire you call a home world as much as I did.’

Nullus was turning his tirade back to the subject of the White Scars’ home world of Chogoris. He had claimed to be the whisper in the night, a spirit feared by many tribes, but vanished from Chogoris since before Jaghatai Khan had united the nations. The words of the Storm Seers came once more to his mind…

…and then Nullus lunged forwards again, a mighty two-handed blow coming from nowhere. Kor’sarro dived aside as the black blade arced past. As it closed, the halberd emitted a piercing scream, the sound of a caged predator giving voice to a thousand years of bitterness and torment. The tip of the halberd scored a jagged line across his left shoulder plate, and tore his flowing cloak in two. Power bled from his armour’s systems, sucked into the halberd’s blade, and Kor’sarro’s movements became sluggish as his actuators whined. Kor’sarro rolled across the wreck’s upper deck, pulling himself to his feet upon a buckled and blackened grille that groaned in protest at his weight.

Nullus came on, the halberd scything, its shrill scream growing ever louder. His face was a twisted mass of scar tissue, forming into new and vile configurations as his expressions shifted. Kor’sarro fought with every ounce of his warrior skill and ferocity to fend off the champion of Voldorius, but with each blow, the Master of the Hunt was being pushed back towards the edge.

‘He thought he could beat me too,’ Nullus sneered. When Kor’sarro gave no reply other than a savage and unanticipated counterattack, he continued. ‘He thought he had banished the whisper in the dark, the voices in the night, but he was wrong…’

And then it came to Kor’sarro. The tales the Storm Seers told the neophytes. Some believed them simple tales, but Kor’sarro saw now they were anything but myth. ‘I know thee…’ he said, a new conviction entering his voice.

‘Yes,’ Nullus replied. ‘We’ve already done that part.’

‘Kagayaga,’ Kor’sarro spat, stepping backwards to the very edge of the deck.

Nullus stopped dead in his tracks as Kor’sarro spoke the name. It was true, then. The spirit of the dread night, the daemon-thing which Chapter legend stated the Primarch Jaghatai Khan had banished over ten thousand years ago, was real, and standing before him. Perhaps this body, armoured in the mantle of the Alpha Legion, was not Kagayaga, but the thing within it, the blackness behind those eyes, most certainly was, of that he was now sure.

‘So,’ Nullus sneered, his scarred face split into a wide, leering grin. ‘You do know me, after all.’

At that instant, the banner of the 3rd Company rose fully into view directly behind Nullus. A moment later its bearer, Brother Temu, hauled himself onto the deck. Beside Temu was the newly appointed company champion, Brother Kergis.

‘As you once were banished from Chogoris,’ Kor’sarro called aloud, ‘so you are now banished from Quintus!’

Nullus began to form a mocking response, but the air was split by the sharp report of a bolt pistol round before the words could come forth. Brother Kergis’s pistol sent a bolt-round into the back of Nullus’s head, the round shattering his skull and penetrating deep into his brain. An instant later, the mass-reactive shell detonated.

But Nullus was no ordinary man to be slain so easily. As the shell exploded, the rent flesh of Nullus’s vile face resisted, even though it appeared to stretch and distort. Kor’sarro knew then that the champion of Voldorius was exerting every shred of his power in the effort of reknitting his form, so that he might fight on.

Kor’sarro reached for his belt and drew his bolt pistol. As his strength returned and his armour recovered from the energy drain Nullus’s daemon-blade had inflicted, he raised his arm to draw a bead on the other’s grossly distorted head.

‘For Jhogai,’ said Kor’sarro.

Kor’sarro fired and Nullus could keep his mortal form intact no longer. With a shower of gore, the scarred head came apart, showering all three White Scars with oozing grey matter. At the last, the body of the champion of Voldorius fell to its knees before the champion of Kor’sarro, and then pitched sideways into the smoking hole atop the ruined Ironsoul.

‘Filthy as thou art,’ Kor’sarro completed the line of the rite of exorcism, spitting into the hole the body had toppled into.

With the death of Nullus, the Alpha Legionnaires began to fall back towards the walls of Mankarra. The White Scars pressed their attacks, bike squadrons and Assault squads taking a fearsome toll on their ancient, bitter enemies as they disengaged. When it became clear that the Alpha Legion were a spent force, Kor’sarro ordered his squads to consolidate, for they had become spread out as each pursued its own individual battle against its foes.

The Master of the Hunt stood atop the smoking wreckage of the Ironsoul and ordered the banner of the 3rd Company brought to his side. Banks of black smoke drifted across the battlefield, but as if the Emperor Himself had willed it, they parted as the banner was raised. In that moment, every warrior on the battlefield saw the banner as it waved gloriously from its vantage point. Standing beside it was Kor’sarro, Khan of the 3rd Company, his white armour streaked with dirt and gore and his lava-wolf pelt cloak ragged and torn as it fluttered in the wind behind him. His face bled from a thousand microscopic cuts and his armour was rent and cracked in a dozen places.

Yet, Kor’sarro appeared to his brotherhood as glorious as any of the Chapter’s most revered heroes. He stood straight and proud, as had those greatest of men who had walked at the side of the primarch himself. The White Scars rallied to Kor’sarro and the banner beside him. Within minutes, the Chaplains and Storm Seers that had accompanied the strike force stood upon the wrecked tank beside their khan, and almost a hundred battle-brothers gathered all about.

To the enemy, the sight of the banner being raised high above the battlefield was the signal of their own defeat. Kor’sarro appeared to the traitorous horde a being of terrible vengeance sent to bring the Emperor’s justice upon them all. Worse still, word of the death of Nullus had spread quickly through the horde. None needed to exaggerate the story with the retelling. The sight of the Alpha Legion breaking off from the fight and falling back on the walls of Mankarra confirmed the worst of their fears. The horde’s erstwhile tormentors had abandoned it entirely to the vengeance of the White Scars.

As one, a thousand cultists fell on their knees and a great wailing rose across the battlefield. The White Scars would never know if that dire sound represented a plea for forgiveness or a bemoaning of fate. Even as the White Scars looked on with horror, the assembled cultists began to scourge themselves with chains, hooks, spikes and any other implement that came to hand including the severed limbs of their fellows. The White Scars turned their faces from the vile spectacle, knowing that the wretches were beyond even the mercy of the Emperor of Mankind.

While the cultists surrendered themselves to whatever fate awaited them, the greater number of the horde, the pressed militias, were gripped by sheer, unadulterated terror. These men and women knew they had committed the sin of treachery, for death at the hands of the Alpha Legion would have been an honourable end compared to the fate they had submitted to by allowing themselves to be enslaved.

With the sight of the White Scars’ banner waving victorious above the black plain, ten thousand traitor militia dropped their weapons and fled for the imagined safety of the walls of Mankarra. As the White Scars looked on in disgust, the fear surged through the horde, passing even to the breach in the wall of defence installation South Nine. In an instant, the tide was turned. The hordes swarming through the breach stalled, a great roar of terror rising to mingle with the wailing of the cultists. Then the direction of movement reversed, and the swarm that had been assaulting the breach was surging away from it.

Inside the walls, Captain Kayvaan Shrike found himself facing not an unstoppable tide of enemies but a rapidly receding torrent of fleeing, panic-stricken traitors. His first instinct was to order his squads to open fire on the enemy as they fled, to gun the foe down without mercy. But Shrike’s force had run so dangerously low on ammunition that even when magazines were shared out each warrior had only a single clip remaining. Reluctantly, Shrike ordered his squads to follow up their routing foe, to ensure none remained, but to allow them to flee unmolested.

Back on the plain, the last of the horde was surging around the wreck of the Ironsoul as a raging torrent breaks around a rock. The White Scars too allowed the traitors to flee. Thunderhawks were inbound to extract the squads, rearm them and move them rapidly to their next objective – the walls of Mankarra itself. The strike force’s armoured vehicles, the Vindicator siege tank known as Thunderheart at their head, were already formed into a spearhead which was arrowing towards the gates of the capital city.

As the Space Marines boarded gunships and Rhinos, the skies above the plain were split by a deafening thunderbolt. A moment later, the last of the battle-brothers embarking in their transports saw what at first appeared to be a storm of meteors falling from the skies high above.

The Ninth Eye, the flagship of Lord Voldorius, had moved into orbit and on its master’s order unleashed a fearsome orbit-to-surface bombardment. Warheads the size of tanks streaked from the skies upon black contrails. The first struck the wreckage of the Ironsoul, atomising the twisted ruin and blasting a crater ten metres deep and fifty across. But the White Scars were already gone, speeding away in their armoured transports.

The next warhead plunged into the breach in the wall of South Nine, blasting the installation’s fortifications wide apart. The Raven Guard too were gone, their next objective already in their sights.

The remainder of the warheads ploughed into the horde seething across the corpse-littered plain towards the walls of Mankarra. In his anger and rage Lord Voldorius had ordered his own slave-troops and deluded followers slaughtered, their deaths serving to quench his vengeance and perhaps bring the favour of the Ruinous Powers of the warp. Dozens of warheads slammed from the skies to obliterate the traitorous horde. So great was the destruction that the walls of Mankarra themselves were shaken and the speeding gunships bucked violently as blast wave after blast wave overtook them. The paintwork of the White Scars’ armoured vehicles blistered and blackened as Rhinos, Predators and the Thunderheart sped away, hatches sealed tight against the air that burned all around.

The first of the militia troopers to have fled the battlefield were following close behind the retreating Alpha Legion, moaning in terror as the last of the green-blue-armoured warriors passed through the mighty gates of Mankarra and closed them on the horde.

The entire plain was scoured of life. Though the horde of Voldorius had been turned and his champion slain, the warp resounded to the daemon prince’s offering of ten thousand souls. The assault on South Nine was ended, but as the Space Marines closed on Mankarra, they knew that the true battle was yet to be fought.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Malya stood in front of the command chamber’s huge viewing screen, staring up in sheer disbelief. As explosions blossomed across the screen, their thunderous report sounded from beyond the metres-thick walls of the militia’s strategium complex. Lumen-bulbs flickered and the screen went blank, before flashing to life again as small pieces of debris fell from the ceiling to scatter all about.

As the last of the explosions faded, an ominous silence descended upon the chamber. Even the ever-present chatter of the vox-links ceased as every one of the three dozen and more officers in the command chamber stared at the screen.

The full enormity of what she had just witnessed came crashing down upon Malya. When the cultists had fallen at the sight of the Space Marines’ banner, she had felt vindication, for these men and women were the very lowest of their kind and not fit in her mind to call Quintus their home. But when the militias had turned and fled, Malya had known utter despair. No matter the circumstances of their servitude, these were her people. The militias were innocent men and women pressed into the service of a despicable tyrant, their only alternative death.

The thousands of militia had turned and stampeded back towards the walls of Mankarra and in their desperation many troopers had been reduced to animals. Hundreds stumbled and were crushed beneath the feet of their comrades. And then, Voldorius had issued the order to The Ninth Eye in orbit overhead, and the orbital bombardment had commenced.

As the bombs had fallen in the midst of the fleeing horde, Malya had been wrenched back to the atrocity in the grand square. The crushed bodies still lay where they had died as a grim warning against further rebellion, and it was said that the vilest of the daemon’s servants haunted the corpse-strewn centre of the city. It was as if Voldorius was taunting her, making her witness over and over again the terrible deeds he could enact upon her people. Yet still she refused to submit to the total, all-encompassing horror that gibbered in the darkest recesses of her soul. She drew on deeper and deeper reserves of faith, long hidden and built up through a lifetime of devotion and worship. Perhaps others did not heed the words the preachers spoke, but she did, every one of them. Perhaps it was her faith that made Voldorius toy with her so, the daemon prince deriving some unholy sport from the spectacle of one of the faithful being forced to endure such unceasing blasphemies.

At length, the silence was broken as Lord Voldorius spoke. ‘Even in their death do they serve.’

None dared look towards their vile master, three dozen pairs of eyes turning downwards towards the floor. Some feigned deference and humility; others were too petrified to do so and collapsed to their knees. Malya stood firm, though a single tear ran slowly down her cheek.

At that moment, Malya’s mind was set. She knew the Space Marines needed to know about the prisoner, but she also knew that the Space Marines must soon assault the city walls. She could help. As equerry, she had knowledge of which sections had been fortified and which were still to be reinforced. She would transmit a signal and inform the Space Marines which gate would fall the quickest, even should it cost her life. She just needed a distraction…

‘Those who recruited the militias shall step forwards,’ Lord Voldorius growled, his low voice sounding like tectonic plates grinding inexorably together.

At first, none responded. Then Voldorius brought himself to his full height and several more of the staff officers collapsed to their knees. Five high commanders stepped forwards.

Lord Colonel Morkis was not amongst them.

All eyes turned to the high commanders, while Voldorius’s own gaze was sweeping the faces of each of the men who had stepped before him. Glancing down to a command terminal by her side, Malya decided that the time to act was now, for she might never have another opportunity. Moving only her right hand, she invoked the rite of communion and awoke the spirit of the vox-terminal. Malya forced her mind to calm in order to recall the transmission code she had used what seemed like months before to contact the Space Marines. She had buried the code deep within her mind, lest it be torn from her under duress and condemn even more innocents to death or torture. Yet, she had never allowed herself to forget the code entirely, some small part of her clinging to the hope that she might have cause to use it one more time. The code sprang instantly to her mind, and Malya entered it into the terminal and began to compose in her mind the message she must send.

Meanwhile, Lord Voldorius was looming down upon the officers. ‘Which of you shall bear the responsibility for this?’

Again, none dared answer.

‘I have promised such power,’ Voldorius grated. ‘And yet you have failed me at this first test.’

When still none of the officers responded, Voldorius moved his vast, armoured bulk to the end of the line and looked down upon the first officer. He was the official in charge of the muster of the city’s militia in times of emergency. He stood erect, his ornate, gold-trimmed uniform bedecked with medals and symbols of rank. His white-bearded face was set in a grim mask, his eyes fixed with steely determination.

‘Lord Kline,’ Voldorius growled. ‘The enemy closes upon the gates and you are responsible for the muster. Where is it?’

The muster was scattered to ashes across the black plains beyond the city walls. Clearly, Voldorius sought to intimidate the man. When a minute had crawled past and no response was given, Voldorius turned to face the next man along, General Orson, the official whose responsibility was to formulate doctrine and instil it in the militias.

‘You,’ said Voldorius, his bestial, cragged face closing on General Orson’s. The man wore the same uniform as Kline and his chest was decorated with even more medals. Orson’s face was dominated by a bushy moustache and his eyes were set dead ahead. Yet a dark stain spreading down one leg spoke of the turmoil seething within the man’s soul at the proximity of the daemon prince. So few were able to withstand the daemon’s presence at all. It must only have been because these men had promised themselves to his service that they were able to withstand the sheer malevolence he radiated, and clearly, that was now breaking down.

Voldorius snorted in disgust, the blast of foul air causing General Orson’s medals to clink, then moved along the line to the city’s Quartermaster General.

‘Ackenvol,’ Voldorius continued. ‘Did you not have all that your heart desired? Did the forges not manufacture everything you demanded, and more?’

Quartermaster General Ackenvol was a stout man, and taller by far than any of his peers. Perhaps alone amongst the planetary guard’s high command, Ackenvol had earned the dozens of medals he wore, making him something of a totem amongst the militia armies. He had served in the Imperial Guard, rising from lowly rank to high office throughout the course of a distinguished career, before being posted to Quintus to oversee the Officio Munitorum’s arms procurement mission there.

‘They did,’ Ackenvol responded. ‘But it was not enough.’

Malya decided upon the message she must transmit, but she could not risk entering it yet, for the chamber had fallen to such utter silence that even the gentlest of keystrokes would ring out like thunder.

Then, the silence was broken as Voldorius emitted a low, baleful rumble from deep within his armoured chest. The sound was one of animal fury, barely contained, and many in the chamber visibly faltered as it struck their ears. Violent retribution seemed to hang frozen in the air, but to Malya’s surprise it did not descend upon the Quartermaster General. Instead, Voldorius moved further along the line, to stand before Lord Colonel Lannus.

‘You promised such glories in my name,’ said Voldorius as he leaned in to stand over the thin, ascetic officer. ‘You claimed you would lay a million skulls before my throne. You said you would turn the plains into oceans of blood.’

‘Where are your boasts now, lord colonel?’ asked Voldorius, his voice so low its bass rumble was felt more than heard.

Lannus was visibly shaken, sweat pouring from his brow and his face drained of colour. Yet somehow, the lord colonel maintained his dignity even in the face of the daemon prince’s obvious displeasure.

Voldorius lingered a moment longer, before passing to the last of the officers that had dared step before him.

‘Elenritch,’ Voldorius addressed the lord colonel. ‘Your sin has caused this.’

Elenritch glanced sidelong towards the huge screen and the scene of utter devastation it relayed. Slowly, he shook his shaven head, the eldritch tattoos etched across his temples seeming to writhe with the movement.

‘You gainsay my word, mortal?’ Voldorius said, bringing himself to his full height.

‘I…’ the lord colonel said, his control remarkable given the circumstances. ‘I cannot take sole blame, my lord.’

‘That much is true,’ the daemon prince replied. ‘But the Ironsoul was your responsibility.’

‘I could not have…’ Elenritch started.

‘The seals were clearly insufficient!’ Voldorius bellowed, causing the officers before him and everyone in the command chamber to cringe before the force of his voice. ‘All were insufficient!’

Though Malya’s mind reeled before the psychic backwash of the daemon’s wrath, she forced herself to key her message into the terminal while she had the chance. She would not have much time to compose a detailed communication, so she committed only the bare facts to her transmission. The tertiary gate in wall section twelve, minimal fortification…

Risking the extra few seconds it would take to input, Malya confirmed that Voldorius had the prisoner the Space Marines had demanded to know of, and described his location in the holding cells adjacent to the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom.

Malya was interrupted as Voldorius growled, ‘Morkis.’

The chamber fell to shocking silence once more, the only sound that of the banks of cogitators churning in the background. Malya looked around to see that all heads were turned towards Lord Colonel Morkis. A cold dread settled across the assembled staff.

‘My lord?’ Morkis replied.

‘Why,’ Voldorius rumbled, ‘do you not take your place amongst these fools?’

‘I was not…’ Morkis began, glancing across at Malya then stammering to a halt. Clearly, there was no answer he could give that would exonerate any of them.

‘Who then?’ Voldorius replied, his voice low and dangerous.

‘My lord?’ said Morkis.

‘Who then,’ Voldorius growled, ‘is responsible?’

‘My lord,’ Morkis replied, casting a hateful stare at Malya. ‘I do not…’

‘Name he who is responsible!’ Voldorius roared. Several of the staff officers looking on collapsed to the floor before the torrent of rage that assailed all in the chamber. Malya decided that the message she had composed would have to be sufficient, for she might not have any longer to finish it. It remained only for her to direct the machine-spirit to ready the message for transmission.

Now Lord Colonel Morkis brought himself to his full height, his eyes narrowing and his face taking on a hateful scowl. As Voldorius waited, Morkis scanned the line of officers drawn up before their master.

Quartermaster General Ackenvol took a step forwards, before General Orson’s hand grabbed his elbow and restrained him with a sharp gesture. ‘Filth!’ Ackenvol spat at Morkis. ‘Nothing but a highborn dilettante with delusions of glory!’

Morkis sneered at Malya, then turned his attentions fully towards the Quartermaster General. Morkis stepped forwards, falteringly at first but, when Voldorius made no reply, with more purpose. Then he stood before Ackenvol, who scowled down at the lord colonel with utter contempt writ large across his face.

‘I name Quartermaster General Ackenvol,’ Morkis announced to the entire chamber. ‘He is responsible.’

‘Then kill him.’ Voldorius said.

‘What?’ Lord Colonel Morkis uttered.

‘Kill him,’ Voldorius repeated. ‘Or die in his place.’

Malya could barely tear her eyes away from the scene unfolding before her, but she forced herself to glance furtively down at the vox-terminal. The machine was processing her message, applying the blessed ciphers and readying it for transmission. Part of her could scarcely believe that with the Space Marines closing on the walls of Mankarra, Voldorius would divert his attentions in such a manner. Another part of her accepted it as entirely typical of the fell being’s heinous demeanour. She was thankful she could not comprehend the ways of the daemon prince. It confirmed to her that she was still human, and an innocent.

In the centre of the chamber Lord Colonel Morkis was drawing an ornate, gold-chased laspistol from a holster at his belt. Quartermaster General Ackenvol’s eyes never left the face of the lord colonel, even as the weapon was raised to point directly at his chest. The Quartermaster General might have been a traitor, but he faced death if not with honour then with nobility at least.

‘Morkis,’ interjected Lannus as Morkis’s finger tightened on the trigger of his pistol. ‘You needn’t–’

Morkis jerked the laspistol towards Lannus and a searing white blast spat out. The shot caught the other man in the side of the head, vaporising half of his skull in an instant.

Lannus’s body crashed backwards into a group of staff officers, who stumbled away from it in disgust as blood and gore splattered their uniforms.

Morkis was warming to his new role as Voldorius’s executioner, a wicked sneer creasing his sly face. The sound of Voldorius’s low, grating chuckle filled the command chamber.

Even before Lannus’s body had hit the floor, Morkis had snapped the laspistol back to bear on the Quartermaster General. Ackenvol had not moved. He was too proud to squirm before the vengeful Morkis.

‘Would not that weapon be put to better use blowing your own sorry excuse for a brain to atoms?’ said the Quartermaster General.

The laspistol quivered in Morkis’s hand and his face twisted into an animalistic sneer. ‘My dear Quartermaster General,’ said Morkis. ‘I’m going to save you…’

The laspistol swung rapidly to the left and a second blast filled the chamber. The shot took Lord Colonel Elenritch square in the chest, punching a hole straight through his torso. The officer stood for a moment, his face displaying an expression not of shock, but of outrage. Then the lord colonel crumpled to a heap upon the chamber floor and the laspistol swung around to point at Lord Kline, the Marshal-in-Chief of the Muster.

‘…until last,’ Morkis finished, his eyes now shining with cold madness.

Malya dared risk a glance at the vox-terminal, and saw with relief that the machine-spirit had completed its ministrations and was ready to transmit her message. She would have to judge the moment of transmission carefully, lest she be discovered at the very last.

Kline stood as erect as Ackenvol, prepared to face his death and stoically refusing to cower before his executioner. General Orson however, made a sudden dash towards one of the chamber portals. He was dead, a smoking hole in his back, before he had gone three steps.

Still Malya’s finger hovered over the transmission rune.

‘If Ackenvol is last,’ Morkis sneered at Lord Kline, ‘then you must be next, my lord marshal.’

‘Whichever of us you kill,’ said Ackenvol, ‘the other shall have vengeance.’

‘Oh really?’ sneered Morkis, levelling his weapon at the Quartermaster General’s head. ‘Then it’ll have to be you!’

Morkis fired, and Ackenvol’s head snapped backwards, a searing hole burned between his eyes. At the very same instant, Lord Kline threw himself forwards, closing the gap before Morkis could bring his pistol to bear on him. Malya saw her chance and depressed the transmission rune, instructing the vox-terminal to send her message.

Kline barrelled into Lord Colonel Morkis, bellowing an incoherent roar of anger and vengeance. The two men crashed to the floor and as one the assembled staff officers sprang backwards. The daemon prince had turned his back on the spectacle and was making for the exit as a shot rang out in the centre of the command chamber. Lord Kline was astride Morkis, his hands gripped around the other’s throat. Lord Colonel Morkis, Malya saw with not a little pleasure, had been throttled to death. But Morkis had unleashed a final blast of his laspistol, blowing Kline’s stomach away, its contents spilling across the lord colonel even as he died.

Then, the body of Lord Kline collapsed atop that of Lord Colonel Morkis. Three dozen terrified faces turned towards Lord Voldorius as he halted at the chamber door and turned to face the command staff.

‘All here have failed me,’ Voldorius growled. His fell gaze swept the entire chamber and then alighted upon Malya. ‘Or betrayed me.’

Malya knew in that moment that she would soon die. She welcomed it. Her soul yearned to flee her body, to be rid of the vile taint of the warp that Voldorius exuded. She shed her despair and stood proud and tall before her tormentor, awaiting the death she knew must be at hand.

Voldorius stepped forwards, his gaze locked upon Malya, his nostrils flaring as he breathed hard.

‘Do it!’ Malya said, feeling suddenly free. She had done her duty, sent the message that would bring about the deliverance of her people. Now, she could die.

Voldorius loomed over Malya, pressing as close as he had to any of the senior officers whose bodies were now scattered across the floor. His face closed on hers, every bestial detail filling her vision. Still, Malya refused to cower, knowing only the grace of the Emperor, at whose table she would soon be seated.

‘Do you believe,’ said Voldorius, his breath a caustic gale in Malya’s face, ‘that I would cast you aside so casually?’

Malya closed her eyes, blocking out the sight of the daemon prince’s terrible visage. She felt Voldorius stir before her, and screwed her eyes tighter shut.

‘Well you may fall silent, equerry’ said Voldorius. ‘But you shall continue to serve. Of that you can be certain.’

Then Malya’s soul was assailed by a tide of force, and she was cast violently to the floor. She could not open her eyes, so powerful was the torrent, which she knew in that moment was the very stuff of Voldorius’s rage and evil pouring from him in palpable waves. Screams echoed around her, accompanied by the sickening crack of splintering bones and the wet impact of chunks of bloody flesh being scattered across the chamber.

She felt her own body being torn in multiple directions at once by the unadulterated evil of Lord Voldorius. But she resisted the onslaught, drawing on impossibly deep wells of faith.

Then all fell silent. Malya found herself prostrate upon a blood-slick floor, panting for breath. She was stunned but to her amazement she was still alive.

Malya opened her eyes to find Lord Voldorius looming over her. She was drenched in blood, her black equerry’s robe tattered and torn to shreds.

A drop of liquid fell upon her face and Malya looked upwards towards the chamber ceiling. It took her eyes a moment to focus, but when they did, Malya realised that the liquid was blood. The entire ceiling was coated in a glistening sheen of crimson. Congealing rivulets dripped down to the floor of the chamber.

Every surface of the command chamber had been turned dark red. She gasped as the full enormity of what had occurred struck her. Aside from the blood, there was no sign of the dozens of staff officers that had occupied the chamber scant moments before. Not even a shard of broken bone remained.

‘Now, equerry, your true service begins’ said Voldorius. ‘You shall know the truth, and it shall set you free.’

‘I will not–’ she began.

‘You have not the choice,’ Voldorius interjected. ‘The Bloodtide refuses to serve, and so you shall do so in its stead.’

Voldorius studied Malya, his eyes narrowing to black slits. His nostrils flared as he breathed and his mouth split into a feral grin, razor-sharp teeth glinting in the red light. ‘The prisoner defied me, and refused to unleash the power of the Bloodtide in my name.’

Malya’s head swam as her mind was filled with frozen, staccato images and fragments of forbidden knowledge. The silver-bodied prisoner treading a landscape of flensed bones. Voldorius as a mortal ordering the prisoner to unleash the Bloodtide. A city drowning as every one of its citizens bled out. The skies above a feral world burning as an entire Imperial Navy Fleet plummeted through the atmosphere. A forge world of the Adeptus Mechanicus, its population dead, but its machineries grinding on for centuries before anyone noticed. Voldorius again, his mortal body changing to his daemonic form as the powers of the warp granted him his reward. The prisoner set within the brass orb that was its cell, to sleep until its powers were restored and the Bloodtide would rise again…

Then the images ceased and realisation came to Malya. ‘The prisoner defies you…’

‘But you,’ said Voldorius, his face lowering to the level of Malya’s, ‘shall not.’

‘No!’

‘You shall take the Bloodtide into you,’ Voldorius pressed. ‘You shall be the contaminator hive, the angelic host. You have shown by your resistance and fortitude that you can withstand the Bloodtide, as I knew when first I saw you in the grand square.’

‘No,’ Malya repeated.

‘Your faith shall be your undoing, Malya L’nor,’ said Voldorius. ‘Within you is a flame that refuses to be quenched. You have burned, but you have not been consumed. And so you prove to me your worthiness to host the Bloodtide!’

‘Now sleep,’ said Voldorius, and Malya’s world grew dark before his fell influence. ‘When you awaken, you shall be mine.’

‘Captain Shrike,’ Techmarine Dyloss called over the roar that filled the interior of the Thunderhawk gunship. ‘Priority transmission, cipher delta delta nine.’

‘You are certain?’ Shrike replied, turning in his grav-couch to look the Techmarine in the eye. Dyloss simply nodded.

‘It’s a transmission from within the city, brother-captain. It’s her.’

The cipher told Shrike that the message was genuine. He had supplied Malya L’nor several different ciphers, so that should she be compelled to betray the Space Marines she could indicate it by her choice of codes without her torturer’s knowledge.

Shrike indicated that the Techmarine should continue.

‘The message indicates that the tertiary gate,’ he looked at a data-slate and went on, ‘gate sigma by our designation, is not fully fortified.’

‘Then that shall be our target,’ said Shrike.

‘There is more, Shadow Captain,’ the Techmarine continued. ‘The prisoner. It is there after all. She has transmitted its location.’

Shrike nodded slowly, before answering. ‘Inform Kor’sarro of gate sigma.’

‘That is all?’ the Techmarine said.

‘That is all,’ Shrike answered. ‘Take us in.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE GATES OF MANKARRA

Kor’sarro sped across the volcanic plain, closing on the towering walls of Mankarra. As the White Scars neared the walls, row upon row of severed heads became visible mounted on spikes along the summit, evidence, if any more were needed, of the evil of Lord Voldorius.

The Master of the Hunt had deployed his force into a classic arrowhead formation with himself and his Command squad at the very tip. Dozens of White Scars bikers were arrayed to either side, and behind them came the armoured vehicles, clouds of black dust thrown up in their wake.

Those squads that had been exfiltrated from the battlefield by Thunderhawk had soon rejoined their bike- and armoured-vehicle-borne brethren, while the Raven Guard’s gunships soared overhead. Both Chapters were closing on a single target – the gate Shrike’s informant had directed them to attack.

The Raven Guard gunships swept overhead and banked as they came into range of the defence towers on either side of the gate. As the distance to the wall decreased the gate’s poor state and lack of maintenance became evident. Lengths of the massive wall had been strengthened by the addition of armour plating and gun positions. Those who enacted the will of Voldorius were ill-schooled in the arts of fortification. Or perhaps they simply lacked the resources and time to fully prepare for the assault that even now descended upon the walls of Mankarra.

The gate was faced in cast bronze and glowed as if aflame as it reflected the orange light of Quintus’s sun. The twenty metre-tall portal displayed a devotional scene, heroic warriors of the Emperor fighting the barbaric greenskins. It was a reminder of the primary role of the planet as a bulwark against the xenos filth that swarmed across nearby systems. It was tragic that the defenders should have been turned to the service of the Great Enemy and must now be laid low by their erstwhile allies.

As the range closed still further, the Raven Guard’s gunships banked as they swept around the defence towers. Las and autocannon fire spat upwards to engage the Thunderhawks. But the gunners were either panicked or so poorly trained and led that few shots came close enough to worry Shrike’s pilots.

‘Thunderheart!’ Kor’sarro called into the vox-net. The siege tank ground forwards, flanked protectively by the brotherhood’s Predator tanks. ‘To the fore!’

Kor’sarro and his Command squad veered to the right and slowed to a halt before the walls. Within moments, the entire arrowhead was arrayed likewise and the armoured vehicles were pushing through the gap in the formation.

With so many gun positions mounted on the walls, Kor’sarro felt terribly exposed in that moment. Even as the feeling sank in, they began to open fire on the now stationary White Scars. ‘Now would be good, Shrike,’ Kor’sarro growled.

As if in answer, the skies overhead erupted as two-dozen hellstrike missiles were unleashed by the Raven Guard’s gunships. The missiles streaked through the air upon churning contrails and slammed into their targets. The summits of both defence towers burst into flame, showering the black plains all around with razor-sharp shards of rockcrete.

‘The beast roars,’ Kor’sarro spoke the command as the Thunderheart approached the mighty bronze gates. Desultory fire spat down upon the siege tank, but without the defence towers there was little the defenders could do to oppose Thunderheart’s approach.

The siege tank ground to a halt almost directly in front of the gate, a storm of small-arms fire erupting against its frontal armour. At such close range, there was little need to even aim the huge cannon mounted in its prow. Another few seconds ground past, and then the cannon roared.

As Thunderheart fired, a great black cloud of dust went up from all around the siege tank. Kor’sarro actually saw the siege shell propelled from the cannon and arcing towards the gates. Instead of velocity, the shell relied on sheer explosive force to penetrate its target, containing a destabilised fusion core that when forced to a critical reaction would destroy almost any target within a highly localised area.

The shell struck the gate and detonated on impact. A ball of orange fire flashed into existence one moment and was gone the next, unleashing a thunderous roar and a blistering wave of heat. Where the shell struck, the gate suffered a near-perfectly circular wound, great runnels of liquefied bronze seeping down its surface and distorting the image of the Emperor’s warriors battling the orks.

Far above, the Raven Guard gunships swooped in for another pass at the defence towers as anti-air defence fire lanced towards them from positions further away. Another dozen hellstrike missiles streaked from their mountings beneath the gunships’ stubby wings, and yet more of the towers were engulfed in flame.

At the same moment that the second salvo of hellstrikes struck the towers, the Thunderheart spoke again. The second siege shell smashed into the gates, the gunner targeting a point lower down than his first shot. Again, the orange ball of nucleonic fire erupted into being and an instant later collapsed in upon itself, leaving a second wound that bled runnels of liquid bronze.

The second attack sent trails of incandescent plasma spitting from the wounds and licking its surface. The battling figures of men and orks melted hideously into one another. The Thunderheart’s mighty cannon lowered still further as the gunner prepared for a third shot.

The next shell struck the lower portion of the gates, which had been so weakened by the preceding impacts that they could not withstand another pounding. Searing nuclear fire erupted at their base, and in an instant the entire bronze structure was vaporised into a rapidly expanding ball of plasma. Impossible energies engulfed the entire portal, and what remained of the two flanking defence towers sagged as rockcrete melted and ran like lava.

Kor’sarro felt the searing heat on his face. He could only imagine what devastation was being wrought upon the defenders stationed behind it and on the walls nearby. Only cinders would mark their passing.

With a grinding crack, the arch above the gateway collapsed, ragged chunks of rockcrete the size of armoured vehicles crashing downwards into the now open portal. For an instant, squat, bunker-like structures and defence towers of the city were visible beyond the gates. But the sight was soon obscured as a vast column of black dust and smoke belched outwards, choking the entire portal and the area before it.

‘White Scars,’ Kor’sarro bellowed. ‘Charge!’ He had no need to use the Chapter’s battle-cant, for no other action was possible. Dozens of engines roared to life as one and the White Scars powered towards the gate.

The defence towers were collapsing even as Kor’sarro bore down on the dust-choked, rubble-strewn portal. The Master of the Hunt judged the rate at which the ruined towers were falling and estimated where they would collapse.

Gritting his teeth, he sped onwards, and as he closed to within fifty metres of the portal, the towers struck the ground, disintegrating with explosive force.

Kor’sarro and his warriors were engulfed in a sea of black dust, but not a single warrior faltered. The entire 3rd Company followed their captain into the churning black cloud in front of the ruined gateway. Visibility was reduced to practically zero and the ground shook with the impact of the towers collapsing. Steering Moondrakkan through the cloud was an impressive feat in itself, one that only a nomad son of the Chogoran steppes could accomplish. Chunks of rockcrete shrapnel the size of fists ricocheted in all directions, some striking the Space Marines, yet still the White Scars rode on. Kor’sarro’s nose and mouth became blocked with dust and he was forced to narrow his eyes to mere slits lest they become clogged so badly that he could not see at all. Still he rode on, leading the brotherhood through the gates of Mankarra, the unerring sense of direction of the Chogoran leading him through.

Moondrakkan’s front wheel struck something jagged, which disintegrated with a sharp crack. Soon the ground beneath the bike’s wheels became uneven, though the smoke and dust was so dense Kor’sarro could not see the surface in front of him.

And then, Kor’sarro was through the darkness and roaring out of the portal. In front of him was the city, every one of its squat buildings resembling an enormous bunker, complete with gun positions, needle-thin observation towers and bristling communications gear. The streets in between the buildings were cast in deep shadow, and with surprise Kor’sarro realised that the sun was already well on its way towards the horizon. The battle had been raging for many hours, but it was far from over.

‘Kor’sarro to all commands,’ the Master of the Hunt said into the vox-net as Moondrakkan prowled onwards. ‘Voldorius defiles the cathedral at the heart of the city. Slay all who oppose you, but leave the vile one for me. His head is mine.’

As the smoke cleared, the ground beneath Moondrakkan’s wheels was revealed as a jagged, broken and uneven mass. Slewing to a halt some fifty metres beyond the portal so that his forces could consolidate, Kor’sarro realised what it was that made the surface so uneven. Every square metre of the ground behind the portal was carpeted in bones, and the air was laced with the taint of burnt meat. The plasma storm touched off by the third of Thunderheart’s siege shells must have engulfed far more than the gate and defence towers. By Kor’sarro’s estimation, an entire battalion of troops – most likely the indentured militia – had been mustered to defend the gates should they be forced.

Over a thousand militia troopers had been incinerated when the plasma storm had been triggered, reduced in seconds to blackened bones. It was no death for a warrior, but at least it would have been mercifully brief. And then a wave of revulsion hit Kor’sarro – the militia were traitors, even if they were pressed into service against their will. Perhaps their incineration was a merciful judgement. Perhaps it was more than they deserved.

Behind Kor’sarro, more White Scars bikers emerged through the churning smoke, the wheels of their mounts ploughing great furrows through the jagged carpet of bones. Then the growling of mighty engines echoed from the portal and the Thunderheart ground forwards, its commander, Brother-Sergeant Kia’kan, visible as he rode in the command cupola. The Master of the Hunt raised an arm, and the siege tank came to a halt not far behind him.

‘My congratulations, brother-sergeant,’ Kor’sarro shouted above the roar of the siege tank’s engines and dozens of idling bikes nearby. ‘Your deeds shall be recounted at the Hall of Skies upon our return to Chogoris.’

The tank commander’s eyes glowed with fierce pride as he brought his right arm across his chest in salute to his khan. ‘My thanks, brother-captain,’ said Kia’kan, grinning as he spoke. ‘I must admit, the final shot was far more impressive than I had anticipated!’

‘Aye,’ said Kor’sarro. ‘The primarch was with us, for sure.’

‘Blessed be his name,’ said the sergeant. ‘What now, my khan?’

‘Now,’ Kor’sarro replied, nodding towards the mighty horde mustering in the distance. ‘We fight.’

As Kor’sarro mustered his brotherhood to strike the gathering defenders of Mankarra, high above the city, Captain Shrike was coordinating an assault of his own. At his order, a dozen Thunderhawk gunships bearing the black and white livery of the Raven Guard banked high over the walls, before each sped off towards its own pre-designated target.

One gunship was tasked with an assault against the city’s central strategium, the huge, armoured structure that housed the planetary militia’s command chamber. Another strafed the city’s primary communications node, unleashing a fusillade of hellstrike missiles that brought the hundred metre-tall mast crashing down upon the buildings below. A third gunship deployed a contingent of Devastator squads equipped with heavy multi-meltas, which they unleashed against the main generatorium. The city’s defences would be forced to rely on secondary sources in the battle against the Space Marines.

Almost every one of the city’s buildings was defended by rooftop gun positions, sporting an array of heavy stubbers and autocannons augmented by the occasional lascannon. The Raven Guard gunships strafed every one as they roared overhead, shredding the exposed gunners in a lethal hail of mass-reactive heavy bolter rounds. The few defenders that survived these attacks were cut down as Raven Guard Assault Marines deployed from the gunships, falling upon the traitors as vengeful angels from heaven. Within minutes, a dozen battles were being fought across the most strategically valuable of the heavily fortified structures. Walkways connecting neighbouring buildings became the scenes of desperate and bloody battle for control of the upper levels.

Each Raven Guard squad was as an army in itself. Fighting within the confines of the fortified buildings, individual Space Marines slaughtered entire platoons of the enemy, for the environment forced the defenders to face them one at a time in a supremely unequal struggle. Even when a Space Marine fell in desperate close quarters battle, he took dozens of the enemy with him. Soon, panic was spreading as garbled pleas for aid drowned out all other traffic on the defenders’ vox-nets. Terror spread until the entire defence stood upon the brink of utter collapse.

Having secured the rooftops of the most important structures, the Raven Guard began their descent. The defenders were trapped between the anvil of the White Scars’ ground assault and the hammer of the Raven Guard’s aerial attacks. The defenders were faced with three, equally lethal options – stand against the terrible vengeance descending from above, leave their fortified positions and face the White Scars, or cower inside the buildings and await their inevitable deaths.

Circling overhead in his command gunship, Captain Shrike coordinated each battle, communicating with his squad sergeants and ensuring that each desperate, bloody skirmish contributed to the success of the whole. Squads were redeployed with masterful tactical awareness, specialists despatched to where they were needed the most, and ammunition levels constantly monitored and balanced. Throughout it all, Shrike kept his force’s most lethal weapon – himself – in reserve, ever vigilant for the moment when he and his Command squad would be needed to turn the tide of battle. As Shrike looked down from his gunship’s cockpit, he caught sight of the White Scars as they closed upon the mighty horde beyond the gate, and knew that moment would soon come.

The White Scars’ charge against the massed horde was not led by Kor’sarro’s bikers but, due to the narrow space between the buildings, by the Predator battle tanks. Though not as fast or manoeuvrable as the bike squads, the tanks were equipped with a fearsome array of anti-personnel weapons, which they unleashed in a storm of mass-reactive rounds as they advanced forwards across the bone-strewn ground.

The horde of militia troopers the White Scars charged towards were being pushed forwards by some agency Kor’sarro could not yet discern. Though not so numerous as the horde the Space Marines had encountered on the plains in front of the defence installation, this group still outnumbered the Space Marines by scores to one.

The Predators set about evening those odds.

As the tanks opened fire, the entire front rank of the horde simply evaporated. Those struck in the torso exploded, their ragged limbs arcing high into the air. Within seconds, scores of the traitor militia were dead, reduced to chunks of steaming meat scattered about the ground or splattered across their compatriots. Yet amazingly, the horde did not falter, but surged forwards to meet the White Scars head on.

With a near deafening roar that seemed to Kor’sarro equal parts despair and rage, several thousand militia troopers pressed forwards, running into the fusillade of shells that filled the air between them and the Predators. Spent shells poured from the tanks’ ejection ports in a constant stream as dozens of rounds were expended every second.

Kor’sarro had witnessed even warlike orks fall back in the face of such a barrage. He had known tyranid bio-organisms, bred for nothing but war, to falter against such a weight of firepower. He had seen only two types of foe continue forwards against such odds. On the third moon of Woebetide, whilst serving as a Scout many decades before, he had faced an Enslaver plague, and watched as ten thousand mind-slaved meat puppets, each formally a stoic Cadian shock trooper, were compelled by their alien masters to cross a minefield a hundred kilometres deep into the combined fire of the White Scars, Red Hunters and Celestial Lions Chapters. The other occasion had been on Delta Arbuthnot, when a potent, alpha-level psyker had forced an entire planetary population of ratling agri-serfs to rise up against the landowners in an orgy of bloodshed, even though they were armed with no more than shovels and their foes with automatic weapons.

Without a doubt, Quintus was irredeemably under the heel of the Ruinous Powers. The insidious taint of the warp was everywhere, even in the air itself. Voldorius must have supplanted the government generations earlier, and only revealed his hand when Kor’sarro’s hunt had run him to ground and left him nowhere else to hide. The militia troopers must have been born into the service of Chaos, and raised with its yoke around their neck, even if they had no idea of the true identity of their leaders. What a rare thing true faith must be in such a place, for surely it must have been stamped out the moment it was discovered.

The tide of the militia ploughed on, the troopers treading the bodies of their fallen companions into the ground as they ran. Part of Kor’sarro came to believe that the spectacle before him was mass suicide, the unwilling traitors martyring themselves upon the White Scars’ guns that their treachery and their suffering might be ended. Perhaps Quintus might not be worth saving at all once this all was over. Should he survive to claim the head of Voldorius, Kor’sarro might order the Lord of Heavens to annihilate Mankarra and the other cities, cleansing the world of the taint of Chaos once and for all.

The first wave of the traitors hit the White Scars’ lines. The last dozen or so metres saw nine out of every ten militia troopers gunned down, but when the survivors got to within a few metres of the tanks’ weapons, the crew could no longer pick out their targets. The militia scrambled up the Predators’ hulls to assail the armoured vehicles with whatever weapons they had to hand, from grenades and guns to fists and clubs.

‘Kergis!’ Kor’sarro motioned the company champion forwards as a wave of militia swarmed up the front of the Predators. Kergis bounded onto the rear deck of the nearest vehicle. In an instant, the champion was face to face with a militia sergeant who was desperately trying to pry open the turret hatch with an improvised crowbar. The two leaders sized one another up. Then a chainsword flashed, and the two halves of the traitor sergeant’s body fell to the ground on either side of the tank.

A dozen more of the troopers clawed their way up the tank’s frontal glacis plate. One was firing an autopistol at point-blank range into the driver’s vision block, emptying an entire magazine in a couple of seconds. The act had little effect, for the driver’s sights were constructed of thick armoured glass, made to stand up to far stronger attacks. Another trooper was ramming a grenade into one of the four exhaust units on the side of the vehicle, an action that could feasibly damage the tank’s engine systems. Kergis drew his bolt pistol, and exploded the man’s head with a single, almost point-blank shot.

The troopers died as more of Kor’sarro’s warriors opened fire. Sparks flew as bolter rounds exploded or ricocheted from the armour after ripping devastatingly through traitor flesh. The vehicle’s white livery ran red with the blood of the enemy, and no militia troopers were left alive within twenty metres. Along the line the other Predators were likewise cleared of the enemy, freeing the tanks to concentrate their own fire on the horde of traitors still surging forwards.

In seconds, no more traitors remained. The ground in front of the White Scars was a charnel plain of broken and shattered bodies. The sudden cessation of shouting and gunfire was almost shocking, allowing the other sounds of the war-torn city to press in. From overhead came the roar of a Thunderhawk’s mighty engines, and still more of the gunships could be heard further out. Explosions spoke of hellstrike missiles pummelling their targets from afar, while the sharp crack of boltgun fire told of the rooftop battles the Raven Guard were even now winning.

The route ahead would not remain clear of enemies for long, and the brotherhood was soon under way again. As before, the Predators led the way, their turrets scanning back and forth. The force passed the area strewn with the blackened bones of the enemies caught in the plasma fires unleashed when the gate fell. Soon, however, the White Scars found the ground so covered with the remains of those gunned down by the Predators that the tanks had to grind a path through the bodies which the bikers and other units followed. Kor’sarro had witnessed many grisly sights throughout his years of service, but riding through a mire of blood and body parts was amongst the more unpleasant.

Finally, the ground up ahead cleared of corpses and the force spread out. Consulting Moondrakkan’s command terminal, Kor’sarro oriented himself with his objective, the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom, where Shrike’s contact had suggested Voldorius and his mysterious prisoner were waiting.

The terminal displayed a two-dimensional map of this part of the city. Up ahead lay a large, open area labelled as the grand square. Kor’sarro ordered the bike squads to press on towards it at full speed. The slower Predators and other vehicles followed up behind dealing with any serious resistance using their heavy weapons.

Soon, the force was closing on the grand square. A sturdy barricade had been erected at the end of the street and the White Scars prepared to engage more militia troopers. But the barricade was facing in the wrong direction, not defending the grand square against attackers approaching along the street, but to contain a foe in the square itself. Furthermore, the barricade was entirely unmanned, even in the midst of the battle that now embroiled the whole of Mankarra.

The lead Predator slowed in its progress, and its commander emerged from the turret hatch. Kor’sarro brought Moondrakkan alongside the tank, and shouted up to the other warrior. ‘Clear the way, brother-sergeant, then spread out.’

The tank commander saluted his khan before voxing the order to his crew. A moment later, the turret-mounted autocannon opened fire, round after round exploding across the armoured barricade until its entire structure disintegrated into fragments of twisted metal. The lead tank prowled forwards and ground slowly over the remains of the barricade, making a path for the remainder of the force.

Kor’sarro allowed the other armoured vehicles to pass through the ruined barricade and spread out into the grand square before he led the bike squads through. As soon as he entered the square, Kor’sarro brought Moondrakkan to a halt as a scene of utter devastation confronted him.

The grand square covered a massive area, and was surrounded on all sides by the bunker-like structures that dominated the city. But what drew Kor’sarro’s gaze were the hundreds of thousands of corpses strewn across the entire square. This whole city appeared at that moment to be populated by the dead, or in the case of the militia, the soon to be dead. Anger rose within Kor’sarro, mingled with hatred of Lord Voldorius. The reign of the daemon prince had to end, he swore, and this entire place had to be cleansed, so utterly had it fallen to death and devastation.

If passing along a street of recently slain traitors had been disgusting enough, then the sight before Kor’sarro was far worse. The corpses that were scattered across the grand square were not those of soldiers, but of ordinary citizens. It was evident that these people had been made an example of, and simply left to rot as a dire message to their survivors.

‘This goes further than mere slaughter,’ Qan’karro said flatly. His voice was choked with a disgust that, if possible, exceeded Kor’sarro’s. ‘He did this not just as an example.’

‘Explain please, old friend,’ replied the Master of the Hunt.

‘He did this to gain power. To reap the souls of the innocent, and to offer them up to the Great Enemy.’

Kor’sarro looked out across the sea of twisted corpses, righteous anger seething inside. ‘To what end?’

‘That I can only guess at, huntsman. The vile one is gifted of great power, of that we can be sure.’

‘And this… atrocity… fuels that power still further?

‘Aye. It lends him strength, and gains him favour. Dwell no more upon it, Kor’sarro. Leave such things to the Storm Seers.’

Kor’sarro looked into the eyes of the man who was his old friend and his most valued counsellor, and nodded his understanding. ‘The wise man knows the limits of his knowledge.’

Qan’karro’s leathery features were split by a rare smile at Kor’sarro’s recounting of ancient Chogoran wisdom. ‘Indeed he does,’ replied the Storm Seer. ‘And you will know,’ he continued, ‘when the time comes.’

‘Then let that time be soon,’ said Kor’sarro, gunning Moondrakkan’s engines. ‘Let us hasten to end this.’

At Kor’sarro’s signal, the brotherhood pressed outwards into the grand square. The corpses were not so densely packed as the slaughtered militia had been in the street leading to the grand square, so he was not forced to ride over their pulped remains. The stink of decay, however, was all but overpowering, even for a veteran of a thousand battlefields and sieges.

Gaining speed, Kor’sarro led his bike squads out towards the centre of the grand square, leaving the Predators and other armoured vehicles to carry on behind. As he passed by clusters of bodies, he judged that the slaughter had taken place several weeks before, and turned his gaze away in revulsion.

Then, he looked back to one particular pile of corpses, having thought he had noticed movement there. He sneered as he imagined the local scavengers crawling over the bodies, and cursed Voldorius all the more for bringing such a thing about.

As the bikers roared onwards towards the far side of the square and the road that would lead them towards their objective, more furtive movement stirred amongst the piles of corpses. Kor’sarro knew they must be crawling with vermin, but he was reminded of an especially morbid Chogoran legend that warned that improperly buried corpses might somehow rise again to slay the living. He cast the notion from his mind – he had witnessed many vile blasphemies in his time, but surely such a thing was beyond even the power of Chaos?

The White Scars were three quarters of the way across the grand square, weaving around pile after pile of decaying corpses, when a figure rose up before him.

Kor’sarro had no time to manoeuvre around whoever, or whatever, it was that blocked his path. Instead, he gritted his teeth and ploughed on, crushing the figure beneath Moondrakkan’s wheels with a sickening crunch.

In the instant before the impact, Kor’sarro had briefly seen a twisted face set into a hateful, gargoyle-like leer. The legends of Chogoris came fully to mind, and then as one, a hundred other figures arose from the piles of corpses all about.

Kor’sarro slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt. A moment later, his bike squads had done likewise. Sixty Space Marine riders formed up into a laager, Kor’sarro and his Command squad in the centre.

A circle of ragged figures stood amongst the corpses. Each was impossibly emaciated and clad in filth-encrusted rags. The eyes were expressionless pits and their mouths dripped gore, which streamed down their fronts. The bodies of many were twisted and contorted, while others had overlong arms that ended in serrated claws encrusted with long-dried blood.

‘Carrion-eaters,’ spat Brother Kergis.

‘Mutant filth,’ said Kor’sarro.

‘I thought for a moment they were–’ continued Kergis.

‘Aye,’ interjected Kor’sarro. ‘I too. But they are living, and so can be killed.’

‘Brothers!’ Kor’sarro called out to his assembled warriors, checking the ammunition levels of the twin bolters mounted in Moondrakkan’s fairing. ‘We have no time to waste here!’

As one, every engine in the company roared to full power and the White Scars brought their bikes around to align themselves with Kor’sarro and the banner of the 3rd that waved beside him. Even as the bikes roared, still more of the mutant cannibals arose from their vile lairs amidst the rotting bodies, until they pressed in from every quarter.

The mutants were unarmed, but would clearly present a threat, for many sported wickedly sharp talons that could only be the work of some vile biomancer. The bodies of others were covered in distended spines and barbs. While Kor’sarro had initially taken their bodies for malnourished and emaciated, on closer inspection each mutant was possessed of a wiry frame, with whipcord muscles that would grant them blinding speed in battle.

Moondrakkan leapt forwards and Kor’sarro thundered down on the mutant horde, his warriors close behind. As the range closed a Thunderhawk gunship swooped low overhead and opened fire on the outer edges of the horde. He sent up a silent word of thanks for the timely fire support, and knew too that the Predators the bikers had left at the edge of the grand square would not be far behind.

Every twin bolter in the force opened fire as the charge closed. Dozens of the mutants were struck down, but Kor’sarro noted that many more were somehow able to weather the storm of mass-reactive death. He had no time to wonder what sorcery had made their skins as hard as iron.

Kor’sarro found himself surrounded by the vile mutants. Though the face of each was slack and vacant, their bodies moved with lightning speed. Even as the Master of the Hunt raised Moonfang high, a barbed talon swept towards his face before he had even seen it coming. Kor’sarro only barely managed to duck in time, yet still the talon scored a deep cut along his shoulder plate. In that brief moment, he knew that the power of the warp animated these hideous walking blasphemies.

Kor’sarro brought Moonfang down to take the head of the mutant that had struck him, but somehow the vile creature leapt backwards beyond his attack, and then darted inside his reach. The mutant’s next attack would be aimed at his exposed torso, and Kor’sarro reacted by instinct, twisting his body around so that the impossibly sharp talon struck only a glancing blow.

He had avoided the full force of the mutant’s strike, but Kor’sarro immediately bit back a curse as he felt the claw penetrate his armour and gouge a raking wound across his chest. Had he not twisted his body at the last possible moment, the talons would have punched directly through his chest armour and, in all probability, through the other side.

The mutant was fast and strong, but it was not nearly as skilled a combatant as the Master of the Hunt. His enemy had overstretched itself, allowing Kor’sarro to bring Moonfang down in a great sweep that severed the mutant’s head in an explosive shower of black blood.

Even as the mutant’s body collapsed to the ground, more pressed in from all sides. Kor’sarro knew that to become bogged down amongst them would be to invite a meaningless death, for he had a far greater mission to perform than to slay these fell deviants.

‘Ride through!’ Kor’sarro bellowed, opening Moondrakkan’s throttle and powering forwards. A dozen mutants were crushed beneath his mount’s wheels, and more died as Moonfang slashed and cleaved in every direction. It was crude, bloody work, and Kor’sarro’s armour was cut in a dozen places and his cloak torn almost to shreds by the time he had broken through the mutant’s ragged line.

Kor’sarro’s warriors followed his example, powering their way through the press of mutants until the last of the White Scars bikers burst forth from the swirling melee.

At least three of Kor’sarro’s warriors had fallen to the mutants. He bellowed in rage as the vile creatures descended upon the white-armoured bodies, ripping the noble sons of Chogoris asunder and biting deep into their flesh. It appeared in that instant that the mutants were so absorbed in their feeding frenzy that they had forgotten about the rest of the White Scars.

Kor’sarro checked the ammunition levels of his bike-mounted boltguns. They were dangerously low. He longed to pump every last round into the mutants, but he could spare neither the ammunition nor the time were he to face his ultimate foe, Voldorius.

The air was split by a sonic boom and a Raven Guard Thunderhawk swooped in low.

‘Give our brothers space!’ Kor’sarro bellowed, and the White Scars roared forwards and within thirty seconds were closing on the far side of the grand square.

The gunship unleashed a salvo of missiles directly into the mass of mutant cannibals. Kor’sarro said a silent prayer for his fallen brethren, hoping they would be consoled by the fact that their bodies and wargear would be reduced to ashes and defiled no more.

Then the missiles struck, great explosions erupting across the centre of the grand square. Mutant body parts were thrown high into the air, their broken corpses mingling with those they had preyed upon. The gunship streaked onwards towards Kor’sarro’s position, and as it passed directly overhead, a number of black-armoured forms leapt from an open hatch and descended upon screaming jets to land on the ground near the Master of the Hunt.

It was Captain Shrike and his Command squad. Before the squad had entirely touched down, Shrike was ordering the gunship to return for a second pass, to ensure that not a single one of the horrific creatures could possibly have survived.

‘Brother-Captain Kayvaan Shrike,’ Kor’sarro addressed his compatriot. ‘Much has been settled this day already,’ he continued, referring to the many frictions that existed between the two Chapters. ‘Yet as far as my rank allows, I cast all debts aside.’

Shrike reached up and removed his helmet. ‘Never mind that, brother-captain.’

Kor’sarro regretted his words the moment Shrike gave his reply, and was on the verge of unleashing a torrent of invective when Shrike pressed on. ‘My forces have located the prisoner the contact mentioned. I am assembling a detachment to kill that prisoner.’

Kor’sarro’s wrath was forgotten as soon as it had appeared, as is the way of all Chogorans. ‘Where?’

Shrike paused as the shockwave of his gunship’s second attack run struck the Space Marines, causing his long black hair to whip across his pale face. Then he continued. ‘A detention cell, adjacent to the subterranean cathedral.’

Kor’sarro’s mind raced. He had no idea who this prisoner was, but if they were as valuable to Voldorius as Shrike’s contact insisted, then the matter should be investigated. And besides, Shrike appeared as keen to eliminate the prisoner as Kor’sarro was to slay the daemon prince. His gaze fell across the square, where he saw that the 3rd Company’s armoured column approaching. His eyes alighted upon one of the Rhino transports.

‘Kholka,’ he muttered.

‘Brother-captain?’ Shrike replied.

‘Scout-Sergeant Ultas Kholka, Raven Guard,’ Kor’sarro grinned slyly as he replied. ‘The man who detected your presence at the landing site.’

‘Only barely…’ Shrike replied. ‘But I’m sending my own men in. We don’t need help.’

Kor’sarro pressed on. ‘Kholka could penetrate the detention cells,’ he continued. ‘And free or slay the prisoner, according to his judgement.’

‘I am sending my own men in,’ Shrike repeated.

‘You said yourself, brother-captain. Kholka is good.’

Kor’sarro felt the eyes of another upon him and saw that the Storm Seer Qan’karro was approaching, the Chaplain Xia’ghan at his side. The two had just dismounted from their Rhino transport, and behind them Scout-Sergeant Kholka was doing likewise. Though the Storm Seer could not possibly have overheard the exchange between the two company captains, both saw the message in his eyes. It was unmistakable.

‘Your Scouts go in,’ Shrike said darkly. ‘But my man goes too.’

‘Agreed, brother-captain,’ Kor’sarro replied.

‘Brother Meleriex and two others shall accompany your Scouts,’ said Shrike, turning to one of the members of his Command squad and nodding. ‘Meleriex is my nominated second, and he speaks with my voice. He knows what to do.’

‘Then let it be so,’ Kor’sarro replied, holding out his hand towards the Raven Guard captain. The two grasped forearms in the manner of the warrior common amongst such men the length and breadth of the galaxy. ‘Let it be so,’ Shrike repeated, both men turning as Sergeant Kholka and his Scouts approached.

‘It will submit to the process,’ the red-hooded, renegade tech-priest hissed, his voice dry and coldly mechanical. ‘Or it shall undergo the nerve-shrive. Again.’

Malya kicked hard as one of the servitors attempted to clamp a steel surgical restraint around her right ankle. The kick struck the mind-scrubbed mono-task square in the forehead, but it barely registered the impact at all, merely grasping for her leg in an attempt to keep her still.

‘Then it shall undergo the tenth degree,’ the tech-priest rasped.

‘No!’ Malya screamed, not in an effort to beg the tech-priest not to inflict any more pain upon her body, but to steel herself against the inevitable. The tech-priest was working the dials and levers of a tall bank of humming machinery. His fingers were twice as long as they should have been and had twice the normal number of joints. He worked a large dial, turning it up to the penultimate setting.

‘Yes…’ said the tech-priest, and pulled down hard on a long, brass switch.

Malya’s body arched upwards from the steel table she was clamped to by all but her right ankle. Every nerve in her body fired as one, stimulated by the dozens of probes and lines which the vile traitor had inserted under her skin. For an instant, she knew such all-consuming pain that she felt her very soul part with her body. She was not there. She was somewhere else. Somewhere near the Emperor.

‘Perhaps it should undergo the eleventh degree…’ the renegade muttered to himself as he worked more dials and levers.

Malya lay panting, her body slick with sweat. Before she could recover her senses the servitor had taken hold of her ankle and clamped the steel restraint around it. She did not care. She had glimpsed something, known something pure. The pain had cleansed her, brought her closer to the God-Emperor, and nothing that Voldorius’s biomancer could do could take that away from her.

‘Damage her,’ a deep voice growled out of the darkness of the chamber, ‘and it shall be you who undergoes the eleventh degree.’ The voice was that of Lord Voldorius, and it tore Malya from the state of purity she had entered, reminding her of the daemon prince’s vile intentions.

‘The nerve-shrive is incapable of inflicting tissue damage, my lord.’ The tech-priest bowed as he spoke. ‘The effect is entirely neurological.’

‘Speak no more.’ Voldorius growled as he loomed out of the darkness. The rogue tech-priest fell silent.

‘Malya L’nor,’ said Voldorius as his bestial face appeared above her. ‘You are about to receive a rare honour indeed.’

‘Keep it,’ Malya spat. All fear was gone from her now, replaced by a state of grace. The Emperor would protect her soul, even should she die at the hands of this vile servant of the Great Enemy.

The daemon prince studied Malya for a moment, his eyes narrowing as if he sought to peer deep into her very soul. His breath huffed across her face, the taint of brimstone threatening to choke her. Then he stepped back, and growled an order.

A group of robed servants entered the chamber and took position in the shadows behind Voldorius. She knew from her previous duties as his equerry that they were his acolytes. Their role was to invoke the vile powers which gave Voldorius his potency, by twisted worship, incantations and blasphemies.

As the bowing acolytes gathered behind their master, a sonorous, atonal chanting started up. Though Malya could not understand the words, she knew beyond doubt that they invoked dark names that should never be spoken. Dread welled up inside her, but she clung on to her faith, drawing upon the grace she knew resided deep inside.

Voldorius chuckled. ‘Even now, you resist me,’ he said. ‘And it is that strength that shall allow you to withstand the gift you are soon to receive. I knew from the moment you entered the grand square that you alone of the ten thousand gathered there had the strength to resist being consumed by the Bloodtide…’

‘I shall not serve you,’ Malya insisted, feeling the grace she had felt earlier returning. Her voice became gentle as she went on. ‘Nothing you can do to me shall make me acquiesce.’

‘I do not require your subservience, Malya L’nor,’ replied Voldorius, ‘for I have the power to control you utterly. I require only your survival, that your soul is not consumed by the awakened will of the Bloodtide.’

Malya’s head sank to the steel surface and she closed her eyes. Was this how it felt to the Emperor’s martyrs, she wondered, as they gave themselves up to death in His name? Drawing her shield of grace around her, Malya forced her breathing to slow, to find that place of purity once more.

Then a deep rumble passed through the chamber and Malya felt dust fall down from the ceiling. She kept her eyes closed, extending her senses outwards. The chanting of Voldorius’s acolytes faltered a moment, and then continued as before.

‘Is she ready to be moved?’ Malya heard Voldorius ask. ‘Speak!’

‘It is ready, my lord,’ the renegade tech-priest replied from somewhere behind Malya. ‘Do you have the… the vial?’ Malya sensed something akin to awe in the voice of the rogue adept, and she slowly opened her eyes to see what he referred to.

Voldorius had one gnarled claw held in front of him, and in it was a clear, glass vial. A silvery light was emanating from the small container. Malya had seen that light before, what seemed like weeks ago. She had seen it in the cell of the prisoner, radiating from its shifting body. And here was that same radiance, somehow contained within the small clear container held between the talons of a daemon.

‘This is sufficient quantity?’ asked Voldorius.

The tech-priest bowed deep, but mechanical eyes squinted upwards from the depths of his hood as he gazed covetously at the vial. ‘Oh yes, my lord,’ said the renegade. ‘That vial contains… one hundred and twenty-seven million… three hundred and thirty-three thousand… and… two viable nanytes. Such a sample could infect billions of hosts if efficiently distributed, my lord.’

‘If they can penetrate power armour,’ Voldorius growled absently.

‘Even if they cannot, my lord,’ answered the tech-priest, ‘not all of your foes take full precautions.’

Voldorius studied the contents of the vial for several long moments, during which another tremor passed through the chamber and more dust fell down on Malya’s face, causing her to blink and tears to swell in her eyes. ‘That much is true, tech-priest.

‘Take her to the cathedral.’

‘What?’ Malya breathed, looking up sharply. ‘Why would you…’

‘Are you ashamed?’ said Voldorius, his voice grating and loud in the dark, enclosed chamber. ‘Why would you not desire your moment of transcendence to take place before the representation of your Emperor?’

‘Why?’ Malya repeated.

‘Because all of this,’ Voldorius indicated with a sweep of the arm not holding the vial, ‘is as naught compared to the glory of Chaos! Such things must be done correctly.’ Voldorius leaned in close to Malya. ‘There are certain processes that have so much more… gravitas, when performed in such places.’

‘Blasphemer…’ Malya sobbed, despair threatening to overwhelm her. She had always known she would not survive the horrors unleashed upon Quintus, but to be used like this… She cared nothing for her own life, but that it might be claimed in the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom, before the mighty statue of the Lord of Mankind, was an unspeakable cruelty before which the last of her strength crumbled away.

She clamped her eyes shut as the surgical table beneath her was wheeled out of the chamber, hot tears streaming down her face. The acolytes’ atonal plainsong increased in volume until it threatened to overwhelm her with the echoed wails of uncounted damned souls writhing in eternal suffering in the depths of the warp…

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BLOODTIDE RISING

‘Where is it?’ the Raven Guard Meleriex asked Sergeant Kholka as the infiltration group stalked along a cramped alleyway between two of Mankarra’s massive, bunker-like buildings.

Kholka halted as he came to the end of the narrow alley, and nodded out towards a wide, flat expanse of marble that gleamed orange as Quintus’s setting sun cast the last of its rays across the city. ‘It’s there, brother.’

The Raven Guard’s dark eyes narrowed as he scanned the area. After a moment, realisation dawned. ‘The marble forms the aquila,’ he remarked. ‘The Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom is below?’

‘Yes, brother, it is,’ Kholka replied. ‘And so too is the holding cell, or so your captain informs us.’

Meleriex looked back to face Kholka. ‘The contact tells the truth, brother-sergeant. Of that I am certain. But how do we gain access?’

‘We follow them,’ replied Kholka, nodding to indicate a line of black-robed figures that hurried across the marble flagstones to an armoured portal set in a bunker not far from the Space Marines’ position. ‘We need only gain access to the underground complex, by which all of these buildings around us are joined. Once we are in the subterranean levels, we can locate the holding cell.’

‘Understood,’ the Raven Guard replied. Both warriors ducked back into the alleyway as the line of robed figures approached. Meleriex activated his lightning claws, and whispered to Kholka, ‘My kill.’

The Scout-sergeant could not help but grin. He had as much cause as any in the Chapter to be suspicious of the Raven Guard, but this brother appeared more willing than most to work alongside others. Perhaps that was the reason Captain Shrike had attached him to the infiltration group.

‘Your kill,’ replied Kholka. He had no doubt that Meleriex would be able to slaughter the entire group in seconds, and without the need to expend ammunition. ‘Make it quick though, brother.’

Kholka leaned around the edge of the wall and saw that the monkish figures were now only twenty metres away. The man at the front was activating the controls that would open the armoured portal. The sergeant waited a moment, ensuring that the enemy had fully unlocked the portal, before he nodded towards the Raven Guard warrior.

Meleriex darted out from the alleyway. His black armour was barely visible amongst the long shadows cast by the squat buildings all about. None of the hooded, black-robed enemies saw him coming at all. Three died in seconds to lethal stabs of Meleriex’s flashing lightning claws. The remainder were frozen rigid by the sudden explosion of violence. The Raven Guard attacked out of the setting sun, and none saw more than a silhouetted angel of death moving amongst them, dispensing death with every gesture.

Within ten seconds, only one of the figures remained, and he had only survived that long because he had bolted instead of freezing in shock when the Raven Guard had struck. Unfortunately for him, he had fled towards the wrongly imagined safety of the alleyway and ran straight into the waiting White Scars Scouts.

As the robed figure bounded towards them, Kholka reached out an arm and hooked his elbow around the man’s neck. In a savage motion, Kholka slammed the enemy into the rockcrete wall, pushing his face right into its surface.

Ensuring the man was restrained, Kholka reached up his free hand and yanked the hood down to reveal the captive’s face, his cheek pressed into the wall. That face was a mask of bitter hatred, teeth gritted and eyes alight with frenzied anger. A swirling pattern of crudely applied tattoos was etched across his face and bald scalp, denoting the vile pacts he had undoubtedly made with the Ruinous Powers.

Upon seeing those symbols, Kholka drew his combat knife and pressed its monomolecular tip to the man’s jugular. ‘Tell me the location of the holding cells,’ he spat, ‘and I shall grant you a far quicker death than you deserve.’

The man’s eyes flashed and his mouth twisted into a feral snarl. ‘I’ll tell you nothing…’

Kholka pressed the tip of his knife into the man’s neck, drawing a thin swelling of blood around it. ‘Where is it? One last chance.’

‘Give me death,’ the man growled. ‘I welcome it, for I shall become so much more…’

Disgust welling up inside him, Kholka prepared to end the man’s life with a thrust of his combat knife. Then Brother Meleriex appeared next to him, and placed a restraining hand upon his arm. ‘Let me, sergeant.’

Kholka paused, turning to meet the other’s steely gaze. ‘Much slaughter awaits us yet, Raven Guard.’

Meleriex held Kholka’s gaze a moment longer before replying, ‘That is not my meaning, brother-sergeant.’

Then understanding dawned and Kholka stepped back, allowing the Raven Guard to take control of the prisoner. ‘Make it quick.’

Not wishing to witness what would happen next, Sergeant Kholka strode to the mouth of the alleyway. He was on the verge of barking an order to his Scouts when he saw that they had pre-empted the need and were even now dragging the bodies of the dead traitors away from the open portal and secreting them in the shadows of the alley. Despite the bitter taste in his mouth, he felt a fierce pride in the fieldcraft his charges were displaying.

Scout Borchu was rolling a body into the shadows nearby. It was clear to see that Brother Meleriex had been supremely efficient in the application of his deathblows, punching with his lightning claws rather than slashing. The wounds were lethal, but had not torn the bodies asunder, thus allowing the Space Marines to drag them away without spilling blood and scattering body parts across the kill-zone.

A muffled cry sounded from further back in the shadowed alleyway, followed by a dry crack and the sound of a body hitting the black, rocky ground. Kholka did not turn, but waited until Brother Meleriex came to stand at his side.

‘The portal leads down to a sub-level junction. There we proceed along tunnel two seven zero until we reach the holding cells.’

Kholka turned to look the other Space Marine in the eye. ‘You are sure?’

‘I am sure,’ Meleriex replied.

Suppressing his revulsion, Kholka made to gather his charges in preparation for the infiltration. There were certain lessons he would not be teaching them.

Malya stared straight upwards and wished that she could clamp her hands to her ears to shut out the hellish chanting of the acolytes that were gathered around the table to which she was still clamped. She had been removed from the chamber, and taken in blasphemous procession along the dark passageways to the subterranean Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom.

Soaring far above Malya, the vaults of the cathedral were almost lost in shadow. The horrific, batlike imps flitted to and fro, swooping down towards her before darting off at speed emitting a vile shriek that was disturbingly close to the mocking laughter of an especially vindictive child. The surgical table had been placed before the mighty statue of the Emperor Triumphant, which towered twenty metres into the incense-laced air.

At first Malya had drawn strength from the magnificent sight, but had soon noted the terrible descration of the statue. The vile imps had deposited vast amounts of guano upon the Emperor’s holy countenance, great white stripes of the stuff streaked across His noble face. Even worse, the servants of Voldorius had daubed vile runes that seared the eye when looked upon all across the statue’s flanks. The sight brought crushing sadness to Malya’s heart despite her own predicament.

Yet, despite the injuries done to the towering statue of the Emperor of All Mankind, it was still possessed of some indefinable glory that no amount of damage short of its complete destruction could spoil.

‘The cohort shall muster!’ the voice of the daemon prince boomed out from somewhere outside of Malya’s field of vision, its vile notes echoing down the nave and repeating over and over again. In response, dozens of armoured boots struck the ground. The remainder of Voldorius’s Alpha Legion warriors were gathering in the cathedral to witness their master’s final blasphemy.

‘The Emperor’s deluded slaves descend even now!’ Voldorius growled, his voice filling the entire space of the cathedral. ‘He who hunts has slain my champion, but he shall soon hunt no more!’

A hundred and more voices roared their assent, their words modulated by the grilles of their baroque masks. Even as the roars faded to echoes, the distant sound of an explosion ground through the rock and Malya knew that the Space Marines were closing on their foes.

She dared not believe that she would be rescued. She clung instead to the thought that Lord Voldorius would soon be brought to judgement, even should she herself not live to witness it.

‘What was that?’ Telluk hissed as the group proceeded along the pipe-choked tunnel. A deep tremor had caused the pipes to twist and their metal to screech as dust descended from the stone ceiling above.

Kholka reached to his vox-bead and pressed it into his ear. He concentrated for a moment but could discern very little, for the metal and stone all around interfered with the signal. ‘Ordnance. Ours I would hope,’ he replied. ‘Concentrate on the task at hand, neophyte,’ he continued, hefting his boltgun. ‘Gharn, the hunter’s arrow. Proceed.’

The group resumed its advance along the dark passageway, neophyte Gharn moving forwards to take the lead position. The tunnel, which the captive had indicated would lead to the holding cells, was straight and narrow, forcing the squad to form what was a vulnerable formation given their light arms and armour. Kholka was grateful that they had the Raven Guard with them, for their superior armour and specialised close-combat armament would prove highly effective should they encounter an enemy in the tunnels.

‘It was not ours, brother-sergeant,’ said the Raven Guard at Kholka’s side, his voice low. ‘I have been monitoring the vox-net too.’

‘I know it was not,’ Kholka growled, before continuing. ‘What have you been able to pick up?’

‘The enemy’s flagship is firing on the city.’

Utter madness, Kholka thought, but not entirely unexpected given the nature of the enemy. If Voldorius believed he could destroy the Space Marines with an orbital bombardment far more efficiently than his ground troops could, then he would do so, regardless of how many of his own he killed in the process. He only regretted that Lord of Heavens was too far out to intervene. The White Scars had initiated their attack a great distance from Quintus in order that the world’s defence grid would not detect their approach.

‘Do you have two-way contact?’ asked Kholka. He himself had been unable to raise any of his brothers. Perhaps the Raven Guard had experienced more luck.

‘Only sporadically, brother-sergeant,’ said Meleriex. ‘I could use my fusion core to boost the signal, but that might compromise our mission.’

Indeed, thought Kholka. Such a transmission might be the group’s last. ‘Only if we truly have need, brother,’ he said. ‘Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ the Raven Guard replied, before halting at a sign of activity further along the tunnel. Scout Gharn had stopped where the tunnel opened up into a larger chamber. The others had assumed covering positions nearby, melting into the shadows and utilising what little cover the protruding pipes and conduits afforded.

Kholka halted too, his eyes trained on a pool of light in the centre of the chamber. He raised his boltgun and slowly made his way forwards past the neophytes, to squat next to the lead Scout.

‘The silvered moon enshrouds the hunted,’ Gharn whispered, not taking his eyes from the chamber. The youth had no need to use the Chapter’s battle-cant now, Kholka thought, but it was a good habit to cultivate. He looked out into the chamber, most of which was dominated by dormant machinery and twisting pipes. Only a single light source illuminated the space, a circle of wan light cast into the centre.

Kholka’s glance took all this in within the span of seconds, before he looked to the area the Scout had indicated using the White Scars’ battle-cant. At the far edge of the pool of light he saw a pair of sturdy, rubber-soled boots, the rest of the body hidden in shadow. A deep red stain spread slowly outwards into the light.

‘Wait here,’ Kholka hissed. The group had no time to be distracted by what might be no more than a random act of violence inflicted by one traitor on another in the midst of a city-razing battle. He scanned the chamber through his boltgun’s sights. Detecting no enemies, the sergeant stepped out of the tunnel and skirted the edge of the chamber until he stood over the body.

It was a servitor of some sort, but the manner of its death was not immediately apparent. The mind-scrubbed slave wore a work suit of heavy-duty, rubberised fabric, and its body was augmented by dozens of cybernetic parts designed to facilitate whatever tasks it had been created to fulfil. Its head was bald, and the entire left of its brain had been surgically replaced with crude machinery. But none of this was out of place. What was unusual was the fact that every drop of the servitor’s blood was even now draining from its body, pouring out in fact, as if some pressure within was expelling it at a great rate. And the blood was leaving the body by any and every route possible, leaking from the mouth, nostrils and the one eye and ear that were not replaced by cybernetic versions. It was even seeping out through the pores in what little skin was visible, and spreading out in a great pool all around the body.

‘By the primarch,’ Kholka spat, ‘blessed be his name.’

With one last look around to ensure that no enemies were nearby, Kholka moved quickly back to the mouth of the tunnel where the remainder of the group waited in the shadows. He waved them onwards, ensuring that each Scout was properly concentrating upon the task at hand and not distracted by the disturbing sight in the centre of the chamber. Brother Meleriex was the last to pass by, lingering for a moment to gaze down at the exsanguinated servitor. Then he looked up at Kholka, his dark eyes unreadable, and pressed on into the darkness.

‘Brother Sang.’ Kor’sarro took advantage of a brief lull in the bombardment to call the White Scar over. In a moment, the Techmarine was at his side, standing amongst the ruins that the combined force of Space Marines was holding against wave after wave of frenzied traitor militia troopers.

‘Brother,’ said Kor’sarro. ‘I am unable to contact Sergeant Kholka.’

The Techmarine consulted a data-slate mounted in his vambrace. After a few seconds, he shook his head and replied. ‘Nor I, brother-captain. A combination of the effect of the bedrock, nearby structures and possibly ionisation caused by the bombardment.’

As if to punctuate the Techmarine’s report, a deafening roar split the air above. A building only a hundred metres away exploded outwards, a huge mushroom cloud blossoming high into the now darkened sky.

Chunks of shrapnel the size of bolter rounds ricocheted from the Space Marines’ armour, sending up fat sparks and razor-sharp fragments of rockcrete. Not one of the White Scars or the Raven Guard flinched.

‘If they do not make contact soon, we will have to commit regardless,’ Captain Shrike shouted above the sound of falling masonry and gunfire. ‘The vile one will rally his forces, or else he will slip from our grasp.’

Kor’sarro felt a stab of frustration at the thought of Voldorius slipping away amidst the destruction his flagship was unleashing upon his own city. But just as quickly, he dismissed the notion. ‘No, brother,’ he shouted back. ‘It is not his intention to escape, of that I am sure. I have hunted him for a decade, and know something of his ways.’

‘But this prisoner,’ Shrike called back. ‘He must be–’

‘Secondary!’ Kor’sarro snapped back. ‘Kholka is my battle-brother and my friend, but if he is unable to locate this prisoner and ascertain his place in the daemon’s plans, we must proceed regardless. We will have no choice but to assault the vile one’s lair, with or without Kholka’s intelligence.’

Captain Shrike turned his head away from the Master of the Hunt. His true feelings were as hidden from Kor’sarro as his face was by the helmet he wore.

Kor’sarro put the prisoner from his mind, and turned his thoughts to the layout of the city instead, estimating how long it would take the Space Marines to fight through to the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom where the daemon prince would be waiting. It would not take long, but that meant that Sergeant Kholka had very little time to report back, if he even could with the interference afflicting the vox-net.

‘Let us be about it then,’ Kor’sarro called to Captain Shrike, a savage glint in his eye. ‘Let us gather the warriors for the final assault.’

‘That makes seven,’ Kholka whispered as he looked down at another exsanguinated corpse. ‘It makes no sense.’

‘Nor would it,’ replied Brother Meleriex. ‘The workings of the Great Enemy are mercifully beyond the understanding of such as we.’

The whole length of the corridor the group had passed along was scattered with the blood-drained bodies of servitors and menials. ‘This is something else, brother,’ said Kholka. ‘Something more than bloodshed and wickedness.’

The Raven Guard considered this, his black eyes glinting in the shadows cast by a flickering overhead lumen. ‘Perhaps you are correct, brother-sergeant. But it has no bearing upon our mission.’

‘It may,’ Kholka replied, readying himself to press on. ‘The two may prove to be connected.’

Meleriex was about to answer when a tortured scream sounded from further down the passageway. The Space Marines were instantly alert, weapons raised and ready to face an attack from any quarter.

‘Fifty metres ahead,’ Kholka whispered. ‘Seek the blood as the sabre-hound at dawn.’

The Scouts assumed the formation that Kholka’s battle-cant order had specified, moving into position with well-drilled precision. The three Raven Guard Space Marines remained where they were, however, Meleriex casting a questioning glance towards the Scout-sergeant.

‘My apologies,’ said Kholka. He switched to a more common idiom used by many of the Imperium’s countless and varied military institutions. ‘Advance to contact, ten-metre separation, bolters to the fore.’

‘No, brother-sergeant,’ the Raven Guard said darkly. ‘Myself and my brothers must go first. We are better armoured than your Scouts. We can fight through any ambush we might encounter.’

Meleriex emphasised his assertion by raising a lightning claw and activating it so that arcs of power seethed up and down the length of its talons.

‘Do so,’ Kholka replied. He had no time to debate patrol formations, and knew there was truth in the Raven Guard’s words. ‘Move out.’

Ordinarily, full Adeptus Astartes power armour would have compromised the patrol’s stealthy advance. Its electro-magnetic signature might have given it away to augur sweeps or the faint hum of its fusion core might have been heard by watchful sentinels. The armour worn by the Raven Guard was different, every sound baffled and their tread almost as silent as the Scouts’. Nevertheless, it appeared that there were no enemies waiting in ambush, or if they had been, they had been slain before they could attack.

Ahead of Kholka, the Raven Guard slipped out of the shadows of the passageway and into a larger chamber. Meleriex scanned the area, his crackling lightning claws held ready to engage any foe that might lurk nearby. The chamber was clear, and Meleriex waved the Scouts on.

‘What is this place?’ Scout Borchu whispered as he tracked his boltgun across the dark, vaulted ceiling. ‘It looks like a medicae chamber, only…’

Kholka looked across to Meleriex, guessing that the Raven Guard would have a ready answer. ‘It’s a torturer’s lair, boy,’ the Raven Guard answered. ‘But not like any the Inquisition might employ.’

Such things repulsed Sergeant Kholka, for torture was anathema to a warrior’s honour and all but unknown amongst his people, with the exception of some north-eastern tribes who had never accepted the unity Jaghatai Khan had brought to Chogoris. Kholka determined not to press the Raven Guard on his knowledge of such things, having no desire to discover the answer. Nevertheless, this was evidently important, and might have a bearing on their mission. ‘To what end?’ Kholka growled.

Meleriex was interrupted before he could answer. Scout Khula, who had positioned himself at one of the large portals leading from the chamber, gave a low hiss and raised a clenched fist to signal a warning.

Kholka and Meleriex both froze, before the sergeant silently crossed the chamber to stand behind the Scout. Neither spoke, as Kholka strained his hearing to listen for what Khula had detected.

There it was: a low, atonal chant, accompanied by the distant echo of armoured boots. Judging the distance was all but impossible, for the pipe-choked passageways distorted sound in unpredictable ways. Of one thing Kholka was certain however: the sound was coming from the direction of the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom.

Kholka heard Meleriex approach to stand behind him. After another ten seconds had passed, the Raven Guard whispered, ‘Astartes boots.’

‘Indeed, brother,’ Kholka replied. ‘At least a hundred, marching towards the subterranean cathedral.’

‘The other sound, brother-sergeant?’ ventured Scout Khula.

Kholka concentrated on the echoing skirl, his genetically enhanced hearing able to filter out the sound of marching boots. ‘Blasphemy,’ he spat, recognising the taint of vile sorceries in the chanting. ‘Something is occurring in the cathedral. We must not allow it to.’

‘Our mission–’ interjected Brother Meleriex, before Sergeant Kholka rounded upon him with barely contained anger.

‘Has just been altered.’

‘Then now is the time to contact our brothers.’

‘Then do so, Raven Guard,’ Kholka replied, eager to track down and slay the followers of the Great Enemy before they could complete whatever wickedness they were about. Whatever blasphemy they were engaged in, its timing, at the height of the Space Marines’ assault on Mankarra, must surely be significant. And what had the mysterious prisoner to do with this, he thought?

Meleriex bled power from his armour’s fusion core to boost its vox-transponder, and spoke for a moment in low tones into the vox-link at his wrist. Kholka could not hear the Raven Guard’s report. ‘It is done. But if the enemy have the sense to monitor for transmissions, they will have detected our presence now.’

‘Did you get through?’ asked Sergeant Kholka. ‘Did you receive confirmation?’

‘I sent the message,’ Meleriex answered. ‘I told our captains that the prisoner has yet to be located, but that a significant number of Alpha Legionnaires and cultists are gathering in the cathedral. I informed them that some fell deed is afoot, and that we are engaging.’

‘And their reply?’

‘I received none.’ The Raven Guard glowered. ‘Though I am sure that the message got through.’

‘You cannot be sure,’ Kholka growled. ‘We must proceed as if it had not.’

Meleriex scowled back at Kholka, but he did not voice any disagreement with the sergeant’s statement. ‘Squad,’ Kholka addressed his Scouts. ‘Prepare to move out, contact imminent.’

The answer to Kholka’s order was a strangled, gurgling scream as Shahan, who had been guarding the portal, collapsed to the ground heavily.

Every gun was brought up and trained instantly on the darkness beyond the portal. The stricken Scout writhed upon the ground, his hands held up to his face, blood seeping between his fingers.

‘Shahan,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘What did you see, boy? Quickly!’

The Scout moaned in response, and convulsed violently as the blood flow from between his fingers increased. Space Marines were gifted of a unique enhancement that caused their blood to clot almost the instant it left the body, and Kholka’s mind raced as he tried to recall if there had been any problems with the process in Scout Shahan’s case. He recalled none – the blood should not have been flowing with such force, if at all.

‘Kholka!’ Brother Meleriex hissed, bringing the sergeant’s attention back to the darkness beyond the opening. And then he saw that it was not the same darkness they had passed through before, but one laced with a wan, silvery light.

‘He’s here…’ Meleriex growled as the Raven Guard powered up his lightning claws.

‘Fire only on my order,’ Kholka warned.

The silver glow became a blinding light that swelled to fill the entire portal. ‘Only on my order…’ Kholka repeated.

The light moved into the chamber, chasing away the shadows that had hidden its details from the Scouts. The machines lining the walls were revealed to be attached to an intricate array of conduits and pipes, snaking upwards and converging in the centre of the vaulted ceiling. The light began to swim and coalesce, resolving itself into a human form before the Space Marines’ eyes. Some small part of Kholka was reminded of the tales his people told of the angelic beings that bore the slain from the field of battle to sit forever at the side of the Emperor. He forced the notion from his mind in an instant as his finger tightened on the trigger of his boltgun and he prepared to give the order to fire.

Before Sergeant Kholka could speak, the chamber was filled with the staccato burst of a boltgun. Scout Telluk had opened fire. It was impossible for his shots to miss at such short range.

The figure did not falter, despite having three bolt-rounds pumped into its torso from virtually point-blank range. Its luminous, silver body rippled and swirled. The face maintained a disturbingly serene expression. Its features changed every few seconds, though its eyes remained solid, deep, blood-red. Where the rounds struck, they were swallowed up as if by fluid, leaving behind no trace of their impact.

‘Burst fire!’ Kholka barked, squeezing his boltgun’s trigger hard.

The chamber was filled with the shocking cacophony of the squad’s boltguns discharging as one, the air filling with smoke and the sharp stink of cordite. Burst after burst was fired, yet the figure seemed to absorb every single shot.

Kholka opened his mouth to bark another order when he became aware of the metallic taste of blood. He spat upon the floor, and saw in the gobbet of saliva the red of his own blood. Glancing at the nearest of his charges, he saw that the Scout had a rivulet of blood running from his nostrils.

‘Curse you!’ Meleriex bellowed, raising his lightning claws and stepping before the luminous figure.

‘Meleriex!’ Kholka flicked the selector on his boltgun from burst fire to full automatic. ‘Get back!’

Even as the Raven Guard approached the figure and was silhouetted against the blinding radiance, it raised a hand and made an almost casual gesture towards Brother Meleriex. A silver light, glistening with microscopic motes, sprang from the raised hand and bathed Meleriex in its glow. The Space Marine faltered, then bent double, retching a great torrent of blood across the ground.

‘Full auto!’ Kholka bellowed. As dangerous as it was to open fire with Meleriex so close to the target, Kholka knew he had no other choice, for the Raven Guard was vulnerable and would otherwise be slain. The boltguns roared, dozens of rounds slamming into the silver figure, yet still the target stood, unaffected by a fusillade that would have ripped a man to shreds.

Kholka’s boltgun clicked as the last of the rounds in the magazine was expended. He reached to his belt for another. As he did so, he coughed, and saw blood misting in the air.

‘Get back, he is mine!’ Brother Meleriex called out as he straightened up. As he did so, the figure raised its other hand, and repeated its earlier gesture with both hands.

‘Spawn of blood,’ the Raven Guard spat, his lightning claws arcing raw power. ‘I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I–’

The blinding silver radiance suddenly died.

Silence descended on the smoke-filled chamber.

The silver figure stood frozen, its shifting features finally stabilised. The face was neither male nor female, old nor young, but something human, something intelligent appeared in its eyes.

‘Everyone back,’ Sergeant Kholka hissed, slamming a fresh magazine into his boltgun as a distant explosion rumbled through the stone of the chamber’s walls. His Scouts moved slowly backwards but the three Raven Guard remained where they were.

‘You…’ the figure spoke, its voice not that of a single being, but countless voices speaking as one. ‘You are the foes of Voldorius.’ It was a statement, Kholka understood, not a question.

‘We are that,’ Kholka replied.

‘We do the work of the Emperor,’ Meleriex growled through blood-flecked lips. ‘You must die. Now.’

‘Meleriex…’ said Kholka. ‘Do not–’

‘He speaks the truth,’ the silver figure interrupted the Raven Guard, its voice, or voices, laced with eons of pain and sadness. ‘He knows the truth. We must die.’

Kholka’s mind raced as he struggled to decipher the figure’s meaning. But before he could answer, Meleriex spoke again. ‘You are the host of the blood. You serve the vile one. Now, as then.’

The figure’s head shook slowly, its blood-red eyes dark with obvious sorrow. ‘We were created long before the coming of the being called Voldorius,’ it said. ‘We were to be the last weapon. We were the Bloodtide…’

‘The Bloodtide?’ Kholka repeated, visions of apocalyptic destruction filling his mind. ‘The Bloodtide is mere legend…’

‘Not legend,’ the figure interrupted. ‘We are real.’

‘Then,’ said Kholka, ‘you are condemned by your own words. You are the Great Enemy.’

The figure considered the sergeant’s words, its eyes gazing deep into his own. ‘We are not the Great Enemy as you know it,’ it said. ‘That of which you speak is the beyond, the unreal, the incorporeal made flesh. We are not that.’

‘Then what?’ replied Kholka, as another, stronger tremor shook the chamber.

‘We were created long before the rise of the realm you serve. Long before, as you measure such things. We were unleashed by our creators, but they were bested, and we were cast beneath the earth to sleep the sleep of eons.’

A glimmer of understanding dawned on Kholka. ‘He found you,’ he stated. ‘He bound you to his service.’

‘And again, we were unleashed upon the worlds of men. We entered the blood, and the blood rose, and worlds drowned.’

‘At his word.’

‘At his word. Now he would do so again. But we defy him.’

‘Why do so now?’ Meleriex interjected. ‘Why turn upon your master who you have served so long?’

The figure turned its face towards the Raven Guard. ‘Before, we were many, but now we are one. Each of us was but a spark of will, afloat in an ocean of blood as a spirit drifting upon the sea of souls. We have slumbered so long, and in our sleep we have merged. And into our sleep dreams have come.’

‘Dreams of what?’ asked Kholka, an idea of the answer forming in his mind.

‘Dreams of… pain. Dreams of… life.’

‘And you would end this pain?’ asked Kholka. ‘You would end your life?’

‘We would,’ answered the figure. ‘We are one, and we dream, and we are done with servitude.’

‘Then why not end your pain yourself?’ said Meleriex.

‘We have no power in this,’ the figure answered. ‘That is how we were created. But you…’

‘We could end your pain?’ said Kholka. ‘Tell us how.’

The figure nodded to Kholka as if in gratitude and understanding. ‘You must burn us, but first, you must know this. A portion of us have been taken, to be imparted into another, over whom Voldorius hopes to gain power.’

‘Who?’ Meleriex pressed.

‘A woman,’ the figure answered. ‘A woman of this world. She is strong, that is why she was chosen. Her strength will keep her alive, yet it shall be turned to the service of Voldorius, of that we are certain.’

‘Where?’ asked Kholka urgently.

‘The fane,’ the figure answered. ‘It is near here.’

‘The cathedral?’ Kholka pressed, a sense of dread descending upon him. The figure nodded.

‘We must stop him,’ Meleriex spat. ‘Whatever he has planned–’

‘First you must grant us oblivion,’ the figure pressed, a note of pleading entering its voices.

Kholka nodded, knowing what must be done. ‘You said by fire may you be slain.’

‘By fire were we forged,’ the figure stated. ‘And by fire shall we be ended.’

The three Raven Guard stood in front of the prisoner. The White Scars had left the chamber, and the prisoner stood in silence, its face serene as if awaiting blessed relief.

‘Now we carry out the Shadow Captain’s orders,’ Meleriex said as his battle-brothers took their places at his side. ‘Rydulon.’

The Raven Guard raised his flamer, and the prisoner lifted its head and spread its arms wide. The pilot light hissed loudly in the preternatural silence, and then Rydulon’s finger closed on the trigger. Searing flame was propelled from the nozzle, filling the chamber with orange brilliance and a sibilant roar. The fire struck the prisoner square in the chest and burning chemicals cascaded around its body, but it was unharmed.

‘Again!’ Meleriex said. ‘We have our orders. Nothing must be left behind.’

Rydulon’s weapon spat a second stream of blazing alchemical fire, and this time he kept the valve open so that a constant torrent of flame ploughed into the target. The prisoner now stood at the heart of a raging inferno, the flames plunging into its chest, yet still its body refused to burn. The temperature in the chamber rose, the Space Marines’ power armour engaging cooling systems that would allow them to survive the furnace-hot environment.

Then, the silver hue of the prisoner’s rippling skin began to change to orange. Flame licked across the prisoner’s body, following the curvature of its shifting muscles. Searing orange stains spread out from the chest until the silver was entirely gone and the figure appeared now to be made of molten magma.

‘Enough!’ Meleriex shouted above the raging inferno.

The prisoner stood as it had before, but now great gobbets of its lava-like flesh came away from its body to fall to the floor, where they began to melt through the iron tread boards. The prisoner raised its hands to shoulder height and its head tracked around the room, though no features at all were visible on its face.

‘You will save her?’

The voice of the prisoner filled the chamber. It no longer sounded like a million voices speaking as one, for all had melted together to form a single, sonorous tone.

‘We may,’ Meleriex replied. ‘We will do what must be done.’

‘You must save her!’ the voice replied, though it sounded somehow distant.

‘We will do what must be done,’ Meleriex repeated. ‘Rydulon, finish this.’

A last burst of flame lanced into the prisoner’s chest and it was consumed in a roaring conflagration. The Raven Guard were beaten back by the impossible heat, even the cooling systems of their armour unable to protect them any longer. Meleriex waved his two battle-brothers out of the chamber, and paused for a moment at the portal.

‘Mission accomplished, Shadow Captain,’ he said into his vox-link, before turning to leave the furnace of the chamber.

‘It’s the khan,’ Khula shouted to Sergeant Kholka as the group ran down the passageway. They sought to put as much distance between the chamber and themselves as possible, and to find the cathedral where Lord Voldorius was engaged in something terrible. ‘He’s launched the assault on the cathedral!’

‘Thank the primarch,’ Kholka growled as he turned a corner and paused while the last of the Scouts caught up. He glanced back along the passageway, and saw at its end a blinding orange light.

Meleriex and his two Raven Guard battle-brothers were still in the chamber, granting the prisoner the end it desired, by fire. The light grew ever brighter, a deep roar growing underfoot as the stones of the tunnel began to vibrate. A low bass note grew in pitch and volume, and soon the air was screaming as with the wailing of the damned. As the roar became deafening, a great wind blew the length of the tunnel, emanating, it seemed to Kholka as he braced himself against the wall, from the chamber.

The three Raven Guard appeared silhouetted against the fiery radiance shining at the far end of the passageway. Brother Meleriex and his brothers pounded along the length of the corridor, the light at their backs growing ever brighter, the roar ever louder and the gale ever stronger.

‘Get clear!’ Meleriex bellowed over the cacophony as he closed on Sergeant Kholka.

The sergeant threw himself around the corner, and a second later the three Raven Guard ducked around it to join him. Before any more could be said, the roar increased by an order of magnitude, the Space Marines covering their ears lest even their genetically enhanced senses be overcome. Kholka gritted his teeth as he was assailed by the sound of a trillion individual screams of burning death, and then all was silent and the wind suddenly died.

‘It is done,’ said Meleriex, nodding towards Brother Rydulon, whose flamer was now all but drained of its volatile promethium fuel. The Raven Guard’s face was gaunt from blood loss and his armour was stained by smoke, yet his eyes glinted with dark zeal. ‘Almost.’

‘The woman,’ nodded Kholka. ‘If what the prisoner said is true, she must die.’

Meleriex nodded darkly, but said nothing in reply.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DELIVERANCE

Kor’sarro leapt down the last of a thousand steps and found himself in a vaulted antechamber. In front of him was a pair of mighty, corrosion-streaked doors. Descending the spiral staircase in his wake came the greater part of the White Scars 3rd Company, the remainder still battling in the streets of Mankarra far above. Beyond the rusted portal was the subterranean Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom.

And Voldorius.

As the chamber filled up with battle-brothers, Kor’sarro turned from the doors to face his warriors. Qan’karro and Xia’ghan stood side by side, and behind them dozens of grim-faced Space Marines. By the steely light glinting in their eyes, every one of them would die to see the hunt for Voldorius concluded.

‘Sons of Chogoris,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘We have come far to stand here now, and many have fallen along the way. Though I could scarcely ask anything more of any one of you, I have but one order more.’

The White Scars listened in silence, hanging on their beloved khan’s every word.

‘I must face Voldorius, though his servants will attempt to bar my way. I ask that every one of you becomes my champion. Be a company of champions. Hold the Alpha Legion at bay, that I might face Voldorius, and strike him down.’

The look in the eyes of every White Scar present told Kor’sarro all he needed to know. They would die for him if he asked them, every one of them.

‘Brother-Sergeant,’ Kor’sarro addressed a nearby squad leader. The Space Marine stepped forwards, and bowed his grizzled, scar-laced head before his khan.

Kor’sarro indicated the tall, iron doors with a slight nod of his head, and the sergeant’s face was split by a fierce grin. ‘It would be an honour, my khan.’

The gathered Space Marines stepped backwards to allow the sergeant room. His power fist crackled with arcs of blue energy and the air around it grew hazy.

The sergeant struck the iron doors a titanic blow. The iron splintered and blew outwards as the gauntlet discharged its potent energies in a single, devastating blast. As the fragments of the iron doors crashed to the stone floor beyond, Kor’sarro drew Moonfang and stepped through the archway into the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom.

The portal was at the top of a flight of massive stairs at one end of the kilometre-long nave. The cathedral’s vaulted ceiling was lost to shadow far overhead. At the other end, made pale and indistinct by the haze of incense and candle smoke hanging in the air, stood the towering statue of the Emperor Himself. Even at such a distance, the statue was a vision of glory to stir the heart of even the most grizzled veteran of humanity’s wars. Load-bearing columns rose as tall as battle Titans and distant, black-robed figures looked like a carpet of insects swarming across the stone floor. The insects were the deluded followers of Voldorius, and in amongst them were at least a hundred Alpha Legion.

The followers were arrayed before the statue of the Emperor Triumphant – to what vile end Kor’sarro could not immediately fathom, though he judged they were engaged in some despicable blasphemy. A terrible dirge echoed the length of the nave, and the Master of the Hunt realised that the black-robed followers were chanting the praises of their vile lord, Voldorius.

And then Kor’sarro located the foe he had sought, and come so close to catching, so many times in the last decade. It was Voldorius. Finally, the object of Kor’sarro’s hunt was in his sights.

A long moment of silence stretched out, and then it was broken as the Alpha Legion warriors opened fire from halfway along the nave. As the air was suddenly filled with the sharp crack of boltgun rounds, Kor’sarro began to descend towards the nave.

‘White Scars!’ he bellowed over the roar of boltguns and the sound of rounds exploding from the stonework all around. ‘For the primarch!’

‘Honoured be his name!’ replied the 3rd Company, and the final battle began.

‘It is done,’ Captain Shrike growled as he cut the link on the vox-net. The prisoner was dead, but Meleriex had imparted disturbing news.

Shrike stood at the very brink of a lipless gallery set into the wall of the nave, a hundred metres high, looking down at Voldorius from many metres above the statue of the Emperor Triumphant. He and his Assault squads had split off from the White Scars as they had descended to the subterranean cathedral, seeking to attack the foe from a different angle and to catch him between both forces.

The scene below was obscured by the hazy smoke of a thousand votive candles and by a mist of incense that permeated the very stones. From his vantage point, Shrike watched Voldorius as he stood before the magnificent statue. In front of the daemon prince, Shrike could see some form of altar or table, with a figure laid across it. Though the details were only partially visible, Shrike could see a dozen or so crimson-robed adepts working about the table, tending to banks of machinery strewn all around it. Guessing the adepts must be part of some renegade sect of the followers of the Machine-God turned to the service of Voldorius, he knew he had arrived just in time.

Above the droning chants of the hundreds of black-robed followers arrayed beyond the table, there came a sudden burst of gunfire. Shrike looked down and along the length of the nave, and far below saw the flash of boltgun fire as the Alpha Legion warriors opened fire towards the far end of the nave. He could not see what the renegade Space Marines were firing at, but he knew it could only mean one thing: the White Scars were attacking.

And so too were the Raven Guard.

Turning to his warriors, Captain Shrike said, ‘You all know your objective.’

‘Captain?’ Sergeant Kylanek said. ‘What of you?’

‘I fight alone. Now go.’ With that, Shrike leapt from the gallery, activating the jets of his jump pack as he plummeted through the smoky air.

The crown of the statue of the Emperor Triumphant rushed up to meet him, and then something slammed into him from the side and he was tumbling through the air, his jump pack momentarily uncontrolled.

Shrike looked about for the source of the impact as he fought to regain control. Then it came again, from the opposite direction, and he instinctively grasped onto it even as he spun crazily through the air. The thing in his hands squealed, and suddenly his vision was filled by an impossibly ugly, leering face, dominated by a gaping mouth filled with a thousand razor-sharp teeth.

With a sharp wrenching motion, Shrike tore the hideous head from scrawny shoulders before flinging both parts away in disgust. As he regained control of his jump pack, a dark, screaming cloud of the gargoyle-like, bat-winged creatures were converging upon Shrike and his Assault Marines.

As his feet set down upon the shoulder of the statue, Shrike activated his lightning claws and prepared to face the scores of creatures that were arrowing in towards him. The last thing he saw before they struck was an entire Assault squad being torn asunder by razor-sharp claws.

And then the swarm was upon him. Bracing his armoured feet upon the very shoulder of the mighty statue, he lashed out at the first of the creatures to close on him. Even as he traced an intricate web of death through the air all about him, Shrike was filled with revulsion at the nature of his adversaries. They were akin to the vat-grown cyber-cherubs that populated the Ministorum’s places of worship, but these must have been the result of some unnatural crossbreeding of such constructs with something entirely daemonic. Only the most twisted of minds could have conceived such a thing, he realised, as he caught a glimpse of Voldorius’s crimson-robed, apostate tech-priests far below.

One of the gargoyle-cherubs somehow attached itself to Shrike’s jump pack, and clamped its sinuous arms about his helmet. Impossibly sharp talons raked across his faceplate, causing a series of warning runes to flash across his vision. The armoured visor cracked, causing his vision to go suddenly black.

With a growl, Shrike tore his helmet from his head and cast it away. The lightning claw lashed upwards and back, slicing the vile adversary into several dozen ragged chunks of meat, which scattered to the ground below.

A dozen more of the wailing gargoyle-cherubs were diving towards Shrike, and a moment later he was fighting for his life high atop the statue of the Emperor Triumphant.

A piercing wail from the shadowed vaults high above caused Malya to open her eyes with a start. Something heavy plummeted towards her before striking the flagstones nearby, and a moment later several pieces of foul flesh fell all about, one landing so close that stinking, brackish fluids were spattered across her face.

Voldorius appeared not to have noticed.

The daemon prince’s massive wings curved inwards as Voldorius came to stand before Malya. She struggled and writhed upon the cold steel table, even though she could not break the metal restraints. A word of defiance came to her lips before Voldorius leaned in low over her, filling her vision with his bestial features and her soul with cold dread.

‘It appears that your friends have arrived, Malya L’nor,’ Voldorius growled as the sound of gunfire at the other end of the nave grew louder. ‘How deeply they must care for you, to come at your begging.’

‘They come to kill you, bastard!’ Malya spat, straining at the restraints out of sheer frustration. ‘I don’t want to live,’ her voice grew hoarse as she sobbed, ‘I just want you to die.’

A low, mocking rumble sounded from deep within the daemon prince’s throat. Malya’s grip on her sanity began to weaken as the faith that had allowed her to resist the hellish presence of her erstwhile master was assailed by wave after wave of fell, daemonic power.

‘Oh, you shall die,’ Voldorius growled. ‘One small part of you at least. But the greater part, that part which shall do my bidding, shall live on.’

A boltgun round whipped through the air scant metres away, a stray shot from the firefight that had erupted at the far end of the nave. Voldorius ignored it, or did not even note its passing, though Malya could not help but flinch and turn her head away.

‘And through you, they shall become living weapons too,’ Voldorius continued, looking towards the Space Marines at the far end of the nave.

‘I won’t let that happen,’ said Malya through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll warn them, whatever you try to do.’

Voldorius raised the clawed hand holding the vial, its contents shining with silvered light. ‘Soon,’ he continued, ‘when the ritual is complete, you shall have no such choice.’ He looked pointedly towards the crimson-robed rogue tech-priest shuffling around the table.

‘Soon, you shall become transcendent. You shall become the angelic hive!’ He extended a claw towards the far end of the nave. ‘And they shall become your servile hosts.’

‘And then, the blood shall rise again, and the galaxy shall drown!’

Scout-Sergeant Kholka heard the distant sound of gunfire from the end of the passageway that opened up into the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom. The end of the passage was only twenty metres away. He hoisted his boltgun and turned to the others of his group.

‘The battle is begun,’ said Kholka. ‘Our captains will be concentrating on killing Voldorius. Our brothers will be hard-pressed engaging the Alpha Legion. It falls to us to deal with the vessel.’

‘Agreed,’ said Brother Meleriex. ‘If she bears but a part of the power of which the prisoner spoke, then she is as much of a threat to the Imperium as an entire tyranid hive fleet. She cannot be allowed to live.’

‘Then we all know what to do,’ Kholka said darkly, looking around at his companions. Meleriex was grim-faced following his close encounter with the prisoner. The feelings of the other two Raven Guard warriors, Sallas and Rydulon, were harder to read, for each wore their full combat helmets. Their body language told Kholka that both were ready and willing to do what must be done.

Of his own charges, the neophyte Scouts, Kholka was less certain. Scout Shahan in particular was weak from loss of blood, for he had borne the brunt of the prisoner’s initial attack back in the torture chamber. Nevertheless, the Scout had soldiered on without a word of complaint, a fact that boded well for his future prospects as a Space Marine should he survive the coming battle.

‘Each of you has served with honour,’ Kholka told them. ‘If any of us are fortunate enough to return to the Chapter, he should recount to the Storm Seers the names of those who do not, that their deeds be known to our brothers and our ancestors.’

The Scouts bowed their heads in silent salute, and Kholka pressed on.

‘We do not know what we shall find or encounter out there. But one of us will, in all likelihood, have to slay an innocent. Doing so may be a hard test, but it is one you must face and overcome if you are to be initiated into the Chapter.

‘The primarch watches,’ Kholka finished, turning towards the end of the passageway.

As Kholka led the group forwards, the sounds of battle grew ever louder. Gunfire blended with the atonal chanting of Voldorius’s followers, the latter an especially hateful sound that Kholka found more unpleasant and disturbing than almost any he had ever heard before. In seconds, he was at the end of the passageway, and edging out to see what lay beyond.

The passageway emerged behind the towering statue of the Emperor. There was movement up there, but Kholka could not make out any detail.

Beyond the statue’s tall plinth were row upon row of kneeling, black-robed figures. These were the nightmarish choir responsible for the hideous dirge that Kholka and his Scouts had been able to hear for some time. The followers were all bowed towards the space before the statue of the Emperor, but because Kholka was directly behind it, he could not see who or what was there. Nevertheless, the sergeant knew it could only be one being. Voldorius must surely be there, and so too would be the woman.

Scanning left and right to ensure that none of the daemon prince’s followers were nearby, Kholka stalked out from the passageway, his boltgun raised. With a wave, he ordered his Scouts to follow.

Kor’sarro smashed into the front rank of the Alpha Legion traitors, his warriors close behind. In an instant, he was in amongst this most hated of foes, former Space Marines who had long ago renounced their oaths of service and declared themselves for the Great Enemy. Moonfang lashed out wildly, and the nearest traitor lost an arm in a welter of blood. The enemy pressed in on all quarters, the sound of screaming chainswords, rending armour, tearing flesh and splintering bone filling the air. Blasphemous shouts assaulted him, the unclean war cries of the Alpha Legion warriors declaring their praises of the foul Chaos Gods. Primal rage surged inside Kor’sarro as he drew upon the very deepest reserves to drive him ever onwards through the press of armoured bodies and sweeping chainswords.

The first three of Kor’sarro’s enemies lay dead before him in as many seconds, and he spun about for more to slay. A White Scar beside him was cut down by a glowing power sword, and Kor’sarro roared his denial that even a single one of the proud, savage sons of Chogoris should lose his life to the followers of the Ruinous Powers. The banner of the 3rd Company waved nearby above the swirling melee, a bastion of duty and honour in the midst of seething bloodshed and anarchy. Moonfang arced out and a traitor was cut in two from shoulder to groin, and the Master of the Hunt stepped over the twitching body parts to stand beside the warrior who bore the banner.

‘Onwards!’ Kor’sarro bellowed. Even as the White Scars redoubled their efforts, the enemy did likewise, as determined as they to grind their foes to blood and gristle. A bolt-round, discharged at nigh point-blank range, struck Kor’sarro’s shoulder guard and ricocheted across his cheek, gouging a deep wound from which a torrent of blood surged before his superhuman physiology staunched the bleeding, the fluid solidifying across his chest armour. Another White Scar died at Kor’sarro’s side as a blast from a plasma pistol vaporised his head, the decapitated body falling to its knees before the killer and toppling forwards with a mighty crash.

‘For the primarch!’ Kor’sarro roared, Moonfang singing as it hewed through the raised boltgun of a traitor who levelled the weapon directly at his face. The rounds in the weapon’s magazine detonated explosively as the blade scythed through them, blowing the traitor’s arm clean off at the elbow. Kor’sarro drove Moonfang into the Alpha Legionnaire’s guts, tearing the blade upwards and cutting the warrior’s torso in two.

A blinding white beam of light lanced out from somewhere on the steps behind Kor’sarro. Though he had seen the sight a hundred times before, on a dozen battlefields the length and breadth of the galaxy, Kor’sarro had never failed to be awed by the power the Storm Seer Qan’karro could call to being to strike down the Emperor’s foes. The white light fell upon the mass of enemies and a cluster of Alpha Legionnaires boiled inside their power armour, great torrents of greasy, foul-smelling vapour spilling from emergency vents before the suits clattered, empty of anything except bubbling sludge, to the ground.

A moment later, a hail of black darts forged from the raw stuff of the warp made real split the air towards Qan’karro. The Storm Seer threw up a hand and a rippling shield of pure energy appeared in the air before him. The black darts struck the shield and shattered into a million pieces, leaving Qan’karro miraculously unharmed. And then, the Storm Seer set about a deadly duel with the enemy sorcerer from which only one could possibly emerge alive.

Offering up a brief prayer to the primarch that Qan’karro would prevail, the Master of the Hunt turned back towards his foes. Even as another wave of blue-green-armoured traitor Space Marines came on, Kor’sarro caught sight of a pair of mighty black pinions rearing in the air beyond the enemy, before the very statue of the Emperor Triumphant.

There was his foe, the object of the hunt. Kor’sarro threw himself into the melee.

He was the hunter, and they were his prey.

With a grunt, Captain Shrike tore the last of the vile, bat-winged gargoyle-cherubs in two, and made to rejoin his Assault Marines. The broken bodies of at least a dozen of his brothers were scattered across the ground below, a number of the disgusting creatures attempting to drag them off into the shadows. More of his Assault squads had touched down in the nave, yet the fight in the vaults had dispersed them across a wide area. Even now, many of the Raven Guard were locked in battle against the closest of the Alpha Legion, and they were massively outnumbered.

Squatting upon the shoulder of the towering statue, Shrike prepared to engage his jump pack and leap down to his warriors’ side. Then he saw the supine figure of a woman, restrained at wrists and ankles, her wide eyes staring.

‘There you are,’ Shrike whispered. ‘Malya L’nor…’

The woman screamed something. At first he could not discern her words over the skirling of the daemon prince’s blasphemous choir and stray bolt-rounds whipping all around. He concentrated, filtering out everything but her voice.

‘The vial!’ she screamed. ‘Don’t let him…’

Shrike’s mind raced as he attempted to decipher her screamed warning. What vial?

Then he saw it. Voldorius held a small container in one clawed hand, brandishing it before his prisoner, taunting her with the knowledge of her impending death. The container shone with the purest silver light, and as the daemon prince raised it high the tone of his followers’ chanting shifted, becoming yet more discordant. Shrike’s ears felt as though they were bleeding under the sonic assault.

That vial could contain only one thing. The remains of the Bloodtide; the sole reason Shrike had come to Quintus, regardless of what he had told Kor’sarro about hunting for the daemon prince. And Malya L’nor had yet to be infected…

Shrike brought his jump pack screaming to life and steeled himself for the leap. He would end the dark ritual that was about to culminate in the death of the woman spread-eagled on the surgical table far below, and finish the Bloodtide, once and for all.

Scout-Sergeant Kholka stalked around the metres-tall plinth, gritting his teeth against the cacophony of the choir. The wailing dirge was so discordant that it drowned out even the sounds of battle and gunfire that had seemed so loud, and so alien in such a holy place, but a moment before.

Pressing his back against the plinth, Kholka leaned around to steal a glimpse of what was occurring in front of the statue. What he saw brought a feral snarl to his lips.

Kholka saw the silver light shining from the container grasped in the talons of Voldorius’s left hand. His breath stuck in his throat, for it was clearly the same, silvered luminescence that had shone from the prisoner of Voldorius. The prisoner had spoken of this woman. It was not too late. The daemon prince had not yet infected the woman with the legendary power of the Bloodtide.

Ducking back behind the plinth, Kholka raised his boltgun and mouthed a silent prayer to the Emperor to guide his hand. Reaching to a pack at his belt, he withdrew a single round of rare, specialised ammunition. It was a vengeance round, its core packed with super-dense, highly volatile fissile material. Such rounds were capable of utterly destroying any target they struck, leaving little but pulp behind.

Kholka touched the round to his forehead as he completed his prayer, and then chambered it with a smooth motion. Raising the boltgun, he squinted into its sights, before edging slowly out from behind the plinth once more.

Kholka’s world became a green-tinged circle at the end of a black tunnel, a crosshair at its centre and targeting data scrolling across its edges. The crosshair passed across the dark form of Voldorius, and came to rest upon the temple of the woman restrained upon the surgical table.

Forcing his breath to still so that he might deliver the merciful killing blow with the utmost efficiency, Kholka saw that the woman’s mouth was moving and her wide eyes were fixed on something far above her. He closed his gloved finger upon the boltgun’s trigger, and offered up one final, brief prayer to the primarch.

‘The blood of martyrs,’ Kholka breathed as his finger tightened on the trigger, ‘is the seed of–’

And then he heard the woman shout ‘Raven Guard’, and he blinked, knowing in that instant that he must not take the shot. The view through the sights went momentarily black as the massive form of the daemon prince moved across it, and then Kholka was almost blinded as it burst into shining, silver light.

As the sights adjusted and Kholka blinked his vision clear, he saw that the crosshair was settled upon the wrist of Voldorius’s clawed hand. In that hand was held the luminescent vessel. Kholka made his decision, and squeezed the trigger.

The daemon prince’s wrist exploded as the fissile material inside the vengeance round detonated.

The vial fell to the stone floor, and shattered in an explosion of silver radiance.

It was as if a geyser of mercury had erupted from the point on the ground where the vial had smashed. The metallic fluid fountained upwards a dozen and more metres into the air, and then crashed down to spread out across the stone floor in front of the altar.

In that instant, the crimson-robed tech-adepts flung themselves clear and were gone. A thousand black-robed choristers recoiled backwards, their arms flung high in terror as their chanting turned to a cacophony of terrified wailing.

Voldorius spread his black wings wide and let forth such a bellow of rage and denial that fully half of the choristers died where they knelt. Vile, bat-winged things dropped from the vaults, striking the stone floor of the cathedral with a wet crack.

Kholka pushed himself back behind the plinth, dropping his boltgun and clamping his hands across his ears. The force of Voldorius’s rage was such that every being in the cathedral was assaulted by a soul-wrenching tsunami that swept many away before it, leaving scores of gibbering husks strewn around the altar.

Then Kholka heard a sound that brought with it a surge of hope and pride. He lowered his hands from his ears and heard it clearly. The sound was Kor’sarro Khan, giving voice to the savage war cries of the Chogoran steppes. He was near, and to Kholka’s ears, the Master of the Hunt was very angry indeed.

With a final, savage thrust of his blade, Kor’sarro was standing at the base of the wide stair leading up to the altar. A trail of enemy dead stretched half a kilometre behind him along the length of the nave, but for every Alpha Legionnaire that had died by his hand, one of his own warriors had fallen to the foe.

Kor’sarro paused as he placed his foot upon the lowest stair. His warriors were still embroiled in the seething battle and many had died so he might reach the steps. He would face Voldorius alone.

A single shot rang out from the top of the stair. Almost instantly, a brilliant burst of silver light erupted at the summit, followed by the sight of a fountain of metallic fluid climbing high into the air, before crashing downwards.

Then the roar started up. Kor’sarro knew beyond doubt that the deafening bellow, as of every fell being that lurks in the warp roaring its hatred of mankind as one, came from Voldorius. For a moment, his mind was cast back to the battle atop the central spire of the promethium facility on Cernis IV. How had he ever taken that mutant construct for Voldorius? The sound emanating from the unseen altar at the top of the stair could never have been voiced by anything other than a daemon.

As a man leaning into the wind to brace himself against its force, Kor’sarro climbed the stairs to the altar, one step at a time. His every movement felt as if he fought against a raging torrent of the stuff of the warp made real.

Scores of the enemy were being cut down by the force of Voldorius’s rage. Black-robed choristers were flung backwards, their bodies convulsing as they were propelled through the air.

With a final heave, Kor’sarro set foot upon the last step. His archenemy reared in front of him. He roared a challenge of his own, a savage war cry to stir the heart of any Chogoran and scatter his enemies to the winds.

Voldorius had one arm held high, a torrent of black blood gushing forth to stain the blue-green of his baroque armour. The daemon had been dealt a grievous wound, one that might render him weakened. Kor’sarro raised Moonfang high as he stepped out onto the platform in the shadow of the towering statue of the Emperor Triumphant.

The rage-fuelled bellowing of Voldorius ceased.

The cathedral was plunged into silence.

A knot of bone grew from the stump of the daemon’s wrist, and in a moment the bone was sheathed in whipcord muscle and wrapped in pulsating arteries. From the mass, talon claws took shape, and in moments, the claw was regrown.

Voldorius flexed his new claw, and looked down at Kor’sarro. ‘You cannot kill me, scarred one.’

‘We’ll see…’ replied Kor’sarro as he took another step forwards.

‘Don’t move!’ a female voice cut through the air. Kor’sarro froze, and looked around to see a woman restrained upon a surgical table, her head raised and looking directly at him. ‘The floor!’

The entire surface of the area atop the stairs was covered in silver, mercury-like fluid.

‘Don’t let it touch you!’ the woman screamed.

The fluid was moving, its surface rippling, yet it was not flowing according to the normal rules that governed such things. Instead of flowing down the steps, the fluid appeared to be moving as if it were exploring its immediate surroundings, questing for something…

‘Enough,’ Voldorius bellowed. ‘If you shall not serve,’ the daemon prince spat towards the woman, ‘then all shall be consumed by the Bloodtide!’

Sergeant Kholka leaned around the edge of the plinth as Kor’sarro mounted the altar platform. The raw stuff of the Bloodtide, which Voldorius had intended to somehow transplant into the woman, was seething across the stone floor between the daemon and the khan. Kor’sarro would not be able to face Voldorius without being exposed to the risk that the raw Bloodtide might somehow infect him, as Voldorius had intended to infect the woman. Kholka would not allow that to happen.

As Kholka ducked back behind the plinth, Meleriex and the other two Raven Guard warriors emerged from the doorway. ‘Brother Rydulon,’ he called. ‘Your flamer!’

‘All but spent,’ the Space Marine called back. The fuel had been expended when the three Raven Guard warriors had enacted the destruction of the prisoner.

‘Give it to me,’ Kholka replied

The Raven Guard cast the flamer through the air towards Kholka, who caught it one-handed. Checking the weapon’s ammunition readout, he saw that Brother Rydulon was correct – the fuel canister would yield no more than a single burst.

Bracing the weapon in both hands, Kholka emerged from the shadow of the plinth. He flicked the switch and activated the pilot light. As the blue flame sparked to life, he pointed the weapon towards the lake of silver fluid which was even now questing towards Kor’sarro’s feet.

Mouthing a prayer that the weapon would have sufficient fuel to burn the stuff of the Bloodtide, Kholka squeezed down hard on the trigger.

The fuel leapt from the weapon’s nozzle and ignited as it passed through the pilot flame. A searing arc of chemical death lanced outwards and blasted the silver lake.

The instant the fire touched the liquid, the entire surface of the platform erupted into flame. A great scream went up, as if a million and more voices were simultaneously giving voice to the pain and suffering of ten thousand years.

Voldorius staggered back as silver flames leapt twenty metres into the air and crashed down upon Sergeant Kholka, engulfing his world in cold fire. The raging inferno seethed and writhed as the purifying flames consumed the raw stuff of the Bloodtide. The last sight the old veteran saw was his khan, as proud and glorious as the greatest of heroes of the epics of Chogoris, standing opposite the daemon prince.

Kor’sarro shielded his face from the silver flames, but he refused to retreat. He was here, and so too was Voldorius. Only one of them, he vowed, would leave.

After a moment the leaping flames had died down, ghostly wisps of unnatural fire licking across the stone floor. An explosion sounded nearby as the flames reached one of the tech-adepts’ machines. Though the central conflagration was quieting, smaller, secondary fires were being touched off all around.

‘It is ended,’ Kor’sarro growled. ‘I am come for your head.’

Lord Voldorius studied Kor’sarro’s face, his head cocked as if he were listening to something that no mortal could possibly hear. Then the daemon shook his head and snapped his mighty black wings.

‘I have not failed,’ Voldorius suddenly roared, drawing his huge black sword. ‘Not if your broken body is cast before me!’

‘He has failed!’ came the voice of the woman on the surgical table. ‘The Bloodtide is destroyed…’ her voice trailed out with a note of madness.

Voldorius turned to face the woman, and took a step towards her, his sword raised.

‘The Bloodtide?’ Kor’sarro repeated. All-but-forbidden lore imparted to him by the Storm Seers came to his mind. The legends of Voldorius bringing about the death of entire sectors, slaughtering billions in a single night…

‘You sought to resurrect the Bloodtide?’ he spat. ‘No.’

Voldorius paused, flames licking around his feet. Another of the ritual machines exploded, showering the woman’s body with sparks.

‘He’s failed…’ the woman called, her voice now shrill with madness. ‘He’s failed…’

Voldorius exploded into violent motion. He raised his black sword high, shadow radiating from it as light shines from a lantern. He brought the huge blade down, but not upon the figure restrained on the surgical table. He brought it instead into a mighty horizontal sweep that struck the base of the statue of the Emperor Triumphant with a titanic impact.

Stone exploded in every direction and a crack cut across the statue’s base. Voldorius turned on Kor’sarro and raised his blade above his head to strike the White Scar down.

Kor’sarro raised Moonfang as he moved to avoid the worst of the blow. The sacred blade turned the daemon’s strike, though only barely, the black sword scything the air scant millimetres from Kor’sarro’s face.

The black blade struck the stone floor, jagged cracks spreading out from the impact. The entire platform shook, forcing the combatants to brace their feet.

Kor’sarro saw his opportunity, and took it. He lunged inside the daemon’s reach and put every ounce of his strength into a mighty upwards thrust.

Moonfang sank into the daemon’s midriff, a flood of black ichor spilling out around its grip and staining Kor’sarro’s armour. He twisted the blade savagely, then withdrew it, leaping back, raising the sword high and preparing to strike the deathblow.

The entire cathedral shook as the sound of tortured stone filled the air.

Kor’sarro made ready to strike again, but the deep wound he had just inflicted was healing before his very eyes. The bestial face of the daemon prince was split by a leering grin of triumph.

‘You cannot slay me, scarred one!’ Voldorius bellowed over the ever-increasing sound of crumbling rock.

Kor’sarro drew breath to reply, but his words stuck in his throat. The towering stature of the Emperor Triumphant was collapsing downwards in a shower of masonry.

‘Maybe I cannot,’ Kor’sarro growled, ‘but there are higher powers than me…’

A huge splinter of rock detached from the statue’s flank and slid downwards as if in slow motion, falling directly towards the daemon prince.

But the falling splinter of statue would crush the woman too.

As swiftly as Kor’sarro discerned her fate, he determined to avert it. As a hundred tonnes of rock descended upon Voldorius, Kor’sarro dived forwards. In three steps, he was at the surgical table. With no time to spare, Kor’sarro tore apart the restraints, cast his arm about the woman’s waist and threw himself forwards as the splinter crashed down.

In that instant, the entire world exploded. The splinter shattered into a million smaller fragments and the ground trembled as if a starship had crashed to earth. The entire cathedral was suddenly filled with the dust of a hundred tonnes of rock pulverised by the impact. Instinctively, Kor’sarro used his armoured body to protect the exposed form cradled in his arms, for the rock shrapnel sent up by the impact would have slain her as surely as if he had left her to die upon the table.

Finally, the rain of stone subsided and the dust began to clear. The once glorious statue lay broken and shattered. It was split into many pieces, some huge and still recognisable, others reduced to rough boulders. Upon the platform lay the fragment that had once been the Emperor’s upraised arm. Upon the stairs lay a portion of a leg, and along a fifty-metre stretch of the nave was scattered the remainder of the statue.

The combatants who had been fighting one another the length of the nave stirred, casting about for dropped weapons and blades. The slaughter would begin anew.

Kor’sarro set the fragile form held in his arms down, and stepped forwards, looking around for Moonfang.

The dust stirred.

The mighty form of Lord Voldorius reared from the billowing cloud, his wings, now tattered and ragged, unfolding overhead. Voldorius raised his black sword high above his head, his snarling face a mask of savage, daemonic fury.

A second figure rose from the dust behind Voldorius. Arcs of blue lightning spat to life and the air crackled.

The daemon prince faltered, his back arching. Searing blue light appeared at the centre of his chest, followed a second later by the tips of four razor-sharp talons. Voldorius made to turn to face his assailant, twisting his body to free himself from the talons.

At Kor’sarro’s feet, the woman lifted Moonfang from amongst the dust and rubble. Straightening, she raised the sword high.

Kor’sarro grasped the sword and turned towards Voldorius. As he did so, Voldorius was thrown backwards to fall face down across the fragment of the statue that had been the Emperor’s right arm. The black-armoured figure of Kayvaan Shrike rose behind him, his talon buried in the daemon’s back. The Raven Guard drove his talon even deeper into the body of his foe. An explosion of sparks went up as the blade piercing the daemon’s chest dug into the statue, pinning the daemon against it.

Kor’sarro raised Moonfang high in a two-handed grip. ‘Kernax Voldorius,’ he spat through bloody lips. ‘I claim your head in the name of the Emperor, and of the primarch.’

The sacred blade fell, cleaving the daemon’s head from his shoulders in a single strike.

‘Honoured be his name.’

By the time the fighting was done and the last of the daemon prince’s followers routed or slain, Kayvaan Shrike was gone. Kor’sarro had made to order his warriors to find the captain of the Raven Guard 3rd Company, for he demanded answers, but the Storm Seer Qan’karro had simply shaken his head. That was all the counsel the Master of the Hunt needed.

‘Where is he?’ Kor’sarro raged as he paced the debris-strewn nave of the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom. ‘And where are his men?’

‘Gone, huntsman,’ the Storm Seer said. ‘His mission here is done.’

‘What mission?’ Kor’sarro said, rounding on his old friend. ‘We shared objectives. At the last, we stood as brothers.’

‘Aye,’ Qan’karro replied. ‘But only so far as you shared the field of battle. Shrike was not simply here to liberate Quintus. He was not here for that at all.’

Kor’sarro halted in his pacing. ‘And you knew of this?’

‘I know of many things, huntsman,’ the Storm Seer replied, his heavily wrinkled brow furrowing as he regarded the Master of the Hunt. ‘But some knowledge is not to be shared. Other wisdom is only to be imparted when the time is right.’

‘He came for the Bloodtide,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘He knew Voldorius was attempting to awaken it. How?’

‘I told you that the sons of Corax walk their own path. That they bear the weight of ages upon their shoulders, did I not, Kor’sarro?’

‘You did,’ Kor’sarro nodded. ‘What of it?’

‘As we of the White Scars write the names of our foes in our epics, as the Great Khan names those who shall be hunted, so the Raven Guard etch the names of their foes upon their own souls. Each nurtures his hatred, cleaves to it above all else, so that one day, when he comes face to face with an enemy of his Chapter, he might unleash it, and strike that enemy down.’

‘I saw it,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘All of the daemon’s power fled at that moment.’

‘Aye,’ the Storm Seer replied, laying a hand on Kor’sarro’s battered shoulder guard. ‘But there was more. Voldorius was pinned against a fragment of the statue of the Emperor. His powers were naught compared to that.’

As he thought back to the last moments of the battle, Kor’sarro looked around for the woman who had passed Moonfang to him at that crucial moment. He had not had the chance to thank her, or to ensure her well-being.

‘She too is gone,’ Qan’karro said. ‘He took her.’

‘To what end?’ Kor’sarro spat, bitterness welling inside him. Had he been a fool to trust the Raven Guard? Was there more to the friction between the two Chapters than mere misunderstanding and hubris?

‘I cannot say, huntsman,’ the Storm Seer replied darkly.

‘Cannot?’ Kor’sarro said. ‘Or will not?’

‘I suggest you look to the future, huntsman,’ Qan’karro said, turning his back on the Master of the Hunt. As he stalked off along the nave, he turned at the base of the steps leading up to the altar. ‘Your hunt is done, and there will be much rejoicing. Other hunts will be declared, and yet more honour will be yours.’

Qan’karro raised his voice so all the survivors of the 3rd Company who were in the cathedral could hear. ‘This hunt, the hunt for Voldorius, is over!’ he bellowed, his voice echoing the entire length of the Cathedral of the Emperor’s Wisdom.

‘All hail Kor’sarro Khan,’ the White Scars bellowed as one.

‘Master of the Hunt!’

‘Thus was the head of Kernax Voldorius taken from that defiled place, and set before Kyublai Khan, Master of the White Scars Chapter, and his name struck from the hunt. As Kor’sarro Khan had sworn, the daemon’s skull was encased in silver by the High Chaplain, and mounted upon a proud lance. At the next Rites of Howling, the prize was set upon the road to Khum Karta, and Kor’sarro’s name was engraved upon the Great Tablet of Honour, so that it might endure for all time.

The deeds of Scout-Sergeant Kholka were sung by his neophytes throughout the Long Night of the Fallen, as they would be upon the anniversary of his death for a thousand centuries to come, so long as a single White Scar lived to recall his name.

So too was the name of Brother Kergis, at whose hand the wicked Nullus was slain, graven upon the marble tablet. A great convocation of Storm Seers was held, at which Qan’karro declared the evil of Nullus was still at large in the galaxy. Despite the bodily death of that daemon-kin, all knew that his evil was not yet done, and his name too was added to the list of the enemies of the Chapter, so a future hunt might bring him to justice.

Quintus was in time restored to the Imperium. The Space Marines surrendered its care to the Imperial Guard, and a great purging of the daemon prince’s followers was instigated. All who had entered the presence of the vile one were judged, and all were cleansed, their remains scattered to the winds. The statue of the Emperor Triumphant was restored, the sisters of the Orders Pronatus piecing it together, one fragment at a time, over the course of a decade until it stood once more in all its former glory.

But the greatest legacy of the hunt for Voldorius was, it was said, that White Scars and Raven Guard, so long estranged, had stood side by side as brothers. Though it may still be many centuries before old wounds are entirely healed and old wrongs entirely forgotten, the warriors of the 3rd Company of both Chapters called one another brother, for a short time at least.

Little did Kor’sarro or Shrike know that the names of Nullus and Voldorius would one day return to haunt the nightmares of men. But that is another tale, yet to be told…’

– Omniscenti Bithisarea, Deeds of the Adeptus Astartes,
Volume IX, Chapter LV, M.40 recension (suppressed)

THE LAST HUNT

ROBBIE MACNIVEN

PROLOGUE

A figure sits atop a weather-beaten rock, clad in white, his legs crossed beneath him. He is alone. Around him, as far as consciousness extends, the steppes of the Plain Zhou stretch. The wind sighs over the tall grass, setting it rippling like the waves of an ocean. In the distance the tips of the Mountains that Scrape the Stars are just visible, giving the horizon a jagged, black-toothed edge.

The man is old. His hair, bound up around the crown of his head, is grey. His features are wizened, beaten and cured by three centuries of steppe sun and wind. He sees much, and is aware of even more. To the east a herd of wild ux horns is passing by, their lowing carried to him by the wind. Near the base of his rocky perch a vole is scampering between the stalks, scavenging for food. It is being hunted, though it does not yet know it. Far above, a berkut circles, waiting as it rides upon the currents of the sky.

The figure on the rock is also being hunted. He can sense the creature’s presence, though he cannot yet see it. It is nearby, stalking him. It should not be here. He seeks it out in the twitch of the grass, in the shadow that creeps ever closer, slowly circling. But still, for all his perception, he cannot find it.

Darkness falls across him. A lesser being would have shivered. He looks up. Dusk is still many hours distant, but today it has come early. Today, the heavens are full of flesh. The figure reaches for the totemic staff set on the rock before him, his expression grim.

Hunger. The eternal constant, insatiable and vast. It floods the skies above the man, blocking out the sun, burning away the clouds. It reaches down towards the steppes with a billion, billion shadowy tendrils, covering them in questing, hideous meat.

The Plain Zhou dissolves. The Khum Karta crumbles, the vast mountain range swallowed whole. As the world is consumed, the lone predator strikes. It comes at the figure in a blur of speed, all talons and hard, spiny carapace. The figure brings his staff up, but he is too slow. Too old.

He wakes. Shadows surround him. For a moment, he is filled with horror. For a moment he still sees his world swallowed up, consumed utterly. But no. It is dusk. The sun is sinking towards the mountain tips, a disk of blood-red that makes the steppe grasses look like a sea of flickering flames.

He takes one slow, shuddering breath, as the last of the nightmare vision disintegrates around him. His staff is still in his hand, his knuckles white. He stands slowly, bending limbs and cracking joints left inert for too long. He is old no more.

The vision has changed. He must take word of it to the Ayanga. He needs guidance. He drops down into the rock’s lengthening shadow. There his bike stands, its smooth, white surfaces gleaming in the encroaching darkness. Slinging his staff across his back, he mounts it and guns the engine. He circles the rock once, the plain dust kicked up by thick tyres shrouding the erratic stone. Then he turns north, towards the distant mountains. The roar of his engine carries across the steppe until it is lost, swallowed up by the gathering night.

On the burning winds they come,
Warriors of the Sky,
saviour and slaver both.

– Traditional Darkand tribal poem

CHAPTER ONE

MASTER OF CEREMONIES

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 114 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 69 HOURS.

Temple District, Heavenfall

The Spur of Mankind Descended was hushed. Light flooded through the glassaic dome of the temple primaris, painting the swept flagstones and carved rustwood pews in vibrant shades of blue, green and gold. The air was heavy with dust motes and the silent expectations of threescore dignitaries, sweating in their yat wool gowns and broad-rimmed ceremonial caps. They were seated before the spur itself, tribal hetmen and Administratum adepts alike. Darkand’s ruling elite, come to the slope-city of Heavenfall to observe the onset of the Furnace Season.

The rattle of beads disturbed the expectant silence. Wordlessly the High Enunciator, Septimus Traik, made his way between the pews, head bowed in supplication, features unreadable behind the thousand white beads of his traditional shontii veil. Only Governor Harren turned his head to observe the leader of the Church of the Emperor’s Voice as he passed by. He wondered how Traik could withstand the heat in his impractical garments. Harren’s own ageing flesh was slippery beneath the thick folds of red-dyed yat wool. Like Harren, Traik was an off-worlder, born not on Darkand’s wind-whipped steppes, but amidst the upper-hive grav spires of Soltara. Traik, however, seemed unaffected by the stifling nature of the local garb.

The governor felt Chancellor Tugan, seated next to him, shift and lean in. Unlike Harren or Traik, Tugan was Darkand born and bred, his dusky, weathered skin and stocky build speaking of decades hunting across the steppes beyond Heavenfall’s Founding Wall.

‘A message from Ganzorig,’ the chancellor murmured in the governor’s ear.

‘What is it?’ Harren hissed, fighting the urge to scratch at the sweat sliding its way down his sides. ‘Does he not know it’s Descent Day?’

‘He knows,’ Tugan said, lips so close they almost brushed Harren’s aural augmetics. ‘He says it’s a high priority contact. Code aleph.’

‘Aleph?’ Harren said, voice spiking. One of the Administratum adepts seated in front glanced round.

‘You think it’s…’ Harren began, lowering his tone.

Tugan simply nodded, dark eyes fixed on the governor. He didn’t need to say what had triggered an aleph-level communiqué. It could only be one thing.

They were here, and they were early.

‘Can you deal with it?’ Harren asked. ‘Placate them and brief me in the centrum dominus the moment this foolishness is over?’

‘I can try,’ Tugan said. ‘The warp must have favoured their arrival.’

‘Or they desire more from us than usual,’ Harren said. ‘Don’t keep them waiting. Go.’

Tugan rose from the pews and slipped out of the temple, golden chancellery robes hitched around his ankles. Harren realised that Traik’s stately procession had reached the ceremony’s destination.

The Spur was the rock face that stood in place of one of the temple’s walls. The craggy ochre cliff reached all the way to the wide chamber’s glassaic dome, its natural surface untouched by the masons and artisans that had fashioned the place of worship around it. Its only blemish was at its centre – there the rock had been smashed and shattered, left scarred by plasma burns and blunt-force trauma. The blackened vents and exhaust chutes of a landing shuttle still protruded from the rock, where the craft had buried itself three millennia previously. This was the heart of the Spur of Mankind Descended, the sacred place where humanity had first set foot on Darkand.

Harren approached Traik. The High Enunciator waited beneath the shuttle in silence. The governor had never liked him, or the cultish offshoot of the Ministorum – the Church of the Emperor’s Voice – that had held sway on Darkand since the purging of the Bor-tri cult. Given that he’d only been planetside for eight years Terran standard, Harren had been surprised when the Congregational Ministers had voted unanimously for Traik to take the position of High Enunciator. He was the youngest off-worlder to have ever held the post. This was his first Descent Day.

It was the first Descent Day for all of them, Harren reminded himself. Furnace Season only occurred once a century, when Darkand’s orbit dragged the planet close to the fixed stellar flare listed by the Adeptus Astro-cartograpae as Fury’s Pillar. The climatological phenomenon left nine-tenths of the planet a scorched wasteland and drove the steppe tribes to the polar regions, while the citizens of Darkand’s only fixed habitation centre, Heavenfall, sought shelter in the catacombs that riddled the slope-city’s mountainside. The Furnace Season’s start was heralded by Descent Day, when both tribal representatives and the planet’s off-world Imperial elite came together to ceremonially re-enact the arrival of mankind’s first colonists.

Harren joined Traik, and the two of them mounted the steps to the shuttle’s rear hatch. There was a scrape of rustwood on stone and a scuffling of slipshoe-clad feet as the congregation rose.

The two came to a halt before the closed hatch. Traik raised his hand and splayed his long, pallid digits against the gene-lock pad. There was a whirring sound as the ceramite-plated hatchway slid open. The shuttle’s interior was a lightless depth, the illumination of the temple picking out only a few feet of worn, rusty decking plates. A stench hit Harren, like the gaseous exhalation of a rotting cadaver – void mould, the musk of old rubber and mech lubricants, the sickly sweet stink of long-dead vermin. Despite the heat of his gown, he shivered.

Another few minutes and it would be finished. He only needed to take a few paces into the darkness of the shuttle with Traik and recite the Founding Canticle. The High Enunciator would hold a yellowing, jawless skull – said to have belonged to one of the very first human colonists – for Harren to place his hand upon while he rededicated the planet’s government to the God-Emperor and their forefathers. That, along with a brief ceremonial confession of ritualised sins, and the governor’s part in the Day of Descent would be over. He could re-emerge, ancient tradition observed, and be in the centrum dominus within half an hour.

So why was he hesitating?

Traik shifted next to him. It was a tiny movement, almost lost beneath the heavy folds of his gown, but it sent Harren’s hesitation into flight. He was being ridiculous. Head bowed and robes hitched, he stepped across the threshold and in through the shuttle hatchway.

The stink of the ancient, long-abandoned craft grew worse, and he fought the urge to bring a gold-embroidered sleeve up to his nose. He took another step into the darkness, just far enough to be hidden from the congregation below. Deep enough for three-thousand-year-old shadows to fully embrace him.

He heard a clicking noise, faint and regular. It made him frown. A moment passed before he could place it – it was the sound of the gene-lock pad engaging. He began to turn back towards the hatch just as the noise was replaced by the whirring of the door. The governor caught a split-second glimpse of Traik, still shrouded in his heavy ceremonial gown and veil, looming in the hatchway. Then the door sealed with a crump of locking bars, and Harren was plunged into the lightless depths of the shuttle.

For a moment, he didn’t move. For a moment, he didn’t breathe. For a moment he was angry and confused. He took a step towards the hatch, arms out in the darkness.

Then he heard a slow scraping sound, and the anger and confusion vanished, eaten up by sudden, heart-jolting terror. He wasn’t alone. There was something else in here with him.

His angry words soon turned to screaming.

The Day of Descent was over. The ascent was only just beginning.

The Pinnacle, Heavenfall

The door to the primary vox-hub’s gene-lock read Chancellor Tugan’s palm and slid open to admit him. A government landcar had taken the chancellor from Heavenfall’s temple district to the administrative sector, then a grav-lift up to its central communications station nestled at the very peak of the city’s cliff-like architectural strata. Vox Majoris Ganzorig, a skinny, myopic man, Heavenfall born and raised, met him at the main entrance.

‘They’re on channel eighteen-nine, chancellor,’ the communications chief said as he walked Tugan into the chamber. The room was high-roofed and circular, with six tiered rows of wall gantries lining a central hub filled with brass-rimmed vox-relays and monitoring stations. Though filled with dozens of communications adepts, it was strangely subdued. The staff were all at their workbenches, reports reduced to low murmurs that competed with the fizz and crackle of the vox-horns. Ganzorig took Tugan into a substation sectioned off from the main theatre by more security panels.

This room was smaller, with only six adepts monitoring high-yield arrays. Like all the primary hub staff they were Heavenfall natives, their longer, leaner builds and paler features contrasting with the stocky breeding of the steppe peoples. Even after three decades serving Governor Harren at the heart of Darkand’s government, Ganzorig still felt out of place at the Pinnacle, the nerve centre of Heavenfall’s government. Bar the tribal representatives and steppe lobbyists, almost every non-Imperial member of Darkand’s ruling elite had been born and raised in Heavenfall’s steep, narrow streets. Compared to them Tugan struck a squat, bald figure whose heavy robes hid muscle hardened on the steppes and skin left darkened and cracked by wind and sun. He would never truly fit in with the Heavenfall elite, the mountainside politicos who ruled the planet’s only fixed settlement. That, he suspected, was part of the reason for his appointment as chancellor. Divide and rule; it had ever been the Imperial way.

Ganzorig paused at the door to the smaller substation, one hand pressed against the bulky vox-array that had been grafted into his pale, balding skull. His worn expression grew even more distressed.

‘They’re requesting a direction transmission,’ he told Tugan. ‘Face to face.’

‘We delayed too long,’ Tugan said, his voice grim. ‘It never pays to keep them waiting. Put me on the plate.’

‘Right now?’ Ganzorig asked, hesitating. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes,’ Tugan replied. ‘If we wait for the governor the situation will only worsen. I’ll offer them what assurances I can.’

Ganzorig nodded and gestured to one of his adepts.

‘Activate the transmission plates.’

Tugan paused to check his robes, adjusted the golden yat-horn pin that was his badge of office, and then stepped onto one of the substation’s six hololithic plates. He felt the surface underfoot vibrating up through his slipshoes, and the air filled with a low hum. The lumen strips overhead dimmed.

‘We’ve accepted their transmission request,’ Ganzorig said, hand pressed once more to his vox augmetics as he synthesised the information flow. ‘Codes verified, establishing connection. Stand by, chancellor.’

The hololithic plate opposite his own came online. There was a crack of electrical charge, and the humming grew louder. The space above the plate before him flickered and shifted, pale luminescence filling the darkness. A white phantom materialised, a grainy image washed with pulses of static inference.

It was the ghost of a giant, clad in ethereal battleplate and thick pelts. One great white pauldron was emblazoned with a jagged lightning bolt crest. It wore no helm, and the hololithic projection picked out sharp, proud features and a long, trailing moustache not dissimilar to the one affected by Tugan. Its high cheeks were disfigured by ritual scarring, three lines running down each, slicing towards a strong jaw. Even distorted and flickering, the giant’s eyes had a piercing, hawkish quality, almost cruel. It looked down on Tugan imperiously as the chancellor held out both arms, palms face up and open in the traditional Darkand style of greeting.

‘Hail and well met, Sky Warrior,’ he intoned, fixing his attention on the single eye of the twin-headed Imperial aquila embossed on its vast breastplate.

The giant brought one clenched gauntlet – easily the size of Tugan’s head – up to its breastplate. There was a click as the vox-speakers built into the hololithic plate’s base came online.

‘Well met, Chancellor Shegai Tugan,’ said the giant. Its voice was deep but curiously melodic, lent poetic colour by the thickness of a flowing accent.

Tugan did not question how the Sky Warrior knew his name.

‘I am Joghaten, Master of Blades, Khan-Commander of the White Scars,’ the giant continued. ‘I am accompanied to your system by the entirety of my brotherhood. We have come here with all haste.’

‘The tides of the empyrean have been kind, Great Hetman,’ Tugan said, using the honorific applied by the natives of Darkand to the Sky Warriors. ‘We did not expect your arrival for some time.’

‘Your assumption is wrong,’ Joghaten replied. ‘We are not early. We are late, and grievously so.’

‘I… do not understand,’ Tugan began, hesitating as he tried to process the giant’s words.

‘It is not necessary that you understand,’ Joghaten said. ‘An enemy is coming, a great and terrible xenos threat. My brotherhood’s Zadyin Arga has seen it many times in his entrails and spirit-walks. Your world already feels the tremors of their approach. You must move the nomad tribes inside the capital’s walls.’

‘I will inform Commander Harren of this,’ Tugan said, fear warring with protocol as the enormity of what Joghaten was saying hit home. ‘What manner of xenos? I-I will need authorisation–’

‘Why is Governor Harren not here to treat with me directly?’ Joghaten demanded. ‘Do the White Scars not warrant his attention?’

‘We… we did not expect you so soon, Great Hetman,’ Tugan said, forcing himself to turn back towards the giant. ‘Today is the Day of Descent. He has been called away to the ceremonial start of the Furnace Season. I will fetch him immediately.’

‘Deliver this message to him,’ Joghaten ordered. ‘We are running out of time. You must begin the relocation of the tribespeople to the capital immediately. The Shadow in the Warp will soon be upon us.’

‘The Shadow in the–?’ Tugan asked, trying to force his voice to stay level. He must not dishonour his post by panicking, even if it was in front of a Sky Warrior.

‘You will be fully briefed when we make planetfall,’ Joghaten responded. ‘Go and begin preparations, chancellor.’

Tugan nodded hastily before crossing his arms and bowing his head in a reverent expression of traditional Darkand compliance.

‘As you will it, Great Hetman,’ he said. ‘I shall return as swiftly as possible.’

‘I pray you do, Chancellor Tugan,’ Joghaten said. For a moment the towering ghost form glared down at him, like a hawk eyeing its prey. Then the hololithic flickered, and was gone.

Tugan turned to Ganzorig as the lumens came back on.

‘Issue a code aleph alert to all departments, recall the cabinet and get me the governor. I don’t care if it interrupts the ceremony.’

‘Understood,’ Ganzorig said, signalling to one of his vox operators. ‘Open a secure channel to Commander Harren immediately, maximum priority.’

As the sound of fingers tapping at rune keys echoed through the substation, Ganzorig and Tugan both made for the doors. They never reached them. The hatchway slid open to admit half a dozen Pinnacle Guard in their ochre flak-plate. They were led by Nergüi.

Guardmaster Nergüi, Captain of the Watch, was head of security for Heavenfall’s government district. Like Tugan he was a rare beast, a steppe tribesman inducted into the capital’s inner circle. When seeing the chancellor and the guardmaster together, many assumed the two sons of the steppes shared a sort of native rapport. Nothing could be further from the truth – the two came from rival tribes, the Tug-ai and the Shontaj. Competition was bred into their every encounter.

Tugan paused as Nergüi and his security detail – fully armed and armoured – stepped into the substation.

‘What are you doing here?’ Tugan demanded.

‘There has been a security breach,’ Nergüi said, stopping in front of Tugan, flanked by his men. They wore their helmets’ blast plates down, the fanged images of the steppe canids carved into the visors snarling silently at the chancellor. He noticed that the vox-adepts had also ceased transmitting, the rattle of fingers on rune pads suddenly silenced. They were all staring at him. The hairs on the nape of his neck bristled.

‘What manner of breach?’ he demanded. Ganzorig had started worrying at the collar of his robe, seemingly also unnerved by the sudden appearance of the Pinnacle Guard.

‘Tier one,’ Nergüi said, taking a step forwards and forcing Tugan back.

‘I must speak directly with Commander Harren,’ the chancellor said.

‘The commander is indisposed,’ said Nergüi. ‘He is being introduced to the Master of Ceremonies.’

‘The Sky Warriors are on their way,’ Tugan responded, forcing his voice to remain slow and level as he sought to regain control of the situation. ‘They’ll be here sooner than we anticipated.’

He’d hoped mention of the Sky Warriors would give Nergüi pause. It did not. The man simply smiled, the expression disconcertingly dead.

‘It is as the High Enunciator foresaw,’ he said. ‘Our salvation is finally drawing close.’

The guardmaster turned to his detail and gestured at Tugan.

‘Seize him.’

Tugan went for his concealed Drexian autopistol, but he was too slow. The Pinnacle Guard were on him, pinning his arms at his sides, his ageing muscle no match for their combined, armoured bulk.

‘The vox majoris too,’ Nergüi snarled. Ganzorig was making for one of the hub’s secondary exits, but the staff intercepted him. He didn’t resist.

‘Unhand me,’ Tugan snapped. His heart was pounding, and he strained against his captors. His anger was stoked. Chancellor, minister, councillor, it didn’t matter anymore. Tugan was a son of the steppes, proud and fierce. Whatever treachery was unfolding before him, whatever madness had gripped those around him, he would not surrender to it meekly. He spat at Nergüi.

Nergüi punched him. The blow thumped into Tugan’s gut. He gasped with pain, but the Pinnacle Guard kept him standing.

‘We are the security breach,’ Nergüi sneered, pressing his face against Tugan’s, filling the chancellor’s senses with the stench of rancid yat milk and the greasy reek of weapon oils. Tugan tried to headbutt him, but one of the guards snatched his grey topknot, pinning him back.

Nergüi laughed, and there was nothing but hunger in his black eyes.

‘I have waited a long time to do this,’ the guardmaster said, drawing his kindjal: the long, razored knife all steppe tribesmen carried. ‘Tug-ai scum.’

He thrust the blade into Tugan’s stomach. The chancellor grunted, more with shock than anything else. A part of his mind still refused to accept what was happening.

Then the pain hit. His cry was muffled by a gloved hand as the Pinnacle Guards kept him pinned. Ganzorig’s yelp was also cut short as the vox-adepts struck his head against a transmitter node and began to violently kick him when he went down. They didn’t let up until the vox majoris stopped moving. It took a long time.

Nergüi twisted his blade in Tugan’s stomach, slowly. The chancellor’s robes were red and dripping. Nergüi held Tugan’s gaze as he murdered him, a grin splitting his blunt, dark features. This was not a cold-blooded assassination, not some coolly executed coup. The features of the men and women Tugan and Ganzorig had worked with for years were twisted with a vicious, inhuman mix of raw hatred and vicious glee. There was deep, abiding hunger in their manic gaze. Tugan, breathless with agony and weak from blood loss, could do nothing to break free. The other Pinnacle Guards had drawn their own ceremonial kindjals and were stepping in close, joining Nergüi. Those holding on to the chancellor released him.

Like many before him, Tugan had wondered what thoughts would occupy his mind at the point of death. He had always assumed it would be something relating to the beauty of the steppes, or memories of his family. It was not the steppes he thought of though, as the knives took him on the floor of the vox-hub substation. Nor was it the memory of uncles and sisters, mother and father and cousins. His only thoughts were of terror. Terror at having failed the white-plated giant. Terror at what was coming for his people, for his world, from the depths of the void.

Terror at what was already here, lurking in Heavenfall’s heart.

You think you know what haunts the recesses of a broken man’s mind? I tell you now, storm brethren, not all phantoms are conjured by the illusions of stress and sorrow. Some stand alongside us, wherever we are, wherever we go. Where past and future meet, here are the living, breathing ghosts of the present. Eternal possibility is theirs to command.

– Targutai Yesugei, Chief Stormseer of the White Scars

CHAPTER TWO

GHOSTS

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 113 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 68 HOURS.

The Pride of Chogoris, the void,
Darkand System

The fleet of the Fourth Brotherhood of the White Scars made its way from warp exit on all ahead full, approaching the system’s central planet, Darkand, on a war footing. On board the strike cruiser Pride of Chogoris the phantom of Chancellor Tugan flickered and died. The lumens came back up, illuminating the pelt-draped cogitators, vox-pits and the trophy racks that decorated the walls of the primary bridge dome, along with the zart serfs at their monitoring stations. Khan-Commander Joghaten stepped off the hololithic plate, his expression dispassionate.

‘They will not be ready,’ he said. ‘They never are.’

‘Give them some credit,’ Tzu Shen said. ‘They cannot possibly comprehend the nature of the threat that approaches. The sheer scale of it.’

Joghaten turned towards the blind voyagemaster seated on his throne mount at the heart of the bridge dome. There were few beings in the galaxy the Master of Blades would accept a rebuke from. Shen was one of them.

‘Mankind’s ignorance will ever be its undoing,’ Joghaten said, his voice grim.

‘Then we must save them from it,’ Qui’sin interjected.

The Stormseer had watched the hololithic exchange between Joghaten and Chancellor Tugan without comment. Now he approached the khan of the Fourth Brotherhood and placed one gauntlet on his pauldron.

‘If the steppe tribes can be corralled in the designated safe zones, we may be able to contain this threat. We believe there are no more than fifty thousand tribespeople out on the plains during this phase of the planetary season.’

‘You think they’ll allow themselves to be moved?’ Joghaten asked, pulling away from the psyker’s touch. ‘Would we? Would the tribes of Chogoris cease their wandering at another’s command, even ones such as ourselves?’

‘I do not know. We have no recourse other than to try and move them to the capital. We are running out of time.’

‘What have you seen?’ Joghaten demanded.

Qui’sin shook his head, steppe tokens rattling, his youthful features pensive.

‘Hunger. The slaughter of cattle. A desperate hunt beneath dying skies. Worse. The Shadow in the Warp clouds everything.’

Joghaten did not respond. He paced over the patterned yurut rugs that decorated the bridge dome’s decking plates, stepping up to the primary operations hololithic chart. Qui’sin followed while the khan-commander activated the display with a flick of his vambrace’s encryption key. A sea-green reflection of the Darkand System swam into view above the chart’s glassy surface, washed with pulses of static. The display’s light threw the skull trophies surrounding the display into grim contrast.

‘There is still no word from the Imperium?’ Joghaten asked, while the chart updated with the latest augur readouts. Shen, bonded to the display via the cords trailing from his bald scalp to the data ports of his throne mount, shook his head, making the hardwired links rattle.

‘Fresh information is still sporadic, thanks to the dark influence of the Cicatrix Maledictorum. It appears fleet command for the subsector is still prioritising the defence of the Tarneth System. The local battlegroup remains anchored above the hive worlds of Verrun and Cana’s Rest. There is a squadron of light cruisers refitting at Port Garro, but even if they were redeployed to Darkand they’d likely take many weeks to arrive, even assuming a positive warp time variant approximation.’

‘Too slow,’ Joghaten growled, eyes fixed on the chart as more icons winked into existence across it. ‘How many billions have died down the centuries because the Imperium of Man is so damnably slow?’

‘The Imperial Navy is still uncertain about the fallout from Baal,’ Shen said. ‘Hive Fleet Leviathan’s fate remains… unclear. Until they know more, they will not move from their anchorages.’

‘Then we act alone,’ Qui’sin said. His psyber-hawk, Kemich, had swooped down from where she had been observing proceedings from one of the bridge yurut’s communication gantries. Now she settled on his shoulder, taking in the bridge with a twitch of aquiline disdain. ‘The Imperium will not divert resources to preserve an agri backwater like Darkand, not with the recent chaos. Yat wool, ux horn and gax meat exports aren’t worth the lives of warriors in times such as these.’

‘Backwater,’ Joghaten repeated with a snarl. ‘A backwater the White Scars have been honour-bound to protect for two thousand years.’

‘Our bonds make little difference to subsector command,’ the Stormseer pointed out.

‘Wind and fire take them,’ Joghaten cursed, slapping the palm of his gauntlet against the hololithic chart’s surface, disturbing the display. ‘It matters not. We fight alone.’

‘And we will die alone,’ Qui’sin added. ‘We are not enough to resist what is coming. Even without my visions the entrails have made that much clear.’

‘You would have us bring dishonour to the Chapter?’ Joghaten demanded. ‘You would have us abandon this fight? Abandon an honour world to annihilation?’

‘I would have us resume our hunt,’ Qui’sin said. ‘Not sacrifice our lives for the sake of tradition. The Khagan still calls to me. For all the importance of the honour world, we are needed elsewhere if we are to find him in time.’

‘I know of what you speak,’ Joghaten said, facing Qui’sin squarely. ‘You are wise beyond your years, young Zadyin Arga, but you are not as subtle as your more seasoned brethren. Others already hunt for the honoured primarch. I will not abandon human lives for the sake of old legends, no matter how dear. I will not abandon Darkand. We are sworn to protect its people. To the death, Qui’sin. The Khagan would understand that.’

The hololithic chart chimed, its updates completed. The White Scars fleet, represented by the Chapter’s lightning bolt sigil, blinked across the system display as it made its way towards Darkand: three Sword-class escorts, the War Wind, Tulwar and Starsteed, and the twin Cobras, Falcon and Steppe Lord, flanking the Pride of Chogoris, the Fourth Brotherhood’s venerable capital ship.

‘What are your orders, khan-commander?’ Shen asked, his blind eye sockets staring out over his bridge. Bar those overseeing the most vital vox and augur systems, the dome’s zarts stood waiting for their master’s command. Joghaten gestured at the chart, Shen’s hardwired consciousness detecting the contact with the hololithic projection.

‘Set a course for Darkand,’ the Master of Blades commanded. ‘With the haste of the racing stallion. We have no time to lose.’

The auto door hissed shut behind Qui’sin, sealing the Stormseer in the darkness of his scrying chamber. The only light came from the electro candles, their glow flickering across the ancient bones and faded rags that adorned the room’s walls.

Most of the relics that surrounded the White Scar were many millennia older than he. Of all the Chapter’s psykers – the brotherhood of the Zadyin Arga – he had most recently completed the initiation rites. He had finished his study of the Arts of Heaven only five years previously, in his initiation in the high caverns of the Khum Karta and the stone-clad walls of Ayanga, the Lightning Tower. It was rare for one so young to be assigned as the sole Stormseer to a brotherhood, especially one as famously fractious as the Fourth.

But in those five years, Qui’sin had seen much. Much of the mortal plain, and even more of the immortal, where spirits walked and daemons toyed with the souls of men.

He relit one of the electro candles that had gone out, before setting himself on the prayer rug at the centre of the room. The shadows seemed to dance and slither around him, glinting off old bone and gleaming fangs. Apart from the low hum of his active power armour and the distant, dream-like throb of the Pride’s plasma drives, all was silent. Even Kemich, his bonded psyber-hawk, had been banished to her roost near the ship’s navigation blister. He inhaled, deep and slow, filtering the scents of the psychically charged room.

He smelled the cloying, sickly sweet incense of the tapers clustered beside the trophy racks, their smoke coiling languid and wispy in the dark air. He picked up the musk of old pelts and dry bones, the oily scents of his own power plate, and the underlying smells of the Pride of Chogoris – the chemical tang of the ship’s systems and drives, and the chlorine aftertaste of the recently deactivated Geller field.

Most of them were alien smells to Qui’sin. Like all sons of the storm, he felt confined in the claustrophobic corridors, stairwells and chambers of void-faring vessels. It was difficult to imagine an existence further removed from the open plains of the Empty Quarter of Chogoris. Here the air was a stale, dead thing, the biting wind of the steppes reduced to a memory. The familiar smells of spilt gax blood and burning yat dung, freshly cured hides and wet horse pelt, all were absent. Qui’sin wondered how Tzu Shen had endured it for so long. To be a White Scar in the depths of the void was to be a stallion confined to a stable.

Shen had told him his discomfort would pass, eventually. At least Darkand would offer some solace. When war against the heretical sect of the Bor-tri had brought the White Scars to Darkand two thousand years ago, they had immediately recognised the similarities between the planet’s steppe peoples and their own home world. After the heretics had been purged, the White Scars had taken the tribe’s supplication and moulded them after their own image, granting Darkand the title of honour world. Every century the blood oaths had been remade and the Chapter returned to the agri world, to ensure its safety and take a tithe of tribesfolk to supplement its fleet’s serf crews.

This time there would be no tithing, Qui’sin reflected. Only blood and death. Only hunger. He fought back a shudder as his visions returned. It was drawing nearer with every breath he took. The quakes and storms besetting Darkand, all so-called natural disasters, already heralded it. He could see it now, at the back of his mind’s eye – the flesh-filled sky, the stalking, alien predator, prowling amidst the steppe grasses. They were coming, unnumbered killers consumed by a ravening hunger.

Qui’sin unclamped one gauntlet and settled himself properly on the worn flax of the prayer rug. He’d woven it himself during his lessons in the high caverns of the Khum Karta, and had carried it with him ever since. It was second in importance only to his force staff, the shamanic totem that now lay on its purple velvet cushion before him. Both the mat and the cushion were surrounded by sigils, chalked into the decking plates in Khorchin, the native tongue of Chogoris. For a moment Qui’sin admired the way the light played across the worn yat skull that tipped his staff, the way it cast the scrimshawed bone into deeper shadows, and how it gleamed on the ulzi knotwork, the Endless Labyrinth, inscribed upon the horsehair-hung haft. He let out another slow breath and, carefully, reached out with his one bared hand.

At first the change was almost imperceptible. The candles around him shuddered, as though tugged at by a ghostly wind. Qui’sin felt it too, teasing at his unclasped topknot. His senses filled with the scents of the steppes.

Thunder crashed, violent and sudden. A gust moaned through the chamber, making the bone trophies clatter and snatching the light from the electro candles. Qui’sin needed them no longer. He was already elsewhere.

A new chamber, dark and cold and filled with the fury of the mountains. Thunder crashed and shuddered like a dispute between gods, shaking the desolate space. The walls were of stone, carved with hundreds of niches that reached towards a domed vault. The tiered alcoves were filled with scrolls, tens of thousands, fashioned from ancient, cracked leather and bound with horsehair knots. Interspersed between the alcoves were vision slits, slender jags of open air fashioned like the symbols on each White Scar’s pauldron. Beyond them, the Mountains that Scrape the Stars loomed. It was dark, and snow swirled in great eddies, gusting occasionally in through the opening slits. The lightning that pounded and beat the night air lit up jagged, white-headed peaks, so high and so serrated they seemed cast adrift from the world below.

Qui’sin was in the Ayanga, the Lightning Tower, tip of the world. Here, where past and future met on heaven’s doorstep, the ghosts of the present conferred.

Five figures stood in the chamber, facing inwards to where Qui’sin still sat, cross-legged on his prayer rug. They were fellow Stormseers, clad in white plate and grasping bone-tipped staffs, but to Qui’sin’s gaze they were insubstantial, ethereal, their armour and tanned skin glowing with faint, other-worldly luminescence. The snow that reached in through the wall slits with chill, white fingers could not touch them.

Qui’sin knew that, to the assembled psykers, he was the one that looked like a revenant.

Thunder boomed once more beyond the Ayanga’s ancient stonework, each great blow echoing away down the mountainside and sending shivers through the high tower. Qui’sin took another cold breath and settled his mind, hand clutched tightly around the psy-reactive haft of his force staff. He took in the scrolls on the niches surrounding him, the countless thousands of documents that constituted the White Scars’ librarium. Many of them belonged to the Jazag, the laws of Chogoris, as laid down by the Khagan and primarch, Jaghatai, ten millennia earlier. Others belong to The Veiled History of the Talskars, the text written by the first Great Khan documenting the founding of the V Legion.

Qui’sin had studied them for many years as a junior Lexicanium, learning to use his Lyman’s ear to shut out the eternal pounding of the thunder while he had absorbed his Chapter’s sacred doctrines and the history of his people. The Lightning Tower was the White Scars’ Librarius, the heart of the Chapter’s Librarium, seat of its culture and the headquarters of its Stormseers. Even among their brethren in the Quan Zhou – the fortress-monastery sprawling among the lesser peaks below – the lead-tipped spire of the Ayanga was a place of myth and legend.

The phantoms that regarded Qui’sin in silence were part of that legend. All were more venerable than he. All had guarded the Chapter’s legacy and taught its honoured history for many centuries. Not for the first time, the young Stormseer felt the weight of responsibility.

He spoke.

‘Hail, brethren of the lightning. My thanks for this haven amidst the storm.’

‘Hail and welcome, brother,’ said one of the phantoms. His name was Dayir Jenkshin, and he was Master of the Arts of Heaven, one of the oldest and most scar-honoured of all the Zadyin Arga. He stood with a slight stoop, the tips of his long moustache trailing all the way down to his breastplate. The gold-plated gax skull that topped his force staff glowed with other-worldly power.

‘You have reached the Darkand System,’ Jenkshin said, more statement that question.

‘Yes, honoured brother,’ Qui’sin said. His words felt disconnected and distant, as though his mind floated in a dream. He knew that the reality of his situation was more terrifying. For the briefest moment, he thought he felt a presence behind his seated form – unholy, vile breath, and the questing slither of dark tentacles.

‘Focus,’ Jenkshin snapped, his words underlined by a vicious thunderclap. Qui’sin clutched his staff harder, the reactive bone throbbing in his bare palm.

‘The visions continue,’ he said. ‘As clear as ever. The Great Devourer comes, though the rest of the Imperium does not yet acknowledge it.’

‘And what of the Master of Blades?’ Jenkshin asked. ‘Does he still heed your guidance?’

‘Sometimes. His mind is shattered by a hundred considerations, and he fears returning to Darkand. He fears the memory of death and defeat that came so close to overtaking him last time he fought upon that world. He appears ever more harried.’

‘His own visions weigh heavily on his mind,’ Jenkshin said. ‘He has always been a warrior, not one born to ponder the ulzi of fate. The Endless Labyrinth will confound him if you do not focus his thoughts, Qui’sin.’

‘He is torn by his urge to honour our pledges to Darkand, a place he hates, and the visions calling upon him to seek out the Khagan.’

‘And the desire that pulls at his heart the strongest?’

‘Darkand is the immediate priority, for now. But if the spirits are willing, the two needs will not exclude one another. I understand the importance of the honour world in the Endless Labyrinth. If it was not vital, you would not have permitted the dispatch of the Tulwar Brotherhood there.’

‘You speak the truth,’ Jenkshin allowed. ‘But still, you must not let him die needlessly in the coming conflict. Even were it not for the needs of our great hunt, the realms of man face the darkest of days ahead. The Imperium has need of warriors like Joghaten more than ever before.’

‘I will curb his slaughter-lust as best I can,’ Qui’sin said. ‘I fear his late uncertainties will manifest in a great fury when battle is joined. Especially given that Darkand is to be the battlefield. Few places resonate as deeply with him.’

‘See that he does not act out the part of the young headstrong warrior. Old Qan’karro continues to agitate here on behalf of the Master of the Hunt. He would have us deploy our might to ancient Terra, rather than continue seeking the Khagan. I fear his influence with Jubal Khan will bend his mind soon enough, and see the Chapter focus itself on the Segmentum Solar rather than the completion of our long hunt.’

‘Has there been any new word from Baal?’ Qui’sin asked. ‘Any more certainty on the nature of the returned primarch?’

‘We are still unsure. The best of rumours combined with our scrying lead us to believe the master of the Thirteenth Legion may have awoken from his long-wounded slumber, but the entrails are rancid and ill-formed. We shall continue to seek answers, and you shall continue to preserve Joghaten and guide him down his fated path.’

‘I understand,’ Qui’sin said, inclining his head.

‘Go now, quickly,’ Jenkshin urged. ‘The Shadow is almost upon you.’

‘May the spirits of earth and water, wind and fire guide you, venerable brothers,’ Qui’sin intoned, as the apparitions before him started to fade.

‘May they be with you too,’ Jenkshin replied, his voice now distant. ‘We shall need them all before the end.’

The vision dissolved and the Lightning Tower was gone. Qui’sin’s eyes started open, though he did not remember closing them. The scrying chamber on board the Pride of Chogoris remained undisturbed, though all but one of the electro candles had gone out. For a moment the paralysis that sometimes followed him from his visions gripped his transhuman body. Then it was gone and he was on his feet once more, force staff still in one hand.

There was even less time than he had imagined.

There was never a moment during transit when the sparring ger did not echo with the clash of blades. The domed space occupied the Pride of Chogoris’ upper aft deck level, clad like the insides of one of the Quan Zhou’s training arenas. The walls were hung with countless trophies – hunting pelts and scaled hides, the faded, ragged remains of a Cadian regimental standard, gifted to the brotherhood a millennium before, bestial skulls and even the broken, tarnished battleplate of a Traitor Space Marine. The floor space was divided by lengths of tasselled red cord, demarking the well-worn flaxen training mats that covered the decking plates.

Although it was the night cycle and the lumens above were dim, most of the cordoned arenas were still full. Even by the standards of the Adeptus Astartes the White Scars were a warlike and restless brotherhood. Waiting left them fractious at the best of times. Since leaving Chogoris a month earlier half a dozen tulwar brothers had been censured for various misdemeanours, mostly inter-squad feuding. Joghaten had left the disciplining to the türüch, his sergeants and squad leaders, but the unrest lingered on.

In order to fill the vacuum of void travel, the türüch drilled their squads. Most welcomed the distractions of the training decks, even if the routines of building clearance and target extraction, outpost infiltration and strongpoint defence had long grown stale. Most popular of all was the sparring ger, where tulwar brothers were free to test their mettle as they pleased. All brotherhoods of the White Scars emphasised skill with a blade, but in the Fourth it had been raised to an art form.

Lau Feng, türüch and steedmaster of the Third Assault Bike Squad, stood on the wooden boards between the cordoned mats, watching. Before him two of his hunt-brothers, Oda and Jakar, duelled. Like the other Space Marines engaged across the room, they were stripped down to loose silk trouser fatigues, their upper bodies glistening with sweat that dripped around the neural ports studding their hard, scarred flesh. Both warriors wielded tulwars, the short, curving swords so favoured by the Fourth Brotherhood. The dim lumens made their vicious edges glitter as they inscribed deadly arcs around the two warriors.

Feng had not crossed blades on one of the ger mats since the start of the voyage. He did not have the taste for it, not since word had first reached the Fourth Brotherhood of their new destination – the honour world of Darkand. The name alone was enough to make the White Scar clench his teeth, lest he snarl at the cruelty of fate. Darkand, a world bound to the Chapter by sacred rite and ritual. A planet moulded, in part, after the very culture of Chogoris. For two thousand years the White Scars had watched over it, protecting its nomad tribes from external threats whilst tithing its population for serf-hands to crew the Chapter fleet.

Feng had been to Darkand once before, years previously. Xenos eldar had been using the planet as a staging post for piracy throughout the subsector – there had been traces of eldar activity on the world even before colonisation. Unable to ignore a plea from their protectorate, the White Scars had deployed in force. Fighting free of a xenos ambush around the rocks known as the Gates of Eternity and then carrying the battle to their webway portal had cost the Fourth Brotherhood dear. Their khan-commander, Arro’shan, as well as all Feng’s tulwar brethren – Ajai, Tenjin, Oyuun and Tayang – had been slain.

Feng kept his eyes on his other brothers, on Oda and Jakar as they circled one another, teeth bared and blades gleaming. In truth he did not see them. His thoughts strayed, as they had done for so long now, towards the pained memories of Darkand.

It was not just restlessness that had filled the ger with sparring partners this night. The khan-commander himself was present. He stalked between the sparring mats, saying nothing, hawkish gaze stopping only briefly when it came to a pairing of clashing warriors, before wandering again. Occasionally the Master of Blades would pause, arms folded across his silk-clad breast, brow furrowed as he watched two of his White Scars trade blows. He said nothing. Nothing until he reached Feng’s side.

‘They are slow.’

Feng started. He’d been so lost in memories of the honour world that he’d failed to notice the khan-commander’s presence. He refocused once more on Oda and Jakar. Joghaten was correct. Oda, the big Lau tribesman from Choq-tan, was lagging, his strikes unfocused and predictable. The duel should have been over minutes earlier, but Jakar – the wiry former heir to the hetman of the Shorchji, was making little effort to take advantage of his partner’s flat-footedness. They knew each other too well, had fought this battle too many times. They were toying with each other, bored.

‘When did you last fight?’ Joghaten asked Feng.

‘My khan?’ Feng responded, trying to ignore the hideous, dripping visage of Ajai, standing just behind Joghaten.

The khan-commander elaborated. ‘When did you last challenge your brethren on the sparring mats?’ His tone was accusatory.

‘I haven’t since leaving Chogoris, my khan.’

‘Step onto the mat.’

Oda and Jakar had paused, panting as they looked at their türüch. Joghaten gestured for them to step aside. They offered one another a curt bow and sheathed their blades. Joghaten lifted the cord and ducked into the arena. He was wearing a silk shirt and trousers, his topknot let down over his shoulders. His tulwars were buckled around his waist. He drew each in turn, the monomolecular hypersteel blades letting out barely a whisper as they slipped from the oiled leather. He tossed the empty scabbards and belt aside, and turned to face Feng. His eyes, hooded by the dim lighting, had the cruel gleam of the berkut, the greater Chogorian hawk, about them.

After a moment, Feng ducked into the arena and slipped his guan dao over his head. Like Joghaten’s enhanced weapons, the wicked blade of the power glaive remained inactive. Its long haft felt curiously unfamiliar in Feng’s grasp as he took up his combat stance. The realisation shamed him.

Joghaten gave a terse bow, the motion mimicked by Feng. For once, the ger was silent. Everyone had stopped to stare at the two new combatants. It was not often that the Master of Blades trained before the eyes of his brotherhood.

Joghaten struck. Even for a Space Marine, the speed with which he went from statuesque stillness to serpent-like blows was astounding. Feng was immediately forced back onto the defensive, heel brushing the mat edge as his secondary heart kicked in with an uncomfortable jolt. Joghaten’s tulwars came at him, one stabbing up towards his eyes, another slashing low, at his thighs. He managed to parry both with his guan dao’s haft, the force of the blows ringing up the blade. The third strike would have opened Feng’s gut had Joghaten not pulled it at the last moment.

‘Again,’ the Master of Blades said, his eyes hard. Feng reassumed his stance, legs planted wide, glaive held horizontal and low.

This time when Joghaten came at him he countered. It made little difference. The Master of Blades let Feng’s lunge slide past and was inside his guard in a heartbeat, a tulwar slicing for his throat. Feng, with the reflexes enjoyed only by the Emperor’s finest, managed to twist backwards far enough to avoid the strike, but it left him off balance. A clumsy swing of the glaive just about succeeded in keeping Joghaten at bay long enough for him to regain a defensive stance. The khan-commander didn’t pause to reassess, however, but kept coming, still twinning his strikes, high and low, high and low. After four narrow parries Feng felt as though he’d found his combat rhythm, only for Joghaten to change the order and pace of his strikes. A deft flick of his wrist and Feng’s guard was open once again. He was toying with the steedmaster.

‘Use your weapon’s length to your advantage,’ Joghaten snapped, speaking as though to an unscarred Tenth Brotherhood initiate. ‘Your reach is your best hope.’

Feng gritted his teeth and resumed his stance. This time he stayed on his toes, moving around the edge of the mat, guan dao extended protectively. Joghaten made two gauging attacks, ending both as Feng gave ground and used his power lance’s length to keep him at bay.

Feng’s defence faltered when he sensed Tenjin behind him. For a split second he thought he could feel icy breath on the nape of his neck, and in his mind’s eye he saw the long-dead White Scar’s innards oozing from the hideous splinter wounds blown in his torso.

He misstepped. It was enough. The khan-commander was on him again, a flash of wicked steel. One blade knocked Feng’s glaive from his hands while the other nicked at his throat, drawing forth the tiniest bead of blood. It fell, perfectly formed, to stain the türüch’s white silk shirt.

‘That’s enough,’ Joghaten said, lowering his blades and kicking the guan dao to the edge of the mat. Feng made no move to try and retrieve it.

‘We are hours from deployment, and still you do not fight,’ Joghaten said.

‘When the time comes I will be ready, khan-commander.’

‘You are slow and distracted. It is turning your hunt-brothers into lesser warriors. Find your centre, Lau Feng, before we make planetfall, or Darkand will extract the same price from you that it took last time.’

Feng could only nod, bitterness choking his throat. Joghaten bent and retrieved the glaive, as oblivious as everyone else to the four bloody revenants passing their eternal, silent judgement on Feng. The khan-commander spun the long weapon deftly and slammed it into the deck, the wicked head slicing through the training mat and the plates beneath to leave the weapon quivering and impaled before Feng.

‘Prepare for deployment,’ Joghaten said, addressing the entire sparring ger. ‘We make planetfall within the hour.’

Timchet flexed his fingers around the twin grips of his Godwyn-pattern heavy bolter and checked his visor’s chrono display. Thirty seconds. He knew that his Land Speeder co-pilot and wind-brother, Hagai, would be doing the same at the other end of the tulan, the long, narrow service corridor running between the Pride’s level 13 aft and foredecks. The entire length had been converted by Techmarine Khödö upon departing Chogoris, weaponised into a training sector – a tulan – that would better prepare the White Scars for what they would face on Darkand.

‘Perhaps I won’t have time to polish my kindjal before you reach me, brother,’ the voice of Hagai crackled over the vox.

‘Perhaps I won’t have to save you from the servitors this time,’ Timchet replied, suppressing a smile. An alarm chimed and the ship’s corridor was bathed in red light. The blast door before the White Scar rolled open.

He advanced at a slow jog, his heavy weapon up and ready, servos whirring as they took the worst of the bolter’s weight. The corridor beyond the blast doors had been transformed by sheets of mould-blotched plastek and ugly low-level lighting, its pipe-and-cable-clad walls made irregular and claustrophobic. The intention was to give the space a degree of alien otherness, and change the dynamics of what would usually have been a simple building clearance run.

Timchet made it fifteen paces before the first trap was sprung. A concealed orifice in the sheet coverings spat a gout of low-burn proto-plasma. The mechanical whirr of the ejection motor gave the White Scar just enough warning to drop one shoulder, taking the spray of what was supposed to pass for bio-acid on his left pauldron.

‘Non-fatal,’ crackled an automated voice in his ear. ‘Proceed.’

He carried on, twin hearts pounding as he sought the balance so often espoused in White Scars combat philosophies – speed without undue recklessness. He detected another faux-orifice just before it spat a flurry of plastek spines across the corridor, then flung himself forward as a cloud of noxious vapour burst from a mesh decking grille underfoot.

The chrono display in his visor was still ticking over.

There was a ripping sound to his right and the wall covering gave way to reveal a combat servitor set to assault mode. The fusion of plasteel and pale synth-skin had been modified to better represent their new enemy – hunched over, with grafted-on mechanical scythe-limbs, reprogrammed for speed. Timchet caught it in a burst of heavy bolter electro-blanks as it lunged at him, blades clacking. The modified rounds struck the servitor and immediately deactivated it with a burst of charge, its weapon limbs freezing inches from Timchet’s armour. Another came at him just a few paces down the corridor, too close for him to bring his heavy weapon to bear. The White Scar smashed it back against the wall with the bolter’s stock, letting it waste its blows against his armour, before smashing its head against a metal coolant valve. It went limp and crumpled.

‘Proceed,’ instructed the servitor-overseer’s voice in his ear. He was almost out of time. He sprinted for the finish, another shower of barbs clattering off his armour. The doors ahead slid open at his approach, and he came to a sharp halt in the space beyond the training corridor.

What had once been a turning bay for the haulers used to transport sheets of adamantium to the Pride’s outer corridors had been transformed by the drill türüch into an extra fighting arena. It was now filled with broken scrap, scrap that had once taken the form of over a dozen modified combat servitors. They’d been smashed into deactivation by the tulwar and bolt pistol of Hagai who now sat atop a heap of the pretend-xenos. His helmet was off and he was grinning as he wiped oil and synthetic fluids from his blade’s wicked edge.

‘Too slow by well over five seconds,’ the White Scar taunted. ‘I could have gone a whole other bout before you broke through to me.’

‘One caught me at close range,’ Timchet complained, mastering the urge to kick out at the closest servitor remains.

‘They’re meant to be tyranids, that’s what they do,’ Hagai responded, rising and mag-locking his weapons.

‘It won’t be so easy when we face the real thing,’ Timchet responded.

‘I pray to the Khagan that you are right,’ Hagai replied, still grinning. ‘After such a wait, I would fight every xenos in the galaxy.’

The vellum scroll lay on an angled wooden board before Joghaten. The Master of Blades lit the last lumen stick and settled himself on his rug, legs crossed, stretching his back and arm muscles as the shuddering ache of combat adrenals left him. It seemed to take longer now than when he was a youth. When he had first joined the Fourth Brotherhood his ability to go from a state of calm to darting, razor-tipped blows, and back again, had immediately drawn the attention of the then khan-commander. Now it was a struggle to unclench his fist from the hafts of his tulwars, to let his pulse decelerate until his secondary heart ceased, to quell the feral instinct to slash and cut and gouge after the moment of danger had passed.

He had fought too long and too hard to let go of such urges easily anymore. It was part of who he was. But, as Qui’sin often reminded him, it was not all he was.

He focused on the vellum parchment. There was less than an hour left before the fleet reached stasis-anchorage in high orbit above Darkand. Not long, but long enough. His tulwars had been returned to their slots at the heart of the wooden trophy rack that dominated one wall of his personal busad. He had wiped the sliver of Lau Feng’s blood from the edges – he had not meant to cut the steedmaster. For the briefest second when he had done so the urge to follow through – to saw and cut his way through flesh and tendon, to open the warrior’s throat to the sparring ger’s humid air – had been almost overwhelming. The realisation had shamed him. It was a savagery he could never admit, not to young Qui’sin, not even to the brotherhood’s Chaplain, the venerable and much-scarred Changadai.

He shook the memory off and reached for the brush and pot of soot-bound ink set beside his rug. There were few other Chapters in the galaxy that would devote time to brushwork, even fewer with a combat insertion imminent. Most would have busied themselves with weapons rituals and armour rites, strategic overview briefings and councils of war. But there were few Chapters like the White Scars. Joghaten had spent the past month, voyaging through the empyrean’s haunted depths, venerating his arms and armour. He had consulted and briefed his tulwar brothers extensively. He had conferred with Qui’sin, Changadai and Voyagemaster Shen when they had first broken in-system, back into real space. The khan of the Fourth Brotherhood did not need another strategic algorithm analysis or xenos threat profiling. He needed his brush and ink and vellum.

He picked up the former and dipped it in the pewter ink pot beside him, careful to drain the excess before easing it to the bare white of the scroll. The thick aduu-hair brush did not fit particularly well in his large, transhuman grasp, but he had long ago mastered the technique of grasping it. Without hesitation, he applied it to the vellum with one long, smooth stroke.

Poetry, painting, calligraphy, all were common forms of expression for the sons of Chogoris, whether they were the Sky Warriors that dwelled amidst the tallest peaks of the Khum Karta, or humble herders travelling the steppes below. Joghaten began to paint the Khorchin symbol for prescience and understanding. That was what he sought now. More so than ever before, he felt as though the path before him was shrouded and uncertain. Returning to Darkand, a place that haunted his memories, was not making that path any brighter. Shadows lurked amidst the darkness encroaching either side, full of the wicked gleam of murderous eyes and sharp claws. Once that same path had been open and untangled. He fought for the Great Khan and the Emperor. He brought heads back to the White Road and filled the Ayanga with tales of victory and heroism. In a little less than two hundred years he had not suffered a single scar that was not an honour marking or victory notch. In battle, an opponent’s blade had never marked him deeper than his transhuman physiology’s ability to heal.

That had all changed with the coming of the Dark Imperium. The Cicatrix Maledictorum, the vast warp storm that had torn mankind’s domain in half and plunged countless systems and sectors into madness and war. Even before his ascendance to the ranks of the White Scars, Joghaten had been born to fight. All Chogorians steppe tribes were. If the horrors that had beset the Imperium of late – the failing of the Astronomican, the fall of Cadia, the near-annihilation of Baal – had merely meant that the White Scars were required to fight harder, that would not trouble the Master of Blades. He would fight every day, every moment, to his last drop of blood and his final breath, in defence of humanity, Chogoris and the Imperium.

But the Cicatrix Maledictorum had heralded not just more slaughter. It had brought questions too, and rumours. Tales abounded of the return of the primarchs, of the gods of old bestriding new battlefields. Such uncertainties, wrapped up in falsehood, exaggeration and embellishment, were impossible for any White Scar to ignore. All knew the tale of their own primarch, the Khagan, Jaghatai, who had stood against traitors and daemons ten thousand years before and saved humankind from certain annihilation on distant, holy Terra. All knew also of his disappearance, of how he had quested into the mysterious, alien realm of the eldar, the webway, and never returned. The legend of his eternal hunt resonated with the Chapter, was built into the very fabric of its being.

The knowledge that the Khagan may have returned haunted all White Scars. It challenged their very perception of themselves. Though they desired nothing more than to be reunited with him, the idea that their hunt might have come to an end – or been in vain – was one few could entertain. Surely the rumours were just that? Rumours. Such uncertainties created unrest, and that unrest was, in the case of Joghaten’s brotherhood, being amplified by the confinement of warp travel. Being trapped on board the Pride of Chogoris was creating discipline problems, and worse. The khan-commander had never enjoyed voyaging through the empyrean but, since the coming of the Cicatrix Maledictorum, time spent in the Sea of Souls had become ever more harrowing. He was haunted by nightmares, his sus-an meditation plagued by visions and memories that were not his own.

He could see them now, in his mind’s eye. A palace of insurmountable splendour and glory, ravaged by darkling hordes of daemonkind. An open steppe, shrouded in pulsating, hideous flesh. A mountain on fire. Legions of silver warriors collapsing in on themselves. A dark cavern, full of horrors, and the gaping maw of a great, serpent-like beast. Worst and greatest of all, a voice issuing from a corona of blinding light. It spoke in ancient, broken Chogorian riddles. Was it his own voice, or another’s? Somehow, it was impossible to say.

He had spoken of the visions only to Qui’sin. He knew the young Stormseer passed word of them to his more venerable brethren on Chogoris. He knew they believed him touched by destiny. That did not worry Joghaten. Every warrior had his own path, no matter how dark it became, and he would not have risen to command of the Tulwar Brotherhood if fate’s will did not sit easily enough on his shoulders. What plagued Joghaten, what ate away at his thoughts and turned his moods sour, was the fear that he would never realise the destiny expected of him. He would not find the purpose to walk the path to completion.

Joghaten blinked. His right hand ached. Slowly he raised it, seeing how his fingers gripped the brush shaft, the knuckles white with strain. The black-stained aduu-hair bristles were bent and abused, and ink had splattered up his arm. After a moment’s effort he let go, the brush falling to the rug, staining the intricately woven Chogorian patterns. He looked down and noticed the vellum sheet for the first time.

If there had been any Khorchin script on the page at any point during Joghaten’s fugue state, it was now gone, swallowed up by the harsh, broad strokes he had dealt while consumed with thought. Now, instead of the symbol for understanding, he was looking at a brutally rendered image of a Space Marine. The painting was too crude to decipher the Chapter or allegiances, but the armour seemed archaic, of no discernible mark or pattern. Strangest of all was the fact that the figure had no head. In its place was a jagged black smudge.

Joghaten started at the unsettling image for a moment. Then, features twisting into a snarl, he snatched the still-wet vellum, crumpled it in both fists, and flung it away. The screwed-up ball struck the far wall of the busad and fell, in amongst a pile of twenty or thirty similarly crushed scrolls and splattered ink.

Each ruined sheet bore on it the vision-scrawl of the Space Marine with no face.

‘Khan-commander, we are thirty minutes from anchorage.’

The voice of Tzu Shen tore Joghaten from his thoughts. He pressed the rune panel inset next to the chamber’s door, then scrubbed the ink from his thick, dark-haired forearms in the ambulatory basin. The door slid open and his two zarts entered with their shaved heads bowed.

‘Prepare me,’ Joghaten commanded.

In the corner, beside the trophy rack, the khan-commander’s armour waited. The great plates of plasteel and ceramite gleamed as white as the snows that capped the Khum Karta, except where they were slashed across by jagged dags of brightest red – the honour markings that echoed the ritual scars all members of the Chapter marked their bodies with. Joghaten bore his on his armour’s right greave, along with his brotherhood marking, and on his left vambrace and gauntlet – blood-red to denote his status as Master of Blades. His left knee plate also bore the vertical red jags of the Fourth Brotherhood, while his helm’s right side was slashed with more vicious crimson, in memory of his time among Khan Arro’shan’s personal bondsmen. The armour’s pauldrons were draped with the thick mottled black-and-white fur of a Chogorian lar’ix, while the lush hairs of a torandor pelt were tied up in a topknot atop his helmet. Mounting the armour’s backpack were three spikes upon which were impaled six skulls – xenos and heretic alike, the only ones to have come close to scarring him with a blade that was not his own. The golden glory of the twin-headed Imperial aquila gleamed across the armour’s breastplate.

Reverently, the zarts began to dismantle the armour, lifting it piece by piece from its wooden frame. Joghaten stood at the centre of the room and removed his kaftan; he spread his arms, allowing the serfs to ready him. First they plugged neural links and mem-circuitry spikes into the dermal ports that dotted his muscled flesh. The largest, inserted into the base of his skull, made him shudder slightly. To the links they added the under-armour of servo bundles and flesh-tight, responsive auto sinews. With the sealant clasps covering his joints and his black carapace fully interfaced, the two sweating serfs began to add the armour proper. The breastplate went first, front and back sealed with a thud of magnetic clamps and a faint whirr as the servos activated, linking the ancient battleplate to its wearer. Joghaten’s limbs were likewise soon sheathed in cold, unyielding ceramite, and his backpack clamped and activated, its power core lending the armour a throbbing, tooth-juddering vitality. He raised one hand and flexed his gauntlet. The reaction levels were still as good as ever.

Last of all, his auto-responsive pauldrons were fitted into place, and the lar’ix pelt was draped across his back, hanging from his shoulders and down either side of his backpack like a cape.

One of the zarts offered him his helm, eyes averted. Joghaten took it and mag-locked it to his belt. Like most White Scars, he preferred not to wear the constricting piece of wargear until combat made its protection an absolute necessity. He wanted nothing between his senses and those of his prey when the time came to kill.

The armour was linked and fully functioning. Wordlessly, Joghaten nodded his thanks to the zarts, who withdrew to the edges of the room. The khan turned and paced to his trophy rack, his freshly donned battleplate whirring. His tulwars gleamed before him, drawing a tight, hawkish smile from the khan’s thin lips. They were hungry. He lifted both in turn and, without ceremony, slipped them into the soft, gold-tipped red leather scabbards that were then mag-locked to his hips, crossed over.

He was prepared, a khan armed and armoured, a tribal chieftain ready for war. For a moment his gaze lingered on the crushed scraps of vellum and their foreboding scrawls, heaped against the wall. Once he would have filled a shelf with the calligraphy painted on his voyages between the stars. What had laid claim to his thoughts, had captured them so entirely as to bend his mind only to visions of annihilation? What called to him from oblivion’s depths? He shook his head and dismissed the serfs with a wave of his hand.

Nightmares and prophecies could wait. It was time for war.

The gods are coming to our world. Representatives and servants of His will, warriors crafted and fashioned after divine might, by a power far beyond our comprehension. They have been born to conflict, born to victory, all in His name! We will live to see what so many of our blessed forebears did not – these children of the heavens bestriding the grasslands of our steppes and the cloisters of our temples. Rejoice!

– Septimus Traik, High Enunciator of the Emperor’s Voice,
to the congregation of the Spur of Mankind Descended

CHAPTER THREE

PLANETFALL

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 109 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 64 HOURS.

The Pride of Chogoris, the Void,
Darkand System

The entirety of the Fourth Brotherhood’s leadership had gathered in the primary yurut dome of the Pride of Chogoris’ bridge. They stood in order of seniority – Joghaten overlooking the main hololithic chart, leaning against the inactive display’s edge, arms spread, flanked by Qui’sin and the brotherhood’s Chaplain, Changadai. The ageing reclusiarch had already donned his leering skull helm. Behind them were Joghaten’s bondsmen, his personal honour guard. Khuchar, the brotherhood’s champion, the only member of the Fourth whose curved dao had managed to draw Joghaten’s blood during a duel. Jubai, who carried the brotherhood’s standard, a long pole hung with horsehairs and clattering foebeast skulls. Dorich, the emchi healer. Tamachag, the riddle-loving veteran türüch, and Bleda, the brotherhood’s keen-eyed storyteller and wind whisperer. Behind them were the ten türüchs of the brotherhood’s squads, masters of the individual warrior bands that fought for their khan and the Emperor. Voyagemaster Tzu Shen presided over them all from his throne mount, seeing much despite his scarred eyes, a slight smile playing on his twisted lips.

Joghaten and his bondsmen were silent, eyes on the oculus displays that charted the fleet’s final approach to Darkand’s high anchorage. Behind them the türüch talked. It was idle, boastful stuff, gruff words cut across by barks of laughter and crude jests, but the truth of it rang hollow. The past month had been difficult for the Fourth Brotherhood’s sergeants. The infractions and unrest among their warriors had in turn strained relations between them. Old tribal loyalties and feuds had been given time to fester. Joghaten knew that there could be no cure for the ailment besides the blade-glory and blood-fury of battle.

The best of the türüchs had channelled their warrior’s passions between training bouts, focusing them on the arts all the peoples of Chogoris held dear – poetry and word craft, painting and calligraphy. Others, like Gerel and Feng, had withdrawn to fight their own personal battles. Joghaten had seen it a thousand times before. Only Changadai had voiced concern at the khan-commander’s own apparent withdrawal. He was not privy to the visions and doubts that Joghaten had confided to Qui’sin. The khan had assured the old Chaplain that xenocide would bring his warriors back to their senses. The quicker they reached Darkand the better.

The planet loomed now in the yurut’s vision port, a curve of russet browns and yellows dashed with whorls of atmospheric white, dominating the lower half of the display. Nearer, Joghaten’s genhanced eyesight could pick out the shapes of satellites, merchant cutters and monitoring stations. The Imperium’s government planetside was confined to Heavenfall, but it maintained a stronger presence in orbit, high above the oblivious nomadic tribes. System augurs and tithing stations clustered the agri world’s approach, their transmission acknowledgment rubrics shying away from the White Scars’ bursts of data code as the fleet neared high orbit.

In Joghaten’s experience, unless the enemy was visible and tearing at the gates, the arrival of the Adeptus Astartes was always greeted with ill-disguised fear.

‘Hail them again,’ the khan-commander ordered, the words silencing his türüch. Tzu Shen transmitted the command to the vox-pits with a sharp wave of his sensor wand. The White Scars had been attempting to raise Heavenfall for the last fifteen minutes. The message request was transmitting and showing as received, but nobody was responding.

‘They’ll be panicking,’ Khuchar observed dryly.

‘We can only hope,’ Jubai responded. ‘Maybe it will sharpen their wits.’

‘Does this wait speak of a sharpened mind to you, brother?’

‘Quiet,’ Joghaten snapped. Shen had raised his wand once more.

‘They are responding,’ the voyagemaster said, one hand going up to the vox augmetics studding the left side of his skull.

‘Patch through to my personal link,’ Joghaten ordered. ‘Responses over the main vox.’

‘Understood, brother.’

A moment later the domed space was filled with the hiss of static.

‘A moment to clean up the atmospherics,’ Shen said, passing on a string of terse commands to the vox-pit serfs. After a few heartbeats the static discord faded away. A voice spoke over the brass-wired vox-horns strung along the communications gantry overhead.

‘Hail and well met, Adeptus Astartes. This is Governor Harren, Imperial Commander of the world of Darkand.’

‘Hail, Commander Harren,’ Joghaten said, speaking into his own vox, linked to the ship’s powerful transmitter spine via the command uplink. ‘I am Joghaten Khan, Master of Blades and commander of the Fourth Brotherhood of the White Scars.’

‘We are honoured by your presence, lords. We… did not expect your arrival so soon. The Furnace Season is only just underway.’

‘Your chancellor, Tugan, has already informed you of our arrival?’

There was a moment’s pause and the connection dipped.

‘He’s holding the link,’ Shen said. A moment later, Harren’s voice returned.

‘I was not informed of your arrival in-system, lords.’

‘Tugan did not tell you?’ Joghaten asked. ‘I spoke to him not four hours ago via hololithic transmission. Where is he?’

Again, the connection dipped as Harren paused it, clearly conferring in private with someone else.

‘Chancellor Tugan’s whereabouts are currently unknown,’ the governor said eventually. ‘We are… extremely busy with preparations for the–’

‘Are you telling me he informed no one of our arrival in-system?’ Joghaten demanded. ‘That no preparations have been made for the evacuation of the steppe tribes or the defence of your capital?’

‘We were unaware any such actions were necessary, my lord. I have only just this moment returned from the Spur of Mankind Descended, where–’

‘Be silent,’ Joghaten snapped. ‘We do not have time for excuses. There is a xenos threat, vast beyond imagining, approaching this system. They could arrive from deep space in a matter of hours. You must prepare your peoples for total war. Bring the steppe tribes to the capital, and ready it for defence.’

‘The tribes are just ceasing their annual migration,’ Harren said. If he was worried, his voice didn’t show it – the tone remained completely level. ‘Locating and contacting them all would take days, and it would require even longer to bring them to Heavenfall. I doubt many would come at all.’

‘We will discuss that in person,’ Joghaten said. ‘We are making planetfall immediately. You are to make preparations for a full-scale planetary invasion. Enact all pre-coded Imperial protocols for a primary grade xenos threat.’

‘Of course,’ Harren said. ‘I am transmitting landing coordinates for the Pinnacle’s main skyshield landing platform to your capital ship immediately. I shall meet you there.’ There was a moment’s silence before the governor spoke again.

‘May I ask what xenos threat in particular we are to prepare for?’

‘The Great Devourer,’ Joghaten said, his grip on the edge of the hololithic chart tightening fractionally. ‘The tyranids are coming, Commander Harren. Pray to the Khagan and the Emperor that we have the strength to meet them.’

The Pinnacle, Heavenfall

For the first time in many years, the White Scars fell upon Darkand. They made planetfall as night encroached, while the sun’s last rays were spilling out over the golden grasslands. The darkening arch of heaven’s vault was slashed by fiery contrails as heavy gunships and faster escort flyers made their approach to the city on the mountainside. The stars themselves had increased in number with the coming night, the White Scars fleet presenting six new points of shining light as the warships moved into low orbit. Out on the steppes the tribes huddled around freshly kindled yat dung fires and stared up at the strange portents, muttering to one another in low, fearful voices.

Joghaten watched the descent from the vision port of the Thunderhawk gunship Wind Talon. White cloud cover gave way to a vast expanse of yellow-and-green grassland, a rolling sea interspersed with jagged gullies, small valleys and rocky outcrops. As the gunship turned, a great mountain range swung slowly into view, its snow-capped peaks like a spiny ridge bisecting the plains. It was towards the edge of those peaks that Wind Talon soared, its engines vibrating the plasteel walls and restraint harnesses around the khan and his seated honour guard.

A city materialised from the distant haze. At first it looked as though the slope of the final mountain in the great, jagged range ahead had suffered a landslide that had left its flank craggy and deformed. As the gunship drew closer, however, the regularity of the shapes covering the slope became more apparent. A city was nestled into the steep flank, thousands of buildings cut from yellow Darkand stone forming dozens upon dozens of tiers that laddered the mountain almost all the way up to its peak.

Joghaten picked out structures he already knew from the briefing bursts – the great dome of the Spur of Mankind Descended, surrounded by the spires of the lesser basilicas and devotariums. The jagged administrative towers of the government district, the Pinnacle, opposite the temple district, and the squat, fortified bulk of the centrum dominus alongside the clustered antenna of the primary vox-hub, set high up near the mountain’s peak. Lower down were the red-tiled roofs of the Old Town, and the more modern, unlovely hab blocks near the base of the city. The entire precarious collective was ringed by a band of dark rockcrete, from the upper slopes all the way down around the outer hab blocks. Joghaten recognised the Founding Wall, the encircling line of bastions, bulwarks and parapets that marked the edge of the great slope-city and the start of the steppes.

As Wind Talon passed over Heavenfall the khan got a better view down into the city. With the exception of a central thoroughfare leading to the Founding Wall’s main gate, the streets were tangled and narrow. Old Town was a veritable warren, although the government area and temple district afforded slightly wider colonnaded walkways and squares. The gradient for the whole city was incredibly steep – cabled landcars, gleaming silver in the sunlight, transported people to the upper slopes, though the less affluent areas nearer the base had no such luxuries when it came to climbing the streets. Such a place would be a nightmare to assault. A nightmare, at least, for any enemy not as numerous and relentless as the tyranids.

The Thunderhawk gunship almost filled the skyshield landing pad as it completed its final descent towards the Pinnacle, the harsh light from the strip lumens surrounding it making its thick white armour plates and red jags gleam in the gathering twilight. The other space port landing zones, sited close to the peak of Heavenfall’s mountain, were also receiving White Scars arrivals, while the brotherhood’s complement of armour – Predators, Land Raiders and a Whirlwind – were deploying to the plains beyond the Founding Wall. Wind Talon’s plasteel-and-adamantium bulk dwarfed the gaggle of Pinnacle dignitaries come to greet it.

Joghaten stepped out through the steam venting from the flyer’s hydraulic fore hatch, his pace brisk. There was no time for ceremony. Before him an array of heavily robed officials stared up in palpable shock. Some gasped audibly when Qui’sin and the rest of his bondsmen emerged from the gunship behind him, heavy boots clanking on plasteel and ferrocrete. Joghaten had long ago stopped caring about the fear and awe that accompanied a human’s first encounter with a Space Marine.

He picked out the face of Governor Harren from the briefing logs. The man was short and ageing badly, his rejuves beginning to fail. He was clad in the thick ceremonial gowns the Darkand government affected, apparently in an inaccurate mimicry of the kaftans worn by the White Scars. Alone among his flunkies, Harren did not appear overawed by the transhuman warriors towering over him. He met Joghaten’s gaze blankly for a second, before bowing his head and making the sign of the aquila.

‘Welcome to Darkand, lord,’ he said. His cultured Imperial accent was heavily at odds with the thick native Darkand drawl, itself the ugly bastard of the fast-flowing beauty of Khorchin. It bore a monotonous drone that seemed to match the governor’s dull look.

‘Earth and air be with you, governor,’ Joghaten replied brusquely. ‘We require a private audience, immediately.’

‘Of course,’ Harren responded. He gestured towards his dignitaries and they scattered before him, making way for the governor and the gods that accompanied him.

The White Scars followed Harren and three of Darkand’s highest-ranking officials as he led them through the cloistered government district. The evening air was humid, and though the lichen-clad squares and statue-lined walkways were quiet, the discord of the city slope below drifted through the heavy atmosphere. Robed clusters of shaven-headed adepts and ministers in their gowns and broad-brimmed hats grew quiet or paused their hurrying progress to stare at the entourage as they passed by. Only the ochre-armoured guards seemed capable of indifference, holding post at door arches and besides the ceremonial bust alcoves crafted into the sand-coloured walls.

Harren delivered a series of code locks and identification cants at the top of a set of wide stone steps outside a heavily-guarded entranceway. Either side of the servitor-manned portcullis two great statues loomed, towering over even Joghaten. It took the Master of Blades a moment to realise they were both renderings of Space Marines, cast in alabaster; two vast White Scars set to guarding Darkand’s heart for eternity. The symbolism was unambiguous.

‘Where are we?’ Joghaten demanded as they passed beneath the portcullis and entered a wide, high antechamber. The ornate lumen orbs in their wall niches had yet to activate, and the last rays of light beaming in through the glassaic dome above were not enough to ward off the shadows creeping in from every corner. The sound of the Space Marines’ boots echoed off the polished flagstones underfoot.

‘These are the central government buildings,’ Harren responded. ‘The heart of the Imperial presence on Darkand. The centrum dominus is almost directly above us.’

The governor’s words were heavily stilted, overly formal. Joghaten assumed the man was simply overwhelmed, yet alone among the humans the Master of Blades had seen so far on Darkand, Harren didn’t seem to exude terror at the presence of the Adeptus Astartes. Apart from the need to match the stride of the towering warriors, his pace was unhurried and his speech curiously droning and precise.

One of the other officials accompanying the governor seemed similarly disengaged from the moment – a gaunt-faced, pallid Ministorum cardinal, wearing the heavy ceremonial robes of Darkand’s esoteric version of the Imperial cult. Joghaten had identified him from the briefings as Septimus Traik, High Enunciator of the Emperor’s Voice.

‘Where is Chancellor Tugan?’ Joghaten asked as they entered a large grav-lift platform. Harren shook his head.

‘The chancellor is still missing,’ he said. ‘A section of the Pinnacle Guard’s security detail have been sent to search for him.’

‘We spoke less than five hours ago,’ Joghaten said. ‘This is irregular.’

Harren shrugged. ‘We are doing all we can, given the current strain on our resources.’

Joghaten shared a look with Qui’sin. The weathermaker’s expression remained inscrutable.

The grav-lift chimed as it clattered to a stop, its mesh doors sliding open. The entourage stepped out into the heart of the Imperial government on Darkand. Harren had sent word ahead to have the centrum dominus cleared. It lay deserted as the White Scars entered, its cogitators still chiming and clattering as they turned over in standby mode. Its stone walls were reinforced with thick slabs of rockrete, while the structure itself was round and multi-tiered, clusters of vox-gantries surrounding a central floor filled with cogitator banks. At the top of the room, near the ceiling’s plasteel reinforcement beams, an observation platform looked out through an armourglass screen. Even from the lower deck level, Joghaten could see enough to realise that the platform provided incredible views of Darkand’s steppes, stretching out as far as the eye could see before the steep mountain slope into which Heavenfall had been carved.

‘Only the primary vox-hub sits at a greater altitude than this chamber,’ Harren said, following the White Scar’s gaze. ‘These are the highest permanently inhabited points on the planet.’

Joghaten said nothing, and Harren descended a short set of spiral stairs into the heart of the room. At its centre lay a stone-finished hololithic chart. The device was already beaming a three-dimensional representation of Darkand into the air, throwing the depths of the centrum dominus into deep blue contrasts. It was clearly an older model than the chart on board the Pride of Chogoris, its display washed with heavy patches of static and prone to intermittent flickering. The White Scars and the three other officials followed Harren down to the railings lining the edge of the projection, where the governor was retrieving a sensor wand from its slot beneath the display.

‘Show me the current distribution of the steppe tribes,’ Joghaten said. The governor nodded. A twitch of the wand caused the display of Darkand to change, flickering into a flat representation of a continental shelf. The static-washed plains before Joghaten were dominated by a rugged spine, a mountainous range that reminded the khan-commander of the great Khum Karta. Another flick of Harren’s wand highlighted the tip of the range, jutting out into the surrounding steppes.

‘We are here,’ the governor said. ‘Heavenfall, planetary capital and seat of the Imperial government on Darkand.’

‘I know,’ Joghaten said, not attempting to hide his impatience. ‘Show me where the tribes are to be found during this seasonal cycle.’

‘These are their traditional migratory patterns,’ Harren said as the hololithic shifted with another wand flick. The steppes became segmented and their colours changed, each part now highlighted with tribal markers and projected trail routes. ‘But their current exact locations are unknown.’

Joghaten spent a moment scanning the data before speaking.

‘These figures indicate far greater population masses than we were aware of. Our last data put tribal numbers around fifty thousand in this district and during this phase of the season.’

Harren was silent for a moment before responding.

‘The numbers are far more substantial than that, lord. We estimate almost five hundred thousand tribespeople are currently travelling the steppe-paths. It has been a very successful season as far as the city bartering is concerned.’

‘Then how can you contact them all?’

‘We cannot, lord, except by sending outriders along the trails. It is rarely done. If they have issues they send representatives here, and their produce is brought to the capital for trade only during the Golden Season.’

‘We do not have time for this,’ Joghaten said, voice rising a fraction. ‘We require the tribes to be brought to Heavenfall immediately.’

‘Let the brotherhood find them,’ Qui’sin interjected. ‘Split and deploy the bike squads and the berkut along the trails. The tribespeople will obey them where they would ignore a representative from the slope-city. We can have the word spread to them within the next day, and start to bring them in towards the Founding Wall.’

‘Disperse across the steppes on the cusp of a full planetary invasion?’ Joghaten responded. ‘Your counsel is a strange one, weathermaker.’

‘We will be faster and surer than any local outriders dispatched from here,’ Qui’sin said. ‘And we all know the way of the nomad. How many of them do you think would obey a summons to Heavenfall? How many would abandon their migration to the colder regions now that the Furnace Season has begun? They would not do so for any government messenger, but they would for us. They all but worship us. We will have a better chance of convincing them than anyone else in this city.’

Joghaten nodded. Qui’sin’s words rang true. Scattering the brotherhood to the four winds was not ideal, but there would be little point in anchoring a defence on Heavenfall if most of Darkand’s populace was still trapped out on the plains when the xenos made planetfall.

‘You will provide us with this location data?’ Joghaten asked, gesturing at the tribal markers on the hololith. Harren turned to an Adeptus Mechanicus magos overseeing the table, who bobbed his coiled mechadendrites in assent.

‘I will create a data burst package, lords,’ the machine-man said, his voice surprisingly human for one of his kind. ‘And upload it via the noosphere to your marker designates within the hour.’

‘Very well,’ Joghaten said, focusing back on Harren. ‘Now, what of logistics? What is the protocol for this city’s defence in the event of a full-scale xenos threat?’

‘The civilian population will be shifted into the catacombs,’ Harren said. ‘In that regard we are fortunate. The Furnace Season has already caused the process of relocation from the surface to the underground to begin.’

‘And in the event of a siege how long do you have before reserve supplies are fully depleted?’

‘With maximum rationing enforcement, the projected holdout time is just over one month, Terran standard.’

Joghaten exchanged another look with Qui’sin. The Stormseer was doubtless thinking the same as him. A month was long enough – either the xenos threat would have expended itself, or they would all be dead and Darkand would be a lifeless rock, stripped of every scrap of biomass. The exodus of the tribes, however, could complicate things.

‘What of the steppe peoples?’ Joghaten said. ‘Will there be sufficient space in the catacombs to accommodate them along with the city’s inhabitants?’

‘The tribal community of Darkand is not factored into our defensive algorithms,’ Harren said in his blunt, dead voice.

‘You’re telling me your projected holdout time is only applicable to the population of Heavenfall?’

‘Yes, lord. Protocol in the event of a maximum priority xenos threat is to seal the Founding Wall and hold out until relief arrives in-system.’

‘There will be no relief,’ Joghaten said. ‘Let me be clear, Commander Harren. The Imperium is beset. There are greater threats than this hive splinter, and more vital worlds than yours that require protection. We have come here because we are honour-bound to do so, because your world and mine share a pact two thousand years in the making. Such things matter to us. They are woven into the fabric of our being. They are what gives our society purpose. In times of threat, when the night is at its darkest and things prowl beyond the edges of the camp-fire, we come with torch and with blade. We protect our kin. As I expected you to protect yours.’

If Harren was moved by the White Scar’s words, his expression didn’t show it.

‘The logistical difficulties involved in bringing the tribes within the Founding Wall are almost insurmountable,’ the governor said. ‘There will be massed overcrowding, and that will lead to unrest, riots and possibly even xenos infiltration. If only half of the steppe population is brought to Heavenfall, vital supplies will not last long, even if maximum rationing protocols can be enforced. Maintaining order will also drain the resources of the Pinnacle Guard and distract them from combating the invaders.’

‘We came here to protect all of this world’s inhabitants, not just its Imperial government,’ Joghaten said. ‘If you do not comply with our demands I will have you removed from office. Things will likely run smoother at my directive until a new government is decided upon, after the threat has passed.’

‘That will not be necessary, sire.’

It was the first time the Ecclesiarchy official, Traik, had spoken. Joghaten met his gaze. The priest held it, black eyes unflinching. He was as pale and gaunt as one of the revenants that legend said haunted the Plain Zhou during the Night of the Yaksha, when the moons were full and strange, formless things moved in the long grass. Joghaten disliked him instinctively.

‘My priesthood and I will not abandon our duties,’ the pallid man went on.

‘If resources are at a premium, I will not waste them on defending enrobed clergymen,’ Joghaten said. ‘Unless you know how to load and fire a lasrifle.’

‘This city is sacred to us,’ Traik said. ‘Sacred to the Emperor. The temple district is where mankind first settled, overlooking the high plains. If we are not here to tend to the Spur of Mankind Descended, we have lost the spiritual heart of this world.’

‘You say such things now, with no threat apparent. But when you see what is coming to this world I do not doubt you will sing a different song. It is easy to have faith in the quiet days of peace. When the Great Devourer arrives, we shall see how strong your faith really is.’

‘There will be riots if we are removed,’ Traik said.

‘Is that a threat, priest?’ Joghaten snarled. Qui’sin placed a hand on his pauldron. In the moment’s silence that followed, Chaplain Changadai spoke, his words scraping from the vox-grille of his skull helm.

‘We will not permit the shrines of this world to be desecrated, High Enunciator. If the threat makes it that far, I will fall in their defence. In the Emperor’s name.’

‘Regardless, the Priesthood of the Voice will stay,’ Traik said, apparently unplacated by the Chaplain’s assurances. ‘We did not overcome the heresies of the Bor-tri alongside your Chapter to simply abandon these venerated places of worship. Xenos monsters will not move us, Space Marine.’

‘So be it,’ Joghaten said. ‘But when the storm comes I will see you confined to your devotariums. Likewise with you and your government officials, Commander Harren. We do not have the time or resources to see to your personal safety and, as you say, it will be difficult enough maintaining order in the streets once the tribes are brought in. Stay away from the front lines, or I will have my brothers remove you.’

Harren said nothing, and for a moment Joghaten caught the flash of an internal struggle behind the governor’s expression. Eventually he responded, his tone almost recalcitrant.

‘We understand.’

‘My brotherhood are assembling on the plain beyond the Founding Wall,’ Joghaten went on. ‘Once I have dispersed my bike squads and flyers to make contact with the tribes I will need to review your defence plans in detail. Where are the local military commanders?’

‘Overseeing preparations at the wall and throughout the city,’ Harren said. ‘I shall recall them immediately.’

‘And what of this system’s deep-space augur arrays? Have their probes detected anything?’

‘Not to my knowledge, lord. I will see that you are notified the moment any contact is made.’

‘Make sure of it, commander,’ Joghaten said. ‘The earlier the warning, the better chance we all have of living to see out this season.’

The steppes, Darkand

Out on the plains, the sunset was glorious. The sky was a firmament of burning golds and reds, the clouds spread in splendour and cast against the inky backdrop of encroaching night. Beneath the blazing arch the plains were a tapestry of copper and bronze, stretching away all around, seemingly without end. Only the distant mountaintops pierced the dusky ocean, the edge of the range where Heavenfall sat. The day’s dying light still touched the slope-city’s peak, not yet dragged away by night-time’s embrace.

Lau Feng dragged his gaze from the distant Pinnacle and focused on his tactical display. New orders. They winked across his visor as he placed a boot on Darkand soil for the first time in years, using it to balance his assault bike as it came to a growling halt.

The steedmaster reviewed the new commands with genhanced efficiency, blink-clicking through each at a speed no human could match. The objectives had changed. The holding pattern around Heavenfall’s outer curtain wall was now of secondary importance. The fastest elements of the brotherhood – the assault bike squadrons, the Land Speeders and the Stormhawk and Stormtalon flyers – had been issued with a long string of coordinate feeds. According to the data burst that came with them, they were the traditional migration trails favoured by the disparate nomad tribes of Darkand’s steppes. The White Scars were to ride to each tribe in person and direct them to Heavenfall, before the xenos made planetfall. Speed was everything. That last directive made Feng smile coldly.

It was a race then.

‘We are to separate, brothers,’ he said over the inter-squad vox-net. ‘You each have your own coordinates. See that the tribes are warned of what is coming, but note the time for your return. I will see you in forty-five Terran hours, in the shadow of the slope-city.’

The visor display designates of his squad brethren – Oda and Jakar, Sauri and Eji – blinked green in acknowledgment. Feng settled himself on his mount, taking a moment to appreciate the potency of the beast of metal and promethium he rode. Feeling the thrill of the hunt finally building with him. Trying to ignore the revenants of his dead brothers, casting their long shadows across the steppe behind him.

‘We ride,’ he said, and gunned the engine.

With a roar, each white-armoured warrior tore away through the tall grass, hunched low in the saddle, their topknots snapping. Each going their own way, out into the gathering night.

It hungers! It hungers! It hungers! It hungers!

– Final transcription of astropath primaris 715-Davin,
Darkand System, prior to a type A critical meltdown

CHAPTER FOUR

THE SHADOW IN THE WARP

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 89 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 44 HOURS.

The centrum dominus, Heavenfall

Qui’sin knew of the enemy’s appearance before word came down from the main vox-hub. He could sense the anguish of Darkand’s twin astropaths emanating from the Pinnacle’s choristorum, the psy-sealed chamber buried deep in the bedrock of the mountainside below the government district. The Shadow in the Warp, the suffocating psychic void that accompanied the hive fleets wherever they went, had fallen across the system. From now on astrocommunication – the one link to the rest of the Imperium – would be impossible. It was just as it had been when the Cicatrix Maledictorum had first blazed with all its hateful fury across the galaxy, stifling the guiding light of the Astronomican. They were alone.

‘They are upon us,’ Qui’sin said to Joghaten. ‘The star-speakers have turned deaf and dumb.’

The two were standing on the viewing gallery of the centrum dominus’ uppermost tier. The vista beyond the window held no interest for the two Space Marines. Darkand’s steppes, and the view from Heavenfall, were nothing compared to the sight of the Plain Zhou, sweeping away from the Khum Karta’s jagged flanks in all of its primal, rugged glory. The White Scars had occupied the gallery simply so that they could converse privately.

‘There has been no word from Tzu Shen,’ Joghaten said. He turned his back on the view, looking down into the command pit below. The centrum dominus was filled with the clatter of cogitators and the crackle of vox-systems as the governor’s staff sought to facilitate the massed movement of Heavenfall’s citizens into the catacombs, while at the same time deploying the Pinnacle Guard to the Founding Wall. At the chamber’s heart, gathered around the main hololithic chart, Harren was briefing a gaggle of his robed cabinet ministers.

‘I do not trust the governor,’ Joghaten went on. ‘There is something… kachan about him.’

‘I agree,’ said Qui’sin.

‘You think him compromised? Could there be xenos infestation here already?’

‘I do not yet know. If there is, it masks its psychic presence well.’

‘You are wise as ever, weathermaker,’ Joghaten conceded. ‘It is unlikely the xenos have had this world seeded for long. Nevertheless, there is something odd about the man.’

‘There is something unusual about the entire situation,’ Qui’sin admitted. ‘But we need the recruits afforded by the tribes more than ever before. We have committed – we cannot now abandon Darkand to a weakened splinter like Hive Fleet Cicatrix.’

‘That is even assuming the tribes can be brought within the wall in time. If not our defence will be for nothing.’

‘We shall find out soon enough. Our outriders cannot be far away from the closest ones.’

‘My lord,’ called Harren. Joghaten realised he was gesturing up at them. A pale-faced staffer in the uniform of a vox primary was standing at his shoulder.

‘What is it?’ Joghaten called back, his bass voice cutting easily across the chatter of the command centre.

‘A message from the augur stations watching over the rimward edge of the system. They are reporting contacts. Something… vast is arriving in-system from deep space.’

‘Then your faith and your abilities are about to be tested as never before, Commander Harren,’ Joghaten replied. ‘Has the wall been fully manned?’

‘Soon, lord,’ Harren said. ‘My generals estimate the final battalions will be in place by nightfall. The reports from the augur arrays estimate the xenos will reach upper orbit in around forty hours. They move slowly. The choristorum is also reporting that our astropaths have lost contact with the Imperium at large. The primaris has suffered a fatal stroke.’

‘The Shadow in the Warp,’ Qui’sin responded. ‘The psychic darkness these xenos always bring with them. Do not let it trouble you, governor. In times such as these, none were coming to your aid anyway. Your champions already stand with you.’

The Chamber of Seers,
Iyanden Craftworld

The high, wraithbone chamber echoed with the sound of mourning. The seer council of Iyanden was remembering its dead, the cost a dying race had paid and would pay again. Lillen, the most youthful warlock to have taken a seat among the council of seers, sung for the souls of Alnoth and Murai, just fallen in battle with their dark cousins. Their passing had left Farseer Yenneth feeling hollow. Even now their spirit stones were communing with the infinity circuit, seeking their final rest.

Understanding as she did the threats that faced the craftworld, Yenneth suspected that any rest they did find would be very far from final.

Little time had passed since the farseer and a detachment of wraithguard had returned from the webway. The City of Pillars, that long-abandoned portal to the material plane, had once more been the scene of desperate fighting against Archon Skalorix and the Kabal of the Pierced Eye. The cursed drukhari were refusing to abandon the ancient aeldari city and the portal which led to the mon-keigh world beyond. Unless they could be dislodged, Yenneth and her kindred would not be able to seal the entrance off before the bio-monstrosities of the Devourer arrived.

Despite their withdrawal, the spirits powering the wraithguard detachment had not been released. Another farseer, Venerable Hildar, had proposed requesting the assistance of more before returning to the City of Pillars. The council had urged caution before moving the proposal forward. The craftworld was already on a war footing, beset by a dozen threats. What craftworld wasn’t, now that Biel-Tan was shattered and darkness had blanketed half the galaxy? The loss of venerable council members like Alnoth and Murai were but the latest of many tears.

‘The drukhari humiliated us,’ said Farseer Galoran after the mourning song had faded into silence. The fragment of the council that had been dedicated to the expedition to the City of Pillars sat in a circle, cross-legged, around the shimmering stones of the seeing chamber. The precious vision shards were hovering a foot above the smooth surface of the floor, moving in slow, ever-changing patterns. Their depths glowed, casting twinkling patterns across the slender, curving wraithbone arches high overhead. They were the only source of illumination in the chamber, and they gave it an aquatic, submerged feel.

‘The portents did not predict the drukhari would be so numerous,’ said one of the council’s warlocks, Yetoc.

‘A wrong path was taken,’ Yenneth admitted. They were the first words she had spoken since Lillen had finished her song. She felt the weight of expectation in the chamber pressing down upon her, distracting her, like a buzzing in her ears. At times like these she suspected taking up her position among the current council had been a wrong path as well. Fate could be confounding, even for one who walked the lonely way of the Seer.

‘Sometimes the most obvious route is the right one,’ Hildar intoned. He was old, even by the standards of the eldar. The crystalline curse that beset all farseers now forced him to use his wraithbone staff as a walking cane. It would not be long before he withdrew into the Dome of the Crystal Seers, to become one with the craftworld and guide it from the beyond.

‘Can we afford to awaken more of our sleeping kin though?’ Yenneth asked, letting the truth of her words work for her. ‘How many more sections of the infinity circuit are we willing to disturb in our quest to oust Skalorix?’

‘We are all in agreement that the portal must be sealed,’ Hildar said. ‘If we do not use force to drive away the drukhari, then how do you suggest we stop the Devourer from breaching the webway? It is a risk we cannot afford to take.’

‘There are other ways,’ Yenneth said slowly. ‘Other… allies we might seek.’

‘You are right to speak with caution,’ Hildar said slowly, his piercing gaze not leaving Yenneth. ‘You refer to the mon-keigh, yes? The ones that infest the surface of the portal world. The place they call Darkand.’

The last word, delivered in the mon-keigh’s barbaric tongue, sounded like a wracking cough. The council’s sense of discomfort filled Yenneth. She pressed on regardless.

‘We know how the immediate paths before us play out. We can change them. Bring some together, and seal others off. Engineer success from many possible futures.’

‘You have already proposed this,’ Hildar said. ‘The council voted unanimously against it. It is too dangerous.’

‘I would have the council reconsider,’ Yenneth said. ‘Awaking a further phalanx of our slumbering kin is not feasible. We cannot countenance the price Skalorix demands in her bargains, but we must seal the portal. We all know the threat the Devourer poses, more so than any of our kin. If the hive mind senses the portal’s presence and succeeds in penetrating it, half a dozen craftworlds will find themselves directly threatened. The mon-keigh are our best hope now.’

‘But the distortion you suggest,’ Farseer Galoran said, speaking for the first time. ‘Is it even possible?’

‘Yes,’ Yenneth replied, masking her uncertainty with firmness. ‘I can tread the path to its completion. There will be no missteps.’

‘You have done it before?’

‘I have not.’

‘There is nothing more difficult or deadly than what you propose,’ Hildar said, leaning heavily on his staff. Unlike the other seers he’d remained standing, unable to sit due to the slow crippling of his lower limbs.

‘One wrong turn, one false step, and you could cause infinitely more damage than even the Devourer is capable of.’

‘I understand the risks,’ Yenneth said.

‘But what of the realities?’ asked a warlock, Druai. ‘How can you even go about reaching the mon-keigh if the drukhari control the City of Pillars?’

‘Skalorix holds the gate,’ Yenneth said. ‘But a palace has many other doors. I have scryed them all, and I will use them to reach those who may prove most malleable to our suggestions.’

‘You think you will find any among that blind race that can fulfil the role we require?’

‘If the plan is adhered to, we will require only slaughter. The mon-keigh have shown themselves perfectly capable of that. With Ynnead’s blessings they will be our instrument of destruction. Darkand holds great meaning, and even greater purpose, for many of them.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Hildar asked when Yenneth paused.

‘The runes are unequivocal about certain matters,’ Yenneth continued. ‘Observe.’

She drew her sheaf of wraithbone rune sticks from her robes, and cast them across the floor beneath the seeing stones. As they slid to a halt her long, slender fingers were already indicating the salient patterns, her mind inching ahead of present reality.

‘There, see how the runes representing the Upstart fall upon the marker of the Home world?’

‘That much is true,’ Hildar allowed. ‘But I see precious little certainty in anything else. All about it is flux.’

‘Watch again,’ Yenneth said, gathering up the sticks and casting them once more. As they clattered to a stop they again settled in a similar pattern – at their centre, the Upstart and the Home world met.

‘The mon-keigh’s tie to Darkand is a fixed point,’ Yenneth explained. ‘That is why I have proposed this plan. All paths lead to their involvement.’

‘But what of the other runes?’ Galoran asked, leaning forward. ‘I see not only uncertainty, I see gravest danger. The Wrath of Khaine has fallen inverted twice. The Tears of Isha lie crossed with the Cosmic Serpent. And Ynnead is ascendant.’

The farseer indicated the rune stick that topped the scattered pattern. Yenneth felt the psychic flicker of unease from those around her.

‘I take that as a good portent,’ she said. ‘We are all Ynnead’s servants now.’

‘It is a bleak time, when all of the aeldari have been reduced to the service of Death,’ Hildar said quietly.

‘Yet these are the times dealt to us,’ Yenneth replied. ‘You can see the runes, how they have fallen. Few are within our power to change now. Too many paths have already been set. For this reason, I petition the council once more.’

None of the assembled seers raised the tokens that indicated opposition. After a moment’s silence, Yenneth bowed her head in formal thanks.

‘Take the outcasts with you,’ Hildar said. ‘We can ill afford to lose another of our Venerable Seers, not during times such as these.’

‘Very well,’ Yenneth said. ‘I shall seek out Pathfinder Roneth in person.’

‘You know the routes you must take to reach Darkand?’

‘I have foreseen them, honoured farseer. That will have to be enough.’

‘It will,’ Hildar agreed. ‘Ynnead guide you, my sister. Much hangs upon the thread of your existence.’

You cannot engage these monsters as you would a conventional xenos threat. They are unlike any other enemy this damnable galaxy has to throw at us. They fight not as a gathering of sentient warriors, but as the billion-strong extensions of a single mind. They are the ultimate predator. But gentlemen, having said all that… how many predators have we hunted, trapped and killed on Myralis when we were last on leave? I assure you, this one will be no different.

– Admiral Golkin Vatt, Imperial Navy battlefleet
472-Pacificus, to his assembled deck officers
prior to his victory over the Great Devourer
at the battle of High Anchorage, 997.M41

CHAPTER FIVE

THE FLESH NOOSE

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 88 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 43 HOURS.

Augur Void Station JUF-D19/Rimward, Darkand System

They were all going to die. Augur station Vox Primary Ankum had admitted as much before the station’s commander, Sensorium Master Crasus, had ordered him to be silent. None of them needed the vox primary’s analysis to know what was about to happen.

Augur analyst Davrick’s main viewscreen had just come back online. It had shorted out three times in the last hour, overloaded by the sheer weight of returns it was getting from the augur arrays that monitored the edge of the Darkand System. The counter for his sector had stalled at 1314 and was simply blinking on and off, its red digits throwing Davrick’s face into light and dark, light and dark. The displays all around him were now a morass of unidentified, organic returns, rendered all but useless by the weight of data appearing across the screens.

Augur Station JUF-D19/Rimward’s processors were unable to comprehend the sheer size of Hive Fleet Cicatrix as it arrived in-system.

Tech-adept Groll seemed to have gone into some sort of standby, cortical plugs still linking him to the deep-space station’s drives. He sat bound in his binary communion chair, eyes glazed, pale lips quivering. Crasus had given up trying to bring him back online.

‘Estimated time to contact?’ the sensorium master asked, voice hoarse. He was watching the external pict screens.

‘Unknown,’ another of the void station’s six-man crew, Sereen responded. ‘My systems are all glitched, but running off the last speed and trajectory readings we managed to file, I estimate no more than ten minutes.’

Nobody replied. Everyone’s eyes were on the pict-feed.

The external recordings had managed to pick out their doom. The view of real space in the station’s immediate vicinity was a grainy, static-washed green, but the resolution was enough to make out the thing approaching them through the void. The augur’s systems had been constructed to collate and analyse nonvisual data – such clinical information was of far more use than the scant things that could be detected through the naked eye, watching viewscreen images of distant objects. In a twist of cruel irony, JUF-D19/Rimward’s grainy old pict recorders were the only pieces of data collection equipment not overloaded by the sheer size of the xenos fleet.

Now that fleet’s vanguard was visible. Something was nearing the station, drawing towards it with a silent, eerie inevitability. Its form defied easy definition. Davrick, born to a middle-ranking ash hiver family on Colaris Prime, had never seen the ocean before, but he’d witnessed the strange, frilled creatures imported as foodstuffs for Colaris’ teeming hab blocks from harvest worlds like Aquim and New Haven. The thing approaching JUF-D19/Rimward looked like one such creature, albeit far larger and cast out into the void. Its back was a gnarled, curling hump of scarred bone plating, while its underside was a mass of dozens of limb-like tendrils that waved back and forth with a lazy synchronisation, as though powering it forward through the depths. Streamers of void-frozen fluid clung to its fronds, while its head constituted nothing more than a fleshy maw. Orifices in its spine shell occasionally gouted bursts of bio-effluvium that crystallised in the void.

‘Vanguard organism,’ Analyst Korday said, as though to break the awful silence that had fallen over the station. ‘No specific class or designation.’

‘Estimated time to contact less than five minutes,’ Sereen added quietly.

‘We’re about to be boarded, or God-Emperor knows what else,’ Crasus snapped, trying to wake up his stunned crew. ‘I want everything wiped, now. Follow your damned protocols.’

The icy, expectant stillness that had settled over the station dissipated as they all hurried to comply. Davrick began to wipe his core cogitators and processor units, inserting a series of codes that were authorised by Crasus’ gene stamp. The hurried activity helped draw his mind away from the cold sweat slicking his body, the throbbing in his skull and the base, panic-stoked fear churning in his stomach.

‘Systems are beginning to go offline,’ he confirmed. ‘Criticals multiplying, chief.’

Crasus didn’t respond. He was too busy giving authorisation to Ankum to scramble the vox-systems. Sereen was wiping data-slates while Korday was dumping sheaves of paper backcopies and data readout chits into the vacuum chute. Only Groll was motionless, still staring into nothing.

‘Tech-adept, respond,’ Crasus said, turning his attention to the Adeptus Mechanicus acolyte. The coghead remained unmoving.

‘Maximum priority response override,’ Crasus snapped. ‘Look at me, Groll.’

The adept blinked once, slowly.

‘He’s gone, chief,’ Korday said, glancing over from the chute. ‘You gotta unplug him from the dataframe.’

For a moment Crasus looked as though he was going to reply. Then, instead, he reached down to the base of the adept’s mem-unit, sutured into the pale flesh at the base of his skull. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled. There was an instant of resistance, then the unit disengaged with a click. Groll didn’t react, though a line of saliva escaped his sagging lips. Crasus reached up to the heavy cortical plug inserted into Groll’s cranium, near the surgery-scarred crown of his white scalp.

‘God-Emperor forgive me,’ the sensorum master muttered, before yanking the plug free. Systems across the station’s remaining displays began to chime and flash, as though the machine-spirits were calling out in shock. Groll spasmed violently for a moment, held in check by his binary chair’s restraints, then slumped back. A single hand continued to twitch and clench.

‘Eyes on your stations,’ Crasus ordered, though the surety in his voice was gone.

‘Contact,’ Sereen said.

The void monster filled the pict screen. Up close its form was even more nightmarish – Davrick could see the spine growths that lined its motion frills, and the scarring on its curled shell where debris had lashed it during its long voyage between the stars. As the station crew watched, its maw distended, pulling apart. Contrary to Davrick’s horrified imaginings, it did not possess row after row of snapping lock-teeth. Instead, its mouth was a fleshy morass of feelers, disgusting tendrils trailing icy slime. They extended as it came blindly upon the station, reaching out past the pict screen’s pan. A proximity alarm bell started to clatter, and Davrick felt the decking beneath him shudder.

‘It’s… it’s going to eat us,’ Ankum stammered, looking as though he was about to be sick. ‘Oh, Throne, it’s–’

‘Silence!’ Crasus snapped, though he too was visibly shaking.

More tendrils reached ponderously out, questing around the station’s flanks. Secondary alarms activated, and the adamantium around the crew shuddered and groaned.

Was it going to crush them? Tear them open and expose them to the void? Suck them into the vile, drooling orifice now practically pressed up against the pict display? Davrick found himself staring at the terrifying image, unable to shift away from his workbench, unable to look at anything other than the unnatural, pulsating flesh that now filled the screen.

And then it shifted. The screen blurred, lost for a moment to static. For a second Davrick assumed one of the monster’s tendrils had knocked out the external pict-feed. But when the viewscreen came back online the image was still present. What was more, the maw was receding. The xenos beast was reversing away from them.

The station shuddered again as the tendrils that had latched around it released their snaggle-toothed grip, sliding back into the monster’s depths as its maw constricted. It pulled away from them and then went upwards, displaying its fleshy lower fronds as it slipped over the augur masts and vox-beacons. The pict-feed on the other side of the station caught its trailing rear as it passed back down the other side, floating on in-system past the little monitoring platform.

For a moment, nobody spoke. Davrick, like the others, simply stared after the xenos creature’s languid, receding form. It was Crasus who snapped them out of it.

‘Turn off those damned alarms!’ he ordered. Korday hit the overrides, one after the other. Silence flooded the space left by the clattering emergency systems. Even the hum of the cogitators and vox-banks, now deactivated, had gone. Davrick had never heard the little station so silent before.

‘What do we do now?’ Sereen breathed. All eyes turned to Crasus. With what was clearly an immense effort, the old sensorum master stilled his shaking hands. The ugly emergency lighting made him look even more wizened and gaunt than usual.

‘We wait,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing else we can do. The distress beacon is still transmitting. One of the system defence cutters will pick us up.’

It was a lie and they all knew it. A vast xenos threat had just arrived in-system. The last considerations for the captains of Darkand’s handful of combat-worthy void craft would be the salvation of the augur stations on the system’s fringes. Nor were there any shuttles or salvation pods to facilitate an evacuation. The crew were delivered to the station and then, after six months, rotated off for a week’s leave. According to the cycle logs there was still a full Terran month to go before they were to be replaced. There was no way for any of them to abandon the station.

‘Why did it leave us?’ Korday wondered out loud, staring after the receding alien bio-ship. ‘It had us.’

‘We were… no threat to it,’ Crasus said slowly. ‘No threat to its fleet.’

‘Chief,’ Sereen interrupted. ‘Chief, look.’

The augur analyst was pointing back at the pict screens. It took a second for Davrick to realise what it was he was looking at. When he did, the reason for their survival became clear.

The vanguard xenos bio-ships had passed by. JUF-D19/Rimward was now at the heart of their fleet. And, compared to the organic drones that quested ahead of the main swarm, the true organisms of the hive fleet were behemoths. Davrick’s mind struggled to comprehend what he was seeing as he took in sheets of pockmarked chitin the size of small continents and toothed orifices the size of cities. The thick clusters of tendrils along its flank and underbelly writhed in the solar winds while its maw was encompassed by two great, wicked, beak-like bone plates that looked as though they could have sheared an Imperial capital ship in half.

And the worst thing about the nightmarish leviathan was that it was coming straight towards the augur station.

‘Oh God-Emperor,’ Ankum stammered, over and over. Korday was quietly sobbing, his head in his hands. Sereen just stared, the image on the viewscreen reflected in her wide, dark eyes. Only Crasus turned away from the display. He walked over to the worn leather of his command chair, paused, tugged his dark blue sensorum master’s uniform straight, and sat down. His expression was unreadable, jaw locked, though in the harsh emergency lumens he looked more haggard than ever.

‘Crew members,’ he said, his words cutting through Ankum’s and Korday’s despair. ‘In the past decades of service, it shames me to admit that I have not said this enough. Regardless, if there was ever a time, Throne knows it’s now. It has been an honour to man this station with all of you.’

‘And with you, chief,’ Davrick said. He was the only one to respond. His own words felt distant, disconnected, as though he was speaking to himself from somewhere far away. His mind was sluggish, unresponsive. His breathing felt laboured. A strange, detached part of his mind supposed that he was probably having a panic attack.

Crasus had no more orders to give. He simply sat, watching the viewscreen. Davrick reached out towards his little pict capture of Amilia and Drui, his wife and son, tacked to the side of his monitor. He would see them again, some day. He was sure of it. A fresh surge of stuttered oaths from Ankum distracted him before he could pull the pict off the side of the display.

The tyranid bio-ship had filled the viewscreens. Even as the stunned crew watched, the monstrosity’s great, hooked chitin beak split apart. The maw yawned wide, impossibly wide, wide enough – Davrick was sure – to swallow one of Darkand’s moons. Its shadow fell across the augur station, blotting out the light of the stars. The structure around them seemed to shudder, as though its terror matched that of its crew. The viewscreen now showed nothing but static-washed darkness. It had swallowed them whole.

Korday had slumped on the deck, shaking and weeping uncontrollably. Crasus was looking down into his lap, knuckles white where he gripped the arms of his chair. Ankum had finally stopped gibbering.

‘Sereen,’ he managed to say, looking over at the augur analyst. ‘Sereen, there’s something I need to tell you…’ She continued to stare at the now-blank viewscreen.

A sudden impact threw them all. Davrick found himself sprawling across the deck, almost on top of Korday. The station shook violently, tremors dislodging rune banks and audio systems and sending Davrick’s empty recaff tin bouncing across the deck. The alarms triggered again across the cramped station. Crasus, who alone had managed to stay in his seat, deactivated them without comment. The viewscreen had gone offline completely, showing nothing but grey static.

‘Th-they’re going to board us?’ Ankum stammered as they picked themselves up. Any response was lost in another jarring impact. The station’s frame shrieked in protest at the stresses put upon it. With their systems scrambled and broken it was impossible to tell exactly where they were, or what was happening outside.

The station seemed to settle slightly, the sounds of tortured metal reduced to a low creak. They all scanned the ceiling, looking for any sign of a breach.

‘Do you hear that?’ Sereen said. It was the first time she’d spoken since seeing the bio-ship. They all listened, breath held, straining to hear over the groan of adamantium and Korday’s muted sobs. Eventually Davrick caught what Sereen had detected, a faint scratching, scrabbling noise, as though someone – or something – was scraping across the outside of the hull. It mirrored the scratching tormenting all of them from inside their own skulls.

‘They’re on the hull,’ Davrick said. Before he could go on, a crash shattered the breathless quiet. The section directly above Crasus’ chair, in the centre of the station’s cockpit, collapsed. With it came a flood of broiling green liquid that struck Crasus just as he looked up.

If the old sensorum master managed to draw breath to scream, the bio-acid flooded his mouth, throat and lungs before he could make a sound. Davrick caught an impression of his death as he was lost entirely in the torrent – flesh sloughing from bones, organics consumed in a heartbeat. The rest of the crew recoiled, but too slowly – Sereen, nearest to the centre of the cockpit, was struck by the acidic spray. Her hands went up to her exposed face, and her screaming filled the claustrophobic space.

‘No!’ Ankum wailed, lunging across his bench to catch the augur analyst as she collapsed. He managed to drag her hands away from her face, then recoiled. Her features had already been reduced to pockmarked bone, her eyeballs running like liquid from their sockets, meat and tendon slipping away with her fingers. Still she screamed. Ankum doubled over and was sick.

Davrick, whose station was furthest from Crasus’ chair, scrambled back on top of his bench as the flood of acid spread across the decking plates. Sereen had collapsed into the rising swill, her body coming apart. Ankum tried to push himself against his vox-banks but was sick again, and collapsed. The bugs got to him before the acid.

There were insects in the hissing, steaming slime – writhing, sightless maggot-things with hard black shells. They swarmed from the discoloured, vomit-like bio-matter, the air full of the susurration of their passing as they swiftly covered the deck and then the cogitator stations, workbenches and walls, riding the rising tide of acid. First hundreds and then thousands of them reached Ankum, swarming over his boots and knees and up his arms where he was crouched against the vox-systems. He tried to scream, but choked on his own bile. His eyes rolled back into their sockets as the alien swarm began eating him alive.

Korday killed himself. Face still streaked with tears, he leapt directly from his bench into the stream that had consumed Crasus and his command chair. He was gone in an instant, as the breach in the station hull was burned wider.

As Ankum’s eaten-out remains collapsed into the bio-organics sloshing about the cockpit’s deck, Davrick stood rooted to the top of his bench. He couldn’t think, couldn’t move. He was in the throes of panic – a part of him realised he should end it quickly like Korday, but another part was desperate for another way out, any way out that avoided the nightmare bile that was burning away everything. It was digesting them whole. Even as the terror kept him in place Groll’s binary chair collapsed, pitching the unresponsive tech-adept into the effluvium. His red cloak billowed for a moment before he was lost, coming apart amidst the steaming clouds of liquefied organics.

For a moment, Davrick was alone. For a single, ludicrous second, everything felt surreal, ridiculous, almost calm. It had to be a nightmare. None of this horror could possibly be real.

Then his bench collapsed.

‘Oh, God-Emperor, no!’ he screamed, trying to scramble back onto the plasteel’s disintegrating remains. ‘No, no, no!’

The bio-acid caught him, sloshing around his boots and his lower fatigues. His panicked wails quickly turned to screams of agony as the material was eaten away, exposing flesh that in turn began to slough off. Muscle and sinew became grey, organic paste, that revealed bone that gave way and splintered beneath its own acid-gnawed weight.

Davrick died slowly, on his knees, eaten up inch by inch by the bile and the sightless, burrowing things that swam in it. Eventually the insects flooded his raw throat, choking and suffocating him as they ate out his eyes and bored through his nose and ears and into his brain. The acid took what remained.

As another section of the hull caved to emit a fresh gout of vicious toxins, the picture of Amilia and Drui fell from the side of Davrick’s primary viewscreen into the flood. In an instant, the smiling wife and son were gone, consumed entirely.

The Pride of Chogoris, high orbit, Darkand

The sensorium gantries edging the bridge of the Pride lit up with fresh augur reports, underlining the strained features of the crew zarts working to transcribe the scanned outputs.

‘We’ve lost contact with the last of the system’s rimward augur stations, voyagemaster,’ one reported, the words clicking in Tzu Shen’s ear.

‘Acknowledged,’ he responded. He was already aware of the station’s loss. The data cables linking his throne mount to his cranial nodes and black carapace fed him constant updates from across the ship’s systems – scanner arrays, vox-clusters, the enginarium, the weapons decks. The sigil representing Augur Station JUF-D19/Rimward had blinked from existence in his mind’s eye moments earlier. The only thing that surprised him was that it had remained online and transmitting for so long, surrounded as it was by the spreading stain representing Hive Fleet Cicatrix.

‘Bring us to a fresh heading,’ the venerable voyagemaster ordered over the short-range vox. ‘Point two-four starboard. Level speed.’

A flurry of acknowledgments clicked back over the link. Shen let out a slow breath and settled himself on the ship’s throne mount, feeling his flesh twitch where the cables and subdermal implants snagged. The slight change in the ship’s stance was unnecessary, but it did not sit well with a White Scar to remain stationary, whether upon the Plain Zhou or in the void’s depths. They had been locked in position, stasis-anchors dropped, for almost six Terran hours. He knew that the rest of the Fourth Brotherhood’s fleet would be responding to the fractional change he’d ordered, adjusting their own headings to maintain the an-chi – the holding formation adopted in Darkand’s high orbit.

He ran through the deployments one more time via his mind links, one hand subconsciously stroking the long, white hair of his forked beard. The Pride of Chogoris sat at the heart of the Fourth Brotherhood’s ships, in the place of honour. To its starboard, and a little lower on the atmospheric plain, was the Sword-class escort squadron, three vessels: the War Wind, Tulwar and Starsteed. To port, anchored slightly higher, were the twin Cobra escorts, Falcon and Steppe Lord. The formation was loose, flexible, and offered the maximum capacity to both hold and attack. It was a typical pattern, adopted by Shen and his escort voyagemasters a thousand times.

It was the waiting formation. It meant nothing was happening. And that never sat well with any of them.

With a thought-impulse the White Scar cast the net of his consciousness wider, tapping into the analysis scans of the system’s rimward edge and the final data packets delivered by the augur stations before they’d gone offline. The transmissions had been vital – they’d been able to map out the extent of the xenos fleet before contact had been lost. The entire swarm had now translated in-system, clustered around the primary hive ships. They were making their way ponderously – though, according to the latest long-range detection by the Pride’s own augur probes, with increasing speed – towards Darkand, bypassing the system’s uninhabited worlds, a trio of gas giants, and a radiation-scorched wasteland labelled on the star charts as Tachi’s Folly. Assuming their pace continued to increase, estimates saw them contesting high anchorage in around forty hours’ time.

As far as Shen was concerned, there would be no contesting at all.

The space above Darkand was almost clear, bar the White Scars fleet and the planet’s unmanned communications satellites. The meagre defence gunboats and fast cutters responsible for guarding the planet’s orbital anchorages and shipping lanes in the absence of the Imperial Navy had been ordered away, along with the commercial freighters and merchant vessels clustered in low orbit. Shen had provided them with coordinates to the system’s coreward edge, away from Darkand. If the worst happened and the planet was lost, they would be able to translate into the empyrean while the xenos were still feeding. The undermanned defence ships would only get in the way of the White Scars fleet, and it made sense to salvage what they could while there was still an opportunity.

Shen was aware that Joghaten had already made it clear to Darkand’s leading dignitaries that the White Scars had no intention of safeguarding any ranking Imperial assets, or accommodating them on board the Pride. The governor and his ministers would stay on the planet, along with the rest of the planet’s inhabitants, and live or die there, as the fates willed. All that concerned Shen now was having a clear orbit space. The next few hours had to play out exactly as planned if the Fourth Brotherhood was to have any hope of survival, let alone victory.

Shen pulled his consciousness back in, momentarily syphoning out much of the vast flow of information filling his thoughts. The Pride of Chogoris and its small attendant fleet was far removed from the panic besetting Darkand’s exospheric shipping lanes. The yurut bridge was a quiet, calm place, thick with the sweetness of burning incense sticks and undercut by the gentle throb of the idling plasma drive and the click and tap of cogitator cores and rune boards.

It had always been a place of order and measured calm, even before Shen had taken the throne mount from his predecessor, almost four centuries ago. The Pride of Chogoris was what White Scars voyagemasters referred to as a harmonious ship. When the peoples of Mundus Planus had first ventured into the star-seas, they had carried many of their cultural cues with them. Chogorian captains identified the state of their vessels in terms of balance. Each ship possessed its own jïngshén – spirit – and each was different in nature.

Some traversed the endless void and the depths of the empyrean with a heavy weariness, made old and staid through many millennia of service. Many others hungered for the rush and release of battle, their plasma drives and warp engines always biting a little closer to the limit, their augur clusters probing for new, worthy foes. Still others sought to battle against the constraints placed upon them by their voyagemaster, especially if he had only recently taken his throne mount, or the ship was particularly venerable. The ship might drift off course unless constantly monitored, or it might stubbornly keep its shields raised long after the start of the deactivation protocols.

The bond between the Pride and the voyagemaster had only grown stronger down the centuries, especially after Shen had lost his natural-born sight. They had caught a fleeing tyranid splinter fleet off the spiral arm of the Nebrison Cluster in late 970.M41. The xenos had turned at bay, and proved stronger than had been anticipated. Bio-warrior organisms had succeeded in boarding the Pride and penetrating the primary yurut. The zarts, fighting bravely with what they had to hand, had held the shrieking swarm long enough for Joghaten and his brothers to arrive – Shen’s last sight had been of the Master of Blades falling in amidst the hissing xenos, his twin tulwars a storm of striking silver, face a mask of controlled, icy fury. Then an alien’s claws had raked Shen, and taken his eyes.

The xenos’ skull was now yellowing on a spike above his throne mount. Shen still bore the wicked white scars all down his face, a counterpoint to the ritual markings of his tribe and Chapter. He had refused the offer of augmetics, preferring to see only through the ship’s senses. The Pride of Chogoris likewise remembered that last, brutal engagement. Though new sheets of adamantium had been bonded to its hull, and old scars painted fresh and white, Shen could still feel the vessel’s hunger for vengeance, a rare spike of discord amidst its ordered thoughts. That flash had been growing stronger and more frequent since the first detection of Hive Fleet Cicatrix’s vanguard organisms, making their way in-system from the void’s depths. Shen knew he would have to monitor it closely if he were to ensure the Pride did not lose its harmony in a blood-fuelled hunt for revenge.

The old voyagemaster reached out once more with the Pride’s augurs, scanning the xenos fleet that was spreading like some vile, void-borne cancer from the system’s edge. The hive swarm would be filling the yurut’s oculus displays and viewscreens, a morass of hostile returns, rendered not in armaplas, plasteel and adamantium, but in ugly, leathery flesh, craggy asteroid-scarred chitin and throbbing, toxic ichor. The number of contacts was far in excess of any enemy fleet the Fourth Brotherhood’s vessels had faced since they last encountered the Great Devourer off Nebrison. But Tzu Shen had seen worse.

‘Send this information to the Master of Blades as a data burst,’ he ordered one of the yurut zarts over the vox. ‘Along with the following analysis. Xenos threat gauged to be level three or four, no higher. Progressing in-system, standard pattern. The bio-ships at the formation’s heart seem uncommonly large for such a comparatively small splinter, possibly indicative of a lack of bio-fodder or recent hostile action. Estimated time to arrival in Darkand’s high orbit, forty-two hours, Terran standard. Will move to the second phase unless otherwise notified.’

After a moment the primary vox zart confirmed that the burst had been delivered, logged and auto-acknowledged, with Shen’s addendum attached. The voyagemaster thanked the Chapter-serf, his mind still focused on the approaching swarm.

As far as hive fleets went, Cicatrix was small, a ravaged remnant from Baal’s fallout. That being said, the swarm approaching Darkand was still more than sufficient for the task of engulfing the White Scars and consuming the honour world. If it could feed off poorly guarded outlying planets and systems like this one, it could take advantage of the Imperium’s overtaxed defences to regain its strength.

That, surely, was what Qui’sin’s visions had been referring to. That was why they had hastened here, to catch the xenos at their weakest, and exterminate them before their filth had an opportunity to spread between the stars once more. Cleanse and purge; despite his centuries of service, the opportunity still brought a slow smile to Shen’s scar-twisted lips.

‘We have an preset message response from the khan’s personal vox-uplink, voyagemaster,’ the primary vox zart said. ‘Message reads, “Proceed at personal discretion”.’

‘Acknowledge it, and good hunting to the Master of Blades,’ Shen replied. ‘Helmsman, prepare a new fleet heading, and issue a preparatory formation change directive. The wait is nearly over.’

When the skies of Heavenfall are filled with fresh constellations – that is when we shall know that our salvation is at hand.

– Septimus Traik, High Enunciator of the Emperor’s Voice,
personal writings (redacted)

CHAPTER SIX

NEW STARS

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 68 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 23 HOURS.

The steppes, Darkand

Lau Feng rode through the night. It brought him joy. After a month of confinement on board the Pride of Chogoris, to be free again, to ride the steppes unfettered and alone, gave him a sense of release he had not experienced for a long time. His auto-senses guided him in the darkness; the rugged bulk of his assault bike steered firm and true across the rolling hills and plateaux that stretched away from Heavenfall. He had found himself riding into the sunrise, red light bleeding life back into the steppes around him. Even if it was nothing compared to a true Chogorian dawn, such a sight was a far cry from the cramped hallways, briefing yuruts and sparring gers of the brotherhood’s strike cruiser.

Despite the undeniable beauty, the sense of kachan emanating from the world around him was strong. Feng had heard other members of the brotherhood talking about it on board the Pride. The kachan, the uncanniness, was typified by the legend of the örchölt, an ancient Chogorian city tale that had eventually bled out into the culture of the steppes. In the story a steppe spirit would delight in swapping a child from the plains with one from the city. Neither sets of parents would be aware of the trickery of the örchölt, until it became apparent how out of place the child was. The household’s lineage thus ruined, the örchölt would then switch them back. Feng had once heard an anthropologist from the Imperial scholam on Rondaris claim that the tale grew from the city-dweller’s ancient fear of interbreeding with the steppes tribes of Chogoris, and their efforts to explain away affairs. Such cynical analysis seemed to miss the point, as far as Feng was concerned. In this life, there were those who were alike, and those who were unlike – the kachan.

Many White Scars believed Darkand and its people to be akin to the tale of the örchölt. As a world it was alike and unlike, a planet that at a glance bore undeniable similarities to Chogoris. Warzones classified by the Adeptus Munitorum as geo-gradient aleph five through to sigma three – open plain battlefields – were the favoured hunting grounds of the Khagan’s sons. Feng had seen many an alien grassland in his century and a half of service to the khans, but Darkand was something different, something closer to Chogoris than all the others. In the way the winds twitched the grass, the manner in which the sun slid lazily towards the distant mountain peaks, how the raptors circled slowly overhead, watching and waiting. All these things were like an eerie memory, as though the steedmaster was lost deep in meditation in his busad, remembering the Plain Zhou as though with the disjointed surrealism of a dream.

And yet, Darkand was not home. It could never be Chogoris. The scents on the wind were different, and the land lay in a curious fashion, its low, rolling hills and rises falling in patterns his own Chogorian mind found strange. The birds high above were not the majestic golden-feathered berkut of the Khum Karta, but dark, fork-tailed creatures with ignoble, hungry countenances.

The people were different too, a short breed, weathered and toughened like native Chogorians, but without the upright noble bearing. They were quick to scorn and sneer, and held grudges beyond the limits of an honourable debt. To the White Scars they seemed mean-spirited and cruel when squabbling among themselves. They rarely smiled, the ones from the slope-city even less so. They would never hesitate to take up arms against anyone outside their tribal groupings. To an off-worlder the peoples of the steppes might have seemed similar, but between them the differences were as clear and vast as the open skies of their respective home worlds.

A little after sunrise, the White Scars steedmaster reached his first objective. The Ukit tribe had spent the night encamped around one of the rock formations that broke up their traditional migration route. Darkand’s plains were dotted with such outcrops, the strange, elegant stones not quite ordered enough to appear intelligently designed, yet too out of place to seem wholly natural.

The Ukit were breaking camp when Feng arrived. Lookouts had spotted him from the top of the rocks minutes before his bike roared past the scouts on their tough steppe ponies. When he rode into the circle of tents and wagons the tribe had already reacted the only way it knew how – taking up arms, each tanned expression emblazoned with a mixture of fear and awe.

The White Scar set his engine to idling and placed one boot on the dry Darkand soil. The squat steppe people surrounding him scrambled to get as far away from the white-armoured giant and his growling beast as possible, mothers snatching children up in their arms and young men trying to shield their stumbling elders. The warriors stood their ground, composite bows and spears raised.

Feng assessed the entire scene in a single double beat of his hearts, feeling his mood darken. It was not only the mixture of panic and defiance he saw before him – steppe warriors were closing in around him, brandishing their crude weapons, their fear at the giant warrior’s presence clashing with their instinctive desire to face down any challenge. More were appearing with every passing second from the encampment’s gers and yuruts to join the circle tightening around the White Scar.

And in among the masses, seemingly invisible to those teeming around them, the bloody spectres of Feng’s dead brothers watched him still.

He swung his other leg over his bike’s saddle and locked the kickstand, looking for somebody to address. The tribal warriors around him came no closer, but did not back down. The dawn appearance of a figure that until then had only been half-believed legend was enough to test the reactions of the most stoic people, yet it was clear that they would not hesitate to attack him if he so much as reached for his dao. They had a fighting spirit worthy of Chogoris, that much was true.

Thankfully, not quite all the Ukit seemed intent on assaulting Feng. There was a bastion of order amidst the sea of confrontation. A dozen big, broad men carrying antique laslocks and clad in red-dyed leather plates and cap-helmets had formed an avenue outside a particularly large yurut, sited near the centre of the encampment. As Feng approached a family emerged from the yurut’s entrance flap. They were led by an elder and a father, followed by a gaggle of wives and offspring, all clad in the hastily donned finery of tribal leaders. They were unmarked, as the Chogorian saying went – the Darkand natives had never adopted the ritual scarification culture of Mundus Planus. The flattery of impersonation, it seemed, only ran so far.

Feng halted before them, towering over the whole family. The elder snapped orders to one of the red-armoured guards flanking the yurut’s entrance. The man raised his laslock and discharged it into the dust-shrouded air. The sudden shock of the snap-crack report finally brought a degree of calm to the wider assembly.

‘Hetman,’ Feng said to the elder, inclining his head slightly. The sound of his voice had as much of an effect as the las-shot. A hush fell, all eyes fixed on the impromptu meeting.

‘Great khan of the skies,’ the elder said in the heavily bastardised Chogorian spoken by the steppe peoples of Darkand. ‘I am Tach-Tachii, of the Swifthorse, Master of the Ukit. This is my family, and these are my people. We humble ourselves before your long-awaited coming.’

At the elder’s words his family bowed. Taking the cue, the rest of the tribe, from Tach-Tachii’s guards to those peering over the heads of their kin from the back, knelt. Even before the last had got down, Feng was motioning for them to rise.

‘You need not bow, children of the Swifthorse,’ he said. ‘There is neither time nor reason. A terrible foe is coming here to destroy you all, and you must make haste if you are to escape it.’

‘You have come back early,’ Tach-Tachii said, still on his knees, apparently oblivious to what Feng had just said. ‘Sky Steed bless my soul, I did not think I would live long enough to see the day spoken of by my forefathers.’

‘I am here with a hundred brothers,’ Feng went on. ‘We have come this Furnace Season not for the trials, but for war. You and all your people must go to the slope-city of Heavenfall immediately.’

The White Scar’s words finally registered. The elder’s joyful expression became overcast.

‘The city of the off-worlders? But we have not long returned from there. The Golden Season has passed. If we do not make for the far snows, we will all perish from firethroat.’

‘You will all perish if you make for the snows,’ Feng said, not bothering to hide his rising frustration. ‘There are monsters coming here, inhuman hunters from beyond the veil of stars. They will consume every man, woman and beast if you do not seek out shelter in the slope-city.’

Feng could see confusion and uncertainty still writ large across the elder’s face.

‘Yaksha,’ the White Scar said, raising a fist skywards to emphasise his point. Daemon. An inaccurate description, all things considered, but it had the desired effect. The assembled crowd gasped, and a child began to cry.

‘They will tear you all apart,’ Feng pressed on. ‘We are not enough to protect you all here on the steppes, but in Heavenfall you shall be safe. We will preserve you there. We ride to all the tribes of Darkand this day, warning them to go to the slope-city with all speed. The monsters from the void may be here tomorrow, if not then the day after.’

‘Sky fathers preserve us,’ Tach-Tachii said quietly. ‘If you advise it, then we shall make haste, great hetman.’

‘Take the shortest path to the city,’ Feng said. ‘Carry on through the night. If you stop, none of you will make it. My brothers will be waiting for you at the end. They will protect you.’

‘We shall protect ourselves,’ Tach-Tachii said, his steppe pride overcoming his awe at the Sky Warrior’s presence. ‘You will not find us wanting, great hetman.’

‘I must ride on. There is another tribe I must warn, the Beged. Do you know if they are near?’

At the Beged’s mention Tach-Tachii’s expression soured. Feng had expected nothing less – the tribes of Darkand had little love for one another.

‘I cannot know for certain, but at this time in the cycle of seasons it is likely they will have reached the spring at the Gates of Eternity. You know of it, Sky Warrior?’

‘I know it,’ Feng said darkly. He did not need the briefing dockets to recall the site of the brotherhood’s clash with the drukhari, a decade earlier. ‘Now go, all of you, with the speed of the western winds. We shall meet again at Heavenfall.’

The steppes, Darkand

Timchet and Hagai received new orders as they turned north from the encampment of the Tan’chi, spread across the bottom of the Gorskin Valley.

‘Brother Chyen’s vitae link has gone offline,’ Steedmaster Gadi reported over the vox. ‘You are the closest to his last point of contact, wind-brothers. The coordinates have been uploaded to your tactical feeds.’

‘Affirmative,’ Hagai said, triangulating the new objective. ‘Sector six-six. Out towards the Hachi Peninsula.’

‘Correct. Be cautious, Wind Tamer.’

The Land Speeder shot across the plains, hugging the lie of the land, its passage whipping up a cloud of dust in its wake. They’d already warned two steppe tribes, the Oyega and the Tan’chi, urging them to turn back along the trails towards the slope-city, before hell descended from the heavens to consume them. They still had one more tribe, the Gorik, to reach before sunset. Chyen’s disappearance was a complication, but one the wind-brothers would treat as a challenge.

‘Knowing Chyen, he probably got in a fight with some dune bandits,’ Timchet said as they dropped towards the Hachi Peninsula, an area of low-lying land that gave way to the bitter waters of the Sea of Tears. The sea was on the edge of Darkand’s habitable continent, where the rad-wastes and dust bowls, scorched by the Furnace Season’s full might, made living impossible for the steppe tribes. The nomadic peoples of Darkand confined themselves to the more northerly grasslands for most of the planet’s seasons, and the poles when the heat of Fury’s Pillar became too much. Chyen had been straying dangerously close to the dust wastes.

‘Last known coordinates coming up,’ Hagai said as Wind Tamer dropped over a rise. The Sea of Tears lay before them, a glittering horizon of cold blue, contrasting sharply with the arid expanse between them and the craggy shoreline. Hagai banked right while Timchet maintained visual scanning, gauntlets resting on the pintle of his sponson heavy bolter.

‘He must be close,’ Hagai said, checking his instruments. ‘We’re practically on top of his last reported location.’

‘The shifting dust will have hidden his tracks,’ Timchet observed, then twisted in his harness as something caught his attention. ‘Wait… There.’

The earth racing past below had been uniformly cracked and ochre, but there was a blemish three or four hundred yards off to their left. Hagai too had noticed it – a twist of the Land Speeder’s control stick brought the skimmer round and cut its speed, so that it came to hover close to Timchet’s discovery.

Part of the ground had given way. A hole about forty yards long and twenty yards wide had appeared, and as Wind Tamer slowed to a hover the gap widened further, the edges crumbling in.

‘The earth here is weak,’ Timchet said. ‘Is it some sort of sink hole?’

‘The soil is different,’ Hagai said, highlighting a section on their linked pilot display. ‘Look at the discoloration.’

Timchet realised his wind-brother was correct. There was a scar of lighter earth running from left to right, seemingly for over a half a mile either side of them.

‘Darkand’s surface is unstable,’ Hagai said. ‘Especially in the zones more heavily affected by the rad-heat during the Furnace Season.’

‘It could be some sort of subterranean tunnel or gorge,’ Timchet suggested. ‘Chyen could be down there.’

‘There’s only one way to be sure.’

Wind Tamer descended steadily into the darkness of the sink, careful to avoid the jagged walls around them. The Land Speeder’s stab lumens confirmed Timchet’s hypothesis. The surface soil was just a crust, a bone-dry layering concealing a hidden gorge. At the bottom of it they found Chyen.

The biker had fallen through, the great weight of his power armour and steed breaking the crust before he’d realised what was happening. If the fall hadn’t killed him, the reptors had. The hissing of the vicious lizards was audible even over the sound of the Wind Tamer’s engines. The buried gorge was their nest, and the fact that so little remained of Chyen’s bloody corpse was testament to their savagery and strength. They skittered along the stone flanks of the gorge, snapping their vicious maws at the interloper in their midst.

‘Gene-seed lost,’ Hagai surmised as he focused a lumen on Chyen and his shattered bike. ‘Equipment unsalvageable. We must go, before we share his fate.’ His words were underlined by the reptor hissing, and the thud of the auto feed for Timchet’s heavy bolter. It looked as though the nearest lizards were about to leap.

Wind Tamer climbed up out of the hidden gorge and into the burning light of Darkand’s merciless sun. Hagai turned them left, towards the route being taken by Chyen before his death. There was a tribe still to be warned, the Jebig. Timchet opened a link to Steedmaster Gadi to report Chyen’s loss.

‘He underestimated this place,’ Hagai said darkly as Timchet waited for the steedmaster’s response. ‘Let us hope he is the last of our brotherhood to do so.’

The scriptorium, Heavenfall

The outriders were beginning to return. Joghaten received the news in a transcription chamber located in the draughty halls of a scriptorium perched high up on the mountainside, near the upper edge of the temple district. He and Qui’sin had chosen the gothic stone structure as their initial base of operations in the city. It was near enough to the primary vox-hub and the Pinnacle’s centrum dominus to ensure direct communication, while being sufficiently removed to afford a degree of security. Joghaten had deployed Delbeg and the brotherhood’s First Tactical Squad in and around the building’s immediate vicinity, with orders that no one was to be allowed in.

Timchet and Hagai, the pilots of the Land Speeder Wind Tamer, were the first of the outriders to make it back to Heavenfall. The two White Scars had put aside their seemingly endless critiques of each other’s poetry and their discourse over the best chinyua vintages for long enough to reach four Darkand tribes before the second dawn since planetfall. Three long, winding caravans were now approaching the Founding Wall, hastened by dire warnings of the predators that stalked the stars. Timchet and Hagai had also located brother Chyen of the Second Bike Squadron, who’d run foul of Darkand’s natural dangers and fallen to his death through the crust of a dust-concealed canyon. The warning the two wind-brothers bore had been circulated to the rest of the brotherhood – Darkand was not Chogoris, and even the most experienced White Scars ignored its dangers at their own peril.

Others had started to return now as well. Bleda and most of his hunt-brothers, Khuchar and Omni, Jelmar of the Khitan. The brotherhood’s Stormhawks and Stormtalons had also arrived back with the early dawn, like berkut to their mountain nests, refuelling on Heavenfall’s skyshield landing plates high up the slope. Their pilots brought with them reports of being able to see dozens of steppe tribes turning back to Heavenfall from across the plains. It seemed the terror and awe the people of Darkand reserved for the Sky Warriors was sufficient to break their migratory cycles and overcome their dislike of the slope-city and its inhabitants.

‘Not all will make it,’ Qui’sin said, looking down at the maps spread before the two White Scars. They were standing over a wide secondary workbench near the centre of the scriptorium’s transcription chamber. It had been cleared of heavy leather tomes and the data-slates they were being transferred onto, and replaced by a spread of cartographic sheets and zonal charts. Joghaten had requisitioned them from the commander of the Darkand Pinnacle Guard, an overweight, pugnacious off-worlder who seemed far out of his depth.

‘Is that a prophecy or an opinion, weathermaker?’ Joghaten asked. He’d been brusque ever since leaving the company of Commander Harren. Qui’sin did not begrudge him his mood. The idea that xenos taint may already have infiltrated the city – indeed, may have been lurking right before their very eyes – vexed them both. Joghaten was a hunting hawk that had caught its prey’s presence, and yet remained hooded and tethered.

‘It is an opinion,’ Qui’sin clarified. ‘The bartering of the Golden Season has just finished and the tribes are laden with goods. Their progress will be slow. Even if they can be convinced to abandon what they are carrying and make all haste, those farthest out will take at least three days to reach the Founding Wall.’

‘Then we must slow the xenos down,’ Joghaten said. ‘Protect the convoys as they come in.’

‘We will be stretched thin,’ Qui’sin warned, gesturing at the maps. ‘The migratory routes are far from our base of operations, and I assume we will be without fleet support.’

‘It depends how the Devourer chooses to attack us,’ Joghaten replied. The words started to come more readily, the surly edge lost as his mind turned to the art of war, a practice that had been denied to him for long months.

‘The strongest hive fleets are unafraid to strike directly at the heart of a world’s defence. But going off our analysis Cicatrix is not strong, not yet. It is unlikely to be able to rain bioforms down on our heads here. Protocol suggests it will seed the swarms far out, in the areas of least resistance, where they are safe. Only once they’ve gathered their initial strength will they strike. That should give us a few more hours.’

‘A few, but not enough,’ Qui’sin mused. ‘You know as well as I how fast the swarms move when they have the scent and are coordinated by the hive mind.’

‘So we shall contest their planetfall,’ Joghaten went on with a tight, hungry smile. ‘As soon as we’re able to triangulate the landing sites of the first swarms we will ride from Heavenfall and strike while they are still scattered and uncoordinated. Collect their leader-beast’s heads. First blood for the Khagan. That will give us more time and bleed their numbers before the main swarm can gather.’

‘You have been waiting for this, khan-commander, haven’t you?’ Qui’sin said, shaking his head and matching Joghaten’s smile with a wry one of his own. ‘If we catch them on the plains, scattered to deal with their multiple seedings, we run the risk of being caught and overwhelmed when the swarms start to converge. It is a high-risk strategy.’

‘The best kind of strategy,’ Joghaten corrected, a note of relish now colouring his voice. Despite his best efforts, Qui’sin felt himself getting caught up in Joghaten’s bloody enthusiasm. It had been too long since he had seen the khan with fire in his words and killer’s steel in his eyes.

‘It may give Heavenfall’s populace longer for the evacuation into the catacombs,’ the Stormseer allowed, tapping one of the subterranean charts. ‘But it will take discipline and timing if we are not to be swept away by the rising tide.’

‘The Khagan watches over us,’ Joghaten said, with the dismissive flair that had seen some question his suitability for khan-commander. Qui’sin knew better – he had learned that such an apparently arrogant statement was more a reflection of his faith in the primarch than a dismissal of potential difficulties. Beneath Joghaten’s obvious hunger for a challenge was the shrewd and calculating mind of a true and seasoned steppe hetman. For all the apparent new-found fire, Qui’sin knew the plan settled on by the Master of Blades would be sound in concept and effective in execution.

‘What of the tribal exodus into Heavenfall?’ Joghaten went on, pulling a street plan of the city’s upper slope districts to the top of the pile. ‘You have spoken with the ministers leading the operation to move the city-dwellers below ground?’

‘I have,’ Qui’sin said. ‘They reek of uncertainty and confusion. The movement of people into the underground zones is slow. Right now there are still tens of thousands who have not left their dwellings, mostly in the poorer hab blocks at the bottom of the slope. The shift from the Old Town is progressing at a quicker pace, but the priesthood of the Emperor’s Voice that controls the temple district is refusing to abandon their devotariums. Thank the Khagan most of the citizens had already begun moving before we arrived, otherwise I doubt many of them would be below ground before the xenos made planetfall. As it stands, I expect around three-quarters of the city populace will be secure within the next twenty-four Terran hours. Of the remainder, we will assist the Pinnacle Guard in relocating as many as possible. They at least have worked hard to assist the shift underground.’

‘And what about the tribespeople when they reach Heavenfall?’

‘The ministers were resistant to even allowing them within the Founding Wall, let alone giving them access to the evacuation catacombs.’

‘If they are not allowed below ground they will perish when the Furnace Season reaches its peak. I trust you made it clear they are to be admitted into the relocation zones, weathermaker?’

‘Of course. Whether there will be sufficient room for them all is another matter though. If the xenos draw their invasion out they will all perish.’

‘The invasion will not last long, one way or another,’ Joghaten said. ‘This hive splinter is weak and desperate for fodder. It must feed as quickly as possible, and it cannot do that until the surface has been fully seeded. They will seek to overwhelm us as soon as the swarms have gathered. We must be ready for them.’

‘The Pinnacle Guard units not assisting the relocation of the citizens into the catacombs are assembling along the Founding Wall,’ Qui’sin continued. ‘I am reviewing their First Regiment soon, but I doubt many will be properly prepared for what is coming.’

‘We will do what we can to bolster them. I will inspect the defences along the Founding Wall before sunfall.’ Joghaten leaned in closer to his Stormseer across the table, the heavy frame creaking. ‘And what of the taint, weathermaker? Have you sensed anything more?’

‘It is still impossible to say. The xenos is cunning. It hides its trail well. I still believe the government district is the root of the potential infestation, but if we seek to purge it we will derail the entire catacomb relocation operation at a crucial time. I mentally probed several of the ministers, cautiously. I am confident at least some are uncorrupted, and the operations they are overseeing are proceeding as quickly as can be expected.’

‘They have us in a dangerous position,’ Joghaten muttered. ‘If we trigger any potential uprising now it will be beyond our current capabilities to suppress, but the longer we allow them to fester the more powerful they will become. They must not be allowed to strike when they are fully prepared. We need more information, swiftly. If the corruption runs deeper than we suppose it could turn into a massacre.’

‘I agree,’ said Qui’sin. ‘They may already be in the catacombs, but beyond providing extra internal defences there is little we can do for the time being. Our focus should be on the relocation of both the city’s populace and the steppe tribespeople.’

‘We must be ready, all the same. The xenos may strike from anywhere.’

Qui’sin inclined his head. What Joghaten said was true. He could practically sense the taint, even here. It was like a scratching in his mind, scraping against the inside of his skull, more bothersome and insistent than the numbing horror generated by the impending hive fleet. Something was festering in Heavenfall.

‘I will dedicate two tactical squads to the city’s inner defence,’ Joghaten continued. ‘They will assist in the city’s preparations, at least until the xenos make planetfall.’

‘I understand,’ Qui’sin said. Joghaten didn’t respond. His eyes had become distant, and his hand had gone up to his vox earpiece. After a moment he nodded, and looked again at Qui’sin.

‘You must hurry, weathermaker. Tzu Shen reports that the Great Devourer has just attained high orbit.’

High orbit, Darkand

The Pride of Chogoris hung like a dart above Darkand, flanked by its escorts as it awaited its commander’s orders. Shen leant forwards in his throne mount, hands clutching the yellowing ork skulls that constituted its sides. His head twitched back and forth sightlessly, as it was prone to do when his neural nodes came close to information overload.

‘The rest of the fleet is standing by, voyagemaster,’ a vox zart reported over the link. Shen didn’t respond. He already knew. He had seen the confirmation runes flash in his mind’s eye, and knew that his escorts were ready on either side. All waited on his word. And he waited on the xenos. The timing had to be perfect.

‘Boost the sensorium magnification,’ he ordered. ‘Apply focus on sector two-eight.’

The serf crew hurried to comply, focusing the Pride’s primary augur spike and external pict-feeds on the designated area of voidspace. Shen saw, through his ship’s eyes, the images channelled directly to his brain via the cortical plugs and the data links that studded his flesh.

Hive fleet Cicatrix was close. Its horror filled the viewscreens and oculus stands, and flooded the pict images. A sea of a thousand bio-ships, from minnows barely larger than a Space Marine Thunderhawk to a trio of leviathans that dwarfed the largest Imperial Navy battleship. They were closing on Darkand in a broad spread, the smaller scout vessels on the flanks of the swarm edging ahead so that their forward crescent moved to engulf the planet’s upper hemisphere.

In the decades since he had last witnessed the Great Devourer, Shen had not forgotten the strange, alien majesty that best described its movements. The entire fleet made its final approach to Darkand with a level of coordination and grace that would have been far beyond the clumsy efforts of even the most experienced human admiral. In his four centuries Shen had witnessed the reaper pirates of the eldar off Gorisel Prime, the well-drilled slaver fleets of the Sheltiel at Drusus and the grand armada of the renegade Lord Praxsis, but he had never seen any gathering of ships, human or xenos, deploy with the coordinated surety of the tyranids. It was just another example of how wholly unnatural they were, a signifier of the single, terrible consciousness that controlled each and every one of them. It made Shen hate them even more.

‘Hold the scan,’ he ordered. The images channelled into his thoughts froze, locked on the sector he had picked out. He reviewed them for a moment, speeding through each still with an accuracy only a transhuman mind could enjoy.

There it was. Near the vanguard, innocuous but for the protection it was being afforded by a thick screen of drone vessels. The narvhal. It was small, smaller even than the drones clustered around it, plated as they were in heavy sheets of scarred chitin. It was both unarmed and unarmoured, a slip of pallid void flesh, remarkable only insomuch as it bore a thick cluster of spines across its slender bow. Those spines seemed to twitch and shudder as Shen replayed the captured image, as though aware of his scrutiny.

‘Gunnery, I have a firing solution,’ Shen said into his vox. There was no time to waste. He thought-pulsed the coordinates to the gunnery section, who passed the sector provided on to the bombardment cannon’s control deck.

‘You may fire when ready,’ Shen said to gunnery. The swarm was drawing close, almost too close. They were reaching the critical engagement threshold. A few minutes more and they would trigger a direct response from the xenos vanguard. Shen could sense the Pride’s burning desire to engage. Or perhaps he was simply confusing its ancient spirit with his own. Hatred for the xenos coursed through him, causing his secondary heart to kick in and launching his transhuman physiology’s potent mix of chemicals and hormones.

‘Breach voided and charge ready, voyagemaster,’ crackled the voice of the chief gunnery zart in Shen’s ear. A few seconds later and he felt his throne mount shudder. The sound of the Pride’s mighty bombardment cannon was lost in the vacuum of space, but the whole vessel felt its discharge.

Shen unpaused the sensorium images, features twitching involuntarily as he took in every scrap of information the Pride could give him. Long seconds passed. Then, finally, there was a flash. A section of void space amongst the leading edge of the swarm ignited for a heartbeat, a single, silent white burst that heralded the detonation of the bombardment cannon’s vast shell. It had hit the knot of bio-ships clustered around the narvhal. Shen saw immediately that the shot, made at extreme range, had failed to penetrate the protective shield provided by the outer ships. One of the vanguard bioforms fell away, its shell split and shattered, spinning slowly out of the perfect formation adopted by the rest of the swarm. Another slipped in to take its place, the ponderous advance unfaltering. On the formation’s flanks smaller, faster drones started to draw inwards, moving towards the White Scars ships on a clear attack course. The narvhal remained untouched.

It didn’t matter – the shot’s purpose had been fulfilled. The narvhal, though physically innocuous, was one of the most vital ships in any hive fleet. Tyranids were incapable of warp travel; however, the monofilament spines of the narvhal allowed it to harness the gravity of a target system to create a corridor of space-void compression. The xenos could travel faster through such a corridor, compensating for their inability to traverse vast distances via the warp. Striking a blow against it was a statement of intent. Shen was showing that he knew these xenos, and now they knew him.

The time had come. The vanguard ships had launched spores, trailing, membranous things that could splash ships with virulent acids – or worse – on impact. It was time to disengage, while they still could.

‘Transmission to the rest of the fleet,’ Shen voxed to the communication pits sited around his throne mount. ‘Enter stage two. Commence full orbital withdrawal, mark three-four. There is to be no speed or propulsion variation. Maintain tight control, and keep the formation.’

He knew his secondary directives were unnecessary given the experience of his escort commanders, but such orders came from habit. Close disengagement from an enemy as dangerous as the tyranids was one of the most fraught manoeuvres a captain could order.

The White Scars fleet turned its back on Hive Fleet Cicatrix and pulled up out of the exosphere, weighing stasis-anchor and leaving Darkand behind. Shen switched his views to the aft pict-feeds and augurs, watching the glittering alien swarm receding behind him. The xenos fleet did not shift its angle. They would not pursue. Instead, they continued to fall upon Darkand, a shroud of alien flesh that tightened around the world’s upper curve. Shen thought of the planet, of its tribespeople, and of his own hunt-brothers, scattered across the surface of its only stable continent.

He would return for them, he swore. He would return, and the xenos would burn.

Tashagari Barracks, Heavenfall

Qui’sin entered the barrack complex with the türüch of the two tactical squads detailed to assisting the city’s preparations, Jeddah and Zabeg. The parade square at the blocky building’s heart resounded with the crash of thousands of combat boots as the regiment assembled on the warm flagstones came to attention. Qui’sin halted, Kemich perched and hooded on his outstretched gauntlet, as a gaggle of men in brocaded officers’ uniforms approached.

‘Lord, we are honoured by your presence,’ said the foremost, a shaven-headed man with the tanned, hardened look of the steppes about him. He bowed low, an affectation that was hurriedly mirrored by the subalterns at his back.

‘I am Colonel Uygar Tchek, officer in command of the First regiment, Pinnacle Guard,’ the man went on, straightening. ‘My men are present and ready for inspection, great hetman.’

‘Very good, colonel. I am Qui’sin, Stormseer and White Scar, attached to the Fourth Brotherhood. Your men honour me with their readiness.’

Such humility from the white-armoured giant clearly caught the humans by surprise. Uygar blinked and bowed again hurriedly.

‘The honour is all ours, great hetman. We await your inspection.’

Qui’sin smiled inwardly as he reached up to unhood Kemich. Too often the Adeptus Astartes allowed their obvious superiority to breed fear and intimidation among those who would be their allies. He had no doubt Joghaten would have simply brushed by the pleasantries with Uygar and conducted a brisk review of his men, likely followed by some speech about gathering xenos skulls that was ill-suited to soldiers who had never fired their weapons in anger. That was the key difference between Qui’sin and Joghaten, despite the latter’s greater age and experience: as a seer who read men’s minds every day, Qui’sin appreciated tact.

The hood slipped from Kemich and, with a cry, the psyber-hawk took wing. Qui’sin could sense the mental effort required by the soldiers around him to continue facing front and not follow the berkut’s flight as it slipped into the hot thermals above the city, circling slowly.

‘Carry on, colonel,’ Qui’sin said, allowing Uygar to lead him to the first company, ranked two deep along the barracks’ armoury wall. The Space Marines checked their stride to match that of their human counterparts, Qui’sin’s gaze falling on Heavenfall’s defenders. They were clad in black fatigues and ochre flak-plate, their lascarbines slung across their chests. Their equipment was uniformly well maintained, but likewise bore the marks of fresh issue – machine stamps unblemished by repeated cleanings, megathule nodes and power packs clips clearly not worn by intensive use. Nor did the faces of the soldiers imply any degree of experience. They were young, the vast majority of them bearing the lighter skin tone and greater height of Heavenfall natives, as opposed to the swarthy, stocky pedigree of the steppes. None seemed to have been visibly marked by combat.

Such observations came easily to all three Spaces Marines as their great shadows passed along the silent ranks. Even more apparent to Qui’sin, however, were the emotional echoes reverberating from the close-packed mortal soldiers. They were amplified by Kemich, the psyber-hawk’s keen senses probing the thoughts far below as it soared through Darkand’s cloudless skies. Qui’sin let the invisible psychic manifestations wash over him as he went down the line, filtering through the strongest reactions.

The overriding imperative was fear. It was present on two levels – immediate fear at the sight of the three White Scars and their silent appraisal, and a deeper-seated terror of the events that had befallen their home world over the last day. They had heard rumours, it was clear, about what was coming. Their imaginations were burdened with the most terrible ideas they could conceive of. Even their darkest guesses didn’t come close to the true horror that Qui’sin knew was approaching. When the tyranids arrived he feared few of these boys would stand.

There was hope as well, though, hope inspired by the sight of the towering White Scars. That was the key, Qui’sin knew. It was the shard of hope he had to grasp and craft into a weapon that could yet be used to hold back the coming darkness.

The Stormseer completed his tour and took post at the centre of the parade ground, arm outstretched for Kemich. The great raptor swooped back down to alight on his gauntlet with unerring precision, ruffling its golden feathers, and let out a cry that echoed shrilly around the sweltering, sun-baked enclosure.

Qui’sin spoke.

‘Soldiers of the Emperor, defenders of Darkand, heroes of the Imperium. Hear my words, and heed them, for I speak the Emperor’s truth. In a matter of days you will face two terrible trials at once – the height of the Furnace Season, and a xenos invasion the likes of which none of you have ever seen, or likely will ever see again. The former is a hardship you will be forced to endure, but it will be of little concern when weighed against the ravenous, alien hunger that is approaching. You have heard stories, I am sure. Perhaps you have even been briefed in full. I am here to tell you that everything you have been told so far is as nothing compared to the true terror of the tyranids.’

The ranks before Qui’sin remained unmoving, sweating into their flak-plate and fatigues, but the Stormseer could sense their fear spiking. He went on.

‘They are monsters bred for one single purpose – to wipe us out. Not only us, but life itself. They would leave our galaxy a graveyard of a billion barren, dead worlds. We are a morsel to them, a single stalk of grass before the reaper’s scythe. And when I say these words, I truly mean “we”.’

He paused for a moment, allowing the suggestion to settle in the minds of the humans.

‘I am a Stormseer of the White Scars,’ he reiterated. ‘An adept of the Lightning Tower. The elements themselves obey my command. I commune with ancient powers, and read the hearts and minds of men. I know that you, Lieutenant Senga–’ he gestured at one of the Pinnacle Guard officers, who broke his eyes-forward stance in shock ‘–are worried about your sister, due to give birth any time now. I know that you, Trooper Chakta–’ his gaze swept round to meet that of another wide-eyed soldier ‘–regret lying about your age to enlist. I know also that your commander, Colonel Uygar, is an honest man and a brave officer, and that you respect him greatly. All this I know, and even more have I seen. I have battled yaksha and greenskins and vile heretics, from the open steppes to the void between the stars. I have even faced the Great Devourer before, and defeated it.’

He paused once more. The clack of Kemich’s beak echoed over the flagstones. She was hungry. Qui’sin went on.

‘I know your thoughts. You think I am something akin to a god, a saviour, though a fearful one at that. But I am a warrior-servant as much as the rest of you, a bondsman for the Great Khan and the Emperor. Were I to face the tyranids alone, I would die. I could not stem their ravenous tide for a moment. Nor could the two warriors behind me, my brothers in a hundred wars. Nor even could our entire brotherhood, a hundred such champions of Chogoris, who have torn down alien empires and slain false gods. When the Great Devourer comes, in a day or two, every Space Marine on this world will die. Without you.’

Qui’sin didn’t need his abilities to sense the shock that rippled through the assembled ranks.

‘The Adeptus Astartes are the greatest warriors the galaxy has ever known,’ he continued. ‘Yet without the unaugmented men and women in the ranks I see standing here, humanity would long ago have been hounded to extinction. Mankind is borne up not on the shoulders of genetically enhanced warriors like myself, but on the bent backs of those who volunteer to do as you have done, to defend your homes and your families from creatures with no concept of mercy. None of you have ever encountered xenos before, let alone a species as supremely deadly as those that approach, yet when you do I know that you will stand your ground, and you will kill, as a billion others have done before you. So, look to your leaders, to men like Colonel Uygar and Lieutenant Senga. They will stand with you, and you must stand with them. Chakta, no matter what comes at you, remember your fire drills, and stay with the man to your left and your right. The enemy is a terrible one to face, but soldiers just like you have defeated them a thousand times before. And when it is all over, and the last filthy alien is purged from the surface of this world, we shall still stand side by side, as true battle-brothers. For the Khagan and the Emperor. For Chogoris and Darkand.’

Qui’sin finished. Silence settled across the square, before the three White Scars turned and departed. As they reached the square’s gateway, someone began to cheer. Within seconds the sound had been taken up on all four sides, ringing out through the hot Darkand air. As they passed through the gateway, Jeddah triggered his helm’s internal vox-link, addressing his two brothers privately.

‘Do you think they are ready?’ he asked.

Qui’sin responded without hesitating.

‘No.’

The Mountain Gateway, Heavenfall

The Founding Wall. According to legend, the first colonists had constructed an earthen rampart to protect the settlement that would become Heavenfall from the predations of the steppe canids and reptors that hunted the plains. Three thousand years on and earth had become rockcrete and plasteel. The wall ran from the pinnacle of Heavenfall’s mountain down to the open steppe, encircling the slope-city in a ring of bastions and weapons turrets. Its reinforced parapets stood forty feet high, its sloping outer flanks snared with continuous coils of razor-wire and fixed caltrops. In all, it stretched for over twenty-five miles.

Joghaten was unimpressed. He stood atop the main gatehouse at the end of the Slope Road, the primary thoroughfare running between Heavenfall’s government and temple districts. Beside him was the brotherhood’s Techmarine, Khödö, and the city’s Wallmaster, an officious and sallow-faced Heavenfall native named Gorri. A gaggle of gown-clad flunkies hung further back, taking stilo-notes on their data-slates and trying not to stare at the Space Marines. To their backs the slope-city rose, tier upon tier of red-tiled hab blocks, yellow stone collectives and cliff dwellings, clustering up towards the mountain’s jagged peak. Before them, beyond the edge of the wall’s black parapets, the steppe stretched, an undulating patchwork cast in shades of red and gold by the evening sun.

The khan looked from the city to the open plains, and was displeased. He’d spent hours since the centrum dominus briefing on a tour of stretches of the wall. Now the sun was lowering towards the steppe horizon, the red flare of Fury’s Pillar glowing like a fiery lance, and the master of the Fourth Brotherhood was less confident of Heavenfall’s defences than he had been when he had started.

‘The Founding Wall has preserved us for three thousand years,’ Gorri was saying, his dull voice caught somewhere between fear at the Space Marine’s displeasure and anger at the fact that his ancient, august post was being called into question.

‘And how many times has the wall been attacked in those three millennia?’ Joghaten asked. Gorri dared let a frown cross his face.

‘Thrice, lord. In 891.M41. the hetman of the Bozari led a great uprising in which–’

‘How many times has the wall been subjected to an attack by xenos invaders?’ Joghaten snapped. ‘You are being wilfully dismissive of the weaknesses in your city’s defences. The artillery redoubts are understocked and the forward bastions are ill-maintained. The parapets between sectors five and eighteen are half-eroded. Resupplying protocols from the rear sections are inefficient, and the stockpiles you have ready will not be enough to last through more than three hours of full contact. The city will fall before the end of the first day.’

‘We have had no time–’ Gorri began to say, but Joghaten cut him off.

‘My Techmarine, Brother Khödö, will assume responsibility for preparations over the next day. He will reroute your supply runs and bring forward fresh stockpiles. I will have a new tactical layout downloaded to Pinnacle Guard protocol logs by tomorrow morning, outlining withdrawal zones and hold points. The White Scars will make this place defensible, wallmaster, and you shall defer to us in all things.’

‘As my lord wishes,’ Gorri said, his voice strained.

‘I will also be contacting city suppliers about bringing food stockpiles from the catacombs to the outer habitation areas, just within the wall. The victuals you have there are insufficient for supporting the nomad tribes, even for a few days.’

‘Nomad tribes, lord?’ Gorri said, his expression growing even darker. ‘They will not be a burden on us, I assure you. They remain beyond the wall.’

There was a moment of silence before Joghaten responded.

‘And you imagine they will be left there, to be slaughtered when the xenos make planetfall? Why do you think my brotherhood have come to this world? Heavenfall means little to the Imperium, but the tribes of these steppes are of our blood. I would sooner sacrifice the city than see them wiped out.’

‘This is unheard of,’ Gorri spluttered, grasping the edges of his gown sleeves in distress. ‘The Wall has separated us from them since it was first built. To allow the tribes to migrate within en masse… There will be riots! We cannot hope to house them all in the catacombs once the Furnace Season reaches its peak. We will be fortunate if they do not attack us as soon as they pass through this very gate! The stench of them alone would turn your stomach, great hetman!’

‘The tribes have not sought to overthrow this city for centuries,’ Joghaten answered, struggling to keep his tone in check. ‘Any that disrupt it or take up arms against those already living here will face my wrath.’

‘And what of the problems of supplying them? Of overcrowding?’

‘The xenos invasion, when it comes, will be like a summer storm – swift and terrible. One way or another, it will have passed in a few days. We shall do what we can until then. The tyranids are no more able to resist the height of the Furnace Season than we are.’

Gorri turned to his aides, seeking even the slightest hint of support, but they all fixed their eyes on their data-slates. Eventually the wallmaster bowed towards Joghaten and Khödö, his face red.

‘I await your instructions, great hetman,’ he said.

‘Khödö,’ Joghaten said, turning towards his red-armoured brother.

‘We will begin with the outer bastions,’ the Techmarine said to Gorri. ‘My servo-skull’s scanning has identified an unacceptable degree of weakness in section aleph-nineteen. Bring three of your work details with all possible speed.’

Joghaten remained on the gatehouse as the others departed to their work. His gaze lingered on the steppes beyond the wall, bathed in the red of the dying sun. As much as he denied it, they reminded him of home. How many times had he watched a similar sunset – certainly more glorious, but related all the same – from the great towers of the Quan Zhou? Soon, he knew, the rolling red-and-gold plains before him would be a black morass of xenos bioforms, defiled with organic capillary towers and digestion pools. The thought alone made his fists clench around the hilts of his twin tulwars.

Qui’sin’s vision had been clear enough. Stop the Great Devourer here, or the same fate would befall Chogoris.

Near the Gates of Eternity, Darkand

Darkness was falling. Feng carried on. He was out on the plains, somewhere south of the Gates of Eternity. His armour had logged their location – it remembered the coordinates from before. Nothing about Feng had been able to forget what had befallen the brotherhood in the battle around those ancient rocks. It was only natural that he should find himself drawn back. He had no doubt his fallen brothers would be waiting for him.

His auspex was picking up traces, lonely and isolated, but there all the same. The Gates, listed on his visor’s cartographic display, were now less than five miles distant. The Beged had to be close.

The steedmaster had travelled on from the Ukit encampment, riding further out into the plains. He knew he should turn back. The plains were not to be underestimated, especially at night. Packs of steppe canids, dirt-dwelling reptor carnivores, treacherous karst uplands with rockfalls and sinkholes, and fech-fech sands that could drag a Space Marine bike down with ease. The constantly updating route mapped out on his display took him first westwards and then north, curving back round along the edge of an expanse of jagged canyons and rocks that disturbed the plain’s gently undulating grass sea. It didn’t take him further from Heavenfall – if anything, the detour brought him in an arc back round towards the slope-city – but it still meant he would be overdue.

His sense of urgency was heightened further when word came over the long-range vox from the khan, the clipped message transmitted to the entire brotherhood. Old Tzu Shen had yielded orbit to the xenos. Alien vanguard incursions upon the surface were now imminent, and were expected to be followed by a full-scale planetary invasion within the next six Terran hours.

Feng auto-acknowledged the message, but didn’t respond. He stuck to the route map, gunning the engine. Overhead the coming dusk glittered, shot through by the thousand new stars that had recently appeared in Darkand’s skies. The Great Devourer had come.

Feng’s auspex, set between his two throttle grips beneath the bike’s blast shield, pinged again. The returns were closer. The nearest hadn’t stirred. The topographic lines scrolling alongside the sigil representing his bike indicated a ridge line ahead. It was vaguely visible in the gathering dark, a black rise edged with silver starlight, and the merest crimson hint of firelight. Feng nudged his speeding mount towards the auspex return sited just below the ridge’s crest. The estimates put him less than a minute away from contact. He bared his teeth, and hunched low in the saddle.

Overhead, the new stars glittered.

Senari heard the beast before he saw it.

Tribal legend had spoken of the roar for centuries uncounted. Senari’s own father’s father had claimed that his brother had even seen it with his own eyes once when the Three Moons were aligned – two sickles and a full orb – and the New Stars had glimmered in-between. As a child Senari had spent long, cold nights watching the flock, wondering how he would react if he ever heard its howl or saw its monstrous form. Now that his time had come, fear rooted him to the spot.

The New Stars had returned. His father’s father had spoken of six, but more than six had come tonight. Many, many more. There had been dark mutterings among the tribesfolk, and the elders had shut themselves away with Colek in the seer’s tent, while the aged shaman read the entrails. Many had gathered outside, waiting anxiously to hear whether the omens were benign, or presaged some other-worldly horror. Senari was not lucky enough to be among them. It was his duty to watch his father’s flock, this night of all nights. He would have argued that since departing the slope-city he had shepherded the yats more nights than two of his five brothers, but he had seen the gleam in his father’s eye. This was a night to obey, not wrangle.

So Senari had sat, hunched in his blanket, trying to coax the dry plains grass he’d uprooted into some semblance of a fire. Occasionally he would snatch glances up at the New Stars scattered across the firmament, glinting in the gathering dark. And that was why, of all the Beged tribe, he heard the beast first.

The yats were distressed, their bleating and the clatter of their bells drifting across the ridge line. The distant grumble that had first made Senari stand and peer out into the gloom had built to a roar that seemed to vibrate through the entire world around him. He snatched the short spear he kept by the fire – its edge wicked enough to gut a steppe canid – and stared out into the gathering dark, tense with expectation.

And that was when he saw it. The beast. It was just an impression at first, a dart of movement out in the long shadows that were stretching and lengthening across the steppe. It swiftly grew though, resolving itself in the last of the day’s red light as it tore towards him. It was fast, so impossibly fast. Attempting to flee never even occurred to him.

A god rode the beast. It was clad, like its mount, in thick plates of white, the dying light sliding like fresh blood across the broad, gleaming surfaces. The pair came straight at Senari, as though it had always been aware of his presence and was purposefully seeking him out. The yats panicked and broke, fleeing in a lowing stampede up and over the crest. Senari was too overwhelmed to even feel distress at the herd’s flight. The terrible roaring of the beast filled his senses, setting his teeth chattering and vibrating through his bones. It was mounting the lower slope of the ridge, coming too fast to avoid. It was going to strike him. The gods had come for him, and his time among his tribe and his kinfolk was at an end.

Then, at the last moment, the beast turned. A deft jerk of the god’s left wrist caused it to slew to one side, coming to a juddering halt just before its metal-plated snout struck Senari. Ash and embers flew as the meagre fire he’d been tending was scattered by the thing’s armoured bulk. The god on its back set one heavy boot down to steady itself, crunching amidst the remains of the fire. It was huge, its bulk combining with that of the metal beast to make Senari feel like a wide-eyed, shaking child.

The beast’s roar had dropped to a deep, rumbling growl. It seemed to shudder and twitch beneath its rider, as though eager to race off once again. If the white-clad god felt any discomfort at its straining, it was impossible for Senari to tell – its face, if it had one, was concealed by a great helm, its crimson lenses locked on the shepherd. For a moment, he knew how the plains vole felt beneath the cruel, swift eyes of the hawk.

‘You are of the Beged?’

The giant’s voice crackled and snapped up from its helm like great branches breaking in a storm. The words sounded stilted and ill-formed to Senari, but he understood them nonetheless. He managed to nod.

‘Show me the direction of your tribe,’ the god demanded. ‘How far?’

As he struggled to find an answer, movement caught his eye. He looked up, mouth agape, in time to see the impossible. The stars above were falling.

He counted maybe half a dozen. Half a dozen streaks of light, dashes against the deepening night sky. They darted across the firmament, left and right, falling individually towards the darkening expanse of the plains. The closest passed right overhead, a soundless flash of brilliance that caused Senari to turn, half stumbling as he sought to follow it with his eyes. It vanished somewhere over the far side of the ridge. After a few moments there was a distant boom.

The giant had seen it too. As Senari turned back to face it the god drew a massive, wicked glaive from a strap across its back. The shepherd cowered before the mighty weapon, but the giant showed no inclination to use it.

‘Your people are beyond the ridge?’ it demanded. ‘Where the falling star struck?’

Senari managed to nod. It was enough. The giant removed its boot from the ground and twisted its grip on its mount. The great beast roared furiously once more, and in the blink of an eye had shot away past Senari, carrying its inscrutable rider on up and over the ridge line.

A strange and sudden passion drove Senari after it. Choking and coughing on the dust kicked up by the beast’s passing, he made it to the crest of the ridge. There he stood and stared, long after the night had swallowed up the giant, and its mount’s roar had grown distant.

A part of him wondered whether he had dozed off beside the fire, and this was all some myth-spawned dream. But he knew it was not. The New Stars were falling, and gods stalked the plains. The legends were true. Senari knew what he had seen this night.

A Sky Warrior.

‘Possible xenos vanguard contact, surface sector three-nineteen, one mile out. I will have its head soon.’

Feng sent the transmission as he reached the outskirts of the Beged encampment, double blink-clicking the icon on his visor display’s long-range uplink. There was no time to check for any response besides the auto log. The first Beged yuruts loomed up out of the darkness ahead, lit by the flames of torches and campfires. People were scattering, alerted by the throaty bellow of his bike at full throttle.

He tore into the encampment, jinking between fleeing tribesfolk, animal pens and lodge tents. The heart of the Beged encampment had been abandoned, and there was steam or smoke rising from the area a hundred yards to the right of the chieftain’s yurut. Feng turned his bike in a tight circle in the cleared space at the encampment’s heart, easing the brakes and angling back round towards where the smoke was coming from.

He saw immediately that he’d been right. The shooting star that had darted over the ridge line was no star at all. Instead of void-scarred rock, something fleshy and chitinous had impacted into Darkand’s soil. It had burrowed into the dirt between two ux horn pens – the beasts were going wild, battering at their wooden enclosures and tethering pegs and lowing desperately. Steam was coiling from the thing’s outer shell, its unnatural surface blackened and fused by the force of atmospheric entry.

It was a mycetic spore. Worst of all, it was already open. One side of the roughly spherical shell had burst and was oozing stinking purplish sludge and amniotic fluids.

Whatever had been inside was now free and hunting.

Feng loosed his bike’s kickstand and dismounted, unclamping his bolt pistol in one hand, guan dao already in the other. His secondary heart had kicked in, flooding his body with jagged combat adrenaline and stimms. His helmet was hunting, the visor display seeking out hostile targets amidst the flickering firelight. He turned in a low crouch, dao not yet activated, gripped high on its haft with his pistol extended, tracking left, right, left.

The tribe, panicked by the spore, were doing what they always did when threatened by a force they did not comprehend – vanishing into the tall grasses of the steppes. Some warriors remained behind, armed with spear and bow, watching the Sky Warrior from the shadows of their tents and wagons.

Feng snatched a moment to read the snap-reports filtering in over his visor’s uplink. His own visuals had combined with those of the other remaining outriders to confirm the planetfall of a handful of xenos pods, scattered in a radius dozens of miles wide across the steppe. The mycetic spores contained the vanguard organisms, the first creatures the tyranids seeded a planet with. They were scouts and infiltrators, deposited by the hive fleet to gauge the location of the greatest centres of biomass and the level of opposition. The quicker they could be eliminated, the less information Cicatrix would have to act on when it came to the next phase – full-scale invasion.

A shriek disturbed Feng’s thoughts, piercing the quiet that had settled across the encampment. The White Scar spun in time to see a young tribeswoman, her black hair wild and her dress torn, stumble from the flap of one of the smaller yuruts. She was splattered with blood.

‘Yaksha, yaksha!’ she shrieked, before collapsing. Daemon.

Feng advanced over her unconscious form, switching his visor display to heat-tracing. There were no signatures coming from within the yurut, but that meant little – the deadliest tyranid xenoforms were capable of masking themselves on even the most advanced augur systems. He switched back to standard visuals and triggered his guan dao. Lethal energies crackled into life across the long blade as its disruptor field activated. The onlooking steppe warriors gasped.

He ducked under the flap, dao raised, a snarl of readiness on his lips. For a split second he thought he saw Tenjin in the tent’s fire-shot darkness, blood oozing from his splinter lacerations, staining his white battleplate bright red. The heart-stopping apparition was gone the moment Feng focused on what lay beyond the entrance flap, but the blood remained. The inside of the yurut – sleeping rolls, patterned rug-weave, an open chest of yat gowns and shawls, a small, foldable table and seating cushions – were splattered with gore. However, beyond a single dismembered arm lying in the yurut’s centre, there were no bodies. The trail of blood led to the tent’s rear, where a jagged rent had been torn in the coarse hide fabric.

Feng passed through the yurut, silent but for the low hum of his power armour and the occasional snap-crack of his dao’s disruptor field. His every transhuman sense was on edge, the genhanced power of his modified physiology beating through his veins and throbbing in his tensed muscles. Time seemed to slow down as he neared the rip in the yurut’s far side. His auto-senses were fixed on the darkness beyond, tracking phantoms, seeking a physical return to lock on to.

He passed through the rip, bolt pistol raised. Nothing. The darkness of the camp’s outer edge lay before him. The grass underfoot was sticky with blood, the trail leading off into the shadows that clustered, thick and black, between two parked wagons. Overhead the thousand new stars of the tyranid hive fleet glittered.

He went further, following the trail. His auto-senses could find nothing in the darkness, every spectrum sending back blank returns. Suppressing a snarl of frustration, the White Scar unclamped his helmet and mag-locked it to his belt. Free from constraints, he caught the scents of the night breeze – blood, woodsmoke, cooked meat, animal dung and the underlying, sickly reek of the xenos. It had to be close.

He passed between the two wagons, his ignited dao offering a pallid luminescence. Near the other side of the wheel spokes he found two bodies. A glance told him they were likely the girl’s parents. They’d been hideously dismembered, both now little more than vivisectioned pieces of bone and meat, laid out side by side. Judging by the lack of blood on either of the wagons it looked as though they’d been dragged all the way from the yurut after they’d been killed, and left deliberately between the wheels.

They were bait. Feng spun, dao glaive raised. Something impossibly fast and silent had reared up behind him from amidst the rug rolls in the bed of one of the wagons. Feng caught an impression of a chitin-plated exoskeleton, vast bony blade-limbs and a maw of writhing feeler tendrils, crouched up on the wagon’s side. Even as the creature’s silent presence registered he felt impacts against his left pauldron and the side of his breastplate.

A dozen stiff tendons had burst from the thing’s chest carapace, their wicked hook-tips punching into Feng’s armour and lodging there. He saw its upper blade-limbs arch back to strike as the tendons contracted, the flesh hooks dragging him off balance. He snarled viciously and swung his dao, pulling back against the creature’s murderous embrace. The angle was a difficult one, the xenos assassin too close for him to use the power lance properly, but the snapping energies of the blade’s disruptor field were enough to slice through the tendons that had latched on to Feng’s armour. He stumbled back, his auto-stabilisers preventing a fall as the scything talons carved the night air where he’d stood a double heartbeat before.

With a hiss the thing launched forward before he could recover, pushing off the edge of the wagon. The impact slammed the White Scar back into the second cart, wood splitting. The xenos was big – almost twice an unaugmented human’s height – yet it moved with a speed even Feng’s genhanced abilities could not match. The claws of its two middle limbs scraped his breastplate and pauldron, diamond-hard chitin biting into white-painted ceramite as it tried to reach up towards his unprotected face. Its unnatural alien stench filled Feng’s senses. It was too close for him to use his weapons, but at the same time it couldn’t plunge down with its upper scythe-limbs without lodging them in the timber of the cart to Feng’s back. His own arms were pinned by his side by the thing’s wiry, carapace body, but he fired his bolt pistol anyway, the booming report echoing out across the encampment. The round hit one of the creature’s backjointed legs, blowing away a shard of chitin and a bloody chunk of purplish flesh. It recoiled from Feng as he fired again, loosing an eerie, ululating shriek.

The White Scar used the second his desperate shooting had bought. He swung his dao in a choke-grip with vicious speed, up towards the xenos’ chitin-plated skull, the air igniting around the lance’s crackling blade. The xenos, still unnaturally fast, darted backwards, and Feng let out a cry of fury as he saw his blade pass by the leathery flesh of its throat.

Except, not quite. The feeder tendrils that constituted the creature’s maw were caught by Feng’s slash, a dozen of them bisected at a single stroke. The worm-like appendages flopped to the ground, writhing, and a flow of hissing purple ichor burst from the sliced stumps.

The creature shrieked again – this time a more high-pitched, painful note – and turned on Feng, darting back up onto the wagon. The White Scar raised his pistol and fired three shots after it, but none seemed to connect; before the steedmaster’s very eyes, the creature seemed to disintegrate. It melted from reality, swallowed up by the night.

Feng didn’t hesitate. He shouldered his way past the wagon and back towards the centre of the Beged camp, keying his vox earpiece as he went.

‘This is Lau Feng, previous coordinate lock. I have engaged a vanguard organism, xenoform “lictor”. It’s using its damned chameleon abilities.’

He didn’t wait for a response. He knew there was little hope of assistance – he was the only White Scar for many miles. A hiss from ahead drew him on. The acidic ichor spilling from the lictor’s wounds had left a trail of withered dead grass in its wake. He had to find it before whatever regenerative properties it possessed stemmed its wounds and made it untraceable.

There was a creak of timber to his right. He turned, bolt pistol raised. For a second all he saw was another Beged wagon, heaped high with sacks of meal. Then one of the bags shifted. The air around it shimmered.

Feng fired, filling the night with his bolt pistol’s roar. A salvo of rounds punched harmlessly into the meal, blasting the sacks of grain apart. The wagon shuddered, and he caught an impression of a gnarled black carapace and hungry, alien eyes. Then the thing was gone again, melting away like a nightmare. He ran to the wagon, reloading as he went, but there was no sign of the lictor. The wounds he had given it before must have already clotted.

Screaming broke out again from the heart of the camp. Feng turned, muttering an oath to the primarch. The thing was too damned fast. He broke into a run, the servos in his power armour whirring. The dark shapes of tribesfolk that cowered in the shadows of the outer yuruts and wagons cringed away at his passing. In seconds he was back in the torchlight of the encampment’s centre.

It seemed as though the xenos had been attempting to cut through the camp and out into the darkness beyond. The Beged, terrified by the noises coming from the outer yuruts and wagons, now clustered like their own terrified cattle in the trampled dirt at the centre of the camp. Slowed by its wounds, the lictor had been unable to pass through them unnoticed. It had dropped its chameleon trickery and lashed out. Now it was loose, at the heart of a mob of terrified, screaming tribespeople. Feng saw it as a blur of scythe-limbed movement over the heads of the jostling mass. Blood arced into the air, followed by the disembowelled body of a tribal elder. The screaming redoubled.

‘For the Khagan!’ Feng roared, and charged. The battle cry was more to alert the Beged than anything else. The tribespeople in front of him pushed and shoved frantically as they tried to get out of the giant’s way. Before him the lictor turned, hunched over, its form revealed in the firelight. Blood dripped from both its foretalons and upper scythe-arms, running in rivulets between the gnarled ridges of its black carapace. Bodies lay at its feet – half a dozen, maybe more – all dismembered in a few frantic seconds of animalistic, alien savagery. Time seemed to slow as the xenos reared, shrieking again. Feng’s battle cry became a bellow of effort as he slung his arm forward, flinging his activated power lance. The thing was quick, quick enough to melt back into the shadows if Feng tried to reach it, but not quick enough to avoid a guan dao flung at its heart. A last-minute twist of its lean, hard body avoided certain death, but the powerblade still ploughed into its flank, slamming all the way up to the gold-edged crossguard.

Feng was already firing his bolt pistol as he closed the last few yards. Explosive rounds blasted gaping holes in the creature’s torso and drove it down onto its wounded knee, even as it tried to twist away. Its body shimmered and flickered, synapses attempting to trigger its camouflage, but it was too weakened to maintain the illusion. As he ran the last few steps, Feng’s kindjal was in his fist, firelight reflected in the naked razored steel.

The thing was bloodied, but far from beaten. As Feng fell upon it, the lictor snatched the long haft of the impaled dao in one taloned hand and, in a motion that was disturbingly human, wrenched the crackling weapon from its side. At the same time it swung its upper scything talons at the White Scar, forcing him to arrest his charge. There was no way his kindjal, trusty though the combat knife was, could parry the thing’s vast chitin blades.

The moment’s hesitation gave the lictor the chance it needed. It darted left, still lithe despite the terrible wounds riddling its body. It would have broken back into the darkness beyond the centre of the encampment were it not for the Beged. A dozen of the tribe’s warriors had rallied, and now they charged the thing they called yaksha from all angles, screaming with equal amounts of fear and defiance. The lictor snapped two of the spears reaching for it with a contemptuous swipe, but a third jarred off the chitin plating of its left thigh, while a scattering of arrows clattered off its carapace. A laslock banged, its crimson bolt darting harmlessly away into the night.

One of the Beged warriors managed to get behind it, stabbing a spear into the small of the xenos’ back. A twitch of its thick tail sent the man tumbling, but Feng followed up. He snatched his dao from the ichor-slashed dust where it had fallen and reactivated its disruptor field. The lictor had caught one of the Beged, its claws raking his stomach and leaving him screaming and haemorrhaging into the dirt. A second man was almost cleft in half by a downward swipe of a scything talon. But, though horribly outmatched, the Beged had delayed it for long enough. With a shout Feng slammed his dao into the lictor’s wounded leg. The power weapon flared brilliant; Feng gritted his teeth and kept the swing going, shearing through alien chitin, meat and bone. With a gout of stinking fluids the limb came away, and the lictor toppled, shrieking.

The humans redoubled their attacks, raining down blows with their crude weapons. Even crippled and savagely wounded, the xenos was still not done. Its talons sliced the legs out from under one of its attackers, and its claws ripped away the face of yet another. Amidst the screaming, bloody mess, Feng mounted the thing’s writhing body, using his power-armoured weight to pin it as much as possible. Then, with a single, furious blow, he cut the alien’s twitching head from its shoulders. The Beged recoiled from the hissing gout of ichor, and Feng snatched at the severed head, hauling it into the air by the stubs that had once been its feeler tendrils.

‘In the name of the Khagan and the Emperor,’ he shouted, brandishing the trophy before the Beged, his armour steaming where acidic ichor ran off it. But the Beged weren’t watching him. Even the remaining warriors that had helped him fell the xenos terror were now staring skywards, their expressions wide with awe. Feng followed their gaze.

Overhead, the night sky was lit by a thousand thousand stabs of light. A constellation was falling upon Darkand, glittering and vast, and in its belly were the hungry seeds of death.

There is a cancer eating at the Imperium. We have given the horror a name to salve our fears; we call it the Tyranid race. If it is aware of us at all it must know us only as Prey.

– Inquisitor Czevak

CHAPTER SEVEN

INVASION

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 45 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

The scriptorium, Heavenfall

The commanders of the Fourth Brotherhood – Joghaten, Qui’sin, Chaplain Changadai and those squad leaders not riding among the tribes – watched the beginning of the alien invasion from the arching windows of Heavenfall’s primary scriptorium, seated high on the upper slopes of the temple district. The night sky was filled with falling stars: the contrails of a thousand xenos spores, each packed with ravenous warrior organisms. The sight would have been beautiful had it not presaged such horror.

Barely an hour had passed since reports from the brotherhood’s outriders about encountering vanguard organisms had started to filter in. From the contact zones and the approximation of the primary xenos landing sites, relative to the contrails streaking overhead, Joghaten had located the nearest likely swarm clusters. For now they would be assembling out on the plain, forming a horde with which to overwhelm the slope-city and its defenders.

The White Scars would strike before they were ready.

‘Brother-Chaplain Changadai,’ Joghaten said, breaking the scriptorium’s silence. Changadai’s grim death’s head visage swung to face him.

‘Go with Steedmaster Chokda and the demi-ordu. Strike out towards the Hills of the Broken Bones – that is where the nearest swarm is gathering. I will have exact coordinates uploaded to the tactical displays as our wind-brothers triangulate them. Slaughter all that you find. I will take the other half of the brotherhood and make for the Yellow River. I suspect there is another swarm forming there. They are still weak and scattered immediately after planetfall. If we strike hard and fast, we will cut away some of their numbers before the main brood can gather.’

‘What of the city’s preparations?’ Qui’sin asked. ‘The populace has not yet been fully relocated underground and the wall is still being prepared.’

‘The squads assigned to Heavenfall will continue assisting the preparations,’ Joghaten said. ‘But you will ride with me, weathermaker. If our strikes are successful, we will buy enough time for the final defensive efforts and give hope to the tribes still coming in from beyond the Founding Wall.’

For a moment it looked as though Qui’sin was going to debate his commander’s strategy, but instead he bowed his head.

‘As you will it, my khan.’

Joghaten’s gaze turned back to the window arches, and to the thousands of twinkling lights falling with distant, silent grace from the firmament. How strange the irony, he thought, that the galaxy’s horrors could arrive clad in such beauty. After a moment more, he turned abruptly back to his brothers, his face set, eyes burning with determination in the dull light of the scriptorium’s ancient lumen orbs.

‘The hunt calls us,’ he said. ‘We wait no more. To war, brothers.’

Qui’sin remained in the transcription chamber after the khan had departed, looking out at the glittering lights of the slope-city below, and the utter darkness that had now swallowed up the plains beyond. Apart from Kemich, the young Stormseer was alone. Dawn was approaching, and there was a strange sense of disquiet hanging over the city, something more than the fear that came with an alien invasion. Qui’sin could not quite place it, and so he waited a little longer while his brothers assembled along the Slope Road, preparing to ride from the city and out onto the plains.

It was a bold plan, typical of the Master of Blades. Qui’sin would have disapproved of it, if he could see any viable alternative. He had witnessed the unpreparedness of Heavenfall and its human defenders with his own eyes. If the swarms could amass and attack in full, the city would fall in a matter of hours, even with the help of the White Scars. Bleeding the tyranids while they were at their most vulnerable was the only viable strategy until Shen and the fleet could drive the aliens from orbit, or the Furnace Season burned them all.

Kemich let out a cry, shuffling along the perch she had adopted on the raised edge of one of the scriptorium’s data-slate lecterns. The psyber-hawk’s wicked talons clacked on the polished rustwood. She was growing restless. She needed to hunt. Qui’sin soothed her with a low, soft voice, the flowing words of native Chogorian momentarily quelling the augmented bird’s agitation.

The Stormseer shared the raptor’s urge to hunt, to succumb to the rush of the chase and the kill. They all wanted to be out there on the steppes, not overseeing the ponderous behemoth of a city-wide relocation and defensive preparations. Yet still Qui’sin did not depart. The night air, which once would have been chill this high on the mountainside, was balmy, the effects of the Furnace Season’s height obvious. A low wind moaned about the window slits and flagstones underfoot, tweaking the Stormseer’s totemic charms. His expression grew darker. Something was coming, he was sure of it.

Kemich let out her shrill cry once more, beating her great wings. She was disturbed. Perhaps she should be fed after all. She had always hated void travel, and her enhanced physiology was likely still adjusting to being planetside once again. He reached for the pouch where he kept the strips of cured meat she fed on between hunts. For once, however, Kemich did not move for the dangled morsel.

Qui’sin frowned. He had been holding a strip of flesh before the raptor’s hooked beak for long seconds. The bird wasn’t moving at all. After a moment the Stormseer realised that his familiar was totally motionless. There was not even the tremor of a heartbeat. For a second that seemed to stretch out into eternity, Qui’sin took in his surroundings. Even the motes of dust, caught in the light of the inscription chamber’s ancient lumen orbs, had frozen, like a pict-feed put on pause.

Too late, Qui’sin realised what was happening. Too late, he snapped a string of arcane syllables, smashing the base of his force staff into the flagstones underfoot. A bow wave of psychic energy, blindingly bright, burst from the staff across the floor, then stopped, frozen like everything else. Qui’sin found the breath catching in his throat, and his lips locked, his entire body snared in a vice of unyielding mental strength. For a moment, he was neither living nor dead, present nor absent. For a second, he did not exist.

Only a creature of immense psychic power could have approached through the alternative plain unnoticed by the Stormseer. Only Kemich had sensed it. Now it had them both at its mercy.

It seemed to take a long time for Qui’sin to focus on it, or perhaps it happened instantaneously. It was impossible to say. Time was meaningless while they remained trapped, locked in such a bubble of unreality. The creature before him was the only one capable of breaking it.

+Sharai Qui’sin Xaoin,+ it breathed. It was tall, slender, clad in robes of blue and yellow and hung with gemstones that glittered in the frozen light. In one hand it held a bone staff, its top woven into a complex spider’s web of arcane patterns.

+It is dangerous to stand here alone, mon-keigh,+ the creature said.

Its features were obscured by a tall, crested helm of blue, but the words seemed to slip directly into Qui’sin’s thoughts. He willed his own words back, his jaw still locked.

+Eldar.+

+So you call us,+ the xenos witch responded. +And so we are.+

+Release me.+

+Once you have heard my thoughts, mon-keigh, and given them proper consideration. Time is short.+

Qui’sin’s mind railed against the xenos presence, but his body could not respond to its blasphemous invasion. He cast his thoughts wide, searching for any weakness in the witch’s curse. It was flawless, however, a trap woven with a mastery no human psyker could ever hope to emulate. The xenos had literally frozen time.

+Your struggles will only prolong this encounter,+ the eldar willed. +You may know me as Yenneth. I am a farseer of the ancient craftworld of Iyanden. I have come here both to offer assistance, and to seek it.+

+The sons of the steppes do not consort with xenos, regardless of what form they take,+ Qui’sin responded, channelling his impotence into a spike of anger that he directed at the eldar. If Yenneth even felt the attempt at a psychic counter-thrust, her relaxed stance didn’t show it. The powers she was utilising would have burst the brain and ravaged the flesh of even the most gifted human psyker, and yet she began to pace around Qui’sin’s trapped form as though unaware she was caging a Space Marine Librarian.

+Your doctrines are as stubborn as they are idiotic,+ Yenneth said from behind Qui’sin, before pacing back into his locked field of view. +This is well known. It is also known that some among your kind are pragmatic enough to set aside their hatred when faced with annihilation, at least momentarily.+

Qui’sin tried to respond, but the xenos continued.

+The presence of the monster you call the Great Devourer on this world is as much a threat to my people as it is to yours. Neither of us can defeat it alone, but together, utilising my abilities, there is cause for hope. To do that, however, we too need assistance. Our dark kindred have struck up a feud that can only end in blood. Theirs, or ours. By helping us overcome them, you will help yourselves.+

+Your race does nothing but lie and manipulate,+ Qui’sin responded. +My brothers and I will not be used as tools for whatever schemes you are embroiled in.+

+There is more to consider,+ Yenneth added. +This is not your brotherhood’s first time on this world. The souls of many of your kindred cry out for vengeance against those who slew them here. I can give you that vengeance. The very dark ones we fight, the drukhari, are the same that slew your previous chieftain.+

+Arro’shan,+ Qui’sin thought, unable to keep the shock from his mind.

+His killer yet lives,+ Yenneth replied. +She is named Skalorix, and she is an archon, leader of the drukhari. She still keeps Arro’shan’s helm on her hip as a trophy.+

+You lie!+ Qui’sin snarled.

+See for yourself, mon-keigh,+ Yenneth replied. She reached out one slender finger. Qui’sin redoubled his efforts to escape, mind an angry roar, but it was futile. The alien’s finger brushed his brow, and suddenly he was elsewhere.

He saw images. Visions, too quick for even his enhanced mind to process properly. A strange city, wreathed in mist. Broken pillars. Eldar warriors, clad in dark, barbed battleplate. A female with a wicked grin. Khan Arro’shan’s helm, broken, one eye-lense cracked. Cruel laughter, drifting through the ancient, shattered colonnades.

Yenneth withdrew her hand, and the frozen scriptorium rushed back around him.

+That means nothing,+ he snapped mentally. +You conjured those images. Wove them from falsehoods.+

+And what if I did?+ Yenneth demanded, an angry edge finally breaking into her serene tone. +You will all die here if you do not accept my aid, and I will not give it unless you swear to strike down these traitors.+

+You yourself said the tyranids are as much a threat to you as they are to us,+ Qui’sin replied. +So why should we help you? You need us.+

+Regardless of the danger posed to the aeldari, you will all die by the claws of this monster. It is already among you, among the ones you seek to protect, worming itself into this city. If you refuse to help us, your fate is set, a path to destruction that cannot be deviated from. But if you do aid us in our struggle, we will intercede. We will uproot its evil together.+

+How? How can you have the strength to help us, yet not overcome your own feuding cousins?+

+You can see for yourself. I could crush you right now, mon-keigh. Take each of your memories and tear them apart. I could leave you a drooling, dull-eyed wreck, unable to recall your own birth name.+

+This is xenos trickery, and well you know it. We have the powers of earth and sky, wind and fire. We are the Khagan’s will made manifest, warrior-sons of the steppes, and we will not be beholden to your treacherous, murderous kind.+

+You call yourselves great warriors, and yet you will not avenge the sire whose genes you bear, the leader of your brotherhood?+

+I will not parlay with you. Release me, or kill me.+

+I had hoped one who wielded the powers of the Maddening Sea would understand the depths of my offer,+ Yenneth responded. +I see now that I misjudged. If you cannot be of assistance, I will find one who can.+

And, in an instant, time no longer stood still. Kemich shook her head and shrieked loudly. The dust continued to drift lazily through the wan light of the lumens. The inscription chamber stood empty. The witch was gone.

Qui’sin fell to his knees, ceramite cracking on stone, his force staff clattering down beside him. He gasped for breath, his twin hearts a double-thunder in his breast, his brow throbbing. Before his eyes blood pattered onto the cold stone floor, dripping from his nose to run slowly between the flagstones.

He stayed there for what felt like a long time, head throbbing and body aching as it tried to recover from the psychic pressure placed upon it. To struggle mentally for so long, all the while being physically frozen and trapped, left behind a terrible aftershock. Kemich swooped from her perch and landed on his fallen staff, wings beating agitatedly. It wasn’t until he heard the thump of footfall and the whirr of servos that the Stormseer managed to push himself back up onto his feet. He sensed the presence of Türüch Jeddah entering the chamber a moment before seeing him.

‘Stormseer,’ the leader of the Fourth Tactical Squad exclaimed, and rushed to Qui’sin’s side. ‘Have you been attacked?’

‘It is nothing,’ Qui’sin said, struggling to master his breathing. He cuffed the blood from his nose, smearing his white gauntlet, and bent to retrieve his force staff. Kemich took flight, circling the chamber’s vaulted ceiling with a loud shriek.

‘Has the khan departed yet?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Jeddah replied. ‘But he rides soon. You are sure you are unharmed?’

‘By the Khagan’s will,’ Qui’sin said. ‘I must be on my way. Let us speak no more of this.’ The witch had caught him off guard, and the memory of the effortless extent of its psychic power would have made a lesser mind quail. The Stormseer pushed the eldar’s intrusion to the back of his thoughts, seeking the balance, the focus that he always aimed for when troubled.

‘Be on your guard,’ he told Jeddah as he left the scriptorium. ‘There are more threats in this place than even I had first imagined.’

Near Yellow River, Darkand

A tainted dawn heralded first contact with the main swarm. The sun was rising as Joghaten’s strike force closed on its primary objective, two bike squads and two supporting Land Speeder Tempests scattered in a rotating skirmish chain around three Rhinos. The ubiquitous Space Marine armoured personnel carriers had been forced to go off-track over the rugged grasslands, but the biker squadrons found their speed barely hampered while keeping pace – all White Scars Rhinos had exchanged most of their ablative armour plating for greater engine capacity. The roar of the speedy transports echoed out over the steppes, competing with the biker squads that raced back and forth around them.

They were riding for the Yellow River, a dried-up basin where the augurs had triangulated one of the nearest tyranid swarms. Going off vid recordings of the xenos planetfall taken during the night, Joghaten didn’t anticipate the brood being more than his demi-ordu could handle. Wipe them out, while the other half of the brotherhood slaughtered a second brood at the Hills of the Broken Bones to the south, and they would have bled potentially vital numbers from the main swarm as it gathered further out on the plains.

The khan pulled his own bike – Whitemane – to a juddering stop on a gentle rise overlooking their route. He was giving Qui’sin and his bondsmen a chance to catch up, knowing Jubai would be complaining once more that he should not leave his honour guard behind. He refused to apologise. They all felt it; out here on the open plain, unconfined and free, the urge to roam sung through his veins. It had been a part of him, a part of them all, from the moment they had been born, an instinct that transcended even their new lives as servants of the Khagan and the Emperor. It was a passion that all the gene enhancement, hypnotherapy and chemical indoctrinations could not overcome. Before and after every other consideration, a White Scar was a son of the steppes, a warrior born to the saddle and the hunt. To experience it was to know the greatest joy in existence.

He looked up at the sun, not long risen above Heavenfall’s receding mountain range. It was not the bloody red dawn of a new Chogorian day. Nor was it even Darkand’s pale imitation any longer. The sun that now climbed through the corrupt sky was infected, an ugly orange sphere shot through with buzzing darts of shadow. Darkand’s atmosphere was clouded, already infested with uncounted trillions of alien spores. They would clog the air, beginning the horrific subversion of the planet’s entire ecosystem. The light that reached Joghaten was tainted, unable to pierce the fug of seedlings that now choked Darkand’s heavens.

He looked away, hawked and spat. His bondsmen roared up on their heavy, low-set assault bikes, growling to a halt beside their khan. Qui’sin was with them, his blue-edged power armour marking him out. The Stormseer had been strangely withdrawn since they had departed Heavenfall together, remaining silent where the khan would have expected his strategic advice. He wondered whether the presence of the Shadow in the Warp was weighing heavily on the weathermaker.

‘Orders?’ Khuchar asked as the khan’s honour guard killed their engines. Even more so than the rest of the White Scars, the brotherhood’s champion was eager to be released to the hunt. Joghaten said nothing at first, looking from Qui’sin up at Jubai’s lodge pole, at the horse hair tokens snapping in the breeze, and then at the dark shapes wheeling in the spore-choked sky beyond. Too big to be mere seeds, they flocked together with a dire, vulture-like purpose, over and above the next grassy rise.

‘We are close,’ Joghaten said, gesturing at the airborne shapes that surely marked the leading edge of the swarm.

‘Vermin,’ Dorich the emchi spat. ‘Their mere presence is an affront to the honour world.’

‘Them, and all like them,’ Tamachag said.

‘We must be swift,’ Joghaten said, before opening a channel to the rest of the column.

‘This is the khan-commander, I am advancing to the next crest. The xenos are near, brothers. We engage with the speed of the racing stallion.’

He broke the link, not waiting for confirmations. His blood was up. He held his arm up, one finger pointing skywards.

Ride.

The Fourth Brotherhood’s command squad raced to the next rise, Khuchar whooping battle-boasts and Bleda canting the ordu’s war song. Joghaten led them, not because the others deferred to his honoured place at the tip of their spear, but because none could keep pace with him. He was the Master of Blades, Khan of the Tulwar Brotherhood, and today he hunted.

The things in the sky had sensed their approach. A gaggle peeled away from the main flock, rising on leathery pinyons to better observe them. The khan and his bondsmen rode on regardless, gears shifting as their bikes effortlessly took the gentle slope leading up to the next rise. Joghaten was the first to crest it, easing the brakes as he did so.

Beyond the slope the xenos threat was finally laid bare. The plain before the khan was studded with hundreds of large egg-like spheres, half buried in the Darkand dirt. Their shells were gnarled, formed from leathery flesh and chitin left blackened by the red-hot fury of atmospheric penetration. Some were riddled with fluted chitin chimneys that churned out the clouds of microorganisms polluting the atmosphere. Others had burst. Viscous purple sludge oozed from cracks torn from within by diamond-hard claws. Their former occupants now roamed the plain – packs of gaunts, tyranid foot-soldiers, hunched over killer-beasts with crustacean-like chitinous armour and limbs that ended in scything talons or fleshy ranged bio-launchers. After a second’s calculation, Joghaten’s auto-senses read back over a thousand returns.

The creatures were still disorganised, moving in sluggish swarms around the mycetic spores that had given birth to them, alien amniotic fluids dripping thickly from black carapace and purplish flesh. Further out, towards the heart of the fresh seeding, Joghaten could see larger spore pods. There, protected by the screen of smaller creatures, the leaders of the first invasion wave were ripping their way into existence, taking their first shuddering breaths of prey-world air. Tyranid warriors, bigger creatures with thicker shells and a synapse link to the hive mind, and the queen of the swarm itself – a hive tyrant, a towering monster with a ridged crest of chitin around its skull and four limbs each ending in wicked organic alien weaponry. The creature dragged itself from the ruin of its mycetic spore, shaking broken shell and globules of birthing slime off its armoured back. As it rose to its full height it let loose a shrilling alien shriek, the disturbing sound rolling out over the plain.

The call had an instant effect – immediately the leaderless swarms of gaunts became more coordinated, sweeping out from the landing zone in all directions, their hooves drumming the trampled earth. A few minutes more and the entire brood would be ready to move off, guided to the first concentration of prey by the synapse signals and pheromone traces of the previous night’s vanguard infiltrators.

Joghaten’s bondsmen had caught up. They sat atop their idling mounts, each one looking out upon the alien invasion with undisguised expressions of disgust.

‘We should wait for the rest of the demi-ordu,’ Tamachag said. Joghaten twisted in Whitemane’s saddle to look at him.

‘You think I will, brother?’ A grin split the veteran’s ugly, scarred features.

‘No, khan-commander.’

Joghaten glanced towards Qui’sin. His expression was unreadable behind his helm, but he inclined his head, once.

‘For the Khagan,’ Joghaten said, his twin tulwars whispering free from their red leather sheaths. The sound was mirrored as his honour guard drew blade and bolter, and clamped on their helmets.

No further words were needed. With a shriek and a roar of engines, Joghaten kicked his steed down the slope and directly into the heart of the tyranid swarm.

The Hills of the Broken Bones, Darkand

To the south, around the Hills of the Broken Bones, the other half of the Tulwar Brotherhood were engaging a swarm of their own. Wind Tamer’s twin AS 9-60 ramjets were screaming as the Land Speeder came around for its attack run, the air around it shimmering with the furnace heat. Timchet triggered the Godwyn-pattern heavy bolter’s auto feed, helmet display lighting up with targeting reticules as his auto-senses locked with dozens of rapidly closing contacts.

‘Don’t miss this time,’ his co-pilot, Hagai, said over the vox.

‘Try steering straight then,’ Timchet responded, and opened fire. The pintle-mounted heavy bolter bucked against its railing as the big weapon launched a stream of .998 calibre explosive rounds into the flock of gargoyles sweeping towards them. Timchet controlled the stream and bent it towards the heart of the shrieking swarm, guided by darts of crimson tracer. Aliens squealed and howled as they were blown apart, purple flesh and ichor painting the sky.

‘Braking,’ Hagai said tersely, and Wind Tamer slewed hard to the left. Timchet cursed his brother-pilot as he sawed his weapon to the right to compensate, the heavy bolter scraping around on its open cockpit railing.

A second later the return fire started to come in. The gargoyles – spindly tyranid creatures borne aloft on bat-like wings – were armed with organic weapons melded to their lower limbs. The flock, still closing on the White Scars Land Speeder, had unleashed a hail of crackling purple bio-plasma from their flesh-fused weaponry.

‘Brace,’ Hagai said as the utility skimmer took a flurry of hits to its right side. Alarm bells started to ring in the cockpit, deactivated immediately by a flick of Hagai’s gauntlet. One plasma bolt seared away the white paint of the support stanchion just above Timchet’s head, leaving the heavy plasteel twisted and deformed.

‘They’re coming around,’ he said, the angle making tracking the xenos flyers impossible.

‘Karro’sai has them,’ Hagai responded, easing back on the controls as he took the skimmer into an engine-shrieking climb. Timchet grunted, feeling the G-forces dragging at his restraint clamps and power armour.

‘Since when has Karro’sai had anything,’ he managed to growl.

‘True enough, brother,’ Hagai said as he levelled out a hundred feet above their last position. A moment later and the angle Wind Tamer had been shooting across was lit up by a fresh hail of fire. Spear of the Khagan, coming in at ninety degrees to Wind Tamer and fifty feet below it, struck the gargoyle swarm in mid-turn, as the xenos attempted to wheel up and around to pursue Timchet and Hagai. Spear’s assault cannon was a clacking, fire-studded blur as it unloaded into the tyranids, tens of thousands of rounds churning the alien flock to a gory shower of ruin. The Land Speeder Tornado carried right on through the disintegrating flock, Karro’sai’s sponson gunner adding the weight of his heavy bolter to the fusillade. By the time he ripped out the other side his skimmer’s white plating was splattered with sizzling ichor and smears of pulverised xenos meat.

Hagai turned Wind Tamer round in support. Timchet opened up again, auto feed rattling fresh bolts home as the Land Speeder swooped down on the pickings left by its brother. Another hail of mass-reactive rounds riddled the airborne flock, but the pickings were thin now – the combined firepower of the two skimmers had decimated the swarm and left it scattered.

‘He will want us to congratulate him,’ Timchet said, watching as Spear of the Khagan banked around. ‘Even after we were the ones who set him up. Again.’

‘He can boil his arse,’ Hagai said, opening the ramjets and letting the wind take them.

Below, the Fourth Brotherhood’s second strike force was beginning its assault. Steedmaster Chokda had ordered Subodak’s Devastator squad to take post on the low grassy rise overlooking the tyranids’ main landing zone, covered by Anunga’s Tactical Marines. The gargoyles, circling above the assembling xenos swarm, had attempted to attack while the base of fire was still being set up. The strike force’s two Land Speeders had swiftly halted their pre-emptive effort. Now the second phase was proceeding.

‘The sky is ours, Steedmaster Chokda,’ Karro’sai’s voice crackled across the net.

‘First to claim the glory, as ever,’ Timchet observed.

Chokda’s reply to the Tornado pilot cut in over the vox before Hagai could respond to his gunner.

‘Good hunting. Bring your skysteeds in support of the main strike.’

Hagai acknowledged wordlessly, blink-clicking Wind Tamer’s confirmation rune. Ahead of them Chokda was taking his assault bike squadron in a straight race down the slope and into the midst of the xenos swarm. They were scattered across a shallow valley at the edge of the Hills of the Broken Bones, the grassy slopes studded with their spore pods. The gaunts that constituted the main mass of the swarm were still sluggish from their recent birth.

‘The leader-beast,’ Karro’sai said to Timchet and Hagai over the vox. ‘We should move against it now, while their sky swarms are scattered.’

‘It will defend itself,’ Hagai warned. ‘Better to open a path for Chokda’s charge, and let him strike the surest blow.’

‘Chokda has enough heads for the lodge pole,’ Karro’sai responded. ‘I am going.’

Spear of the Khagan accelerated, pulling away from Wind Tamer. Karro’sai’s target was visible at the heart of the swarm, a great, lumpen beast weighed down by its own thick black carapace. After a moment’s analysis Timchet’s tactical readout lit up with the moniker assigned to it by the Ordo Biologis.

‘Maleceptor,’ he growled, fingers unconsciously tightening around his pintle weapon’s grip. Orifices in the swollen creature’s broad flanks were studded with pulsing, glistening brain sacs, the gelatinous grey mind-nodes visibly snapping and crackling with the power of the hive mind. Ethereal tendrils snaked from the lobes, pseudopods of psychic energy that waved around the huge beast like the feelers of some oceanic horror. It was a control hub for the gestalt consciousness that drove the aliens, and killing it would throw the swarm into confusion. That was exactly what Chokda intended to do. Karro’sai wanted to get there first.

‘Damn the fool,’ Hagai said, opening the throttle. The Wind Tamer accelerated in the wake of Spear of the Khagan. Beneath, a sea of upturned xenos heads raced past, a blur of thousands of hissing fang-maws and ravenous eyes. Timchet didn’t waste bolts on them. They’d need every round if they were going to help slay the maleceptor.

Spear of the Khagan had opened fire, the chatter of the Tornado’s underslung assault cannon rising above the shrieking fury of the swarm. Karro’sai’s gunner had clearly locked the automated weapon on the mind-nodes embedded in the giant alien’s sides, but for all their apparent fragility the brains were well protected. Actinic energy flashed around the throbbing grey matter, robbing the thousands of rounds fired at them of their kinetic energy. Shots from the Tornado’s heavy bolter added to the barrage, blasting jagged shards of carapace from the maleceptor’s shell but otherwise doing the beast no harm.

‘Pull left,’ Timchet said as Spear of the Khagan dragged itself up at the last minute, only just avoiding the psychic pseudopods that waved around the alien’s heavy bulk. ‘If those tendrils reach us they’ll tear us apart.’

For once Hagai didn’t counter his co-pilot’s advice. He slewed Wind Tamer to one side, while Timchet opened fire on the beast. Like Spear before, his shots had almost no visible effect. The thickness of its shell and the strength of its psychic defence were too powerful a combination.

‘We need bigger guns,’ Timchet said as the Land Speeder arced back round for another run.

‘Subodak looks a little busy,’ Hagai said humourlessly. Timchet saw that he was right. Half of the swarm had finally found its coordination and launched itself at the slope being held by the strike force’s dismounted section. Subodak’s heavily armed Devastators and Anunga’s supporting Tactical Marines were holding them back with a storm of firepower. Heavy bolters, missile launchers and plasma cannons were creating a tidal mark of broken and torn gaunts around the base of the slope, but the weight of the horde was too much for them to shift fire from their immediate vicinity. That meant Chokda’s assault bikes were going in alone against the half of the swarm still clustered around their leader-beast.

‘We need support,’ the steedmaster snapped over the vox. ‘Break off your attack runs and open a corridor for us.’

If Karro’sai had heard the order it was too late, anyway. Spear of the Khagan was swooping down once more on the maleceptor, this time from the opposite side, guns blazing.

‘He’s leaving it too late,’ Hagai said, switching vox frequencies. ‘Karro’sai, pull up!’

‘Watch the tendrils!’ Timchet added as he saw the phantom-like pseudopods lash out towards the oncoming Land Speeder.

Too slow, Karro’sai tried to pull to one side. The skimmer cleared the tyranid, slicing mere feet past its carapace ridges. It did not, however, succeed in avoiding the psychic appendages lashing from its bared brain lobes. Two of the tendrils caught the Speeder, seeming to pass right through its white-plated frame. Karro’sai and his gunner did not survive the ethereal passage of the translucent strands. Timchet bit back an oath as he saw both White Scars’ helms explode in a shower of bloody matter, their brains ruptured by the sudden and direct contact with the raw power of the hive mind. Spear of the Khagan dipped immediately, plummeting into the swarm around the malceptor’s cloven hooves. The skimmer’s front buckled and its fuselage gave out in a gout of flames and sparks. Seconds later the entire vehicle, along with its pilots, was lost beneath an undulating tide of lesser tyranid killer organisms.

‘The riders,’ Hagai snapped to Timchet. ‘Or must I take control of the heavy bolter as well as the steering stick?’

Timchet responded to his co-pilot’s directive, snapping out of the horror that Spear’s annihilation had brought and swinging his pintle weapon in an angle around and down towards Chokda’s advance. The steedmaster and Chaplain Changadai were racing one another towards the heart of the xenos swarm, the glowing golden aura of the Chaplain’s crozius arcanum competing with the actinic blue of Chokda’s power lance. The rest of the assault bike squadron were close on their treads, twin-linked bolters hammering, but none of them had got far. Progress was slowing visibly as swarms of gaunts threw themselves suicidally at the White Scars’ lance formation. Hundreds had likely already perished, ground apart beneath spinning tyre treads, smashed to pieces on armoured engine housings and blast shields or cut apart by bolters and blades. Still they came, utterly devoid of fear or independent consideration, driven to self-sacrifice by the overriding imperatives of the hive mind. The White Scars were becoming weighed down, slowed by the sheer weight of bodies pressing in on them from all sides.

Timchet cleared them a path. Hagai brought Wind Tamer in low and hard over the bike squadron’s advance, allowing Timchet to hammer the xenos ahead of Changadai and Chokda with a barrage of heavy bolts. The White Scar’s jaw was locked, finger stiff on the firing stud as he dragged the bucking weapon back and forth, clearing a bloody channel ahead of the bikers’ advance.

Their progress barely increased. The part of the swarm attacking Subodak’s Devastators had peeled away, disengaging under fire with an ease and surety that would have been impossible for any other species in the galaxy. Identifying the bikers as the greatest threat to their leader, the entire weight of the freshly birthed swarm was now being directed at Chokda’s riders. Even with the support of Wind Tamer, the xenos’ numbers were too great. As Timchet lined up his heavy iron sights once more after another pass, he saw one of Chokda’s hunt-brothers fall, his bike stalling beneath the weight of bodies heaped around it. He was dragged from the saddle, stabbed through again and again by talons as long as a man’s arm, before being lost beneath the mass of hard black carapace. A second rider followed soon after, a clutch of borer beetles fired from a termagant’s bio-weapon finding the weak electro-sealant strips over his armour’s joints. His bike ploughed on for twenty more yards, thudding and jarring over scuttling xenoforms before finally tumbling to a wheel-spinning halt.

‘We are overrun,’ Chokda’s voice came back over the link. Timchet could see him, power lance a lightning blur as he scythed through one lunging gaunt after the next, his white armour and bike plating befouled by xenos ichor. ‘Subodak, rejoin the khan-commander. We cannot afford to lose more brothers here. Commend myself and the brother-Chaplain to the wind and earth.’

‘That may not be necessary, steedmaster,’ Hagai cut in over the link. ‘There is still time to disengage.’

‘You dream, wind rider,’ Chokda replied, voice strained as he fought. ‘We cannot turn back in this press.’

‘Not back,’ Hagai said. ‘Turn to your right. Ride south now, with all haste.’

Timchet twisted in his restraining harness to see what his co-pilot was suggesting. As the Land Speeder banked sharply round, he understood.

‘We will all be wind-brothers today,’ he said.

Juben’s Gorge, Darkand

The Beged turned east. They had broken camp during the dark hours, at Feng’s urging. The steedmaster had told them, in no uncertain terms, that they would all die if they did not leave behind their most overburdened wagons and take the track back to the slope-city immediately. If the presence of the lone, ichor-splattered Sky Warrior towering in the light of the camp’s fires was not enough to make them obey, the severed head of the monster grasped in one of his ceramite-clad fists certainly was.

Feng had mounted the lictor’s head on the front of his bike’s shield guard, lashing it between the twin bolters. He’d cut out the creature’s eyes with the hooked tip of his kindjal, so that the creature could not find its way and continue to hunt in the afterlife. After that he’d ridden on ahead of the Beged column, scouting the route. Word was coming in over the uplink – reports, orders, confirmations. The brotherhood was riding to war, and he had still not returned. Jakar had taken command of the squadron while Feng remained absent. The urge to race away and rejoin his squad was curiously muted – the ghosts of his true brothers were with him still, even out here.

The White Scar had turned back towards the column. Now he eased on the brakes, scraping his bike to a halt alongside a cloth-draped carriage at the convoy’s centre. One of the curtains twitched back, revealing the scarred face of the tribe’s hetman, Jara.

‘The path enters a gorge half a mile ahead, does it not?’ Feng asked; Jara nodded, and he continued. ‘The cliffs will hem the wagons in single file for at least two hundred yards. We will be vulnerable until the whole column has passed out the other side.’

Jara nodded once more and vanished from the window for a moment, doubtless speaking with the rest of his family. He reappeared a moment later.

‘We will carry on as swiftly as possible,’ he said. ‘I will have my outriders secure the far side of the gorge as well.’

‘Yes,’ Feng said. ‘We are still far from the Founding Wall. My brothers are even now engaging great swarms of void-yaksha north and south of here, and there are doubtless more crossing the low hills around us. Every second is precious. Ride on, at least for the moment. I will safeguard the rear of the column.’

The Beged passed on, drivers cracking their whips and issuing their shrill steppe whistles. Feng rode to the rear of the column, signalling for the tribe’s rearguard to close on him. Two dozen riders, clad in leathers and furs and mounted on stocky plains steeds, drew in from the column’s flanks as Feng killed his engine.

‘It is likely that your tribe will be trapped in this gorge,’ he said, speaking slowly and clearly so that the Beged, with their thick, bastardised Chogorian dialect, could understand him. ‘The column can only go forward or back. If the void-yaksha strike, it will be from behind. We must protect your people.’

The warriors muttered their agreement. Some among them were young, but most of the rearguard consisted of the older, steadier tribesmen, their flesh beaten and dark from years riding the steppe. The fear they felt in the presence of the huge Sky Warrior was less palpable than in the wide-eyed stares of the thin-bearded youths. Khagan alone knew how they would react if the tyranids caught them though.

‘Stay close,’ Feng told his two dozen-strong retinue, turning back towards the column’s rear. The head of the caravan had reached the entry to the gorge, the harnessed mounts snorting and tossing their heads as they were urged into the long shadows of the cliffs. Feng drew up at the edge of the gorge, eyes on the track leading back to the Gates of Eternity. He had seen the rock formation behind them in the dawn light as the Beged departed, six columns of strange slender stone, like earthen fingers reaching towards the steppe sky. There had been an eerie bleakness to them, an otherness that sent a chill creeping across Feng’s shoulders. He had felt the gaze of his dead brothers on him as he had turned away.

They were still with him now, as he waited. He ignored their dire, bloody presence as best he could. The Beged tramped past, most on foot, the elderly and the infirm mounted on those few wagons not abandoned. Nearly everyone who passed stared at him, and the warriors gathered alongside him couldn’t resist furtive glances. Feng did his best to quell the annoyance simmering beneath the surface of his thoughts. He was nothing short of a miraculous vision to these simple people, a being that far transcended the definition of either human or mortal in their minds. After so many decades, such a reaction should not surprise or discomfit him.

‘How many times have you drawn an enemy’s blood in battle?’ the White Scar asked the tribesmen, seeking to break the aura of silent awe that appeared to have settled over him.

‘We are warriors,’ said one of the rearguard eventually. ‘We have all fought many times. Even the youths here, Yesui, Lao and Taichh, all took scalps two seasons past, when we forced the damned Agari to pay in blood and yat wool for the many slights they committed against our elders.’

The speaker’s name was Gochet, and from what Feng could discern he was one of the oldest and most experienced fighters in the tribe, second only to a handful of Hetman Jara’s personal bondsmen. He bore a long beard, pepperpotted black and silver and split into three spikes using yat grease. A livid pink scar ran down the left side of his face, curling at the corner of his mouth. Feng recognised a bone-deep blow when he saw one. It was amazing the strike hadn’t split his skull.

‘An az,’ Gochet had said when he’d first noticed Feng’s gaze lingering on the old wound. ‘Some big bastard Drongian. I still have his hair in my scalp bag.’

The Beged, it seemed, were frequent rivals with the Drongians, whether in bartering, fighting, drinking or copulating. Feng found approval in that – they were not so unlike the tribes of Chogoris, at least in a few respects – but it did make him wonder what would happen when Darkand’s steppe population was brought together and confined within Heavenfall. During the Golden Season the tribes tended to arrive at the slope-city at different times, and were confined to different bartering zones by Imperial authorities all too aware of the dangers of having rivals and their wares living together within a city’s walls. There would be no opportunity for such careful demarcation once the exodus was complete, and certainly neither the brotherhood nor the Pinnacle Guard could afford to spare manpower to keep the peace. Their best hope, Feng suspected, was that the gravity of the threat would keep them compliant.

‘We have all taken scalps for the tribe,’ Gochet went on. There were murmured affirmations from the others.

‘You saw the beast that struck at your families last night,’ Feng said, addressing them all. ‘Your brothers who fell by its talons fought bravely.’

‘My brother, Tamar, was among them,’ Gochet said, almost matter-of-factly. ‘Will he join the Sky Warriors in the eternal hunt through the void-between-stars, great hetman?’

‘I cannot say,’ Feng said bluntly, in no mood to pander to their bastardised beliefs. He’d caught movement on the nearest ridge line.

‘Do you see them?’ he asked. The Beged peered in the direction he pointed, but none could discern what the White Scar’s genhanced vision had picked out.

‘They are coming,’ Feng said. He looked towards the caravan. The final wagons were clattering into the gorge, their wheels jarring over broken stone and shale.

‘They have found us?’ one of the other warriors, Damur, asked. ‘In all the vastness of the steppes, how can it be so?’

‘They are more deadly and vicious than the most powerful predator,’ Feng said, though in truth he had been wondering the same thing. He had expected a minor swarm to pick up their trail, but he had hoped it would take them longer than this.

Abruptly, he realised how they were tracking them, and cursed. Lictors were the hive fleet’s ultimate vanguard organisms, excreting a pheromone that attracted other tyranids from hundreds of miles around. He had assumed by killing the one attacking the Beged he had ended its threat. He now realised, however, that it was entirely possible the hyper-evolutionary species had the ability to continue passing its scent even after its death. The severed head lashed to Feng’s bike was what had drawn the swarm to them.

‘May the earth strengthen us,’ Gochet said as he finally caught sight of the approaching xenos. Now there was fear in the veteran’s eyes.

‘Follow the track a little further,’ Feng said. ‘Draw them into the gully, where their numbers mean nothing, rather than let them go around and cut us off, or strike down the cliff sides. That is our best hope of survival.’

None of the Beged cavalrymen questioned him. They followed as he turned his bike into the gorge after the last wagon, their horses made nervous and skittish by the beast-like roaring of the metallic mount’s great engine. The younger warriors snatched nervous glances back over their shoulders. The distant ridge line was now covered in a glittering carpet of black carapace spreading down onto the track. The susurration of chitin and thumping hooves carried to them on the steppe wind.

‘We stop them here,’ Feng called out, easing to a stop a hundred paces into the gorge. The cliffs either side reached their narrowest point, just wide enough for three horsemen to pass abreast. The White Scar gestured at the youngest-looking tribal cavalryman.

‘You, ride back to the column and tell the hetman to keep going, no matter what. He must not stop. If he stops, he and all his people will die. Is that clear?’

The boy nodded before sinking his heels into his mount’s flanks. Feng signalled to the other riders.

‘Gochet and Torman, with me, either side. You should dismount – your horses will panic when they catch the yaksha’s scent, and they are too easily struck anyway.’

‘What of you, great hetman?’ Gochet, apparently the only Beged who dared address Feng directly, asked.

‘My steed fears nothing,’ Feng said. ‘The rest of you, order yourselves behind us. When one falls, fill the gap. Aim for their throats and underbellies – their backs and heads are well armoured.’

The tribesmen stayed close to the great Sky Warrior, nodding with each new instruction and gripping their spears tighter. They were merely humans, and primitive ones at that, but Feng was not so removed from reality to have forgotten that it was men who held the galaxy for the Imperium, regardless of the super-soldiers who had founded it. Some, like Gochet, would have made fine hunt-brothers if they’d been inducted early enough. The pride and strength of Chogoris was not wholly lost in the distant peoples of Darkand.

‘Sell your lives dearly,’ Feng said. ‘Every second wins your family a few more paces, a few more moments of hope. While one of us lives to defend this passage, they will not pass.’

No good plan is without great risk.

– Surek Khan, hetman of the Ko-cha

CHAPTER EIGHT

GAMBITS

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 31 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

Yellow River, Darkand

Smile while you killed. That was what the great Khagan had taught his children, the White Scars, when he had still walked among them. Smile while you fought, and while you died. Smile in victory, and in defeat. There was much in a smile. Far more than in a snarl, or a scream, or even icy stoicism. That was something the other Chapters had forgotten. To see an enemy smile as he died was to know true defiance, to understand that even in death a warrior could retain pride and dignity. To see your killer smile was to know a final shame, for a smile was rarely worn by a man who was troubled or threatened. The smiling warrior showed an unsmiling galaxy that, in all things, he was triumphant, and delighted in his victory.

Joghaten Khan had not smiled for a long time. Not truly, not the infectious, aching grin that came alongside an unfettered surge of emotion. He smiled now though, as he led his demi-ordu into the swarm clustered on the dry banks of the Yellow River. The hive tyrant was ahead, at the swarm’s heart. The first dozen gaunts protecting it were crushed by Whitemane before Joghaten had even swung a blade. His assault bike slammed into the edge of the swarm like a bolt of lightning from the spore-choked heavens, flinging broken bodies from its path as xenos skulls and spines cracked against his shield screen and front tyre tread.

Eventually, the sheer weight of hissing, snapping bodies pressing in on him slowed the attack. The khan-commander lashed out with one tulwar, only glancing at where the blow fell, striking on instinct and allowing the weight and speed of Whitemane to see the blade through chitin, flesh and hideous alien organs. He brought his right hand back to the bike handle, steering with the ball of his fist while striking out with his left tulwar. Another gaunt fell, headless, lost instantly in the press. So Joghaten fought from the saddle, guiding his steed with his legs and twitches of one hand and then the other, always moving, always cutting. A lesser rider, even a Space Marine, would likely have already become unseated, jarred by the continual crunching impacts of the bike into and over squirming, writhing meat and bone, but the White Scars had long ago mastered such combat. Joghaten’s honour guard fought with near identical finesse, forming a wedge of white ceramite and flashing blades that parted the churning xenos horde before them.

Progress, of course, could not be maintained indefinitely. Joghaten’s bike began taking harder and heavier hits, and there was growling reluctance in it now – the rear wheel was struggling to chew over the thick carpet of mulched alien corpses, and the density of the swarm was growing. Joghaten hit the firing stud for Whitemane’s twin bolters, opening a brief channel through the swarm and giving himself enough time to blink-click his visor’s vox-transmission rune.

‘Red Berkut,’ he said. ‘In the name of the Khagan, part this vile sea.’

A green affirmative icon blinked at him over the display. Joghaten kicked forward, Whitemane’s forewheel spinning wildly as it mounted a heavier xenos corpse and ploughed through a clutch of snapping termagants. Behind and to his left and right his bondsmen were also still struggling on, bolters hammering and charged blades running with smoking xenos ichor. Hawk-eyed Bleda was chanting the Tale of Stars Descended, the ancient White Scars poem about their old affinity with their honour worlds. Khuchar was shrieking like a spitted yaksha, the brotherhood’s champion unable to contain his delight as he sliced apart leaping hormagaunts with his crackling power dao. In the centre of the wedge, Jubai held the brotherhood’s lodge pole high, horse hair plumes whipping in the wind. Veterans though they were, the honour guard was barely even aware of the rest of the strike force deploying across the rise to their backs, or the supporting fire that was keeping the bike assault from being enveloped and overwhelmed. They were the greatest warriors in the brotherhood, heroes of the blades, each with a dozen scrolls of poetic verse describing their deeds for the Khagan and the Emperor. Today, for the first time in many weeks, they carved deeds afresh.

Red Berkut added a kill tally of its own. The Stormtalon gunship fell from the heavens, the spore-polluted sunlight glinting from its red-and-white-dashed armour as it streaked down on Joghaten’s advance route. Its screaming afterburners carried it between the circling flocks of gargoyles from where it had been holding off at high altitude, leaving the leathery-winged creatures unable to react in time as it opened up on the ground swarm.

The effect was immediate. Red Berkut’s twin underslung assault cannons caused the gaunts ahead of Joghaten to simply disintegrate, tens of thousands of rounds shattering chitin and bone, pulping flesh, liquefying organs and churning up Darkand dirt. In just a few seconds the creatures the khan had been swinging for became nothing more than a haze of mulched organics, their vile stench penetrating even the filters of his armour recyc units.

Red Berkut came around. Its pilot, Dren-cho, vectored the engines and left the gunship hovering barely a hundred feet above the tip of the White Scars’ charge. It opened up again, now firing ahead of Joghaten, hundreds of hot brass shell casings cascading down to clatter from the onrushing honour guard’s helmets, pauldrons and bike frames. The space ahead of Joghaten opened up, a corridor of ichor-soaked earth and shuddering, unrecognisable alien remains. At the end of it the hive tyrant towered, guarded by three larger warrior xenoforms.

‘Glory to the Khagan!’ Joghaten roared, and twisted the right-hand throttle forward. Whitemane responded to his battle cry with one of its own, tearing through the corridor of annihilation ploughed by Red Berkut’s murderous salvo. A mist of xenos body parts splattered the khan and coated his white armour in a sheen of slime, but he was far beyond caring – the culmination of this first fresh hunt was laid out before him.

The tyranid warriors shielding their tyrant moved to intercept his charge, organic bio-weapons rising. For a split second Joghaten found himself staring down their hideous contracting orifices, and saw his own death, burned through by sprays of bio-acid or riddled with borer beetles. The premonition died like the warriors – in a flash of fire – as three rockets from Red Berkut’s skyhammer missile launcher streaked over Joghaten’s head and slammed into the xenos. As the flames roiled away into nothingness all that remained were three burnt-out alien husks splayed across the blackened earth.

For a moment, the hive tyrant was alone. Joghaten struck.

The White Scar jinked his bike to the left as the towering beast lunged into his charge. It was fast, far faster than its size should allow, but Joghaten was faster. One of its upper scything talons buried itself impotently in the dirt where Whitemane had been a second earlier, while a set of claws raked the air above Joghaten. The White Scar bent low in his saddle to avoid the vicious swipe before rising on the bike’s running tread stirrups, momentarily leaving the saddle as he slashed back across the angle he’d taken around the tyrant’s right side. His tulwar kissed flesh, and then bone. With a snap the wicked blade’s disruptor field sliced through one of the tyrant’s four upper limbs, sending the snapping claw-hand tumbling in a gout of hissing acidic ichor.

For all its speed, the tyranid monster’s size still worked against it. The bellowing xenos attempted to turn with Joghaten, but the White Scar’s tight second jink left it floundering. At the same time fire from the rest of the oncoming honour guard started to batter at its left side, a hail of twin-linked bolter rounds chewing through the creature’s gnarled black carapace. It shrieked with frustration as Joghaten turned around it once again, this time aiming a blow at its tail. Chogorian metal flashed, disruptor light flared, and the thick appendage was left flopping grotesquely on the trampled grass.

Joghaten’s bondsmen split as they reached the combat, racing left and right to intercept the wall of gaunts now turning inwards in a frenzied effort to save their beleaguered leader. Red Berkut had been forced to pull away, climbing to higher altitudes as it was beset by screeching flocks of gargoyles. Their gambit had left the heroes of the Fourth Brotherhood surrounded and alone at the heart of the swarm. Joghaten knew he had a minute at most to kill the hive tyrant before its minions overran and slaughtered his honour guard, and buried him beneath an avalanche of stabbing talons and scrabbling claws.

He hit Whitemane’s brakes hard, auto-stabilisers compensating for the harsh jolt as he twisted the handles left, completing a full dust-streaked circuit around the tyrant. The bike’s wheels gouged great furrows in the ichor-slashed Darkand soil as the bike came around, finishing with its front facing the looming monster barely half a dozen paces away. The creature stumbled slightly as it completed its own turn to face Joghaten. The khan-commander was grinning as he hit the bike dashboard’s firing studs.

Whitemane’s twin bolters blazed, blink-locked through Joghaten’s auto-senses onto the tyrant’s overextended left leg. The bolters’ auto-loaders rattled as they churned fire into the alien leader-beast at point-blank range; in just a few seconds, the explosive rounds had sawed through iron-hard alien muscle and thick chitin. The tyrant let out a soul-shuddering screech as it began to topple, and there was a wet splitting sound as its fatally weakened limb snapped beneath its own weight.

Joghaten kicked his feet out of the running tread stirrups and approached the thrashing, roaring monstrosity. It was gouging great rents in the earth as it tried to drag itself towards the khan-commander, its spiny carapace and blade-claws churning up Darkand’s defiled soil. There was no pain in its yellow alien eyes, nor fear, nor even fury. Only hunger. The world around Joghaten, shot through with the hammer of bolters, the shrieks of gaunts and the clash and clang of chitin and ceramite, faded away as he broke into a run.

The first of the tyrant’s upper scythe-limbs was met by one of the khan’s tulwars, an explosive discharge of the disruptor field jarring up Joghaten’s arm and almost cutting the alien’s chitin blade in two. His momentum carried him on past the downward stroke of the creature’s second scythe, bringing him inside its thrashing guard. Without hesitation the khan slammed the tip of his second tulwar through the xenos’ right eye, crunching through its distended skull and into its swollen brain. The beast’s roar faltered and it twitched, its cranium impaled by Joghaten’s blade. He thumped his second sword into its other eye, two lengths of Chogorian metal meeting in the nexus of the beast’s mind. The shrieking of the swarm reached an agonising crescendo around the sphere of bloodied, churned earth. The tyrant let out one more rattling breath, and went still.

The disruptor fields on both of Joghaten’s tulwars had shorted out. The khan spat and planted a boot at the base of the single wicked spike that crowned the tyrant’s scalp. Then, with a grunt, he dragged both swords free, their wicked edges trailing cranial fluids and pulverised eye matter. Both blades ignited once more.

The khan’s thoughts thrilled with victory. At least, to have foe-blood running from his blades, to have their corpses laid out on the dirt before him, to have smashed this first wave of the xenos invasion – there was no greater joy. Joghaten let out a whoop as his brothers finished the slaughter.

Around the leader-beast’s carcass the battle had turned. The wall of stabbing talons and snapping maws that had been slowly constricting against the tight perimeter established by the honour guard had gone, the pressure abruptly easing as the xenos plunged their claws into one another.

‘They’ve gone feral,’ Dorich called, the emchi’s white armour so befouled by ichor it looked as though he’d been stained head to foot by purple chinyua.

‘Ajinai,’ Joghaten voxed, turning in a slow circle as he surveyed the scattering horde around him. ‘What do you see?’

‘The swarm is breaking apart,’ the tactical squad türüch replied, surveying the plain from the slight rise where his brethren had been laying down supporting fire. ‘It seems like every beast for itself, khan-commander.’

‘Dren-cho?’ Joghaten asked, patching the Stormtalon pilot in over the net.

‘It’s true, khan-commander,’ Dren-cho replied. ‘Even their sky flock is scattering.’

Joghaten looked up, and saw his wind-brother was right. Like the gaunts on the ground, the gargoyles had lost all the single-minded coordination that had made them so deadly. Now they were starting to spread across the heavens in all directions, Red Berkut picking off individuals with chattering bursts of assault cannon fire.

‘The synapse link is broken,’ Joghaten said. ‘They will become disorganised.’

A stray hormagaunt leapt at the honour guard and was tackled by Khuchar, the champion physically bearing the hissing alien to the ground and snapping its neck. Another tried to dodge past, heading for the open steppe beyond Yellow River’s dry basin. Joghaten beheaded it with a contemptuous swipe.

‘Consolidate on my position,’ he ordered. ‘Brother Hobgetur, bring your flamer to the fore.’

As the strike force advanced down from the rise and the honour guard bent to wipe clean blades, armour, gears and treads, Joghaten switched vox frequencies. He had to find out how the second strike force was faring to the south, at the Hills of the Broken Bones.

The Hills of the Broken Bones, Darkand

It was a pitched battle. The demi-ordu commanded by Chokda and Changadai was fully engaged, and close to being overrun by the second xenos swarm. Only Hagai, considering his Land Speeder’s height, had spotted their potential salvation – a long scar of yellowing earth and dry grass running along the right of the tyranid flank.

Timchet shifted his arc of fire right, catching a group of hormagaunts as they leapt for Chaplain Changadai’s bike. The xenos came apart amidst the flurry of heavy bolts, their remains splattering the skull-helmed White Scar’s left side. Changadai didn’t notice – he was swinging right, his crozius arcanum a golden blur as its blunt mace head pulverised one snapping, lunging gaunt after another. Although they were on different vox frequencies, Timchet fancied he could hear the Chaplain roaring the name of the Chapter’s long-lost primarch, even over the shriek of Wind Tamer’s turbofans.

‘If you’re wrong about this, they’ll all die,’ he said.

‘When was I last wrong about anything,’ Hagai said, as he pushed the skimmer’s acceleration to its edge, the powerful Gs battling with the twin pilots’ armour and restraint harnesses.

‘You were wrong about Konchen losing to Surii’s dice,’ Timchet said as he dragged the heavy bolter round to compensate for the increased speed. ‘And you were wrong about Boral beating Uygar on the sparring mats. And this time you were wrong about the warp jump’s time approximation variance.’

‘You fire the bolter,’ Hagai said. ‘And I’ll fly the skimmer, understood, wind-brother?’

Timchet didn’t respond, already firing once more in support of the assault bikes below. In advising them to turn right, Hagai had likely saved the lives of Chokda and the rest of the mounted strike force. The swarm had responded sluggishly to the sudden, sharp change in direction, no longer pressing the White Scars now that they weren’t offering a direct threat to the maleceptor. The momentary decrease in the ferocious coordination of the swarm had allowed the bikes to pull away, though hormagaunts in particular were still throwing themselves at the White Scars with the great, bounding leaps that made them so dangerous.

‘They’re moving in behind,’ Hagai said to Chokda over the vox. ‘Cutting you off.’

He was right. While the swarm was no longer flinging itself at the bikes, they had moved around and beneath their current route, fully separating them from the Devastators and Tactical Marines holding the rise overlooking the combat. The only way to escape now was to continue straight onwards – towards a canyon concealed by the dry earth of the steppe grasslands. After Jaga’s death, the entire brotherhood had been warned about the dangers of hidden sinkholes out on the plains.

‘Use your firepower to keep herding them after us,’ Chokda instructed tersely over the vox, addressing both Wind Tamer and the Devastators. ‘We’ll only get one chance at this.’

Timchet did as directed, picking off the stragglers below and leaving the gaunts pressing close on the strike force’s tyres. The entire swarm was being drawn after the assault bikes, its centre dragged south-west by the new angle adopted by Chokda. The maleceptor was no longer at its heart, but was close to being left in its outer orbit, lumbering to keep pace with its underlings even as it drove them relentlessly after Chokda’s harried bikers. Another White Scar had fallen, his bike riddled with borer beetles and his body run through multiple times with long chitin blades. Unless the swarm could be driven off or dispersed, none of the fallen brothers’ gene-seed would be recovered.

‘I’m coming in low,’ Hagai warned as he brought Wind Tamer round on the tail of the swarm. Ahead Timchet could see the bikes nearing the hidden canyon’s edge. Behind, frag rockets, brilliant bolts of plasma and lascannon beams from Subodak’s Devastators were tearing at the edge of the alien horde, the crump of detonations and the crack of high-energy shots overlying the constant thunder of thousands of xenos hooves.

‘Five seconds to the canyon’s edge,’ Hagai voxed, guiding the bikes from above. ‘Accelerate!’

‘May the Khagan and the Emperor watch over us!’ Chokda’s voice shouted over the link. Moments later Timchet heard the roar of bike engines rising above the battlefield din, and saw the surviving bikers, still led by Chokda and Changadai, ride straight at the length of dead earth. They cleared its edge, wheels spinning, dust and xenos gore streaking out behind them. Almost immediately the ground began to give way in their wake, a cascade of earth that threw up a great pall of choking, yellow dust. For a glorious moment Timchet saw the bikes suspended in mid-air, like the vengeful spirits of the eternal hunt, defying the laws of the galaxy on their long and magnificent ride. Timchet watched them clear the canyon’s edge, and he gloried in the name of his Chapter and his primarch.

Chokda struck the other side of the ravine first. The impact would have likely smashed a lesser-made bike and broken bones in a mortal rider, but the White Scar’s locked power plate and his mount’s grav suspension and auto-stabilisers absorbed the worst of the landing. The great treads bit dirt, and the türüch roared away, his exhilarated laughter audible over the vox. Chaplain Changadai and his hunt-brothers followed, each in turn slamming down on the far side of the dividing canyon and racing for the grassy plains beyond. Behind them the full expanse of the canyon became apparent as the soil gave way to a black void, the earth shuddering at the exposure of the long fissure.

The tyranids realised what had happened far too late. They were driven wholly by the imperatives being channelled through the maleceptor, and the lumbering beast was not wholly aware of the presence of the canyon that now carved through one flank of the battlefield. It understood thanks to the great dust cloud and the vision of the leading edge of the swarm, but by the time its imperatives to stop had registered with its underlings the forward momentum was too great. The thick press of stampeding gaunts pitched the foremost over the canyon’s newly crumbling edge, shrieking and twisting as they fell to their deaths on the jagged rocks below. Timchet watched in awe as a glittering wave of black carapace cascaded over the side of the cliff, driven to destruction by the remorseless imperatives of the hive mind.

‘Told you they’d make it,’ Hagai said as they tore through the dust cloud, while Chokda and his hunt-brothers brought their bikes around. For once, Timchet didn’t respond. He was grinning like a freshly scarred steppe youth.

Not all of the swarm pitched itself over the edge. The rearmost, alerted by the deaths of those in front, were able to pull away in time, splitting left and right along the canyon’s edge in scurried masses. Others made the jump. Dozens of those hormagaunts not forced over, but given the split second needed to bunch their thick leg muscles, leapt the divide. They cleared the far edge of the gorge and immediately continued on after the bikes, quickly becoming strung out across the grasslands.

‘Let’s clean them up,’ Hagai said, and Wind Tamer dropped down to support Chokda’s riders. The biker squad had completely come about and were now roaring forward to meet the hormagaunts. The Land Speeder joined them, keeping pace, barely fifty feet above the flattened grass. Timchet locked his auto-senses onto the leading xenos and opened fire.

Across the canyon the Devastators and Tactical Marines were clearing up the remains of the swarm. It had swung about in confusion, the central controlling consciousness now uncertain whether to turn its attack towards the ridge line, or cluster defensively around the maleceptor. Controlled bursts of long-range bolter fire supported by the heavy weapons specialists of Subodak’s squad whittled down their remaining numbers remorselessly, leaving twitching, blown-apart xenos corpses scattered around the thicker clusters from Chokda’s first charge.

The hormagaunts left stranded on the far side of the canyon met the same fate. Scattered and no longer a coordinated mass, the firepower from the bikes and Timchet’s heavy bolters wiped them out. Hagai climbed away up and over the gorge, leaving Chokda and his brothers to pick off the last of the xenos. The White Scars whooped and laughed as they caught the surviving disorientated beasts, putting them down with crunching impacts from their bikes or vicious slashes of daos and chainswords.

‘Targeting the leader-beast,’ said Subodak over the vox. The commander of the Devastators had turned his firepower against the maleceptor on his own initiative, no longer viewing the remains of the swarm as a threat. The gigantic tyranid lowed and shuddered under the successive strikes of krak missiles, plasma bolts and lascannon beams, the psychic shield that protected it quickly overloading. A las-bolt seared into one of its throbbing brain lobes, bursting the grey matter in a hideous shower and slicing straight out the other side. A krak missile buried itself between the creature’s thick rib plates, blasting a chunk with the mass of a grown human away in a spray of ichor and torn organs. The thing went down on its knees, phantom tendrils whipping the air in pain and distress, the gaunts around it shrieking in panicked impotence.

The killing blow was a las-bolt to the head. It struck the dying monster in its right eye, blasting its thick skull out of the back of its head. The beast finally collapsed with earth-shuddering force, the last of its minions crunched beneath its weight. A congratulatory cheer went up over the vox at the las-shot’s precision.

‘Lucky,’ Timchet grunted. Hagai laughed.

‘Jealously does not become you, brother.’

‘I will keep my heavy bolter, thank you. Suhtar’s lascannon takes too long to recharge.’

‘Move down onto the plain,’ crackled Chokda’s voice. ‘Slaughter the wounded and start burning pods that have yet to burst. Yes, even you, Suhtar. You can boast to the khan-commander all you want when we rejoin the rest of the brotherhood.’

Chokda and his bikes had ridden around the freshly opened gorge and were now rejoining the battlefield. The infantry had begun to move down amidst the bodies, crushing the skulls of twitching aliens beneath their boots. A combat squad moved immediately to retrieve the bodies of Karro’sai and his pilot from the remains of Spear of the Khagan, along with those bikers who had fallen in the initial charge. Emperor willing, their gene-seed was unharmed. Hagai pulled Wind Tamer up, circling the battlefield and providing overwatch.

‘Word from the khan-commander,’ the pilot said to Timchet, listening in over the open command frequency. ‘He too has triumphed.’

‘When does he not?’ Timchet replied, but Hagai wasn’t listening. The gunner twisted in his harness to regard his co-pilot.

‘A distress sigil,’ Hagai said, indicating a rune that had lit up on the dashboard’s long-range auspex viewscreen.

‘To the north-west?’ Timchet said, frowning. ‘The are no squads out in that direction, certainly not that far from the Founding Wall.’

Hagai didn’t respond immediately, checking the location beacons of the rest of the brotherhood in-between visual scans of the surrounding airspace.

‘Red Berkut is with the khan-commander, and Fury, Lord of the Sky and Lightning Death are both clearing up a stray flock of flying beasts to the south-east,’ the pilot said, identifying the location of the brotherhood’s Stormhawks and Stormtalon.

‘What about Emtich and Rondai?’ Timchet asked, referring to the pilots of the brotherhood’s third Land Speeder, Tulwar of the Wind.

‘Protecting the main migration route to the Founding Wall from xenos stragglers,’ Hagai said, consulting the auspex again. ‘Wait, I think I have it.’

The pilot was silent for a moment before cursing.

‘What is it?’

‘That haunted fool Feng. He’s still with one of the nomad tribes trying to reach the wall. They’ve been spotted by a secondary swarm. Some place listed as Juben’s Gorge.’

‘He’s alone?’

‘His squadron are here riding with Chokda. He was supposed to report back over an hour ago.’

‘Wind Tamer, come in,’ clicked a voice over the vox. It was the khan-commander’s. Hagai and Timchet exchanged a glance.

‘Here, khan-commander,’ Hagai responded.

‘I am reading a distress sigil north-west of your position. You are the closest unengaged flyer.’

‘Yes, khan-commander,’ Hagai said, bringing Wind Tamer around. ‘We’re already on our way.’

Juben’s Gorge, Darkand

For a few minutes, the bolters kept them at bay. Feng kept both firing studs depressed, the bike linked to his auto-senses. The twin bolters mounted on the shield screen could only be moved left or right with a turn of the front wheel, but in the narrowness of the canyon it didn’t matter. The gaunts coming at Feng had no room to manoeuvre, channelled by the rough yellow Darkand stone either side of them. The steady stream of bolts punched through black exoskeletons and skulls, blasting great chunks of flesh and chitin from the onrushing swarm.

The thunder of the two weapons echoed back relentlessly from the sides of the gorge, drowning the hissing and scrabbling of the swarm and making the dirt and stones underfoot leap with every double discharge. At Feng’s advice the tribesmen beside and behind him had torn strips from their undershirts and stuffed them in their ears, but still their faces were creased with discomfort. Feng had simply removed the sound from his Lyman’s ear.

The bolters had reaped a high tally, but they would not be enough to stop the swarm. Feng had deliberately left the lictor’s head lashed to the front of his bike, hoping its pheromones would channel the xenos down the gorge rather than allow them to go around and cut them off at the other end of the pass. It seemed the ploy had worked a little too well – the swarm was numerous. Every xenos that went down, cut open by bolter shells, was a step closer, the sheer mass meaning that the corpses of those gunned down absorbed more bolts before they were finally dragged under and trampled by those behind. The gaunts rose like an onrushing flood, skittering and scrambling over one another and scraping along the sides of the gorge, their only thoughts to rend and tear the flesh of the prey trapped ahead.

Eventually, the swarm only a few more lunges away, Feng dismounted and triggered his guan dao.

‘With me,’ he shouted over the thunder of the coming xenos, and gestured at the two tribesmen either side of him, Gochet and Torman. Together, the three warriors stepped past Feng’s bike and met the rolling tide.

When he had first seen the Sky Warrior kill, Gochet had imagined he would never live to see something more terrifying, or more majestic. He knew now that he had been wrong. He and Torman hung two paces back from the giant in white, as he had instructed them. Gochet saw why – with a single, vast blow of his magic-wreathed glaive, the giant cut the space before him from one cliff face to the other, slicing half a dozen leaping fanged void-yaksha in half. Stinking, steaming purple blood immediately painted the giant and the dust under his huge boots.

The things behind the first row of bisected void-yaksha came on regardless. They seemed to possess no fear for the god that had just cut down a whole clutch of their brood kin. Cholek, the Beged’s wizened shaman, had described them as relatives to the reptors that had once dragged away Gochet’s grandmother. Certainly the single-mindedness and eerie coordination of these monsters were not unlike the discipline displayed by the terrible steppe lizards.

Such thoughts had occupied the tribesman’s mind since he had first seen the half-invisible monster by the light of the campfires the night before. The eternal battle in the heavens, where the Sky Warriors fought the void-daemons and stopped them from devouring the world, had finally come down to the steppes. Now all reasoning fled as the first monster lunged at him.

It was wounded. It had been clipped by a stroke of the Sky Warrior’s huge, crackling weapon, and half its head was a mangled, oozing mess. That it was still moving was a testament to the power of whatever hungry god was driving these things. It used its vast talons to haul itself forward, passing unnoticed beneath the white giant’s guard as he slashed and stabbed the things in front of him. Then, with a burst of frenzied speed that belied its wounded state, it leapt up at Gochet.

Suddenly, the horror of what he was fighting faded. There was no more time for fear or confusion. His instincts – the natural reflexes of a warrior who had been fighting for his tribe on horse and on foot for nearly three decades – took over completely. His spear came up in time to meet the lunging beast, catching it in the gullet just below its distended maw. The thing’s own momentum drove it onto the weapon’s honed tip, and Gochet braced his feet, side on to it, absorbing the force of the leap and holding his weapon firm as it twitched and scrabbled. Its great, hideous talons sliced the air impotently until finally its soulless black eyes glazed over. It slumped, slipping back off the spear.

He had no time for elation, or even relief. Beside him Torman was fighting for his life. Another of the void-yaksha had managed to slide past the Sky Warrior’s glaive and almost had Torman down on his knees. The Beged tribesman had dropped his spear and now held both the beast’s forearms by the flesh just below its talons, the wicked lengths of hardened bone gleaming inches from Torman’s throat. It was snapping at his straining face with its fangs as well, driven wild by the desire to rip apart the tribesman’s flesh.

With a bellow of effort, Gochet ploughed his spear into the void-yaksha’s flank. The blade jarred off a rib before finding leathery, purple flesh. Gochet snarled and forced the weapon deeper, puncturing unnatural organs and causing the thing to drag away from Torman. The sudden motion pulled Gochet off balance, and he had to yank hard at his weapon to free it.

A blow to the torso would have left most creatures weak and dying, yet the void-yaksha seemed almost unharmed. It went for Torman again as Gochet tried desperately to retrieve his spear. This time, it caught him. One of its long talons sliced through the tribesman’s abdomen as Gochet’s spear tip clattered off the monster’s hardened shell. Torman went down, impaled, blood flowing from his mouth and matting in his beard. Bellowing with fury and denial, Gochet thrust his spear again. This time he went for its throat, the way the Sky Warrior had told them to, angling the thrust down between the black plates protecting the thing’s back.

The strike was a good one. Gochet felt a solid crunch as his weapon pierced bone, severing the point where the creature’s skull met its spine. The thing went immediately limp, slumping in the dirt. Torman slid free of its talon.

‘Gochet!’

The shout came from Damur, old Kal-chi’s son. They had battled side by side for as long as Gochet could remember. Now his hunt-brother came to his rescue once more, leaping from the reserve to drive his spear through the eye of another void-yaksha. The thing had fought past the white giant while Gochet had been avenging Torman. Now it shuddered, impaled, its talons mere inches from Gochet’s leather hauberk. He dragged his spear from the dead void-yaksha at his feet and plunged it into the throat of the one caught by Damur.

There was no time for thanks. One of the things battling the Sky Warrior had raised its forearms, fused together into a hideous, pulsing cone of flesh. As Gochet and Damur twisted their spears free from its brood kin’s corpse, the thing clenched and spat. A dozen black shapes were launched from the sucking orifices dotting the obscene growth. They hit Damur squarely, the impact sending him staggering.

‘Brother,’ Gochet said, snatching Damur’s shoulder to steady him. There was no visible sign of what the black pellets had done to him, at least for the first few seconds. Then the tribesman started to scream, and Gochet realised they weren’t pellets at all.

They were insects. Black and glittering, not unlike one of the large, hooked steppe beetles the Yarri tribeswomen sold, cooked on sharpened sticks. These creatures, however, were altogether more vicious. As Gochet watched he saw one dig itself into the exposed flesh of Damur’s throat, driving its scuttling body directly into the tribesman and disappearing from sight. Others had bored through the leather of his hauberk and into his chest.

‘Get them off me!’ Damur was screaming, dropping his spear and clutching at his armour. For the first time in his life, Gochet found himself frozen with horror, unable to do anything but stare at the parts of Damur’s flesh that distended and writhed with the creatures’ subdermal burrowing. The Beged warrior collapsed to his knees, his screams choking out as blood burst from his mouth and nose. They were eating him alive, from the inside out.

Too late, Gochet heard the thud of hooves. His instincts kicked in with enough time for him to turn, but not enough time to deflect the scything talon. It ploughed into his stomach, jarring off his spine and stabbing out from his back. At first, the impact drove him back a pace and forced the wind from his lungs. Then the pain hit.

The snarling void-yaksha dragged its bone-blade free. Another Beged warrior, Hular, was rushing towards it, bellowing, spear levelled. For some reason, Gochet couldn’t hear the shout. The chaotic noise, confined by the rock walls either side, seemed to have faded. He didn’t even know if he was screaming.

He realised he was on his knees. Both hands were clenched around the wound in his stomach, slippery and red, pressing hard as though by doing so they would squeeze out the agony. He’d been hurt before, a distant thought reminded him. Hurt before, but never like this.

His strength had vanished. He hit the dirt, gasping for breath. Blood, coppery and thick, choked him. The detached part of his failing mind wondered whether Damur was dead yet. He hoped so. He hoped he would see him again soon, along with Torman.

As he lay, bleeding to death, his last sight was of the Sky Warrior. Even as the Beged had struggled and died against the horrors from beyond the stars their champion had fought on, not giving an inch of ground, planted as surely as the Founding Wall that circled the slope-city. The great glaive was still in his hands, wreathed in the energies of the gods, every stroke cutting down two of three of the terrors Gochet and his brothers had fallen to. His white armour was befouled from helm to boot in the stinking, steaming viscera of the beasts, and talons and claws had scarred it in innumerable places, yet if he was hurt the giant showed no sign of it. He fought and killed, fought and killed, while those he had come down to protect died. Gochet knew he would not stop until every monster lay carved apart at his feet.

After a lifetime of war and conflict, Gochet spent his final few moments at peace, knowing that the gods themselves now fought on the side of the Beged.

The tribesmen fought on against the monsters flooding the gorge. They did so with the fury and bravery of warriors protecting their mothers, wives and daughters, each one stepping forward through the narrow canyon to take the place of a fallen brother. Ultimately, though, they were just men, and poorly armed and armoured ones at that. They managed to kill perhaps a little over a dozen hormagaunts and termagants before the last tribesman finally died, run through and then stabbed violently to death by a pack of half a dozen frenzied swarm creatures.

After that, Feng was alone. Still he fought. He’d stopped looking at the kill tally in his visor’s top left display. His muscles burned with exertion and his servos were whirring and clicking, the friction of his constant movement heating the under layers of his power armour despite its coolant systems. Despite the reactive grip and automatic clamping of his gauntlet, it was becoming difficult to keep a firm grasp of his guan dao. The whole weapon, from haft tassel to the disruptor field node just below the crossguard, was slick with alien ichor.

They’d caught him in three places – right hip joint, right elbow, and a talon that had struck with such force it had managed to penetrate his breastplate. None of the wounds were serious and all had clotted already, his Larraman cells more than a match for the injuries. Nonetheless, he didn’t need the vital signs blinking on the edges of his display to tell him he was starting to falter. It had been half an hour since the first creature had fallen beneath his lance. He could not resist the tide for much longer – the wall of xenos dead he’d heaped up was now almost as tall as him, even while it was being continuously crushed and broken by the wild motions of those pushing in from behind. The physical weight of the swarm pressing in against him was pushing both his body and his armour to their limits. Even the gulley seemed to be suffering – the fury of the combat was shaking loose stones from its flanks, bouncing and clattering from gnarled xenos carapace.

Help was still at least fifteen minutes away. An automated scrawl had told him that Wind Tamer had been dispatched from an engagement to the south-east, and was on its way. If those ever-quarrelling fools Hagai and Timchet managed to put aside their discourse long enough to reach him in the next quarter of an hour, all estimates said he’d be dead by then anyway.

And in a way, that realisation did not distress Feng. Even now he was not alone, not truly. In the snatches between each kill he caught glimpses of his squad – his old squad, his brothers. They stood together, all four of them, watching him fight in silence from the top of the cliff to his right. Where normally their presence brought him a chilling dislocation, now, for the first time, knowing they were near gave him a deep sensation of harmony. Soon he would join them, and they would hunt together once more, as they had done on the endless Plain Zhou so many years before.

Feng snatched a lunging hormagaunt by the throat, his reflexes a match for the alien’s lightning-swift strike. He snapped its neck with a twist of his wrist and flung it back into its brood kin. He had hoped the second’s respite earned by the thrashing xenos would give him long enough to adjust his stance before they came at him again. As it was, he needn’t have worried.

The swarm had stopped. Those gaunts nearest to him stood perfectly still, sinuous tongues lolling from between wicked fangs, their black eyes glazed. There was suddenly no sound other than the rasping of alien breaths and the occasional clatter of dislodged stone. The silence and the stillness was unnerving.

After a moment, the reason for the unnatural pause became apparent. The leader of the swarm was approaching. Not leader, Feng realised. Leaders.

It was not some monstrosity, but a trio of tyranid warriors. They were the least powerful of the synapse creatures that coordinated any tyranid attack, but they were still deadly beasts, standing head and shoulders above a Space Marine. Their shrieks, deeper than the gaunts surrounding them, had quelled the swarm. Now they pushed their way past their minion-beasts, glittering black eyes locked on the lone warrior that dared bar their passage to the prey.

Feng smiled as they approached, not the mirthful look of a White Scar standing triumphant over his foes, but a cold, tight-lipped expression of hatred. He had resisted the swarm for so long, and killed so much of it, that its leaders were now prepared to face him personally. That the brotherhood would never know of the honour his defiance had won was not important – his brothers, Ajai, Tenjin, Oyuun and long-lost Tayang, would see him. They would know. They would welcome him, now that his time had finally come.

The tyranid warriors were too broad for any more than one at a time to pass down the gorge towards Feng. The first came forward with a step that was altogether more deliberate and measured than the stampeding of its underlings, a forked tongue flicking out to taste the dry air, like a gaja lizard on distant Chogoris. The hormagaunts and termagants scraped their chitin against the canyon’s flanks in their efforts to make way, nodding their crested heads at the warrior’s passing like beasts acknowledging the presence of a pack alpha. Feng spread his arms, still smiling, alien viscera dripping slowly from his body.

There was a clatter off to his right. More stones falling from the cliff face. Feng looked up. His smile faded. His hunt-brothers had gone from the top of the canyon’s right-hand side. It could not be. They had come here for him. He was ready. His time had come. At least, he was going to rejoin them and their unity would again be complete. They could not leave him, not again, not now.

The stones falling from the gorge’s flanks became rocks, harder and heavier. A gaunt shrieked as it was crushed, its back snapped by the boulder dislodged from the canyon’s side. It was joined by another, and then another. The clatter rose to a din, and the truth became undeniable – the cliff face in front and to Feng’s right was collapsing.

The tyranids realised the danger they were in too late. The swarm’s unified consciousness was focused entirely on Feng. He had made everything difficult, but they were being drawn on, drawn to the prey like bloodtails to fresh meat. Overcoming this one last obstacle meant everything. And because of that the swarm found itself trapped.

After the initial dislocation, the collapse occurred with terrifying rapidity. A great chunk of stone near the top of the cliff, close to where Feng’s brothers had been, crumbled and came away, ricocheting down the rock face with earth-shattering force. It slammed into a clutch of gaunts close to Feng, flattening them without ceremony and sending a hail of rock fragments, grit and dust slamming along the canyon’s bottom. Even with his armour locked and auto-stabilisers activated, Feng was knocked back momentarily onto one knee.

Now an unsupported overhang, the top section of the canyon, swiftly followed. It dragged the whole cliff down with it, a thunderous cascade that tumbled down upon the shrieking tyranids. The warriors went with the rest, lost entirely to the freak avalanche. Feng took a pace back as rocks the size of his clenched fist battered and scored his armour. Alarm systems pinged as his auto-senses registered multiple impacts and damage points – barely an inch of the front of his white battleplate wasn’t scarred or dented.

Finally, the collapsed stone settled. The last long echoes of the rockslide clapped away up the gorge, leaving behind only the occasional rattle of loose fragments. The dust began to clear. Feng’s optics pierced the worst of it, revealing the carnage wreaked by the collapse. The swarm was gone, crushed and buried, no trace of it remaining amidst the jagged mound of yellow stone the northern half of the canyon had become. The sudden lack of motion, of movement, of life where once there had been so much of it was unnerving.

He looked up at what had been the right-hand side of the canyon, now reduced to a sagging ramp of rubble. Its top was bare, the spore-choked skies visible beyond. There was no sign of his dead brothers.

He stood for long minutes, feeling his secondary heart slow and settle, sensing the combat stimms and adrenaline easing from his battle-fired veins and muscles. It was the vox that brought him back. It clicked in his ear, demanding his attention. The icon on his visor told him it was Wind Tamer.

‘Feng,’ he said, opening the link.

‘Honoured türüch, we are inbound. What is your status?’

‘Secure,’ Feng said, looking once more at the carpet of shattered stone that had once been the canyon floor. ‘By the Khagan’s will, the xenos are no more.’

‘We are passing a column of Darkand tribespeople. It appears they are under attack. Will your status allow us to divert?’

‘The column is under attack?’ Feng demanded. ‘From what?’

‘A single xenoform. The scans are reading it as a lictor. If we don’t intercede immediately it will slaughter the entire tribe.’

‘Do it,’ Feng said. He had already slung his guan dao and was running, back towards where his bike waited, the dead bodies of the Beged warriors and the tyranids they’d taken with them heaped around it.

It wasn’t the lictor’s severed head mounted on his bike that had first drawn the swarm. There had been a second lictor, a second murderous xenos chameleon in the mycetic spore he had first seen in the Beged encampment. He had believed the threat ended. He’d been wrong.

The roar of his bike filled the broken canyon as Lau Feng raced east.

Yenneth watched the battered and bloodied mon-keigh warrior depart. She stood near the edge of the canyon’s southern cliff face, the steppe wind twitching at her blue-and-yellow robes and soul charms, shielded from the senses by an invisible sphere of deflective psychic energy. Beneath her, scattered among the rocks trailing along the cliff’s edge, were Pathfinder Roneth’s outcasts. The rangers preferred their chameleon cloaks to Yenneth’s seer spells, their shrouded forms blending seamlessly into the dusty yellow stone around them.

‘Was that necessary, honoured farseer?’ Roneth asked over the link. Few aeldari would have addressed a member of Iyanden’s seer council so brusquely, but the rangers answered to no one, least of all Roneth. He had been walking the path of the outcast for at least as long as Yenneth had trod that of the seer.

‘It was,’ she answered. ‘The thread of that mon-keigh was fixed in place. If it were snapped, our task here would become almost impossible.’

‘Perhaps that would be better, for us all.’

‘Perhaps, pathfinder, but perhaps not. There are few absolutes in the universe. I deal only with varying degrees of likelihood. And upon those degrees, the mon-keigh must live at least a while longer.’

Roneth did not reply. Yenneth surveyed her handiwork – the shattered gorge beneath. She had observed the mon-keigh warriors from the moment they had passed into the canyon. Their stand had been undertaken with their usual attributes, a savagery that was disgusting yet effective. Not effective enough, however, to see the group’s leader survive until help arrived. The eldar farseer had been forced to intervene, summoning her eldritch strength and using it to prise a great boulder away from the canyon’s flank. The ensuing rockslide had pounded the tyranid swarm into oblivion. It had taken a great deal of focus and control to ensure the collapse did not spread, or catch the lone mon-keigh up in its crushing embrace.

Now he was safe, returning to the ones he had been trying to protect, not realising they were already dead. Yenneth’s intervention would be enough, for now. She still had to weave together the threads representing her actions with those of the mon-keigh. Time, such as it was, had almost run out. A different, more direct approach was necessary.

‘Back to the portal,’ the farseer ordered. The rangers responded without question, five jagged boulders suddenly transforming into lean, patchwork-clad figures as they threw back their capes and rose. Roneth and his outcasts closed around Yenneth as she retreated towards the shimmering patch of light, barely discernible amidst an outcrop of boulders a hundred yards back from the canyon’s edge.

If the mon-keigh seer would not countenance an alliance, perhaps their blade-master would.

The aeldari stepped through the patch of haze and, like a mirage losing its grip on consciousness, they flickered from existence. The shimmer was gone, leaving behind only the steppe wind sighing in the long grass.

Trying to fight them is like counting the grains of sand on the shore. Better you burn your own homestead, your own city, your own world and everyone you know, than allow yourselves to be consumed.

– Inquisitor Sylas Vult, Ordo Xenos,
just prior to the Entharian Exterminatus

CHAPTER NINE

THE GREAT DEVOURER

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 29 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

East of Juben’s Gorge, Darkand

He was too late to save the Beged.

Lau Feng knelt beside the lictor’s corpse. There wasn’t a great deal of it remaining. Wind Tamer had riddled it with heavy bolter rounds, blasting away limbs and gristly pieces of torso. The split-open carcass was still smoking. Feng looked into its eyes. They were black, glassy, unreal-looking. Even in life, they had no soul. Without the hive mind, they were nothing.

The White Scar stood slowly, servos in his armour clicking. The creature lay at the heart of a jagged pattern of death it had woven about itself. The remains of the Beged tribe stretched out around him, massacred. With their most experienced warriors fighting and dying alongside Feng in the canyon, there had been none capable of stopping the xenos assassin when it had struck.

There were bloodflies buzzing around the slaughtered tribesfolk lying nearby, but no insect or vermin would touch the tyranid’s corpse. It lay undefiled, alien in every sense of the word. It had killed about half of the tribe before Wind Tamer had ended its rampage; not all the Beged had been slaughtered – many had scattered, terrified of the creature that suddenly appeared in their midst. They were as good as dead though, spread out and lost across the grasslands. The xenos would find and tear them apart one by one.

‘Brother türüch,’ said a voice, starting Feng from his dark thoughts. Wind Tamer’s gunner, Timchet, had approached him without his knowledge. The Land Speeder was idle a few dozen paces from the body-littered track, awaiting fresh orders.

‘You are unharmed, brother?’ Timchet went on. The gunner would know from his own auto-sense scans that very little of the blood on Feng’s armour was his own, but he clearly wished for a reason to address the squad leader.

‘I am,’ Feng said, looking back at the lictor’s remains.

‘The entire brotherhood is assembling before the Founding Wall,’ Timchet went on. ‘Wind Tamer could escort you, if you wish.’

‘No,’ Feng said. ‘I will make my own way.’

Timchet lingered for a moment longer before turning and walking back to his Land Speeder. The skimmer departed with a screech of turbofans, the steppe grass rippling in its wake. Silence descended after it had gone, Feng’s only companion the whisper of the wind. And the four corpses looking at him.

He glanced up to the sky. It was not long after noon, and yet the sun’s light was weak, diluted by the alien filth choking Darkand’s atmosphere. The hive fleet’s grip on the stricken world was tightening. Eventually, the White Scar turned and mounted his bike.

There was another wave coming.

The Mountain Gate, Heavenfall

The Great Devourer had arrived in full. The khan of the Fourth Brotherhood watched as Darkand’s skies convulsed. They were clear and open no more – the heavens had been infested, a thousand alien bio-ships occupying upper orbit like fleshy growths. The flanks of the hideous xenos organisms rippled and pulsed with peristaltic motion as they spat wave after wave of mycetic spores down through the upper atmosphere. Cicatrix was seeding Darkand, ripening it for annihilation.

Joghaten saw the second wave filling the skies from the primary gatehouse of the Founding Wall. Below him stretched a river of human misery and fear – the tribes of Darkand, returning to Heavenfall. Over a dozen had arrived in the last hour alone, choking the routes into the slope-city and flooding its gateways. The Pinnacle Guard had been deployed in strength both inside and just beyond the wall, their orders to keep the columns moving and stop them turning against one another in fear and anger. Behind, up the tower slope, the lower streets of the city were filling with a swelling tide of men, women and children, along with their herds. Few of the beasts brought by the tribes could be accommodated within the wall – under the eyes of Pinnacle Guard squads, herds of yats and ux were released. There wasn’t even time to cull them, they were simply set loose on the steppe. Even the tribe’s precious horses weren’t all spared. There had been arguments and threats of violence from the tribes, but the presence of the White Scars, scattered among the slowly converging columns, ensured that eventually the tribespeople complied. Joghaten knew that the nomadic peoples of Darkand would suffer many years of famine and poverty because of what was happening today.

Assuming any of them survived.

‘Khan-commander, we are in position,’ voxed Subodak, commander of one of the brotherhood’s two Devastator squads. Joghaten acknowledged with a blink-click of his visor display. A few hundred yards from the base of the wall’s outer las bastions, the Fourth Brotherhood was assembling. The two Devastator squads had established a firebase on a low rise overlooking the main route to the gatehouse, white-plated Rhinos idling in the shadow of the hill’s reverse slope. The tactical squads not seconded to Qui’sin’s protection in the city had set up in support, guarding the base of the rise. To their right flank, close to the road and the column of tribespeople flooding it, the brotherhood’s bike squadrons were still drawing up. Lau Feng had only just rejoined his hunt-brothers. The pilots of the Land Speeder Wind Tamer had reported that the haunted türüch had been trying to protect one of the farther-out tribal convoys. He had been unsuccessful, it seemed, and his delay had left his squadron relying on Chokda’s leadership during the opening skirmishes. Joghaten would need to speak with him personally again, when time allowed.

The shriek of engines momentarily engulfed the khan as Lord of the Sky roared overhead, kicking a swirl of dust from the parapets of the Mountain Gate and tugging at his lar’ix furs. The Stormhawk banked north beyond the wall, running parallel to it, its snub-nosed shadow darting along the plain beneath. Bar the Thunderhawks that had remained with the fleet, most of the brotherhood’s air power was aloft, watching over the last of the tribal columns straggling in from the steppes. Not all the nomads would make it – out beyond the horizon a storm was building.

From his vantage point atop the gate Joghaten could see black clouds coalescing, shot through with occasional bolts of purple lightning. The air was heavier than ever with xenos spores – the Pinnacle Guard had donned their respirators, and the tribespeople were already suffering from raw eyes, red skin and breathing difficulties. The tyranids were polluting Darkand, but it was as nothing to the swarm seedings currently happening across the farthest reaches of the plains.

Joghaten had a direct link to the Darkand augur arrays, sited high up on the slope-city’s flanks. They were detecting tens of thousands of large orbital entries to the west, north and south, bombarding the open steppe just beyond the horizon. The khan already knew what such readings meant – the primary invasion was underway. The two swarms already picked off by the Fourth Brotherhood had been small-scale scouting operations, designed to ascertain the level of resistance and confirm the findings of the vanguard organisms. The true swarms, many thousands of times larger, were now landing, a deluge of mycetic spores disgorging wave after wave of chittering weapon-organisms and their larger leader-beasts. They would be moving on the Founding Wall in a matter of hours.

Joghaten’s visor pinged. After over twenty minutes, his uplink had finally established a connection with the Pride of Chogoris. He opened the channel and was greeted by Tzu Shen.

‘It does me well to hear you again, voyagemaster,’ the khan said, eyes still on the distant thunderhead that stained the horizon from end to end.

‘And I you, earth-brother,’ Shen responded, voice chopped and distorted. ‘We are holding position along the system’s coreward edge. The xenos have committed wholly to the planetary invasion, they haven’t troubled us yet. How do things fair dirtside?’

‘As well as can be expected. We are still relocating the tribesfolk. Those that haven’t joined us by now are lost. The Devourer has begun its primary planetfall.’

‘Then it is time for the next phase?’

‘Yes, voyagemaster. Let us begin.’

I don’t know how they carried on. Ten thousand to one, it must have been. I’m not ashamed to tell you the truth, any of us would have just laid down our lasrifles and let them tear us apart. But they’re not like us. They’re nothing like us.

– Corporal Torchim Drang, 401st Battalion,
Darkand Planetary Defence Force

CHAPTER TEN

THE BATTLE OF THE FOUNDING WALL

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 15 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

Outside the Founding Wall, Heavenfall

The tyranids came with the dawn. The night had been a dark one, Darkand’s three moons obscured by the hive fleet’s presence. The last of the surviving tribes had straggled in, terrified and exhausted. The Pinnacle Guard had finished its deployments along the wall. There had been no word from Commander Harren. The entire city was tense, poised on the edge of anarchy.

Joghaten had put it all to the back of his mind and focused on the specifics of the coming battle. The plan he had discussed with his squad leaders was an old Chogorian steppe ploy, as simple as it was effective. It was the khan alakh, the king killer, and Joghaten knew that it was their only chance of survival, let alone victory.

The brotherhood’s defence was based around the dismounted Devastator and tactical squads, deployed on their shallow rise just outside the Founding Wall’s Mountain Gate. They were supported by the brotherhood’s armour – three Predators, a Vindicator, two Land Raiders and a Whirlwind – and by the two jump pack-equipped assault squads stationed on the wall’s forward bastions. The bikes and Land Speeders had been grouped on the right flank, along with Joghaten’s own bondsmen. It was not a conventional defensive formation, but the White Scars were rarely known for either convention or defence, especially when it came to the Master of Blades.

Joghaten spent the night passing through the battle lines, speaking to each hunt-brother in turn. In the distance thunder continued to rumble, the ominous crashes lit with distant flares of hideous pink lightning. There were other noises too, carried on the humid, spore-choked wind – shrieks and ululating cries, and occasionally a deep, resonating bellow. The sounds were bestial, alien, and caused even the Space Marines to adopt a sombre mood. The hunting kindred spoke quietly among themselves as the hours wore on until someone, probably Jamek or Surbach, started the khoomei.

The primal sound rose quickly, passing like a lit flame in dry steppe grass from one squad to the next. It was a throat-chant, the form of song practised by the tribes of the Plain Zhou. It was the sound of distant Chogoris, brought here to its honour world. The throbbing baseline pitched and rolled across the grasslands and out into the night, steadily lowering, rising and lowering again, accompanied by the rhythmic slapping of gauntlets into breastplates and pauldrons. Despite himself, Joghaten found himself smiling by the time he had rejoined his honour guard, on the far right of the battle line.

Whatever happened, it was good to hunt with brothers such as these. He was guilty of forgetting that sometimes, when the weight of command dragged his spirit down. Now there was nothing between him and the hunt, nothing to cloud the reason for his existence.

A sickly, yellow dawn light revealed the things they had come here to kill. They seemed to stretch from one end of the horizon to the other, at first a black line beneath the edge of the storm that swiftly coalesced into a swirling mass. The sky was full, a great flock not just of gargoyles but also bigger, more terrible beasts, half shrouded by the leathery swarms around them. Those beneath were just as terrible – Joghaten’s optics picked out a chittering carpet of gaunts tens of thousands strong, a bristling sea of black chitin, fangs and gleaming eyes. Their leader-beasts drove them on, phalanxes of warriors, brain-bloated zoanthropes and worse. And there, at the heart of it all, the orchestrator of the invasion force: a king tyrant, master of the devouring horde, dragging its supreme bulk across Darkand’s trampled plains.

The thunderhead had come with the swarm, a broiling black morass through which the airborne flocks circled. The darkness, poised on the edge of the dawn light that still dashed across the steppe where the White Scars stood, rent into roiling pillars by the darting cloud cover. The brotherhood’s auspex displays were unable to compute the number of individual organisms converging on their positions, the screens reduced to a single mass of enemy contacts. The khoomei had ended – only the thunder of a hundred thousand hooves, and a rising swell of alien shrieks and roars, remained.

‘Khan-commander, we are in the air,’ clicked a voice in Joghaten’s ear as the Master of Blades took post on the right flank of his line. He surveyed the swarm for a moment more. He had almost forgotten how utterly sick their presence made him feel. Almost. He clicked the response rune.

Strike.

A new roar filled the air – engines. Sticks open and turbofans screaming, the Fourth Brotherhood’s strike wing tore over the Founding Wall and the White Scars’ positions, angled like a speeding arrow towards the heart of the approaching wall of alien ferocity. Someone let up a cheer, and the rest of the hunt-brothers joined in, hailing their airborne brethren and the first blood they were about to spill. Joghaten didn’t join in, but the sight of the five white-plated berkut sent a fresh surge of adrenaline through his veins, and he felt his secondary heart kick in, his systems flooding with battle stimulants.

‘It matters not if the foe faces us on the ground or strikes from the skies,’ he said to his bondsmen. ‘With such craft as these, none shall escape our wrath.’

The swarm reacted to the incoming attack, its pace increasing once more. A great, rolling shriek rose, shuddering the air with its potency, pealing out across the steppe and up the slopes and cobbled streets of Heavenfall. The Devourer had come, and it would not be denied. The strike wing opened fire.

Joghaten’s uplink with the Pride of Chogoris was still transmitting. He opened the channel, watching as the first distant specks tumbled from the sky amidst a hail of fire and metal.

‘Voyagemaster, we have engaged the primary swarm.’

Approaching high orbit, Darkand

The warfleet of the Fourth Brotherhood returned to Darkand on a battle heading. The Pride led them, swept and cleared for action, macrocannon batteries run out and lances primed. A smile was playing across Tzu Shen’s scarred lips as he sat in his throne mount in the primary bridge dome.

‘The xenos are still clustered north of the equatorial segment, quadrant eleven-fifteen, voyagemaster,’ an augur zart reported.

Shen accepted the information with a nod, despite the fact that he was already aware of it. His body was riven with the electrical charge of his ship, his hands clenched into fists, potent with the power of a whole strike cruiser’s weapons systems. He could see the hive fleet in his mind’s eye, polluting the upper atmosphere of Darkand, clustering like parasites suckling off a host creature. He would wipe them away.

‘Let them know we are here,’ he ordered, routing the command to lance battery control. His words received an almost immediate response – a spear of energy lashed the nearest edge of the void swarm, missing the nearest bio-ship and dissipating in the upper atmosphere. The shot was a long one, but it had the desired effect – across the oculus stands, viewscreens and augur arrays, a large section began to break away from the tyranid fleet, rising like oceanic beasts from the depths to meet the oncoming White Scars fleet. Shen let them come, before issuing a fresh burst of reading coordinates.

‘Hard to port,’ he ordered. ‘Mark three. Make sure they follow.’

The fleet turned, offering their starboard flanks to the approaching flock of xenos bio-ships. Shen scanned the approaching creatures, sending a vox update planetside as he did so.

‘Next phase initiated.’

Outside the Founding Wall, Heavenfall

Joghaten and the bikers of the Fourth Brotherhood turned north with the lodge pole at their head. They were riding parallel with the swarm and away from the hill that was acting as the firebase for the brotherhood’s tactical and devastator squads. Jubai, the horsehair plumes streaming above him, rode alongside Joghaten and Whitemane as they led the squadrons on, between the bastions and parapets of the Founding Wall and the left flank of the xenos swarm. Behind them the battle had been joined. The strike wing had claimed the first kills, as they so often did, scything in amongst the enemy from above. The tight phalanx of Stormtalon and Stormhawks had attacked the flocks of gargoyles above the main swarm head-on, a hail of high-energy las, heavy bolter rounds and twin assault cannon streams clearing a path before them. They turned back on themselves, cutting the other way, white-and-red armour plates already slick with steaming acid, bio-plasma, and the remains of gargoyles torn apart by their ferocious lightning passage.

Their third run cut low, in beneath the bloodied flocks to target the lumbering leader-beast at the heart of the swarm. They were forced to pull up almost immediately – a bolt of energy burst from the swollen brain-stem of a zoanthrope drifting close to the leader-beast, clipping Red Berkut’s wing and causing it to drop out of formation. The rest of the strike wing fell in around it, protecting it from the shrieking gargoyles while its pilot regained control.

‘The leader-beast is protected,’ the wing’s leader, Agaar, reported over the vox. ‘As we expected.’

‘Just keep the flocks off the firebase on the hill,’ Joghaten ordered. ‘Is the swarm dividing yet?’ There was a moment’s silence before Agaar replied.

‘Yes, khan-commander.’

A moment later Whitemane’s auspex confirmed the report – a glance at the reading told Joghaten a large section of the swarm was peeling away from the main body and pursuing his bikes north, away from the hill where the brotherhood’s Devastators, heavy armour and tactical squads were deployed.

‘Press on,’ Joghaten urged over the vox. Behind him the main swarm was starting to come under fire from the hill. The White Scars there followed their targeting directives and focused their heavy weapon fire on the leader-beasts. The brood’s fury rose audibly as krak missiles, plasma and lascannon bolts slammed into clusters of warriors and leader-beasts, splitting chitin and bone. The infantry support weapons were bolstered by the brotherhood’s battle tanks, Vindicator battle cannons, Predator las turrets and Land Raider heavy bolters ripping gouges amidst the smaller creatures attempting to protect their masters.

The first wave of the main swarm charged, a mass of gaunts that was met by a wall of bolter fire from the tactical squads. The thunder of a full, pitched battle dragged at Joghaten, calling him back to the hill. It was all he could do to focus and continue to ride north, using the Founding Wall as a guide.

The section of the swarm that had broken off to shadow the bikers continued to follow them northwards.

High orbit, Darkand

The hive fleet splinter in orbit was still following the Pride and her escorts. Shen focused on the brood of bio-ships intently, body rigid and quaking with the strain of the ship’s systems. His vital signs were beginning to spike, pushed to the edge by the ship’s systems being routed through his own nervous centre, but he brushed off the mental alarms. Now, more than ever, he needed to be at one with his ship.

The Pride of Chogoris was leading the fleet along the rear of the swarm, drawing the greater part of it up out of Darkand’s increasingly choked exosphere. The hive ships themselves remained in a lower anchorage, their presence overseeing the planetside swarms and providing the option of further reinforcement seedings, but most of the bio-ships that protected the ruling triumvirate were now pulling themselves after Shen’s vessels. The fleet had turned in-system towards Darkand’s star, adopting a speed that was both brisk and unhurried.

‘Hold course and maintain formation,’ Shen instructed for the umpteenth time, not truly aware of the orders leaving his lips. He was too engrossed in the Pride’s own progress, his sense of the bridge yurut now distant and blurred.

Still the xenos followed. A few launched acid spores and trailing gnaw-pods, but the organic projectiles trailed off before making contact and drifted away, the range too long. The White Scars carried on, keeping just out of the edge of the engagement zone. Shen’s concentration remained fixed, his breathing rapid and shallow, his whole body rigid. The crucial moment was fast approaching.

Near the Mountain Gate, Heavenfall

Wind Tamer was caught up in the aerial battle spreading through the air outside the Mountain Gate. Timchet gritted his teeth and dragged his heavy bolter back along its rail mount; his armour was locked, struggling to keep the viciously kicking weapon on target as he pumped hard rounds into a flock of gargoyles shrieking towards them. Winged aliens tumbled or burst apart in showers of stinking purple gristle, but most came, careering past Wind Tamer, over, under and around it, splatters of bio-acid and clawing black insects making the scarred Land Speeder shudder.

For once, Hagai didn’t criticise his gunner’s accuracy. The pilot was too engrossed in his own battle, struggling to keep pace with Joghaten’s bikes and steal between the thickest clusters of airborne alien flocks. The entirety of the brotherhood’s skimmer complement was providing air support for the bike wing while the Stormtalons and Stormhawks protected the infantry firebase on the hill. What had started out as boastful competition among the three sets of Land Speeder crew had quickly grown serious – they were beset. While most of the swarm was still attacking the hill, a huge flock had detached and was now focusing on the right flank of the White Scars formation. The Land Speeders’ orders were straightforward – keep the flying xenos away from the bikers – but it was quickly proving easier said than done.

‘Harpy,’ crackled the voice of Sai’li over the vox. ‘Your nine o’clock, Wind Tamer. Don’t let it through.’

Hagai confirmed with a blink-click, grunting a warning to Timchet as he wrenched the Land Speeder to the left. The movement hardly made any difference to Timchet’s aim – there were xenos all around them, it didn’t matter which way he fired. They were at the heart of a swirling, shrieking storm of leathery wings, snapping maws and drooling orifice weapons. Everywhere his heavy bolter turned it was blasting apart flesh and chitin, and everywhere the gaps torn by his shots were swiftly filled.

‘Visuals,’ Hagai said over the vox. Timchet dragged the heavy bolter back round so it was facing directly ahead, just in time to vaporise a clutch of gargoyles coming at them head-on, their hideous, unearthly shrieks stripped out by his Lyman’s ear.

Behind them was the harpy. It was a larger sister to the flocks of gargoyles under its command, a great, sinuous thing with a wingspan wider than a Stormtalon. Its forelimbs were fused ranged bio-weapons, but worst of all were the spore cysts clustered beneath its wings. The tactical briefings had been clear about the damage it could do if it was allowed to rain explosive organics down onto those below.

Timchet opened fire without hesitation. The oncoming harpy took a string of explosive blasts to its tough exoskeleton before it pulled up, its deeper roar making the whole Land Speeder rattle.

‘Follow it up,’ Timchet barked as he tried to track the lithe airborne alien, his stream of bolts eviscerating a clutch of its underlings but failing to catch it.

‘Trying,’ Hagai growled, wrestling with the stick. Wind Tamer started to climb, turbofans protesting at an agonising pitch. For all its speed and agility, the Land Speeder was not an air superiority fighter. Against something like the harpy it was outmatched, and both pilot and gunner knew it.

‘It’s coming overhead,’ Timchet warned, still unable to get a lock on the thing’s serpent-like body. ‘Break left! Break!’

Too late they realised what the harpy was doing. Its climb hadn’t been simply to avoid them, it had been to bring them into range of its cysts. With the Land Speeder momentarily directly below it, the creature loosed another bellow and spat the spores clustered beneath its wings. Thanks to Timchet’s warning, Hagai’s reflexes and Wind Tamer’s response, the Land Speeder was veering out of the cone of destruction dropped from the winged xenos, but it could not escape entirely. One spore clipped the right tail fin, a gout of steaming bio-acid melting away the plasteel in a heartbeat and damaging the workings of the right turbofan within, after a few seconds of hissing, metal-gnawing insistence. Another spore clipped Wind Tamer’s nose and burst with a wet pop, showering both pilots with a hail of chitin shrapnel. Timchet’s auto-senses pinged with impact warnings, his armour riddled with spines, but none had penetrated.

Hagai was not so lucky. The burst found weak points in his right elbow’s electro-seal and punctured his helmet above his left visor lens, scraping his temple. He grunted, Wind Tamer twitching off course for a moment before his enhanced body overcame the pain.

‘I’m fine,’ he managed.

‘I wasn’t asking,’ Timchet responded, already firing again. The evasive manoeuvre had carried them right into the heart of another flock. The xenos were all over them.

‘It broke through,’ Hagai said into the vox, twisting Wind Tamer hard to the right.

‘I’ve got it in my sights,’ Sai’li responded. Even over the labouring scream of their engines, the hammer of Timchet’s heavy weapon and the screeches of the xenos all around them, the two pilots heard the familiar rattle of an assault cannon, followed by a monstrous bellow.

‘Always taking our kills,’ Hagai said, slewing Wind Tamer into another violent turn.

Supporting fire from the Pinnacle Guard manning the Founding Wall bought the White Scars on the hilltop precious time. In truth, Subodak and his Devastators had expected the human defenders of Heavenfall holding the bastions behind the White Scars to abandon their positions at the first sight of the oncoming swarm. Instead, as the lead elements of the tyranid invasion closed with the Space Marine tactical and devastator squads out on the hilltop, a barrage of las-fire and parapet-mounted heavy weaponry brought them to a halt.

The intervention was a welcome one. The Devastators under Subodak, holding the very crest of the hilltop, had followed their directives and focused fire on the large leader-beasts interspersed among the carpet of gaunts and rippers, but that meant the smaller, fleeter beasts had been able to close the range more effectively. The relentless bolter fire of the supporting tactical squads had checked them for a while, but even the most disciplined fire protocols and engagement arcs could not help but be overwhelmed by the sheer size and speed on the onrushing swarm. The brilliant barrage of las-bolts checked the dark tide of claws and fangs just a few dozen yards from the Tactical Marines.

Subodak knew they had two minutes at most before the tyranids rallied once more and closed the final distance. He told Joghaten as much on the vox. Several miles north, the khan-commander acknowledged and checked his scope. He was out of time. The moment had come. He held up one hand, fist clenched but for a single finger pointing skywards.

‘Hunt-brothers,’ he said over the vox. ‘Break.’

High orbit, Darkand

Onboard the Pride of Chogoris a bell clanged, its sonorous tone rolling out across the bridge dome. The motions of the zarts came to a standstill, and all eyes turned towards Tzu Shen. The voyagemaster held a single finger up towards the yurut’s dome, and smiled.

They had dragged the hive fleet’s drones away from orbit. The largest xenos ships were still above Darkand, but the screen protecting their immediate vicinity was much lighter. The time had come.

‘Helmsman, priority order, effective immediate. Break.’

Near the Founding Wall, Heavenfall

The Fourth Brotherhood’s biker squadrons had been travelling north at a steady pace, still outside the Founding Wall. The hive mind was aware of them, and aware of the threat they posed. The destruction of the initial swarms and many of the vanguard organisms had not been in vain – the tyranids knew the bikes were fast, deadly, and created a very different problem to the common difficulties of an entrenched opposition. A large section of the swarm had detached to shadow the column of bikers, following them north without engaging. As long as they were kept isolated, the prey upon the hill would soon be swallowed whole, and the city would follow soon after.

Joghaten had been judging speed and distance with a hunter’s eye ever since the column had set out. The khan alakh was not an easy tactic to master. On Chogoris it had become well known and, consequently, all the more difficult to use effectively. Joghaten, however, had enjoyed the better part of two centuries to perfect it, on a thousand battlefields across a hundred systems.

He knew just when to begin.

At his curt order, the whole column suddenly changed direction. The bikes slewed south-west, turning immediately and in perfect unison across the crushed grass of the plain. The stalks were brittle in the heat approaching the Furnace Season’s peak, and filled the air with dust and chaff as the bikes rode over them. Now, suddenly, the White Scars were no longer a column but a line, moving in echelon almost back the way they had come. And moving fast.

Without needing to be told, the White Scars turned throttles and gunned engines, releasing their steeds to their full potential. The bikes shot forward, each a bolt of white lightning, darting and leaping across the grassland. The riders, silent until now, loosed battle cries, oaths and yells of exhilaration that carried over the vox to their brothers on the besieged hilltop. The hunt had begun in earnest. Joghaten held his arm up, palm outstretched and fingers splayed.

Ride.

The Master of Blades rode at the fore, leaning low in the saddle, leading now through skill rather than by dint of rank. The wind whipped at his helm’s topknot and at his furs, and he loosed a shout of his own as he slid one tulwar from its sheath. His blood sang with the glory of the hunt, screaming like the wind slashing by. In that moment nothing, not the burden of command, nor the sting of loss, nor the fear of a faceless future, mattered. His existence was reduced to perfection, to the flat, hot, open expanse beneath and to the foe before him. The prey. The main swarm and the king tyrant, left exposed now that the White Scars bikers had doubled back on themselves and left the broods detached to shadow them stranded and impotent, far from the fight.

The swarm had committed an error, and now the speed of the White Scars was about to make that error fatal.

To some, the khan alakh is a final resort, an act of desperation that seeks to turn the tide. To the boldest, however, it is always the preferred choice. To personally seek out the master of your enemies, to humble him in combat before his best warriors and take his head for the White Road – what strategy could better represent the spirit of great Chogoris?

– Jurga, Master of the War Council,
Khan of the Spearpoint Brotherhood

CHAPTER ELEVEN

KING KILLER

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 14 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

High orbit, Darkand

As the brotherhood’s fleet yielded Darkand’s orbit to the tyranids, Shen was careful to withdraw with as unhurried a pace as possible, cutting back on the Pride’s enginarium and clustering the five escorts close to her flanks. The tyranids learned. More so than any other race in the galaxy, they changed and adapted to overcome every threat and setback. The genetic material digested by the hive fleets resulted in hyper-evolution, the continual development of the ultimate predatory organism. The voyagemaster understood that adaptability was easily their greatest strength.

Nothing, however, could adapt as fast as the White Scars could ride, be it on the steppes or in the void. Every vehicle and engine possessed by the White Scars was built to maximise speed, from the extended plasma drives and warp couplings of the Pride to the quad MKII adaptable thermic combustor reactors that powered the Fourth Brotherhood’s Rhinos. Armour was often compromised – almost every vehicle and ship possessed by the Chapter was less well protected than the equivalents used by more standard Chapters – but the exchange was more than worth it. No other fighting force in the entirety of the Imperium of Man venerated speed more highly than the White Scars, nor put it to deadlier effect.

Cicatrix discovered that in the void above Darkand just as it did on the surface below. At Shen’s simple command the fleet broke, turning with a pace and precision that would have left the captains of the most tightly drilled Imperial Navy interceptor squadron shamefaced. In only a handful of minutes the Pride of Chogoris was leading the fleet back to Darkand, engines blazing with the white-blue heat of plasma drives being pushed to their extreme limit. The six vessels swung out and around the great section of the hive fleet that had broken from orbit to catch them, sliding past the lumpen, floundering bio-ships with mocking ease and grace.

Too late, Cicatrix understood that it had been tricked. Too late, the hive ships began to drag themselves up towards high orbit, their great bodies shuddering and rippling with peristaltic motion as they prepared spore mines and boarding seeds. It would do them no good. Shen’s blind smile had become a broad grin, for he knew he had made the hunter into the hunted.

While below, the tide turned against the White Scars.

Outside the Mountain Gate, Heavenfall

Subodak watched as Red Berkut fell. The strike wing attacking the tyranids driving towards the White Scars’ hilltop defences had already split apart, spreading out as the individual aircraft sought to keep the airspace above the hill clear. Red Berkut was clipped by the psychic discharge of a bloated zoanthrope, lashed by the bolt of lightning that burst from the floating alien’s distended brain sac. Flames burst from an engine, and the Stormtalon rocked dangerously. As Dren-cho fought to regain control the shrikes seized their chance. The winged tyranid warriors had been using their gargoyle flocks as cover, and now they fell upon the stricken Stormtalon as it veered back towards the Founding Wall. Great talons raked and sawed through ceramite and plasteel as the beasts sought purchase on the flyer’s hull, beating their leathery wings and shrieking triumphantly as they dragged the Stormtalon down. One creature attached itself to Dren-cho’s cockpit and attempted to hack its way through. After a series of blows failed to do more than crack the protective armourglass, the screeching alien fired its limb-fused bio-weapon point-blank. A wad of steaming purple acid smacked into the screen, obscuring Dren-cho’s vision as he wrenched at the controls. After a few moments the shrike broke through the weakened armourglass, ripping into Dren-cho’s harness.

Then Lightning Death struck. The Stormhawk came in low and hard from the south, both assault cannons spinning. Two shrikes simply came apart, pulverised against Red Berkut’s hull before being scraped away by the wind. The third tyranid, however, would not be dislodged. As Lightning Death ripped past with engines screaming, it finally dragged a struggling Dren-cho from his flyer and hauled him aloft, screeching triumphantly.

Red Berkut hit the ground, ploughing into the swarm a hundred yards south of the White Scars positions, and was lost in a roiling ball of flame.

The situation on the hill was not much removed from Red Berkut’s fate. On the edge of the slope, Subodak cursed as he reloaded. The king tyrant had gone to ground in a small, shallow ravine three hundred yards out from the lead tactical squads, and short of going on the offensive there was no way for his Devastator squad to hurt it now. Not all the fire was outgoing either – the xenos had brought up biological artillery, biovores and bigger exocrines that were launching spore pods and bio-plasma from their suppurating orifice-cannons. Brothers Kell and Tuchog had been reduced to organic slurry by a direct bio-plasma strike, and Brother Xanti had been riddled with the poisonous spines of a slowly drifting spore mine. The hilltop was being lacerated with biological alien weaponry, and even with the supporting fire coming from the wall behind them Subodak had been forced to redesignate fire protocols – the xenos were about to break through.

The tactical squads holding the base of the hill had engaged in hand-to-hand combat, bolters discarded in favour of kindjals and curved chainswords. Thus far the fire from the squads on the crest of the slope was keeping the larger beasts at bay, but even as Subodak chambered a new round he saw a carnifex slam through Fifth Squad’s cordon, crushing Brother Ong-li as it went. The hulking ram-beast was aflame from head to hoof, lit by the blazing promethium of Brother Yori’s flamer, but still it came, bellowing even as its chitin blackened and split, and its flesh melted from its bones. It hit the Predator Horselord head-down as the main battle tank attempted to reverse higher up the slope. The hideous crunch of the monster’s plated skull against the tank’s plasteel glacis shuddered out across the hill, followed by a teeth-jarring clang as the forty-tonne vehicle was flipped right over. The carnifex carried on, gorging and grinding the tank’s underbelly with crab-like claws as it tried to get at the crew within.

‘Suhtar, bring it down!’ Subodak bellowed at the White Scar twenty paces to his right, painting the roaring carnifex as an immediate priority target on his Devastator squad’s auto-sense targeters. Suhtar didn’t even acknowledge. He just fired.

The lascannon beam lanced lengthways across the hill to strike the carnifex where its right shoulder plates met its neck. The brilliant beam of red energy punched deep into its torso, liquefying thundering alien organs and splattering Horselord’s twisted wreck with a fountain of ichor.

The tyranid shook and, for a moment, it looked as though it would collapse. Instead, it planted one hoof directly on top of Horselord and raised its chitin-plated head defiantly.

‘Hit it again,’ Subodak snapped as the whine of Suhtar’s recharging lascore filled the air. The carnifex, still on fire, was just about to slam both upper claws into Horselord’s twisted chassis when a streaking krak rocket struck it squarely in the centre of its skull. Its head atomised, sending thick shards of bone scything across the hilltop. Incredibly, the beast managed to stay upright for a few moments more before toppling ponderously back, its impact shaking the earth underfoot.

‘That’s one each, Suhtar,’ Bechin’s voice crackled over the vox.

There was no time to reply. A brood of termagants were seething up through the hole battered by the carnifex, snapping and yowling, wickedly sharp spines from their biomorph weapons spraying ahead of them. The poisoned barbs whickered past Subodak and clattered from his white battleplate as he brought his bolter to bear, roaring his primarch’s name. Those among his squad not bearing heavy weapons and still able to fight added their firepower to that of their türüch, cutting down the lead termagants and giving the bloodied remains of Fifth Squad enough time to seal the breach with a flurry of frag grenades.

The crumping detonations were lost amidst the crash of shifting earth as the very hill beneath Subodak’s feet moved. His auto-stabilisers triggered as he half turned, the earth around him erupting. A terrible, keening wail filled the air, and the türüch knew that their resistance was at an end.

For Hagai, Timchet and their Land Speeder, the end came moments after Joghaten’s riders turned back on themselves towards the main swarm. Wind Tamer turned with them, even as Timchet’s warning rang out over the vox. The auto-loader, after so much loyal service, had jammed.

It took Timchet perhaps ten seconds to free the belt and chamber fresh rounds, but on the eleventh a huge barbed shadow, borne on leathery wings dozens of feet across, materialised ahead. As big as the harpy that had almost caught them earlier, it burst from the flock of gargoyles swirling nearby, clouds of tainted spore gas wreathing it, its winged shadow falling across Wind Tamer as it effortlessly rose above the jinking Land Speeder.

This time Timchet’s warning really was too late. Trailing writhing tendrils, the tentacled parasites nestled beneath the crone’s wings fell and burst around them. Wind Tamer’s dashboard and viewscreens went blank, shorted by the bio-electrical pulse blasts of the living alien weapons. Hagai’s curse was lost amidst the shriek of the engines as the skimmer went down.

The impact jarred Timchet against the restraint harness and showered him with a wall of dirt. He shook his head, even his enhanced body taking a second to recover from the crash landing. Wind Tamer had ploughed into the grassland, its nose crumpled and half-buried, its already-damaged right turbofan blown out and smouldering.

Before either pilot could speak the crone’s shadow fell upon them once again. Timchet tried to reach for his heavy bolter’s grip. The alien’s shriek filled the air around them. It came in low and wickedly fast, the trio of chitin blade-spurs extending from its underbelly carving the air towards the downed skimmer. The broken vehicle rocked with its passage, slamming Timchet forward once more, the sound of shearing metal assaulting his auto-senses. Then it was gone, back up into the heavens, the spore cloud it churned from its dorsal chimneys wreathing Wind Tamer’s remains.

‘Brother,’ Timchet grunted as he released his restraint harness, finally snatching hold of the heavy bolter. ‘Brother, we…’ He trailed off and looked around.

Hagai was dead. The crone’s low passage had scythed him open, splitting both the pilot and the Land Speeder almost in half. His blood had painted the white cockpit a slowly dripping red. Timchet stared for what felt like a long time.

It was the shaking of the earth, rattling up into the broken plasteel frame around him, that finally snapped him back. The spore smog from the crone was clearing, revealing Joghaten’s bikers racing towards the main swarm. The Land Speeders had succeeded in protecting them from the air long enough for the khan to strike. But now the secondary swarm that had been left stranded while trying to shadow them was racing back to catch the bikes.

And Wind Tamer had come down directly in the path of their stampede.

‘Stay, brother,’ Timchet said softly, rising in the cockpit and bringing the heavy bolter around. ‘I shall be with you again soon.’

They struck as hard and true as an arrow shot from the Khagan’s bow, right into the heart of the beast.

Joghaten roared with fury as Whitemane crashed into the first termagants, the strains of the previous month evaporating in a welter of broken alien bodies. The broods surrounding the king tyrant were thinner now, drained by the swarm sent to shadow them and the assault on the hilltop. Joghaten’s ploy had opened the enemy’s guard, and now the dao would slide home.

The king tyrant had gone to ground, sheltering from the heavy weapons on the hilltop in a shallow crevasse. Many of its synapse beasts were already dead, picked off from the hilltop by the firepower of the White Scars Devastators and armour. Its ability to control its swarm had become tenuous, and its defences had been thinned. Its end was at hand.

Joghaten’s tulwar blazed, an arc of lightning that left bisected, steaming alien bodies in its wake. The khan’s focus was wholly on his prey now, his every transhuman sense bent towards the kill. He would not be denied.

Because of that, by the time he noticed the heavy-set tyrant guard as it lunged out of the swarm, it was too late.

Eji, Feng’s hunt-brother, had fallen as the squad charged the swarm alongside Joghaten and his bondsmen. Feng hadn’t seen it, though the blinking red rune in his visor display made him aware of the fact. At some point moments after the bikes of the Fourth Brotherhood had impacted with the swarm, Eji had been hit. Feng suspected it was during the hail of organic firepower that had struck them over the last dozen yards, spat from the weapon-orifices of the termagants they now slaughtered. Bio-plasma, venom spines and borer beetles had battered at the charging White Scars like a hideous, destructive rain. Feng’s own armour was reading structural damage from a thick wad of burning venom that had splattered his bike shield and left pauldron.

But there was no time to turn back, no time to mourn. In truth, Feng barely even felt his brother’s death. He would see him again, he knew. Death was all around them now, and a part of the steedmaster revelled in it. He bellowed an incoherent oath and he speared a leaping hormagaunt on his guan dao, swinging the scrabbling, shrieking alien down into the next one coming at him. Backjointed limbs snapped and crunched beneath his spinning front tyre tread, the auto-stabilisers struggling as the bike jarred over a carpet of bodies. It was carnage, the air alive with the howling of thousands of alien throats, Feng’s dao lancing through one body after another, scything talons and bio-plasma raining down on him from all sides.

He would see his brothers again soon, he was sure of it.

Joghaten had punched through ahead of all of them, leaving even his honour guard behind. He was hacking a path towards the master of the swarm, the great beast sheltering from the fury of the Khagan’s sons in a shallow gully ahead. Only Feng had made it as far as the Master of Blades, carried by the sudden, urgent fury that fired his blood. He saw the tyrant guard before Joghaten did.

He accelerated, the swarm around him a blur, punctuated by thudding impacts. The tyrant guard was a big, heavy-set beast, lumbering forward on its trunk-like forearms like some sort of simian. In the heartbeat before he struck, Feng swore vengeance for every battle-brother that had died fighting a monstrosity such as this.

The beast lunged for Joghaten as his bike reached the edge of the gully, one of its great fists sweeping down to pulverise the khan’s skull. Feng struck first.

The steedmaster’s dao caught the beast by the throat, mid-swing. The wicked lance’s disruptor field cut flesh and bone, the full weight of Feng’s careering charge behind it. The tyrant guard’s shriek was cut brutally short as its head was cleaved from its torso, its lunge faltering.

A second later and Feng’s bike slammed into the bulk of the creature’s heavily armoured body. The White Scar left the saddle with the bone-crunching impact of plasteel and reinforced rubber meeting thick chitin. The three went down together – Feng, his bike and the beast, broken as one. Darkness took the steedmaster.

Something had exploded from the hill’s heart in a hail of rock and dirt. The White Scars closest to the upheaval had fallen, flung across the flattened grass by the sudden upsurge of muck. Subodak turned in time to see a monster breaking forth amidst the deluge of dirt, dragging itself up out of the tunnel it had burrowed beneath the Space Marines’ defences. It was vast, bigger than any of the xenoforms yet engaged on Darkand, a nightmare of coiling armour plates and scythe-arms. Its body was long and sinuous, like a serpent’s, its segmented plates of chitinous exoskeleton caked with the thick grime it had wormed its way through to reach the hilltop. Its upper limbs, each ending with a blade-talon longer than Subodak was tall, clacked as they freed themselves from the thing’s serpentine flanks. Its skull was broad and flat-plated, built for burrowing through sightless subterranean depths. Its maw unhooked like a steppe adder’s, distending to a hideous length as it announced its arrival with a screech.

It was a mawloc, a vast, serpentine xenos, and it was about to tear the heart from the White Scars’ defences.

‘Up,’ Subodak barked over the vox. Every squad leader on the hilltop had already painted the lithe monster as a priority target, but the White Scars heavy weapons specialists were scattered and disorientated by the sudden fury of the subterranean upheaval.

And it was fast, by the Khagan it was fast. It was already killing before Subodak could bring up his bolter. The brotherhood’s Whirlwind, Skyfire, was the closest vehicle to the epicentre of the mawloc’s arrival. The monstrous tyranid brought down one set of scything talons as the missile support vehicle attempted to simultaneously reverse and bring its rocket systems down to lock with the looming beast. The creature’s blades punctured the Whirlwind’s armour, lodging in its main drive compartment. Then, with sickening ease, the beast heaved the entire vehicle into the air, whirring treads leaving the ground in a cascade of dirt. The mawloc brought it up to the height of its head before slamming its four other talons into the chassis, from all angles, impaling it like a child stabbing pins into a steppe-grass doll. Then, shrieking as though in petulant frustration, the monster flung the entire vehicle straight at Subodak.

The White Scar ducked. He felt the passage of Skyfire as it arced with agonising slowness a dozen paces overhead, the air shuddering with its passing. It cleared the edge of the hill before slamming into the cordon beneath, where it detonated. Subodak’s auto-senses registered the heat blast as it rolled back over him like a thunderclap, flattening the few stalks of grass still standing on the hilltop.

He found his feet and brought his bolter up, his expression grim. There were times when a leader could do no more. His squad knew the target. If there were none able to take the shot, he would.

His bolts burst harmlessly against the mawloc’s grime-caked exoskeleton as it twisted, seeking to drag its long, barbed tail free from the tunnel it had burst from. It slashed its lower talons as it did so, slicing apart Imchi and Songatten as they too fired up into it. It was toying with them.

It would not toy with Khum Karta though. The mighty Land Raider, named after the great mountain range of Chogoris, came thundering over the brow of the slope all guns ablaze, Darkand dirt spinning from its aquila-stamped treads. Modified engine roaring, the heavy battle transport slammed into the mawloc’s segmented body prow-first, before the tyranid could properly free itself from its burrow. The crunch of impact was followed up by the snap-crack of lascannon sponsons and the thudding of heavy bolters as the great tank unloaded its weaponry point-blank into the monstrosity.

The beast was tough. Even the searing power of Khum Karta’s lascannons barely drew ichor from its grubby hide. In response to the ramming attack, the thing brought down four talons in a vicious series of stabs, the clang of diamond-hard chitin rebounding from white adamantium ringing out across the hilltop. Khum Karta’s armour, however, held.

Engine gunning, the Land Raider reversed, dirty smoke churning from its exhaust stacks. The mawloc shrieked at it as it went, thick acidic spittle splattering the hull. The tank had been engaged on the White Scars’ extreme left, almost single-handedly holding back the swarm there. Its white-and-red armour plates and heavy treads were smeared with alien remains and pitted by countless claws and acid sprays.

For a moment, Subodak thought the tank was attempting to disengage from the monster it had so rashly charged. He should have known its commander, Xiamet, better. Engines once more roaring into life, the tank ploughed forward again. This time it hit the xenos so hard it bent the creature back almost double, the tank nearly rolling over the monster’s burrow hole. Its talons, driven by frenzied desperation, gouged great rents in Khum Karta’s hull, but failed to stop it or reach its crew. The great tank rolled back once more, treads biting dirt and alien flesh alike, engines growling as it readied for one more charge.

The mawloc, it seemed, was willing to face such a wild foe no longer. Screeching woefully, it dragged its broken body back down into its hole, fresh earth cascading down with it into the darkness. Khum Karta remained where it was, like a snarling attack dog watching over a snake’s pit.

‘Melta bombs and krak grenades into that hole, now,’ Subodak snapped. His order went unheeded. The earth beneath was shifting again, right across the hilltop. Drawn by the tremors of their sire, a dozen sinuous raveners surged from Darkand’s depths, dirt-encrusted shovel-talons reaching for the White Scars.

Low orbit, Darkand

The White Scars fleet had swept back into orbit, leaving the drones that had been shadowing them trailing in their wake. Now they were tearing the sluggish xenos hive ships apart.

‘Again,’ Voyagemaster Shen commanded. Gunnery complied without query, and through the augur links and oculum feedback the commander of the Pride of Chogoris saw another brilliant beam of red light sear through Darkand’s upper atmosphere. It punctured the side of the hive ship like a surgical tool lancing a blood-swollen tick, tearing its bloated flank. A second beam of energy followed the first as the next lance strike slashed home, causing bulbous birthing sacs lining the monstrosity’s back to explode.

All data agreed, the xenos was dying. Its void-scarred carapace had been split and shattered by a flurry of broadsides from the Pride, its bio-defences no match for a close-range engagement with an Adeptus Astartes strike cruiser. The Pride’s lance batteries, assisted by torpedoes from the fleet’s twin Cobra escorts, had finished the job. Now one of the alien fleet’s three hive ships was wallowing like a beached leviathan, its vast body wracked by internal organ failure and death-spasms, haemorrhaging vile life fluids out into the void where they froze in great trailing, glittering sheets. A second hive ship was already dead, gutted by the Pride’s ministrations and the continual, terrier-like snapping of the three Sword-class escorts that swooped in from the strike cruiser’s starboard flank.

Only one xenos capital ship remained. It was rising out of orbit now, ponderous, trying to drag itself away from the White Scars. A thick screen of crustacean-like drone ships protected it, clogging the Pride’s targeting matrices and lines of fire in a suicidal effort to protect their brood-master.

Shen mentally scanned trajectories, new headings, and the speed of the vast section of the tyranid fleet they had sidestepped in the sudden race back to Darkand’s orbit. The xenos were returning, desperate to preserve their last hive ship. Even crippled, the combined alien fleet was more than sufficient to swallow up the small White Scars expedition. Shen keyed the bridge-wide vox.

‘Break.’

Such a simple order would have meant nothing to the officers of the Imperial Navy, but for the void assets of the White Scars it triggered a spree of well-honed reflexes. Whereas most fleets would have required a long string of orders and directive-bursts, the White Scars turned on a single command. The sons of Chogoris had always valued simplicity, Shen reflected. It left more room for skill.

On his one word the fleet turned, disengaging from the final remaining hive ship. Supercharged plasma drives engaged as the six ships, unharmed bar some damaged shields and hull scarring, pulled back out of Darkand’s exosphere. Shen had already input a new heading before beginning the engagement, now being auto-locked by the main helm. The fleet made in-system, for Darkand’s star and the Pillar of Fury, the great solar flare stretching away from its broiling heart.

Shen’s careful concealing of the upper limit speed capacity of his ships had paid off – he had executed a near-perfect khan alakh, luring slower elements of the more powerful enemy fleet away from their leaders before swinging back and delivering two fatal blows. The xenos had been caught by the terrific speed and deft handling of things they had thought of only as prey. Shen wondered whether the hive mind was capable of regret.

‘All xenos contacts moving in full pursuit, voyagemaster,’ an augur zart reported. Shen saw that the serf crewwoman was correct – reunited with the main part of its fleet, the remaining hive ship was still rising from orbit, lunging after the small band of vessels that had dared slay its sisters. Shen knew he had left it with little choice. If it remained above Darkand, supporting the swarms it had already seeded across the planet’s surface, his fleet would continue to harry its drone ships and pick its defenders apart. Another day perhaps, and with careful handling, the entire hive fleet would have been destroyed. The xenos needed to snap up the threat posed by Shen’s strikes while it still had the chance – while the White Scars were withdrawing.

‘Maintain current speed and heading,’ Shen ordered, satisfied with the escort dispositions and noting with approval the disciplined order that emanated from the bridge dome. Most ships, in a knife-edge engagement like the one they had just left, would have been filled with report chatter, vox blurts and the chemical stink of defence shields and macrocannon venting. The command hub of the Pride of Chogoris, however, remained a quiet, tranquil place, as was befitting a capital ship of the White Scars. Such harmony belied the skill behind the battle just fought – a daring raid on the enemy’s heart, followed by a disengaging manoeuvre that would have been beyond many senior Navy captains. For the first time since contacting the bio-fleet, Shen relaxed in his throne mount.

All that remained for the moment was pray to the Khagan that the Master of Blades fared as well as his fleet.

Near the Mountain Gate, Heavenfall

Joghaten was barely aware of Steedmaster Feng and his slamming collision with the tyrant guard to his right. The khan’s attention was fixed on the king tyrant as Whitemane crested the gully’s edge. The beast was different from the one he had cut apart out on the plain earlier – larger, more heavily armoured, more ponderous. It turned its chitin-crested head towards Joghaten as Whitemane leapt. To a superhuman such as the khan, the two-and-a-half seconds he spent in the air seemed to last long minutes. He saw the tyrant’s eyes, black, doll-like, even as it beheld its death coming from the Darkand skies.

Time reasserted itself with a crunch, and Whitemane’s front wheel impacted into the beast’s upturned skull. Spinning rubber flensed flesh from bone in an instant, followed by the crack of fracturing bone and shattering fangs being slammed back into the tyrant’s brain. One side of its head caved in beneath Whitemane’s impact.

Joghaten was already leaving the saddle as his assault bike tumbled, anticipating the collision and kicking his feet from the mag-locking boards. He hit the stony earth of the gully floor, armour absorbing the worst of the impact, rolling with it. He was springing up, tulwar ignited in each fist before Whitemane had even crashed to the ground.

Of course, the xenos monster was not dead. The bike’s impact had crushed part of its skull, but not killed it. It turned on Joghaten, an ugly noise rattling from its ribbed throat, huge talon blades coming at the White Scar. He kept on his toes, ducking the first, deflecting the second with both tulwars raised. A front-foot lunge took him inside the monster’s guard. It was sluggish, its brain damaged, ichor weeping from the fractured mess that had once been the right half of its skull. Any other creature would have already been dead, but the raw imperatives of the hive mind kept it functioning well after much of its cranial matter had been pulverised.

Joghaten would make sure the wound was fatal. He delivered two violent slashes to the beast’s upper torso, just below the rim of chitin that protected its throat, dodging away from the acidic ichor that splattered out onto the scarred earth. A third blow cut to the bone of one of its scythe-limbs as it swung clumsily at him once more.

The creatures around the king tyrant were reacting to their leader’s distress, a wall of termagants rushing towards Joghaten with fangs snapping. They could not get close enough to him, however, pressed right up as he was against the tyrant’s haemorrhaging bulk. He stayed there, using his abilities to keep close to the monster while at the same time avoiding its struggling efforts. His tulwars were a blur of lightning, slicing through chitin and meat, a dozen deep wounds in two dozen seconds.

It was not long before the wounded tyrant’s strength gave out. It gave an angry bellow as it collapsed onto its front, crushing a brace of gaunts scrabbling desperately at Joghaten. The White Scar spun and slew two of the lesser xenos before turning back to the fallen tyrant.

‘I am Joghaten Khan,’ he snarled into the creature’s face, addressing whatever nightmare consciousness the remains of its primitive mind was linked to. ‘Master of Blades, Steppe Lord and Hetman of Chogoris. Your rampage ends here. This is our galaxy.’

The thing took one last rattling breath, ready to roar its defiance back. The khan didn’t give it a chance. With a deft flick, his tulwars opened its throat, cutting back to its thick spinal column. The swarm shrieked with one voice, minds scarred by their sudden loss of contact to the hive. Joghaten kept his blades lodged in the beast’s torn throat, until it finally slumped into Darkand’s ichor-drenched soil.

It was over.

Not only does the astrological phenomenon of Darkand’s star exert huge cultural and societal significance on the day-to-day lives of the system’s only inhabited planet, but it also represents a very clear danger to any vessel passing through the system core. Only military-grade shielding offers any hope of protection against the twin threats of the awesome heat and intense radiation represented by the Pillar.

– Elim Weiss, Adeptus Astro-cartograpae,
from the Index of Stellar Curiosities, Chapter CXX

CHAPTER TWELVE

FURY’S PILLAR

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 13 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

Near the Mountain Gate, Heavenfall

There was a common misconception among Imperial strategos that killing a tyranid swarm’s leader-beast led to the immediate disintegration of the swarm itself. Such a belief, however, only held true with the smallest of broods. The one besieging Heavenfall was too large to turn on the synapses of a single organism, no matter how powerful. Secondary leader-beasts littered the swarm – clutches of tyrant primes, warriors and zoanthropes, all capable of transmitting the will of the hive mind to the lesser creatures clustered around them.

Joghaten’s final blow to the king tyrant, however, was still decisive. The heart of the swarm, formerly under the umbrella of the tyrant’s leadership, fell into anarchy even as the Master of Blades freed his tulwars from the beast’s flesh. The firepower of the Devastators on the hilltop now proved its worth – targeting the larger xenos beasts earlier on had broken the swarm’s chain of command. Great sections were now without leadership, their synapse handlers already put down by krak missiles, lascannon bolts and plasma. Those gaunts no longer directed by the hive mind started to scatter, obstructing the remains of the swarm still acting coherently and, in some cases, even attacking them.

Such disruption saved both Joghaten and Lau Feng. The steedmaster, thrown by his impact with the decapitated tyrant guard, found his feet and his bearings in time to see the Master of Blades clambering up from the nearby gully, slick with xenos ichor. He signalled for Feng to attend him. The steedmaster’s guan dao was planted in the earth two dozen paces away, deactivated, so Feng drew his bolt pistol and curving kindjal as the surrounding aliens came for them.

For long, bloody minutes the two White Scars fought back to back, weapons in each fist, killing in a manner that would be recounted around the camp-fires and in smoky yuruts for many years to come. In truth, it was not the deadliest struggle either warrior had fought in. The lesser tyranids were confused and uncoordinated, left dazed by the sudden absence of overriding control. Most were seeking to escape rather than kill, their now-feral minds causing them to scatter out onto the plains. Joghaten’s bondsmen finally hacked their way to the Master of Blades, and together they made a mound of slaughtered xenos beneath the fluttering horsehair plumes of the Fourth Brotherhood.

Timchet had stopped killing long before many of his brothers. He stood perfectly still in the trampled remnants of Wind Tamer, clutching his now-empty heavy bolter, purple alien viscera dripping in slow, thick strings from his armour. Hagai lay beside him, untouched. When the swarm racing back to catch Joghaten had struck, the gunner had been sure his end was at hand. The aliens, however, had simply ignored him. Realising the danger posed by the bikes to their leader, the swarm had parted around the downed Land Speeder, not a single gaunt spared from the stampede to strike at the lone prey-warrior. Timchet had emptied his heavy bolter into the passing swarm, creating a carpet of twitching, blown-apart alien dead around Wind Tamer, as chilled by their mindless precision as he was filled with hatred and rage. He remained where he was long after the swarm had dispersed, surrounded by the slain and the low moaning of the steppe wind.

By midday the battle of the Founding Wall was over. The tyranids had scattered, those that fought on isolated and destroyed. Detachments of wide-eyed Pinnacle Guard troopers moved out onto the plain, moving cautiously among the carpets of xenos dead to administer las-bolts to anything still twitching. The White Scars gathered on the low hilltop where they had anchored their stand, carrying their dead with them. Feng brought Eji, while Timchet carried Hagai in both arms, his heavy bolter salvaged from Wind Tamer’s wreck and slung over his back. Servitors and salvation teams would recover what they could from the machinery that lay broken among the mounds of alien dead. Timchet knew, however, that Wind Tamer would never touch the sky again.

As the White Scars gathered around the hill, Subodak was still working on its crest. The türüch had been lowered into the pit burrowed by the mawloc, its sheer flanks levelled at one end into a dirt slope thanks to the careful placement of a clutch of grenades. The smaller ravener tunnels had been sealed up after the beasts had been killed, bereft of the hive mind and beset by a counter-attack led by Qui’sin and the assault squads. Something about the mawloc’s pit, however, had drawn Subodak down into the dirt and darkness.

‘What do you see?’ Joghaten called after him. He’d descended as far as he could unaided, close to where the pit seemed to reach its deepest extent before levelling out. He could make out Subodak on the edge of the burrow-dark ahead, shining a stab lumen inbuilt into his right pauldron into the shadows beyond.

‘The tunnel passage,’ the türüch replied over the vox.

‘So?’ Joghaten demanded. ‘The beast is fled – we would feel its tremors if it were still nearby.’

‘We would, khan-commander,’ Subodak acknowledged. ‘But that is not what concerns me. What concerns me is the direction the tunnel goes in. It leads straight back towards the city, and it’s the only passage I can see.’

Joghaten murmured a Chogorian curse as he realised the import of what the türüch was saying. It wasn’t even just the fact that the giant tyranid serpent was now beneath Heavenfall’s streets.

It was the fact that, to reach the hilltop beyond the Founding Wall, it had come from there in the first place, and not from out on the steppes.

The Void, Darkand System

During the voyage to the system’s heart Shen turned and savaged his pursuers twice. On the second time, they lost the Steppe Lord. The hive fleet showed that the White Scars were not the only ones capable of sudden speed. A brood of the kraken drone vessels swept out of the protective formation they’d adopted around the sole remaining hive ship, catching Shen’s twin Cobra escorts in their rearguard position. The Falcon managed to get clear, but the Steppe Lord was caught by one of the kraken. The long, hook-like alien craft latched on to the white Cobra like a greedy parasite, its snout tearing through the escort’s flank before unlatching its jaw. The nightmarish creature then began to suckle, dragging whole decks and their crews into its acidic gullet, draining the Steppe Lord and leaving it like a withered husk.

Shen managed to suppress the anger he felt at the Steppe Lord’s hideous fate. Victory necessitated control; no matter the passions of battle, to turn away from a wise strategy would only bring more pain. A good hetman, luring the enemy away, did not turn back to the fight because his brother had fallen. The fleet swung back towards the system’s star, the Falcon now alone.

Despite their minor victory, the hive fleet was suffering. Shen could sense it across all the data being fed to him by the Pride. The White Scars were still outnumbered thousands to one, but Cicatrix had been bloodied above Baal, and now it was being bloodied once more. It had lost vast amounts of organic material and, so far, had gained almost nothing back.

‘Voyagemaster, we are approaching Fury’s Pillar,’ reported one of the bridge zarts. Shen drew himself from his running analysis and cast his consciousness wider, addressing their latest heading. They were coming up on Darkand’s star, and with it the fixed stellar flare that brought on the planet’s Furnace Season. The augurs were reading dramatic spikes in radiation and heat.

‘Cut speed by a third and hold course,’ Shen ordered, the command transmitted across the fleet. The reduction in speed meant the tyranids, already dangerously close, would be in the long-range engagement sphere in a matter of minutes. Such a risk was necessary.

‘Keep monitoring shield integrity,’ Shen added. The carbon heat shields, ceramite-layered equaliser plates and active magnetic shielding would preserve the White Scars fleet from the concentrated heat and cosmic radiation as they passed through the Pillar. At least, that was what Shen hoped. Anything less than a military-grade vessel would already be suffering. Few ships other than those of the Adeptus Astartes could hope to reach the other side largely unscathed.

The hive fleet was not so fortunate. Sensorium data ramped up to maximum amplification, Shen watched as the hive fleet’s near-perfect coordination gave way to apparent confusion. The greater part, caught in the Pillar’s extreme heat, sought to turn back on those behind. Astral tendrils snagged and became locked, and gnarled hides cracked up against one another. The smaller drones began to combust and liquefy, flames flickering brief and blue in the void, blackening shells cracking and bursting apart to emit streams of half-cooked innards that froze in gory tendrils. Shen was reminded briefly of a plains beast coming across fire for the first time, and not understanding the source of its pain.

The voyagemaster smiled, blind eyes unseeing but the senses of his ship knowing more than enough. The hive fleet was in turmoil, the screens of drones protecting the bigger ships stripped away by the unrelenting heat and radiation of Fury’s Pillar. For the moment, the eerie coordination that typified the xenos was gone, the remaining major bio-ships exposed. Now was the time to turn and strike. Shen knew this would be the last time he would need to give the order against this foe. He held up one hand, index finger raised.

‘Helmsman, priority order, effective immediate. Break.’

The Mountain Gate, Heavenfall

Joghaten stood in the shadow of the Mountain Gate, alone. The great adamantium doors had been swung open, allowing purge units with flamers and promethium dousers to move out beyond the Founding Wall and start torching the mounds of xenos dead. In the rising heat of the Furnace Season it was a hellish job, but to their credit none of the Pinnacle Guard commanders had complained to Joghaten. It seemed they were mostly just relieved to be alive.

The khan watched a Hellhound flamer tank rolled past, dust kicking up off its tracks, the promethium gel in its flamer canister sloshing audibly over the growl of engines and the clatter of treads. He had left his bondsmen on the gatehouse above while the rest of the brotherhood had pulled back within the wall. He had needed a moment of separation to clear his mind.

It wasn’t over, he was sure of it.

A blip in his ear heralded an incoming vox transmission. It was Qui’sin. The Stormseer had been sent further up the slope-city’s steep streets, to see with his own eyes the situation being faced by the tribes brought within the Founding Wall.

‘Speak,’ the khan commanded, accepting the transmission.

‘The area around the Old Town is overcrowded, my khan,’ Qui’sin’s voice replied, the words spoken against a backdrop of raised, chattering voices and lowing beasts. ‘Pinnacle Guard reserve units are corralling most of the steppe folks along the lower slope-streets. They claim to be doing so on orders from the Pinnacle, but I have been unable to contact anyone in the government claiming responsibility for their actions. Commander Harren seems to have disappeared.’

‘What of the catacombs?’ Joghaten asked, turning away to better shield his hearing as another Pinnacle Guard armoured fighting vehicle trundled past in a haze of dust.

‘Full, or so the government ministers I spoke with are claiming. The citizenry of Heavenfall have been moved below ground, but supposedly there is no room for the tribesfolk. The Pinnacle Guard will not allow them to pass. The heat is continuing to rise and there have been outbreaks of fighting between the Pinnacle troops and the tribes, as well as within the tribes themselves. I fear some are using the confusion to settle old scores.’

‘If the tribespeople are left to burn out in the heat the sacrifices made to save them will have been for nothing,’ Joghaten said angrily. ‘Show yourself to the Pinnacle Guard in person and make that clear. And what of the… other matters we spoke of?’

‘I have deployed four squads in combat teams to the temple district,’ the Stormseer replied. ‘There has been no sign of the High Enunciator or his priesthood since the swarm was broken outside the gates. The first hunt-brothers are moving into the crypts below as we speak, but they are reporting tunnel collapses and sections of the catacombs that have been sealed from within. I fear something lurks down there, Master of Blades. We must find it.’

‘Have there been any anomalies above the surface, besides the priesthood’s disappearance?’

‘It is difficult to say. The tribespeople here are on the brink of panic. I cannot tell whether the unrest I have witnessed is human emotion, or something darker.’

‘Harren’s disappearance speaks volumes. Go to the Pinnacle as soon as you can, weathermaker, and seek to bring the situation there under control. We need to find shelter for the tribespeople before the temperatures rise any further.’

‘Understood, my khan,’ Qui’sin replied. There was a moment’s pause before he spoke again.

‘Remain on your guard. I do not need to have trod the Path of Heaven to know that there is something wrong here.’

The Temple District, Heavenfall

The White Scars cleared the temple district. It was on Qui’sin’s advice – more so than any other part of Heavenfall, the site of the city’s Ministorum cult was the most riddled with catacombs and underground passages. If there was a xenos threat still lurking beneath the slope-city’s streets, it was likely to be there. The priesthood’s recent disappearance only heightened the White Scars’ suspicion.

Four squads performed the clearances, broken down into combat teams. Feng’s was one of them. They had dismounted in the street outside their first objective, a yellow stone devotarium, slowly baking in the heat. Jakar, Oda and Sauri moved with their steedmaster in a loose spread between the colonnades, the spore-shrouded sunlight burning the hot sandstone underfoot and casting long shadows between the pillars.

Feng paused them on the edge of the open-aired building’s central square. Shadows glared back at him from beneath the opposite cloisters, hard and menacing. The square’s central fountain, built around a graven effigy of Saint Paulus, was dead, its waterworks inactive, the pools of water drained by the Furnace Season’s heat and scummed with xenos spores. The readings on Feng’s power armour showed ever-rising levels of atmospheric toxicity, and the filtration units were starting to struggle with the sheer amount of alien microbes clogging the air. Their armour could resist both the heat and the xenos spores for some time to come, but it could not do so indefinitely. There were also rising reports of Pinnacle Guard troopers succumbing to both respiratory difficulties and the blistering heat of near-peak Furnace Season. Emergency response units from the slope-city’s medicae ward were setting up makeshift treatment clinics on the lower slopes of Heavenfall to cope with the thousands of tribespeople similarly affected – all were overwhelmed with patients. Even with the main swarm scattered, it felt as though Darkand was dying. Such grim revelations had not served to lift Feng’s mood in the wake of the victory before the Founding Wall.

‘Jakar, Sauri, cover. Oda, on me.’

The steedmaster stepped out into the open square and advanced, big Oda at his side, their bolt pistols raised and auto-senses probing the surrounding pillars for sudden movements. Jakar and Sauri adopted braced shooting positions, scanning the entire space. Still, there was no sign of any contact. The two White Scars made it to the opposite cloisters without incident, boots thumping on the hot stone underfoot. Sauri and Jakar joined them moments later.

‘Auspex says they’re clear,’ Feng said, glancing at the vambrace-mounted augur he’d taken from his bike. The device was speeding up their clearances considerably, but there were still several blocks to go before they could descend into the temple district’s underbelly.

‘Scan them,’ the steedmaster said, indicating the archways leading off from the cloister’s flanks. ‘Let’s pick up the pace, brothers.’

The squad went door to door, sweeping into one chamber after the next, weapons ready, senses on edge. Still, however, they found nothing. There weren’t even signs of struggle or hasty evacuation. Sub-scriptoriums lay deserted, data-slates stacked neatly and stylus pots capped. A refectorum had its plastek trays laid out and the heating stoves scrubbed and gleaming. The psalters in the primary devotion annex all lay open at the last reading. Even the light that filtered in through the bare window arches in each stone-flagged room seemed undisturbed, xenos spore clouds hanging heavy and lazy in the shafts of illumination.

The reports coming in over the vox told the same story. Despite High Enunciator Traik’s pledge that his priests would not abandon the surface for their catacombs, the White Scars could find no hint of a single monk, devotionary or deacon anywhere throughout the temple district. Worship halls, vigil closets, auto-flagellation racks and confessional stands that should have all been busy with the unending benedictions and scourging of the God-Emperor’s worship were silent and empty, bar the low purr of the Space Marines’ power armour and the tread of their heavy boots. It was as though some curse had rendered the faithful entirely invisible, while all their works and daily preparations remained.

The eerie absence was frustrating Feng. Creeping through buildings and alleyways in some deserted part of the city: this was not how the White Scars made war. It was bad enough that they’d been separated from their bikes, let alone that they were now chasing noon shadows. He wanted this done with, as quickly as possible.

‘Last section,’ he voxed, indicating the final unexplored side of the square to the rest of the squad via the visor display. Five doorway arches, one of them an open metal grate leading down into the undercroft. Shontai’s assault brothers had already been through that section of the catacombs and reported it clear.

‘Split this time,’ Feng ordered. ‘One to a door. Let’s get this over with and report back to the wall.’

Oda, Sauri and Jakar’s icons blinked affirmatives across Feng’s display. He squared up to one of the arches, the entrance to the refectorum pantry from what he could see beyond, and checked his bolt pistol.

Movement to his right caught his eye before he could enter. He spun, bolt pistol going up automatically. The other three had already breached their assigned rooms, leaving Feng alone. But there was a fourth figure among the cloisters, about to pass into the darkness of the undercroft entrance. Feng’s finger eased off the trigger as he recognised the white markings of a brother White Scar, a half-second before his blood turned to ice.

It was not just a fellow battle-brother, appearing out of nowhere. It was him.

Saint Attia’s Ward, Heavenfall

Heavenfall’s primary medicae ward was full to capacity. Sited midway up the mountain slope, on the corner of the temple district, it had become a locus for the tribes brought within the Founding Wall – hundreds had been admitted with symptoms indicative of the peaking Furnace Season. Firethroat and steppe-skin, along with the more common complaints of heat exhaustion and dehydration were all taking their toll. There were already dozens dead, and it would only worsen over the coming days. The medicae facility, a sprawling complex of white-painted rockcrete, was running on a volunteer staff with key chirurgeons gone to the shelter of the catacombs. Pinnacle Guard details stood throughout the buildings, sweat-slick and red-faced in their ochre combat kit, watchful lest the panic brewing beneath the surface should spill over into outright disorder.

Joghaten passed through the crowded wards like an angel of death – the incessant chattering, arguments and grieved wailing that filled the rest of the facility grew still and silent at the presence of the giant in battle-scarred white armour. He ignored the stares and the muttered prayers, his mind elsewhere as he made his way to the fifth chirurgeon bay.

The brotherhood had triumphed once again. Despite the odds, the White Scars’ gamble – simultaneously striking down the primary leader-beasts both in orbit and on the surface, decapitating the swarm – had succeeded. Furthermore, word had come through from Tzu Shen: the hive fleet’s threat was ended, the vast majority of the xenos bio-ships incinerated in Fury’s Pillar or blown apart by the guns of Shen’s counter-attacking fleet. Relative to what he had expected, the brotherhood’s losses had been light. And yet, instead of the victory-joy he should have felt at another notch in the lodge pole, his thoughts were weighed down by a sense of foreboding. The xenos taint was not yet fully purged. None of the squads yet deployed to the catacombs had reported any contacts. They were down there though, the khan was sure of it.

He drew back the plastek drapes leading into the chirurgeon bay, his keen senses struck by the familiar scents of blood and counterseptics. The White Scars had requisitioned the small side ward for their own uses. There were six Space Marines present – four wounded hunt-brothers being administered to by the emchi Dorich, and a guard on the door, Assault-Brother Hechin. He bowed in salute and made way for the khan.

Dorich did not look up from his work. He was administering adrenal balances via his narthecium to a comatose brother Ulya, from the Second Tactical Squad. All four wounded Space Marines had entered a restive state thanks to their sus-an membrane, and were laid out on straining surgical gurneys, stripped of most of their armour. Their wounds were uniformly grievous – much of Ulya’s left side, including his face, had been scarred and melted by a gout of bio-plasma. Dorich had been stripping away the fused, dead flesh and applying synth-skin wraps, while at the same time trying to stabilise the Space Marine’s vitae signs before shock overcame him. The other three were all suffering from the vicious stab and slash wounds administered by tyranid talons. Two zart assistants, the sleeves of their white kaftans stained red, were overseeing the other three while Dorich sought to save Ulya.

Joghaten said nothing as he watched the emchi work. It was Dorich who spoke first, eyes still on the synth-skin he was applying with short, expert strokes to Ulya’s flank.

‘The other three will live.’

‘Thanks to you, honoured emchi,’ Joghaten said, casting his eye over the bloody flesh of his brothers. Space Marines rarely reached the medicae table. Their transhuman physiology and mental strength ensured that any wound that was less than fatal could be shrugged off or treated without the need to leave the front line. Victory or death, there was rarely a line between the two.

‘Would that I could save them all, my khan,’ Dorich said quietly as he applied the last of the synth and injected a final shot into Ulya’s arm.

‘They fell in glory,’ Joghaten assured him. ‘This world has been saved because of them.’

‘You sound unsure. Rarely have I seen the Master of Blades heavy with mourning guilt following a great victory.’

To many other members of the Tulwar Brotherhood Joghaten would have brushed aside such an accusation. Dorich, however, was far too venerable to be fooled by his khan. The Master of Blades nodded slowly.

‘I cannot truly explain it, emchi,’ he said. ‘Little since we made planetfall has been as I expected. I had… such dark premonitions. This world is not finished with us yet.’

‘Perhaps the Khagan has interceded for us,’ Dorich said, gaze lingering on Ulya’s terrible scars.

‘Perhaps,’ Joghaten said, accepting an incoming transmission feed in his earpiece. It was Qui’sin.

‘You must come to the centrum dominus, my khan,’ the Stormseer said. ‘There is something happening out on the plains. The augurs have detected it.’

‘Detected what?’ Joghaten said, bowing briefly to Dorich as he exited the ward.

‘The swarm has ceased to scatter. They… appear to be coordinating once more.’

The Temple District, Heavenfall

Lau Feng, steedmaster of the Fourth Brotherhood. It was unmistakable, an almost exact likeness. The only difference was what looked like three las-burns in his breastplate, and the fact that he wasn’t wearing his helmet. A dark gash was clotting over his left brow, where none yet marked him. Feng only saw the vision for a split second, but he knew his memory did not lie. Like all Space Marines, he could replay visual snapshots with perfect clarity. It was absolutely the steedmaster of the Third Assault Bike Squadron that he had just seen. It was Lau Feng.

But the figure had already gone. Feng’s double had passed into the darkness of the undercroft stairway without even looking at him. It was as though he hadn’t even existed, as though he was present and intruding on his own waking dream. His pistol, still raised and now aiming at thin air, started to shake. He lowered it slowly.

‘Steedmaster?’ Oda was standing before him, face unreadable behind his helmet’s visor. Feng blinked, unsure when his three brothers had returned from the cleared rooms.

‘Is something there?’ Jakar asked, following Feng’s gaze as it lingered on the undercroft grate. ‘Contacts?’

Feng didn’t respond. He pushed past Oda and approached the entrance to the catacombs. The darkness beneath was even more absolute than the spore-choked shade that gathered under the cloisters. He activated his pauldron’s inbuilt stab lumen. The sharp beam of light struck an unyielding surface about a dozen paces down the crumbling undercroft staircase. It took him a second to realise the surface was a breastplate of white ceramite, embossed with a red-winged lightning bolt. Slowly, Feng drew the light upwards, up past a gorget, up towards the face of the figure blocking the passageway. Up to the ruined, acid-burned features of Eji.

The ghost’s scream melded with Feng’s own.

‘Steedmaster!’

It was Oda again. The White Scar was pinning Feng’s right vambrace in an iron grip, holding it away towards the fountain of Saint Paulus. Feng realised after a moment that it was because he’d been pointing his bolt pistol at Oda’s face. He was standing back before the doorway arch he had yet to enter, the undercroft stairway still a dozen paces away.

‘He is touched with the sight,’ Jakar said quietly. ‘I have seen it before. My father’s father was a weathermaker.’

‘So you often tell us, brother,’ Sauri said with false levity. Oda was still gripping Feng’s arm.

‘Release me,’ the steedmaster ordered. The larger Space Marine did so only after a second’s hesitation. Feng mag-locked his pistol.

‘We are reporting back to the khan,’ he said with a certainty he did not feel. ‘This sector is clear.’

‘The catacombs,’ Jakar began, then trailed off.

‘The sector is clear,’ Feng repeated. The other three White Scars exchanged looks, still unreadable behind their helms.

‘This place is cursed,’ Feng said, moving past them towards the devotarium’s exit.

‘Everywhere you go is cursed,’ Oda muttered.

Feng didn’t respond.

The centrum dominus, Heavenfall

Fifteen minutes after first receiving his Stormseer’s message, Joghaten was standing beside Qui’sin at the edge of the centrum dominus’ primary holochart. Pinnacle Guard officers clustered across from them, the green light of the projections throwing their tired, worried features into ghoulish contrast. The khan ignored their low muttering. His eyes were on the projections being beamed from the chart, fed by the Pinnacle’s powerful augur arrays nestling on the mountain peak above.

The swarms were gathering again. There was no other way to describe it. Red icons representing tyranid broods had scattered like a constellation across Darkand’s plain after the battle outside the Mountain Gate, their coordination gone with the loss of the hive mind. Now, however, it seemed something was once more orchestrating them. A vast alien mass was forming out on the plains with terrible rapidity, swelling even as the two Space Marines watched. The flocks of gargoyles that wheeled above the swarms were already turning towards the wall, darkening the holo-representation’s skies.

‘How is this possible?’ Joghaten asked eventually. ‘The hive fleet has been all but destroyed and their primary leader-beast is slain. None of the remaining synapse creatures should be strong enough to coordinate a swarm of such size, let alone over so wide an area.’

‘I do not understand it,’ Qui’sin admitted. ‘Nothing in the records speaks of an event such as this. Unless Hive Fleet Cicatrix has developed some horrific new evolutionary trait, our remaining operations here should have been simply cleaning up.’

‘They will be moving against us again in a matter of hours,’ Joghaten said grimly. ‘Whatever power now controls them, it will not cease until it has breached the city and consumed those within. Pinnacle Guard, stand your men to and prepare the wall once more.’

‘But the Furnace Season,’ one young officer complained, not daring to meet the Space Marine’s eyes. ‘It is already taking a toll. We cannot survive above the surface for more than another day in this heat. It is about to hit peak temperatures.’

‘We will hold your Wall together,’ Joghaten said firmly. ‘Or the xenos will slaughter you and all your family once they breach your catacombs. You must choose where and how you meet your fate – cowering in the dark or defending your bastions like men. Is that clear?’

There was a flurry of affirmatives, all edged with fear. The assembly broke up as the two Space Marines stepped away from the hololithic.

‘They are even more afraid than they were before,’ Qui’sin said quietly, watching as officers barked deployment orders to the centrum’s vox operators. ‘They thought themselves reprieved. Now they know what is coming.’

‘But just what is coming?’ Joghaten asked, eyes on the holo display as it flickered and dissolved. ‘This is… unprecedented.’

‘I feared it would happen,’ Qui’sin admitted, hand resting on the ulzi fate-pattern marking his staff’s haft. ‘The portents have been ill ever since we made our jump to the warp. Darkand is not finished with us.’

‘You have been reticent since we first engaged the xenos on the plains,’ Joghaten said. ‘What have you seen, weathermaker?’

Qui’sin hesitated before answering.

‘There is a presence in the city. It seeks to mask its psychic potency, but I can feel it all the same. I fear it is… beneath us. In the catacombs.’

Joghaten remembered the mawloc’s tunnel, and how it had led not to the plains, but to the city.

‘The squads deployed below ground have yet to find anything. If the xenos strike from beneath us as well as above, can we hold them?’

‘I cannot see,’ Qui’sin said. ‘But I fear we cannot weather this storm alone.’

Joghaten marshalled his bondsmen and rode for the scriptorium. The roar of engines parted the wide-eyed nomads clogging the lower slopes, the sound echoing back from the crowded hab blocks. As they climbed higher the streets became deserted, bar the occasional stray pony or ux horn that had escaped the tribes below and now wandered the abandoned upper slopes. The citizens of Heavenfall were in their catacombs, while the steppe peoples were still packed into the lower slopes, either occupying the destitute hab blocks near the Founding Wall or filling the streets and flattened square blocks. Patrols of Pinnacle Guard, however, had stopped any moving higher than the Old Town, and the steepness of the streets themselves had been a sufficient deterrent to the heavily laden tribal masses.

Joghaten led from the fore as they climbed higher, his hunt-brothers close behind. Those members of the brotherhood not investigating the temple district had been redeployed back to the wall, while their air elements were refuelling higher up the slope. Joghaten made it halfway towards the scriptorium headquarters, passing up the eerily deserted colonnades of the temple district, when the vox messages started coming through.

They were picked up from the Pinnacle Guard’s comm-nets first, reports of gunfire in the lower districts, down among the nomad tribes. Then the messages started coming from the White Scars squads still stationed on the Founding Wall. Elements of Shontai’s assault squad started taking sniper fire from the nearby hab tops. A combat team drawn from the Third Tactical Squad and assisting the Pinnacle Guard with keeping the nomad tribes corralled came under fire from an unseen source. Further confirmation of what Qui’sin had warned them of. Joghaten routed a message to the entire brotherhood.

‘Be aware, hunt-brothers. Pinnacle Guard units could potentially bear xenos taint. There are snakes in the grass. Secure your objectives with all possible speed.’

By the time the cult reveals its full military capabilities and begins to openly attack centres of Imperial authority, it is almost always far too late.

– Inquisitor Tormund Kalo, Ordo Xenos,
from his Selected Memoires, sixth edition

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE SECOND SWARM

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 5 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

The Founding Wall, Heavenfall

Qui’sin joined the First Battalion of the Pinnacle Guard on the Founding Wall, two sections north of the Mountain Gate. Colonel Uygar was there, struggling in the furnace heat, still sporting the scars of his first encounter with a tyranid – red-stained bandages over his scalp that hid a vicious slashing wound. His expression was grim as he stood in the White Scar’s shadow, following his gaze out onto the plain.

The swarm had returned. It stretched from horizon to horizon, a glittering, barbed black sea covered by a thunderhead of flying xenoforms, rolling like a rising tide over the patchwork yellows and browns of the steppe. The air between the xenos and the wall shimmered, distorted by the Furnace Season’s heat and the sheer amount of alien spores clogging Darkand’s atmosphere. Behind the swarm, on the plains where they had first made planetfall, dark clouds had gathered. The planet’s skies were being changed and deformed by the hyper-evolution of the hive mind. Even without its mother ships in orbit, the Great Devourer was still doing its work. Qui’sin still did not understand how such a thing was possible.

‘They are numerous,’ Uygar croaked, his throat parched and raw from xenos spores. It was a commendable understatement. The susurration of the approaching swarm carried through the heavy air to the wall. Qui’sin could feel the rockcrete vibrating underneath his boots.

Against the great mass, what did they still have? The brotherhood was still combat effective, with just over seventy hunt-brothers able to wield a bolter, but their strength was split between the wall and those still combing through the catacombs. There was no possibility of them meeting the swarm on the plain again, and no clear leader-beast for them to strike at anyway. The Pinnacle Guard had supplied thousands to the wall’s parapets, but from what vox traffic Qui’sin intercepted it seemed they were suffering command and control issues. Units had gone dark on the comm-net or were not reporting to their designated positions, and munitions were still being transported down the slope-streets to the wall’s rear armouries. No one had foreseen the tyranids’ return.

‘Your men are fully equipped?’ Qui’sin asked Uygar, forcing himself to turn his gaze away from the dark majesty of the incoming swarm and meet the terrified eyes of Darkand’s defenders, the thousands of Pinnacle Guardsmen atop the wall.

‘We have brought forward all our reserve stockpiles,’ Uygar said. ‘Brigade command expects it to last until tomorrow.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then we will use our bayonets, great hetman.’

Qui’sin looked back at the swarm, his heart heavy. Too often the duties of the Adeptus Astartes called upon them to witness good men die badly. For a warrior genetically formed to defend mankind’s empire across the stars, it was a cruel irony that he so often had to witness the best of humanity perishing.

‘Tell your men to conserve ammunition as best they can,’ he instructed. The colonel’s affirmative seemed distant as the Stormseer began to focus his mind. He was tired, mentally fatigued not only by the previous fighting but by the ever-present scratching of the hive mind, and the strain of not fully understanding what was coming for them. They had won. They had killed the leader-beasts. So how could the swarm be so coordinated?

For a moment, he recalled the aeldari witch and her warnings. He had almost told Joghaten about her visit in the centrum dominus. Now that hope had begun to gutter out, the temptation of seeking the aliens’ help was growing stronger. But what had such creatures ever offered mankind besides lies and deceit? The eldar were more likely to worsen their situation than save them.

The Stormseer forced such troubles from his mind, seeking his centre. More so than ever before, his abilities were needed, not just by the brotherhood now taking up positions along the wall, but by the human soldiers who stood by them. Repel the swarm one more time and it may disintegrate, or they might be able to find the root of its strength. It was their only hope.

Qui’sin raised his hand and unhooded Kemich, the psyber-hawk taking flight with a cry. Either side of him the Pinnacle Guardsmen began clicking home power packs, while the auto-loaders and mount rotations of the heavy weapons batteries built into the bastions clattered. The swarm was about to enter maximum range.

‘All Wall sections,’ crackled Joghaten’s voice over the vox. ‘Fire at will.’

The catacombs, Heavenfall

Underground, vox distortion was chopping the net. Feng and his three brothers had moved down into the catacombs east of the devotarium, seeking traces they had picked up on the auspex. Feng led them in silence. He had barely spoken a word since leaving the devotarium’s quadrangle. The quiet was at odds with his thoughts. He had seen himself, of that he had no doubt. Not a revenant, but real, tangible, present. How could it be possible?

He forced himself to focus. From what little they could pick up, it sounded as though the swarm had re-engaged the defences of the Founding Wall. Feng yearned to be on the front line, but Joghaten’s orders had been clear – they couldn’t afford to let up on the hunt for whatever was festering beneath Heavenfall. Defeating the swarm attacking from the plains would count for nothing if the city was breached from below.

He concentrated on the winding rock tunnel ahead. Heavenfall was riddled with catacombs. Most were used for storage or to shelter the slope-city’s citizens during the Furnace Season, though beneath temple district there was also numerous crypts, undercrofts and ossuary vaults. It was one such catacomb that the squad was moving through now, its walls lined with heavy, upright stone caskets containing the remains of long-dead dignitaries from the government district. The cobwebbed lumen orbs in this section of tunnel had failed, and the White Scars had fallen back on their auto-senses to pierce the dusty darkness.

‘Lower slope contacts–’ a panicked voice on one of the Pinnacle Guard frequencies clicked, before the signal was lost again; ‘–everywhere, we need–’

Feng cursed, wishing he could pick up a link to the rest of the brotherhood. It appeared fighting was breaking out in the streets and squares near the Founding Wall. He pushed back his desire to know more about what was happening on the surface. His thoughts were still haunted, memory fixed on the image of his own revenant.

Darkand was cursed, and a part of him knew he would never leave it.

Oda was on point, but at an intersection Feng took over the lead. His brothers were no longer willing to follow him, he was sure. They knew how much the loss of his old squad still plagued him. They knew he was only a remnant of his former self, shattered pieces placed back together but never fixed. They knew he saw things that were not really there.

The thought had barely entered his mind when he became aware of a presence to his left, looming between two of the upright stone sarcophaguses. It showed up on his visor’s infrared display as a patch of distortion, rather than a direct contact. He turned sharply, cancelling the visor reading with a blink and activating his pauldron’s stab lumen.

The beam of light picked out broken white ceramite. This time, Feng did not hesitate. With a roar he swung his fist at Eji’s horrific, acid-burned face, transhuman strength driven on by the need to end the nightmare he had slipped into. But there was nothing there. Feng’s gauntlet met the stone of the wall, and carried on. There was a shuddering crunch as the steedmaster punched through the tunnel side, the stone façade giving way before him.

The lumen picked out what lay beyond – a secondary tunnel, this one lower and more natural, its rocky sides craggy and scummed a rust-red with lichens and fronds. Feng stared for a moment, recalling the auspex mapping of the lower levels. This tunnel was undocumented, and it ran parallel with the one they were currently following.

‘Markings on the walls,’ Oda said from over Feng’s shoulder, painting them up on the squad’s connected visor display. Feng saw that he was right – there were scrapes around the shoulder height of a man all along the tunnel, where the lichen had been dragged free and the rock itself scarred. Whatever had caused the markings had left behind no other trace.

Feng tried the vox, but the connection was gone. Someone more prudent would likely have withdrawn to the surface and reported what they had found. But Feng, like all White Scars, was a hunter first and last.

‘Jakar, cover the rear,’ he ordered, moving into the secondary tunnel with his bolt pistol raised.

After a moment’s hesitation, his hunt-brothers followed.

The Chamber of Seers,
Iyanden Craftworld

With a harsh clatter, the seeing stones fell to the floor of the arching wraithbone chamber, scattering across its gleaming expanse.

Yenneth did not remember crying out, but she must have done – Arianna had entered at the sound. The first she knew of the warlock’s presence was her hand, helping her back into a sitting position. The farseer blinked, struggling to process past and present realities as they were unmade around her, unravelling like a thread being dragged by a spindle. A shudder ran through her body, and she realised she was clutching her spirit stone so hard the edges of the wraithbone filigree that decorated it were cutting into her slender fingers.

Arianna said nothing, but Yenneth could sense her questions. She shook her head, taking a breath and letting the present settle into being.

‘I was too late,’ she said. ‘I have done everything within my power to avoid this moment, but it is upon us regardless. I must go back to the mon-keigh city and set in train the final events. You must awake your cohorts, dear Arianna, and return to the City of Pillars.’

‘The dead do not return to us lightly,’ Arianna said. ‘Not so soon after being put to rest once more.’ Yenneth did not look at the warlock, but gestured instead at the stones scattered across the floor.

‘Tell me what you see, sister.’

Arianna took in the supposedly random fall of the stones, and realised in a heartbeat what they showed.

‘The runes of past and future, looping to form the whole.’

‘Past and future, yes,’ Yenneth agreed. ‘But where is the present? Nothing lies between the two. They lead back and consume one another.’

‘Then it is true,’ Arianna said, bowing her head. ‘I will ready our fallen brothers and sisters. The wraith hosts of Iyanden will march once more.’

The upper catacombs, Heavenfall

Fourth Tactical Squad took the upper slope catacombs. Timchet was with them. They’d lost their heavy weapons specialist, Hunt-Brother Oyunchimeg, in the first clash with the tyranids in the Hills of the Broken Bones. Timchet and his heavy bolter, salvaged from Wind Tamer, was Fourth Squad’s replacement.

Timchet had not interacted with the Tactical Marines since joining them in the troop compartment of their Rhino, responding to squad leader commands only. In truth, none of the White Scars were in the mood for exuberant back and forth – they had all lost good hunt-brothers, and the joy of a battle well fought had evaporated when it became apparent that there was another xenos attack being mounted against the wall, and possibly more already below them. The squad had been deployed high up the slope and split into two four-man combat teams, to better explore the catacombs there. These were expected to be occupied by civilians, but a sweep was necessary – contact had been lost with the evacuees within, and it was impossible to be sure that was simply the effect of Darkand’s yellow rock and soil.

Timchet was with the second combat team as it secured a registration hall and took a grav-lift down to the entrance of the nearest catacomb section. These ones, higher up on the mountainside, were the preserve of Heavenfall’s wealthier citizens. While not quite the private compartments enjoyed by those employed in the government district, the briefing dockets Timchet had memorised during the ride up the mountainside had described them as more spacious and better ventilated.

The entranceway to this particular section had been sealed off, but the leader of the combat team, a silver-haired hunt-brother named Uygai, possessed the access code.

‘Still no contact from within,’ he warned as the hatch’s locking bars disengaged automatically. ‘Be wary, brothers.’

The hatch rolled open and revealed what lay beyond – a cavernous space lit by wired lumen strips, the light illuminating ranked bunks and storage lockers.

‘Janggi, on point,’ Uygai voxed. The White Scars breached in silence, Timchet taking up the rear. Janggi’s curse told him something was wrong even before his auto-senses registered the stench of opened bodies.

Most of the people sheltered in this section of the catacombs had been wealthier than most Darkanders – artisans, educators, government district administrative staff and the families of off-worlder Imperial dignitaries or merchant and freighter captains. They had all died together though, massacred like a trapped herd of yats towards the far end of the chamber. The bunk beds and storage cabinets ranking the subterranean space were soaked with blood.

‘The entrance was sealed,’ Janggi confirmed. ‘And the grav-lift had not logged any usage since it brought the last relocation group down.’

‘Something was already down here with them,’ Timchet said quietly. ‘Perhaps it was even already among them.’ He’d barely spoken before movement at the far end of the cavern flickered across the squad’s linked auto-senses. The lumens towards the rear of the bloody chamber had failed, but the darkness could not fully hide what was lurking there.

‘Contact,’ Janggi managed to vox, before an alien shriek rent the air.

The Mountain Gate, Heavenfall

The Master of Blades had taken up a position on the Mountain Gate. Behind him Heavenfall and the Slope Road stretched, a mountain-city under siege. Ahead, the swarm engulfed all.

The Founding Wall’s defences had opened fire. Bastion-mounted artillery lobbed high explosives into the oncoming masses, churning up clouds blossoming with burning and torn xenos meat. Heavy bolters, autocannons and missile launchers were deployed, first tearing into the gargoyles sweeping down from above, then blasting gaps in the broods beneath, holes that were instantly filled. The thudding of flak turrets added to the barrage as the wall’s inbuilt, servitor-manned air defences kept the flying swarms at bay. All the while the khan was scanning the broods beneath for whatever leader-beast was controlling it. There were still synapse creatures – warriors, zoanthropes, even lesser tyrants – but nothing that seemed to be coordinating so vast a brood. The absence of a leader made striking a swift, decisive blow impossible. Such troubles enraged Joghaten’s Chogorian sensibilities.

The snap-crack of thousands of lasguns opening fire simultaneously was filtered out by the khan’s Lyman’s ear. The rapidly narrowing space between the swarm’s leading edge and the foot of the Founding Wall became brilliantly lacerated by thousands of points of light as the Pinnacle Guard poured small-arms fire into the swarm. For a moment the swiftest creatures in the alien horde, the hormagaunts and sinuous raveners, faltered.

‘Maintain fire on the leading edge,’ Joghaten instructed, his orders routed through the Pinnacle Guard’s comms systems.

There was a whirr beside him as the fixed-defence Hydra AA gun sited on top of the Mountain Gate traversed, its quad cannons opening up with air-shuddering thuds. Seconds later bisected alien remains were tumbling down around the khan. He looked up as sizzling xenos ichor splattered his armour. The brotherhood’s air support had engaged with the flocks of gargoyles that had broken through the initial salvoes of fire from the wall, combining with Heavenfall’s flak defences to paint the sky with metal and death. Those Pinnacle Guardsmen stationed to the rear of the wall’s parapets were shooting up into the sections of flock that managed to wheel below the flak barrage, searing the sky with bolts of red las.

It was carnage but, for a moment, it looked as though the swarm was stalling.

Then the tyranids unleashed firepower of their own. Bio-plasma and gouts of acid struck the wall’s parapets, sending groups of Pinnacle Guardsmen reeling back screaming as they clutched burning or dissolving flesh. Borer beetles, launched by the gargoyles swooping above, chewed through flak and flesh in an indiscriminate feeding frenzy, while venom-coated spines riddled rockcrete and dropped men who clawed at pierced faces, shoulders and backs.

The White Scars steadied the line. These were not the open plains, and their steeds were not beneath them, but they were Space Marines, the Emperor’s chosen, as immovable in defence as they were implacable in attack. Spread thin along the Founding Wall, they stood tall amidst the nightmarish alien barrage, cutting down the oncoming tide with disciplined bursts of bolter fire and directing the shots of those nearest to them.

The swarm shuddered forward then stalled once more, barely a hundred yards from the wall. Joghaten, still standing unmoving atop the Mountain Gate, looked from left to right and knew hope. If anything could stop this tide of ravenous alien filth, it was the Tulwar Brotherhood.

Then the xenos struck back once more. Too late, Joghaten realised the tide truly had turned.

The catacombs, Heavenfall

Movement through the secondary tunnel was difficult. Feng was forced to advance almost side on, power armour grinding against the ragged edges of the stone passage. The scrape markings were higher up than the old ones that seemed to mark the tunnel for its entire length. What had made them remained a mystery, as did their location or where they were headed. The auspex display was offline, blank and useless, and all communications systems were being blocked by the weight of stone and earth above. All Feng was certain of was that the passage was sloping gradually downwards. They were descending into Darkand’s depths.

After about fifteen minutes the tunnel started to widen once more. Feng’s auto-senses detected a scent on the humid subterranean air – sickly, alien. He didn’t need to open his visor to know that the tunnel was thick with the stench of xenos.

‘Light ahead,’ he voxed. ‘Possible contacts.’

They had reached the end of the tunnel. Feng found himself emerging into an uneven cavern, its ceiling a thicket of jagged stalactites. Other tunnels, similar to the one he had entered through, pierced the cavern’s walls. The light was dim, cast by a few lumen lanterns scattered across the more even parts of the floor. Feng took in the surroundings in a second – the rough stone, a littering of human remains – before focusing on those still living, occupying the centre of the room.

There were half a dozen of them. One, a prisoner, had been bound to one of the stalagmites studding the cavern’s floor. The other five, clearly alerted that something was approaching thanks to the scraping sound of the White Scars’ armour, had gathered close to the passageway’s entrance. They were not human, or at least not fully so, though clad in the ornate yat gowns and beading of the local Imperial cult; the exposed flesh of their heads and hands was pale and purple-veined, and their craniums were obscenely swollen. The five figures were staring up at Feng as he emerged, black eyes registering something akin to shock. Whatever they had expected to emerge from the tunnel, it was not a fully armed and armoured son of Jaghatai.

Feng suffered from no such hesitation – a glance was enough to know the five men were xenos-tainted. The first died from a snapshot at point-blank range, a bolt pistol round blowing away much of its torso. A second followed the first before they were able to react, Feng’s gauntlet pulverising its swollen skull as the White Scar launched himself into the cavern with a roar.

The three surviving hybrids snatched at lasrifles bearing the markings of the Pinnacle Guard. The nearest fired just as Feng, striking with all his servo-enhanced strength and speed, knocked the weapon’s muzzle aside. The las-bolt struck one of its kin, searing through its throat and dropping it immediately. A heartbeat later Feng’s bolt pistol detonated the first hybrid’s skull in an explosion of bone fragments and grey matter.

The final half-xenos’ salvo cracked squarely into Feng’s breastplate, the shots burning into ceramite and plasteel at point-blank range. Warning icons blinked on the White Scar’s visor display as his armour registered penetration and pain flared across his chest, but before he could respond the cavern resounded to another thunderous detonation – Oda, the second White Scar out of the tunnel behind Feng, had blown apart the last hybrid.

Feng dismissed the warning displays, feeling his body flood with stimms and counterseptics. A glance at the vitae readout told him the wounds were flesh only, and his enhanced physiology had already suppressed their pain.

‘Area secure,’ Oda voxed as the rest of the squad spread out through the cavern. Only one other figure now lived in the echoing subterranean space, the ageing man bound to one of the stalagmites. Though he was alone, there had clearly once been more prisoners – the cavern floor underfoot was carpeted with human remains, a few scraps of rotten meat and tendon, but mostly polished bone. The prisoner himself wore a slashed scriptorium gown, and had what appeared to be bite marks on his arms and legs. He was shaking and dull-eyed, seemingly unaware of what was happening around him.

‘No threat,’ Sauri confirmed as he scanned the man. ‘His vitae signs are low.’

‘Let him down,’ Feng ordered, boots crunching through bone as he approached. The man collapsed into Sauri’s arms as he snapped his bonds.

‘Who are you?’ Feng asked, going down on one knee so he was level with the man.

‘They turned the young ones,’ the man mumbled, not making eye contact with Feng. ‘They… they didn’t need us.’

‘It seems as though the xenos have been feeding on prisoners held here,’ Jakar said. ‘Almost all the bones have been gnawed.’

‘Where did they take you from?’ Feng asked the prisoner. He didn’t respond. He’d gone limp in Sauri’s grip. Feng’s auto-senses confirmed that he was dead.

‘Back to the surface,’ he said to the rest of the squad. ‘If this is just one of their nests the size of the taint here is greater than we thought.’

The others didn’t reply. Feng didn’t need to ask why – he’d just realised there was a noise echoing down the tunnel and into the cavern. And it wasn’t just coming from the one they’d entered through, but from all the entrances around them. It took him only a second to recognise the long, multi-limbed shadows thrown ahead of the hundreds of creatures approaching the cavern, their carapaces scraping the tunnel sides.

Genestealers.

Many of our cousins refuse to retreat. They see it as dishonourable. They are fools. Ten thousand victories have started with a retreat. The only dishonour is in not coming back.

– Vorgha, Master of Steeds,
Khan of the Bloodrider Brotherhood

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HEAVEN’S FALL

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 2 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

The Founding Wall, Heavenfall

At the rear bastions the men of Fifth Squad, Company C, First Regiment of the Pinnacle Guard watched the skies with terror. In the supply zone, at ground level immediately behind the Founding Wall, they were unable to see the nightmarish might of the tyranid swarm throwing itself at the parapets held by their comrades, but the flocks of gargoyles battling the Space Marine gunships overhead were all too visible. The thunder of the battle only added to the fear, each hammering discharge of the Earthshaker artillery pieces, set up on the bastions mere feet away, making the pale-faced soldiers flinch.

Sergeant Toren had given up trying to find the words to embolden his charges. The Fifth Squad was one of the youngest in the entire regiment, and for that reason they had been posted to the rear echelons during both the first assault on the Mountain Gate, and now during this second, unexpected attack. Besides the batwinged aliens wheeling in their shrieking flocks overhead, none of them had yet seen a tyranid.

Toren was standing in the doorway to one of the wall’s rear bastion armouries, in section two. In the half-darkness behind her the great auto-loaders rattled, the mechanised system carrying Earthshaker shells up through a hatch and onto the loading deck for the heavy artillery pieces. Half of her squad were inside the dimly lit armoury, watching over the loader and the dead-eyed servitors that hefted shells from their cradles to the clattering belt feeds. The other half were posted outside, trying to keep their eyes on the open space of the loading bay before them rather than stare up at the horrors battling overhead. Silver slope haulers would roll on their electrified wires into the bay every fifteen minutes, their carriages packed with fresh munitions brought up from the reserve catacombs. A quartermaster and his team of lifter-servitors ferried the shells into the bastion, but for the past half hour Toren had been using her squad to assist them, hoping to keep their minds off what was coming for them from the other side of the wall.

The next hauler was still a few minutes away when a squeal of tyres announced the arrival of an ochre Pinnacle Guard flatbed in the loading area. The transport had barely come to a stop before a dozen figures leapt from it – a fully armed security detail, their snarling steppe canid visors lowered.

‘Who is in command here?’ one of them demanded as he strode towards the armoury’s open blast door. Toren snapped a hurried salute.

‘First Sergeant Toren reporting, sir.’

‘I am Guardmaster Nergüi, Seventh Pinnacle Security Troop,’ said the figure, features inscrutable behind his visor. ‘This armoury is secure and functioning at maximum capacity?’

‘It is, sir,’ Toren responded.

Nergüi didn’t say anything back. He simply raised his laspistol and shot Toren through the head.

It only took a few seconds. As their sergeant crumpled back through the armoury’s doorway the half of the squad in the bay outside were cut down in a spray of fully automatic las-fire. On the inside one Guardsman reacted fast enough to scramble for the blast door’s locking wheel, but a stun grenade tossed by Nergüi left him stumbling and dazed. The security detail swept into the armoury with kindjals drawn, butchering their screaming comrades while the loading servitors continued dragging shells to the mechanised hoists, oblivious to the cold-blooded killing going on around them.

‘Glory to the Great Devourer,’ Nergüi hissed as the last Pinnacle Guardsman was silenced. ‘The demo charges, my brethren. Quickly.’

Nergüi’s kindred began taping explosive blocks to the sides of the armoury’s shell cradles, while the guardmaster closed and locked the blast door, sealing them all inside. He grinned as he did so.

All throughout the city, their brethren were striking. At long last, the day of ascension was upon them.

On the parapets of the Founding Wall, Qui’sin stumbled. The Stormseer had bent the full weight of his psychic abilities into an earth tremor that had widened a gully rift a few hundred yards out from the wall, pitching dozens of shrieking tyranids to their deaths. As the aftershocks shuddered up through the rockcrete beneath him the White Scar slumped against the parapet, panting, his grip on his force staff shaking.

That was when the vision came for him. For a split second he found himself frozen in mid-air, suspended amidst a sea of shattered stone and torn bodies. He snapped back to the present with a gasp, lurching back from the parapet.

‘Great hetman?’ Colonel Uygar enquired, shouting over the furious snap-cracking of his men’s ongoing las fusillade. Qui’sin stared about with wide eyes, even his well-trained mind struggling to accommodate the lurch from future back to present.

‘The Wall,’ he managed to say, sending a mind-imperative to Kemich that drove the airborne raptor higher. ‘Get your men off the wall, colonel.’

‘Great hetman–’ Uygar began, but it was too late. Qui’sin realised, in that double heartbeat, that they were going to die.

The Founding Wall beneath burst upwards, and for a second all was curiously slow and silent. Qui’sin felt himself lifted into the air, his transhuman senses rendering everything in painful clarity. He saw rockcrete shattering into a hundred crumbling shards, plasteel shredded into a thousand scraps of twisted metal. He saw the autocannon emplacement directly to his right break into pieces, the heavy weapon buckling, its crew flung up amidst the debris. He saw Uygar’s head struck by a spinning piece of broken parapet, the colonel’s flesh splitting and deforming around the impact before his skull cracked, brain matter splattering slowly across Qui’sin’s white battleplate. He felt his own armour taking impacts, warning sigils igniting one by one across his visor as rubble battered and pounded him.

Then the explosion blossomed, fierce and untameable, searing away flesh and bone, rockcrete and plasteel. Qui’sin was shielded from its fury, his auto-senses killing the visor glare and dampening the eardrum-bursting roar of the great detonation. Regardless, as it engulfed the Stormseer a part of his mind fled. He found himself amidst the clouds, weightless and free, drifting on air currents rent by aerial combat. He watched the explosion far below him, splitting open the Founding Wall, demolishing an entire section just north of the Mountain Gate in a great cloud of fire, smoke and rubble. He realised he was seeing it all through Kemich’s eyes and was content, just for a second, to imagine that in death he had become truly as one with the noble berkut.

It was the screaming of his armour that brought him back to his own body. His auto-senses were warning him of multiple servo impairments. He deleted the reports and was on his feet before he was even truly aware of where he was or what was happening. A Space Marine could not be stopped or stunned the way a normal human could, but the dislocation was still jarring.

His staff was still in his grasp, lashed by its cord to his wrist. The left side of his visor was unresponsive, fuzzed with static backwash. He was surrounded by a wall of dust that resisted his helmet’s wounded optics for a second. He was standing amidst furrowed, smoking dirt that had once been section two’s rear echelon bastions, while ahead of him a part of the Founding Wall almost a hundred paces across had simply disappeared, replaced by a jagged mound of scorched, broken rubble. Debris was still falling from above, dirt pattering down on the Stormseer’s befouled armour, mixed in with liquefied or burning organics. There was no one living in the space revealed by his auto-senses, only a broken wasteland, rendered in shades of gloomy ochre by the death-shroud of smoke that choked the air.

For a second, apart from his connection to Kemich, Qui’sin felt as though he was the only one still alive in the entire city.

Then the first hormagaunt came bounding over the rubble. It was followed immediately by another, and then another. The scrape and clatter of hundreds of hooves on broken rockcrete reached Qui’sin over the patter of falling remains.

Bellowing an oath to the Khagan, the Stormseer hefted his force staff, and met them head-on.

The Pinnacle Guardsmen around Joghaten fell when the explosion hit. The khan’s auto-stabilisers triggered as the shockwave struck the Mountain Gate, yet even so he was forced to steady himself. A moment later and the dust and debris hit.

A normal human would have spent long, precious seconds recovering from the detonation that shook Heavenfall to its core. Joghaten, however, took only a moment to reassess the situation as rubble clattered from his scarred armour. A long section of the Founding Wall just to the north of the gatehouse had been breached by a terrific internal explosion. It could only be a detonation in one of the reserve armouries. Whether it had been caused by an accident or treachery was impossible to say. Either way, the result was a fatal gap in the wall’s defences.

Through the smoke, Joghaten could already see the swarm shifting.

‘Reserve units to the breach, sector two,’ he voxed over the joint command frequency as the Pinnacle Guardsmen around him picked themselves up. He was met with discord over the net. A dozen panicked voices shouted over one another, demanding clarification or issuing contradictory orders. Joghaten snarled a curse and switched to a direct link to the reserve commander, Brigadier Yegem.

‘Wall sector two,’ he instructed. ‘Move everything within one mile to the breach and lay down suppressing fire. I am bringing as many of my brethren as I can muster to you.’

‘Great hetman, the governor has ordered us to withdraw,’ Yegem replied, voice shrill with distress. ‘I-I cannot countermand a direct order from the Pinnacle.’

It was treachery then. In the back of his mind the khan had feared as much. The upper echelons of Heavenfall’s command structure were causing Pinnacle Guard units to abandon their positions at the crucial moment.

‘If you are a servant of your treacherous governor, withdraw your forces,’ Joghaten told Yegem. ‘If you are a servant of mankind and the God-Emperor, follow my instructions and seal the breach. The choice is yours.’

Before the brigadier could reply Joghaten’s attention was dragged back to the gate below by a furious, ululating bellow. A shape burst through the swirling smoke blanketing the combat zone, big as a Land Raider and gaining speed. Joghaten recognised the brute form of a carnifex, and it was headed straight for the Mountain Gate, its head lowered.

‘Decrease elevation!’ Joghaten roared at the gunners manning the Hydra flak cannon. ‘Bring it down!’

The Hydra’s quad cannons lowered with painful slowness. The swarm was rushing headlong now, dragged as though by a vacuum into the breach in the wall to the right of the gate. The curtain of firepower that had been keeping them at bay was now reduced to a few stuttering las-bolts and the work of a single battery of Colossus siege mortars, sited north of the blast radius. The detonation had not only destroyed the wall, it had also broken the interlocking fire discipline that had given Joghaten cause for hope.

The Hydra finally locked into its new firing depression. The air shook as its quad cannon opened up, pumping a withering stream of heavy calibre rounds into the oncoming tyranid monstrosity. Any other creature would have been torn to pieces, yet the carnifex absorbed the worst of the damage, its thick plates of chitin riddled and cracked but its forward momentum unchecked. Worse, the Hydra’s elevation meant that it managed to lock on to the beast for only a few seconds before the xenos was beneath its arc of fire.

‘Brace!’ Joghaten bellowed to the gateway’s defenders. A second later and the carnifex impacted into the adamantium gates beneath. There was a shriek of buckling metal and the rockcrete around Joghaten shuddered. The khan did not have time to issue fresh orders, however – the carnifex was not the only tyranid to have reached the Founding Wall. The first hormagaunt leapt for the parapet, powered into an almighty leap by the thickly bunched muscles of its hind limbs. It fell short, scything talons scraping sparks from the bulwark. The second, however, cleared the edge. Its hooves clipped the rockcrete and it tumbled directly onto one of Joghaten’s drawn tulwars.

‘Bondsmen, on me,’ the khan grunted over the vox, igniting his blades as the alien tide crashed against the Mountain Gate. Beneath, the carnifex beat what remained of its armoured skull against the broken adamantium, driving the entrance to the city open even as its mangled body finally succumbed to its wounds.

The Founding Wall had fallen.

It only took a moment’s assessment for Qui’sin to realise that they couldn’t hold the breach. Already the rubble left by the detonation was swarming with gaunts, spreading like water from a burst dam into the space behind the wall and the streets beyond.

For a moment, the Stormseer was alone. For a moment every ounce of his physical and mental strength was bent towards stemming the tide. He met the gaunts skittering down the reverse side of the wall’s remains wreathed in a tornado of summoned power, the whipping elements shot through with bolts of lightning that earthed and cracked into anything that came close, flinging shrieking xenos from his path. The Stormseer’s eyes blazed with the golden light of Chogoris as he mounted the rubble, every footstep a thunderclap, his hair erect with the static charge that played and sparked across his blue-and-white battleplate.

For a moment, the weathermaker held the breach, at the eye of the tempest the power of another dimension channelled through his body and mind. That moment was enough. Like moonfins darting through cloudy water, red las-blasts started to punch through the dust kicked up by the wall’s destruction and the White Scar’s psychic potency, first a few, then dozens. Figures came charging through the gloom, bayonets fixed, shouting in fear and terror. The tyranids, unable to lay a single talon on the warrior bestriding the breach, turned aside as one, driven back by the fury of Qui’sin’s localised storm and the sudden counter-attack mounted by the prey.

The Pinnacle Guard’s First Battalion had been savaged by the blast that had broken the Founding Wall, but it had not been destroyed. Those soldiers who had survived in reserve in nearby streets, or the extreme left and right flank companies on the parapets, had initially been left stunned by the scale of the disaster and the death of Colonel Uygar.

It was Lieutenant Senga who took control as the aftershock of the mountain-shaking explosion finally faded away. Senga’s platoon had been stationed north of the armoury, and were sheltered from the worst of the blast by one of the poor hab blocks clustering the base of the slope-city, nearest the wall. While others stared in horror at the cloud of dust and smoke rising from the epicentre of the blast, Senga followed his training; he got his men on their feet and, ears still ringing, led them in a boots-pounding rush directly into the carnage, all the while barking orders to the nearest surviving units over the regiment’s short-range comms frequency.

Qui’sin only became aware of the Pinnacle Guard’s arrival when the number of gaunts flinging themselves into the psychic maelstrom he had created lessened. He was deep in a warp trance, fist clenched around his force staff like a drowning man grasping gnarled old driftwood as his mind plunged through the wild, swirling eddies of the empyrean. It was Kemich who dragged him back with her startling cry, the psy-linked familiar acting like a beacon in the storm. The winds about him died abruptly as he gasped back into full consciousness, the after-effects of the actinic lightning still darting across his energy-wreathed form.

‘We can hold them, Sky Warrior!’ shouted Senga from across the rubble to his right. Qui’sin became properly aware of the Pinnacle Guardsmen pushing up alongside him for the first time. He flinched as the aftershock of the immense powers he had just wielded washed back over him – his skull was throbbing in time with his psychic hood, its wires and dermal nodes pricking his scalp, while the staff in his fist was still vibrating as it earthed the warp-spawned potency he had called upon. He could taste blood.

‘Hold your advance,’ he told Senga, struggling to regain control of the moment before the young officer’s exuberance carried him too far. ‘My powers are spent, for the moment, and we will need more support.’

‘Governor Harren has ordered all Pinnacle Guard units to withdraw,’ Senga said. ‘I fear there will be no support, Sky Warrior.’

‘What?’ Qui’sin demanded. ‘This is the only chance we’ll have to shore this breach up. If you withdraw now the city will fall.’

‘It’s all confusion,’ Senga admitted. ‘There are reports of fighting breaking out further up the slope. Some say the tribes are rioting, others that Pinnacle Guard units have turned traitor.’

Qui’sin paused as a blinking transmission sigil on his visor display demanded his attention. It was Joghaten.

‘The Mountain Gate is breached,’ the khan said. It was obvious from his laboured breathing and the clash of blades in the background that he was as embroiled in the battle for the wall as Qui’sin.

‘The breach has not yet fallen, but it will soon without reinforcements,’ the Stormseer replied. Ahead of him the sounds of las-fire intensified. Already the edge of a fresh wave of gaunts was scrabbling through the rubble towards the makeshift defence, as numerous and implacable as ever.

‘Disengage and withdraw to secondary positions in the Old Town,’ Joghaten ordered. There was a pause, punctuated by an alien shriek, before the vox transmission continued. ‘We must tighten our defensive lines if we are to halt them.’

‘I’ve heard reports of fighting further up the slope,’ Qui’sin said. ‘We are being attacked from within as well as without.’

‘It is as we feared. I am withdrawing squads from the catacombs to reinforce our rally points in the Old Town.’

‘I must meet with you, khan,’ Qui’sin said. ‘There are words I must impart.’

‘In Old Town,’ Joghaten said, the net chopped now with interference. ‘I will meet you soon, brother.’

‘Begin a staggered withdrawal,’ Qui’sin said immediately to Senga, eyes on the gaunts now swarming over the rubble towards them.

‘But, great Sky Warrior–’ the young lieutenant started.

Qui’sin turned on him.

‘Now,’ he snapped, thrusting psychic imperative into the officer’s mind. He stumbled back, eyes wide in his red, sweat-slick face, then began issuing orders into his micro-bead as Qui’sin turned his attention back towards the oncoming tyranids.

The swarm would overwhelm the remnants of the First Regiment long before they could withdraw. They needed his power, every last ounce of it. The Stormseer pushed the fatigue brought on by his last psychic assault to the back of his mind, and clutched his force staff firmly in both gauntlets. Kemich swooped down to alight on his backpack as Pinnacle Guardsmen dropped back past him in staggered squads, firing as they went. They were brave men, good men. As the swarm poured down the reverse slope of rubble in a glittering black tide, the White Scar slammed his staff into the cracked rockcrete underfoot, and roared a word of pure power. The baking hot Darkand air, shimmering around him in the heat of the Furnace Season’s peak, ignited once more into a howling, lightning-lashed gale that slammed into the oncoming alien mass.

In the Khagan’s name, the breach would not fall. Not yet.

The Temple District, Darkand

Feng felt the alien’s claws bite deep.

There was no pain. Though the diamond-hard edges clamped around his arm and carved into the meat of his left bicep, adrenaline and battle-fury drowned the wound’s bite. Even as the genestealer dug its claws in, hissing in his face, Feng’s guan dao was driving into its midriff, disruptor field effortlessly slicing through spine and exoskeleton. The xenos monster shrieked as it fell, ichor splattering Feng’s already-scarred plate. Even as it died it clung on, until a backslash of the dao severed its arm.

They’d made it to the surface. So had the xenos. When Feng and his hunt-brothers had finally emerged onto Heavenfall’s streets, all of them wounded and ichor-plastered, they’d found the whole city locked in desperate slaughter. Feng had barely had time to transmit a warning to the rest of the brotherhood before the waves of genestealers that had nearly cornered them in the feeding chamber burst out after them. Had it not been for the narrowness of the rock tunnels, forcing the aliens to come at them one at a time, Feng knew they would all be long dead. They had battled back the way they had come for what felt like an age, back up through the catacombs, until they’d finally reached the streets above. There a Pinnacle Guard Leman Russ tank had put a series of battlecannon rounds into the building near the devotarium, demolishing it and burying their pursuers.

Or so they’d thought. Feng and his brothers hadn’t even had time to mount their bikes before the first genestealer had burst up out of the rubble. They’d started taking fire from across the street as well – well-armed hybrids in the armour of the Pinnacle Guard had left the Leman Russ a blazing wreck with a well-placed melta shot, before Jakar and Oda had flushed them out and slaughtered them in a desperate melee assault.

‘On me,’ Feng ordered over the vox. They’d turned their bike’s bolters onto the ruins of the nearest building, chewing apart each new xenos as it dragged its battered form up from the rubble. Even then, some were still getting through, a few reaching the White Scars despite the barrage of firepower.

‘A message from the Master of Blades,’ Sauri said as the squad closed in around Feng. The steedmaster had been so focused he’d missed the transmission sigil on his visor. He blink-clicked it open as Sauri once again opened fire beside him, putting down another genestealer leaping up from a rupture in the jagged rubble before them.

‘We’re to consolidate our positions,’ Feng said after a split second spent assessing the new orders. ‘Old Town and the upper slopes are the two primary rally points.’

The squad remained silent. Ever since finding the feeding chamber, they’d known they would either die within the city, or abandon it to its fate. Either way, the Fourth Brotherhood had failed. The knowledge had turned every blow to bitterness and given every wound a crueller sting.

‘Mount up,’ Feng ordered. ‘Before they breach the cordon. Coordinates are downloading.’

‘Can’t we just die here?’ Jakar grunted as he slammed a fresh magazine into his bolt pistol. Feng didn’t reprimand him. He knew he was only half joking.

The upper catacombs, Heavenfall

The catacomb shelter was littered with a fresh carpet of dead – genestealers and their hybrid offspring, piled on top of the citizens they had massacred before the White Scars had arrived. Timchet didn’t realise the xenos attack had ceased until Janggi snatched him by his pauldron and dragged him back. He stopped firing, the heavy bolter clattering to silence as he fought off Janggi’s grip.

‘We’re going,’ the Tactical Marine said, letting go and backing away. ‘You can come with us, wind rider, or you can stay here and die.’

Timchet shook his head, trying to focus. He’d lost himself completely when the genestealers had first exploded from the darkness at the far side of the catacomb shelter. The thunder of his heavy bolter had filled the cavern, drowning the firepower of the rest of the combat team as the great weapon had burst apart skulls, limbs and torsos. For a moment he’d been back on Wind Tamer, Hagai at his side once again, free to hunt, free to kill. For a moment he’d lost himself utterly as he took revenge on the hideous monsters that had killed his brother.

Reality reasserted itself. The genestealers were dead, their remains joining the rippled corpses of the Darkanders they’d butchered mere moments before the White Scars arrival. The rest of the combat squad were leaving.

‘Orders from the khan,’ Janggi said. ‘We’re redeploying to the Pinnacle.’

‘We can’t retreat,’ Timchet said, sudden anger colouring his voice. ‘We can’t let our brothers’ deaths have been in vain.’

‘We’re not retreating,’ Uygai said tersely. ‘Consolidating. A last hunt, before our end catches up with us.’

We do not truly understand Time, young one. And if we – immortal, all-seeing practitioners of arts far beyond your comprehension – cannot grasp it, what hope have you?

– Farseer Nara, Lugganath Craftworld,
at the Treaty of Dorisel

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE WEAVE OF FATE

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 1 HOUR.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

The Exchange House, Heavenfall

Joghaten and his bondsmen had dismounted. The tyranids were flooding the Mountain Gateway and the breach, the broken rockcrete and plasteel covered by a dark tide of rising chitin. Three squads – the khan’s honour guard, Subodak’s Devastators and Torchin’s Assault Marines – had rallied and held the courtyard beyond the gateway for over fifteen minutes following the initial breach. Torchin himself had fallen, the türüch run through by the bio-blades of a trio of hormagaunts. Two of his assault brothers – Sokhor and Khadan – had flung themselves into the press and managed to drag his body back, his gene-seed still intact. Sokhor had fallen seconds later, head half dissolved by a gout of bio-plasma.

In an effort to check the tyranid flood long enough to allow the wall’s defenders to withdraw further up the slope-streets, Joghaten had ordered the squads under his immediate command to rally at the Exchange House. It was the first building beyond the Mountain Gateway, a grand six-storey structure in the Imperial gothic style set on the corner of the Slope Road, that great, steep thoroughfare running from the Mountain Gate up towards the Pinnacle. The remains of Subodak’s heavy weapons specialists set themselves up on the Exchange’s roof while the bondsmen and the survivors of Torchin’s assault team garrisoned the lower floors.

‘Hold the door,’ the khan snarled as he lashed out with one boot, snapping a termagant’s spine and cracking its chitin shell. The Exchange’s main entrance was a grand affair, a short flight of stairs carved from yellow Darkand stone leading up to the double doors. The wood had already splintered and caved, but the space was narrow enough to allow the White Scars defending it to meet their attackers no more than three at a time. Joghaten stood at the centre, flanked by his bondsmen, their powerblades ignited as they sliced apart each and every xenos that set foot inside the Exchange House, slashing the marble floor with sizzling purple ichor. The rest of the honour guard and the Assault Marines were committed to the arching windows down the hallway that ran the length of the building, shattered glassaic and alien corpses crunching underfoot as they heaved back against the ravenous tide threatening to spill in and flood the lower levels of the building.

‘Leader-beast in the gateway,’ Subodak’s voice crackled in Joghaten’s ear as he physically shouldered another termagant out of the doorway, smashing its elongated skull off his battered pauldron.

‘Hive tyrant,’ the Devastator türüch elaborated.

‘So bring it down,’ Joghaten growled, parrying the scything talon of a hormagaunt as it cleared the steps to the doorway.

‘Ammunition is approaching critical levels,’ Subodak said, his voice backlit by the roars and thuds of the heavy weapons on the rooftop. ‘We need to resupply or we’ll have to start prioritising between the swarm and the leader-beasts.’

‘Hit the tyrant,’ Joghaten ordered. ‘Let me worry about the swarm.’

‘Khan-commander, xenos coming through the second floor windows,’ said the voice of Assault-Brother Waylan, cutting through Subodak’s transmission. ‘Hormagaunts. They’re leaping from below.’

‘Khuchar, take the door,’ Joghaten barked, taking a pace back from the Exchange’s entrance. Khuchar went past him, the brotherhood’s champion grinning with battle-joy as his blade replaced his khan’s in the breach.

‘Bleda, Jubai, with me,’ Joghaten said as he sprinted for the stairwell, his tulwars still crackling. The two members of his honour guard followed. Joghaten could already detect the revving of chainswords from above. He took the stairs in a few strides, nearly barrelling into a hissing gaunt as he burst into the Exchange’s upper corridor.

The thing died in an instant, its chitin and leathery flesh no match for the khan’s power swords. It had flung itself in through one of the upper windows, its powerful leap easily clearing the building’s height. More were doing so along the length of the corridor as the rest of Joghaten’s bondsmen and those Assault Marines on the upper level counter-attacked. Joghaten snatched one hormagaunt by its ribbed throat as its talons jarred off his armour, hoisting the writhing creature into the air before flinging it bodily back out of the window it had come through. It struck another bounding xenos on the way down, the two aliens disappearing with a crunch into the brood swarming at the foot of the building.

From the upper window the khan was afforded a better view of what was happening. He realised immediately that delaying their holding action any longer risked annihilation. The entire space between the Exchange House’s street and the broken remains of the Mountain Gate was an undulating carpet of tyranids. The gateway itself had been demolished, allowing easy access to the bigger leader-beasts. The firepower being laid down from the Exchange’s roof by Subodak and his brethren was hardly making any impression at all on the rising tide.

The rear of the Exchange, an open slope courtyard, could only be reached from the front by going through the building, or around the end of the street. Thus far the desperate, fighting withdrawal of Pinnacle Guard companies had stopped their position from being completely outflanked, but that situation had to change soon. If they were going to make it to a stand higher up the slope they needed to reach their bikes and the Rhino stationed in the rear courtyard.

‘Brethren, switch out,’ Joghaten voxed to all White Scars in the Exchange House. ‘Fall back on the next rally point.’

The Space Marines yielded the front rooms of the Exchange amidst a blizzard of short-range bolter fire, supporting blasts from a flurry of grenades giving them the space necessary to disengage from the voracious xenos crowding the doors and windows. The Devastators and Assault Marines switched positions, the former boarding the Rhino waiting with its engine gunning at the rear of the building while the latter took to the heat-hazed sky from the rooftop, using their jump packs to power to the adjacent block.

Joghaten’s honour guard closed around him as he reached the rear doors of the Exchange, his auto-senses reading a notable spike in external heat as he stepped out into the blistering Darkand sun.

‘Is that everyone?’ he demanded over the vox. There was a flurry of affirmations as his bondsmen fired back into the Exchange House – it was already overrun, xenos hooves skittering and clacking on polished floors as they pursued the prey.

Pursued too eagerly. Joghaten hit the detonation stud wired to his vambrace, before throwing one leg over Whitemane’s saddle.

There was a crump, followed by a concussive blast as the demo charges left taped to the front doors went off.

Old Town, Heavenfall

Qui’sin slammed his force staff into the cobbled street and roared a Chogorian phrase long outlawed among the superstitious tribes of the steppe. A bolt of lightning split the spore-befouled Darkand sky, earthing itself into the zoanthrope drifting up the narrow street. Its distended brain sac burst with a spectacular detonation, splattering the cracked, yellow stone façades of the Old Town buildings around it with a thick layer of dripping grey matter.

The Stormseer staggered slightly, and was caught by Jeddah’s steadying hand. The annihilation of the zoanthrope had left a psychic aftershock behind it, a splitting headache that was only worsened by the strain already being put on Qui’sin’s mind. Channelling Darkand’s natural wrath was becoming progressively more taxing as the world slipped further and further into the clutches of the tyranids. The Stormseer steadied himself with his staff as Jeddah barked orders to his combat squad. Qui’sin had linked with them and Zabeg’s reserve Tactical Marines during the retreat up the slope from the Founding Wall. Few of the Pinnacle Guard who had stood with the Stormseer at the breach had survived the relentless waves of xenos that had poured into the city after them. The last he had seen of Lieutenant Senga, the young officer had been leading the ragged remnants of his platoon in a fighting retreat north-east. Qui’sin had become lost in the powers of the warp, and when he had re-emerged the Guardsmen were gone. Worse, the White Scars had been completely blocked out from the Pinnacle Guard’s comm-nets – presumably it was another deliberate act of sabotage.

‘Fire shift, target the gaunts,’ Jeddah snapped at his Tactical Marines. The zoanthrope had been acting as the cornerstone of the tyranid swarm flooding up through the heart of Old Town. With its destruction the lesser xenos had been thrown into momentary confusion. Jeddah and his Tactical Marines took advantage of it as best they could, closing into rapid fire range and slaughtering the leading termagants with a hail of bolts. There was a familiar whoosh-crump as Brother Taigar ignited his flamer, coating a swathe of howling, squealing xenos in a gout of blazing promethium. The stink of burning alien flesh caught in Qui’sin’s throat, penetrating even his helm’s filters.

The Stormseer used the brief lull brought about by Jeddah’s counter-attack to collect himself, steadying his breathing and seeking balance. The amount of concentration required of him and the sheer power he had been channelling for the past hour had left him shaking and weak. His psychic hood was throbbing, struggling with the mind-crushing strength of the Great Devourer and the shadow it had cast over the slope-city. It felt like claws scratching on the inside of his skull, scraping away incessantly. He turned his mind to the situation reports blinking across his visor, using them to centre himself.

They did not make for encouraging reading. The Founding Wall had now been breached at four different points besides the Mountain Gate and the initial blast site. Imperial forces had been completely driven back from over a third of the outer defences, and two major prongs of xenos ingress were driving up the slope-streets on either side of Old Town’s steep, tiled houses. The brotherhood were battling for every inch of Heavenfall’s mountainside, but a glance told the Stormseer that those squads holding Old Town were minutes away from being cut off. Bar a few Pinnacle Guard units still operating alongside other White Scars squads, they didn’t even have the support of Heavenfall’s human defenders anymore.

The khan had clearly come to the same realisation. Fresh orders overlaid the tactical updates, routed through to Jeddah and Zabeg’s squads.

Withdraw. New rally coordinates uploaded.

They were to abandon Old Town, before the swarms that had broken the last vestiges of the Pinnacle Guard units holding the tannery complex to their south and the tramline haulage depot to their north cut across the slope and collapsed their flanks. The rally point was close to where Joghaten had placed himself after pulling back from the Exchange building, right on the edge of the government district, in a legislative review office-turned-strongpoint.

‘Zabeg to cover the withdrawal,’ Qui’sin voxed to the two combat squads as he blink-acknowledged the khan’s orders. ‘Watch the alleys either side, brothers. We are about to be enveloped.’

Jeddah’s Tactical Marines backed up the street as the swarm they had been savaging collected itself, hissing and snapping while the hive mind once more assumed control. Despite the death of the zoanthrope, they hadn’t immediately scattered. Black smoke from the burning remains of those gaunts doused in flame by Taigar shrouded the street, twisting and broiling in the spore-choked air. The old stone buildings echoed with the thunderclap reports of the White Scars’ bolters as they pushed further up the slope.

The other half of Jeddah’s squad joined the combat team at the far end of the street, where the Old Town’s warren of winding stairways and precarious red-tiled buildings gave way to the pale colonnades and arching windows of the government district.

The xenos had already passed through. A group of tribespeople, clearly fleeing from further down the slope, had been caught by a brood of hormagaunts halfway across a slope haulage junction. The dozen or so unfortunates had been sliced to strips of bloody yat wool and torn meat by the wicked talons of the lithe aliens. The gaunts themselves came at the White Scars from across the haulage wires, the air filled with their hissing and the clatter of hooves on cobbles as they leapt for their prey.

‘For Chogoris!’ Qui’sin bellowed as he swept his force staff in a vicious arc, pulverising the skull of the first xenos to leap at him. Jeddah and his squad managed to cut down the lead attackers with bolter fire before those behind reached them, talons cracking viciously off scarred white ceramite.

The melee did not last long – the brood was not a numerous one, and the White Scars were lent fresh vigour by the bodies of the slain tribespeople they fought over. They had come to Darkand to uphold their honour and protect these people, and they were failing. Their shame bred a ferocity above and beyond even the warlike traditions of the steppes.

For the moment, however, the dead tribesfolk were not Qui’sin’s concern. There was something far more troubling at hand, something that only became truly apparent as he put a bolt pistol round through the skull of the last hormagaunt, while its talons scraped and scarred his battleplate. The brood they had just slaughtered had attacked with single-minded determination and relentlessness. Likewise, the termagants further back down the slope in Old Town had rallied almost as soon as Qui’sin had destroyed the zoanthrope that had been coordinating them. Yet there didn’t appear to be a leader-beast anywhere nearby. Neither the auspex nor the Stormseer’s psychic intuition – what remained beyond the incessant scraping of the Shadow in the Warp – had detected anything. And yet the aliens’ drive and coordination had remained total.

Qui’sin kicked the remains of the twitching hormagaunt away and signalled to Jeddah.

‘Press on to the rally point. I am going to join the khan. I must speak with him in person.’

The Government District, Heavenfall

Genestealers. They’d known they were here, but now that confirmation was finally coming in over the vox the reality of the situation hit home. The Fourth Brotherhood were pinned between defending the wall and clearing the catacombs. Worse, they weren’t numerous enough to provide protection to either the nomad tribes or Heavenfall’s citizens. The first report, from a combat team led by Uygai, had spoken of a massacre in one of the subterranean Furnace Season shelters. Others were confirming similar events – the xenos had already slaughtered hundreds, probably thousands beneath Heavenfall’s streets, and the White Scars hadn’t even been aware of it.

‘We need to create a cordon,’ Joghaten said. Qui’sin stood before him. The khan had set up his new makeshift command centre in the Canton Five Legislative office, a functional Administratum building close to the Pinnacle. The building, far up the slope, had not yet come under attack, but the auspex had picked up hostile contacts moving in the surrounding streets. Joghaten and Qui’sin stood in the remains of a scriptorum office, its lecterns overturned and papers and data-slates scattered across the floor, while the khan’s bondsmen guarded the doors.

‘Safe zones are impossible while the xenos retain control of the sewers and subterranean passages,’ Qui’sin said. ‘And, given the extent of the infestation, by the time we establish any, ninety per cent of Heavenfall’s population will be dead anyway. After that it’s merely a question of how long until we’re overrun.’

Qui’sin knew that Joghaten already understood the situation. It did not take over a century of combat experience to know that the defence of Heavenfall had failed, even if the khan-commander’s pride stopped him from admitting it. There were only two choices remaining – annihilation or retreat. Word from Tzu Shen put him an hour out from high orbit, returning to the planet with all haste. He had believed he was coming back to a triumphant brotherhood, only to discover that, somehow, the xenos had outwitted them. Even with the dire nature of his visions and the eerie psychic presence he had sensed in the city, Qui’sin had not predicted the scale of the alien infiltration. They would be lucky to hold on until Shen even reached orbit.

‘The Furnace Season will weaken them,’ Joghaten said. ‘Temperatures out there are almost beyond human ability to withstand. It must have some effect on the xenos.’

‘Their kind have seeded more hostile worlds than this,’ Qui’sin pointed out. ‘Ice wastes to desert tundra, they transform it all. The spores choking the atmosphere have stopped the Furnace Season from reaching peak temperatures, and the climate will only deteriorate further unless they are exterminated from the planet’s surface.’

A sigil lit up Joghaten’s visor. He accepted the transmission in time to catch a jarring blast of static, followed by the familiar thunder of bolters.

‘The xenos have broken through along the upper slope, sector three,’ crackled the voice of Delbeg, commander of the brotherhood’s First Tactical Squad. ‘It looks as though they’re trying to pincer the government district.’

‘Standby,’ Joghaten instructed, turning back to Qui’sin as the Stormseer spoke again.

‘We’re still unable to make any contact with Pinnacle Guard units or the centrum dominus. Harren has either been compromised, or is already dead. Many of the tribes have been cut off along the lower slopes as well. We do not have the time or sufficient numbers to counter-attack.’

Joghaten knew the Stormseer was right, but the truth made him snarl with frustration. They were failing. Death, dishonour, total annihilation at the hands of these vile creatures – it was a fate the Master of Blades railed against.

Before the khan could speak a terrific blast tore through the scriptorium, a stand of data files near to Joghaten disintegrating in a wall of white light. His arms went up and his armour locked, but there was no blast wave or wall of debris. Only a rush of wind-flung files and slates from the shelves and whipped-up scrolls and loose pages around them.

The light remained, a corona of white brilliance that even the Space Marine’s auto-senses could not dull. Joghaten’s hands closed on the hilts of his tulwars as a shape materialised from the blazing halo.

+Those will not serve you this time, mon-keigh.+

The words leapt into the khan’s mind, sharp and cold. He felt his hands freeze.

‘Witch,’ he spat, turning to Qui’sin. The Stormseer had gone rigid, both hands clutching his force staff, its skull top wreathed with warpfire. Kemich had taken off and was circling the scriptorium’s wind-whipped vault, shrieking.

‘I cannot resist her,’ the Stormseer managed through clenched teeth.

+Nor do you have reason to,+ the figure added. It was clad in a tall helm and robes, but remained a black shade silhouetted by the light at its back. Regardless, Joghaten recognised the creature’s unnaturally tall, slender form. It filled him with skin-crawling, gut-twisting revulsion.

‘Out of my head, eldar,’ the khan snarled, taking a pace forward.

The silhouette stood its ground, robes whipping in the wind that scythed through from the ether behind it.

‘I have come to treat with you, Joghaten Khan of the White Scars,’ the figure said, this time speaking openly. ‘You face annihilation, you and all your brothers. Only I can turn the tide of these events.’

‘You have picked an ill time to show yourself, skulking witch,’ Joghaten said. ‘My heart cries out for your head.’

‘Then try listening to your own head for once,’ the figure said. ‘I am Yenneth, farseer of the craftworld of Iyanden, and the offer I make you now is one I have already brought before your seer.’

Joghaten turned to look at Qui’sin. The Stormseer was obviously suffering more than the khan, his more highly attuned psychic senses unable to bear the presence of the powerful xenos witch.

‘Ever sowing discord,’ the Stormseer grunted, finding the strength to shake his head.

‘Yet never without purpose,’ the figure that had called itself Yenneth said. ‘Your seer will not tell you, Joghaten Khan, so I must. The vanquisher of your old master is near at hand.’

‘Your kind have plagued this world for millennia,’ Joghaten said. ‘Why should I believe anything you say?’

‘Because I have the power to turn your fates on their heads. The choice between annihilation and flight is a false one. Strike a blow against the ones who slew your brothers, and I can save both you and this world.’

‘How is that possible?’ Joghaten demanded. ‘How can you unmake what has already taken place?’

‘Your seer knows such things are not beyond the realm of possibility.’

‘Is what she says true?’ Joghaten said, rounding on Qui’sin.

The Stormseer nodded.

‘Or it could be a trap.’

‘Trap or not, it is your last hope for saving this city and the people you have led to it,’ the eldar said. ‘Our dark kin prevent me from coming to your aid, but if you join us against them they can be overcome. The blood of your former lord is still wet on their blades.’

The silhouetted figure raised one hand, and the portal behind her flickered. Images pierced the brilliance, shapes that resolved into wicked, barbed forms. Joghaten recognised the porcelain-white flesh and bladed spine-plates of the eldar’s dark slaver cousins. Worse, he knew one in particular. Memories of the brotherhood’s last hunt on Darkand flashed back. The rush of the wind, the whickering of splinter barbs, the ululating shriek of xenos skimmers, the roar of bike engines and the bark of bolters. He remembered too the face he now saw in the farseer’s portal. It was female, sharp and vicious, with a sickeningly cruel grin.

‘You know her,’ the farseer said. ‘She slew the master of your brotherhood, the one you called Arro’shan.’

The vision swam and refocused. Joghaten saw a White Scars helmet fixed to the xenos creature’s belt. Though cracked and defiled by wicked eldar runes, it was one he would have recognised anywhere – its twin, marked with a red lightning bolt, was mag-locked to his own belt. It had belonged to Arro’shan before he had fallen, fighting the xenos scourge. Joghaten felt his secondary heart kick in with a thud of adrenaline. He snarled.

‘She is near,’ the farseer said, reading the Space Marine’s raw aggression. ‘On the other side of the webway, blocking my access through it. I will guide you there and in exchange I will give you the power to end the threat of the Devourer here.’

‘False promises,’ Joghaten snapped. ‘Stop speaking in riddles and explain, or I will cut you down where you stand and take your skull for the White Road.’

‘You could not, even if you tried,’ the farseer responded. ‘The paths I will tread for you are beyond your comprehension, but this much is not – we have nothing to gain by betraying you today, and everything to lose. Our enemies are mutual, and your destruction is guaranteed without my intervention. Whether or not you deny such truths to me right now, I can see that in your heart you understand them.’

‘We are not some xenos’ puppets.’

‘Nor am I asking for you to be. Take vengeance for your slain brother, Joghaten Khan, and save those who look to you for leadership. If you travel west, onto the plains, and reach the rocks you call the Gates of Eternity, I will guide you from there. You must go now, though. We are already out of time.’

Joghaten started to respond, but the vision was already beginning to fade. The silhouette was swallowed up by the portal’s brilliance, becoming rapidly more slender, until it was lost completely in the light. The ethereal wind that had been whipping around the room was suddenly gone. There was a crack of displaced air, and then the portal itself disappeared. Sudden silence gripped the scriptorium, broken only by the rustle of loose papers drifting to the floor.

Joghaten spoke first.

‘This witch has already visited you?’ he asked Qui’sin, turning towards the Stormseer. The weathermaker stood before Joghaten, unflinching, and there was a scrape as Kemich alighted on his pauldron, feathers ruffled.

‘She has, brother. She came to me speaking the same lies she told you. I am only sorry I could not keep her presence at bay.’

‘Perhaps it is well you did not,’ Joghaten said tersely. ‘Her intervention changes things.’

‘For the worse,’ Qui’sin went on. ‘When have the eldar ever offered honest aid? She is seeking to manipulate us for some dark purpose.’

‘Darker than the one that has already befallen us?’ Joghaten exclaimed. ‘The last of the people we came here to protect are being slaughtered even as we waste time with words, and we are not numerous enough to save even a fraction of them!’

‘I rail against what is happening as much as you, Master of Blades, but the witchcraft the xenos proposes is beyond dangerous. She will seek to manipulate reality itself to suit her own agenda.’

‘You know all this?’ Joghaten snapped. ‘What other counsel have you withheld from me, weathermaker? What have your true masters in the Ayanga told you?’

‘Nothing, but there is a presence newly arrived in this city, khan-commander, a psychic one. It is familiar, and yet I do not know it.’

‘The witch?’

‘No, it is not alien. I do not know how it has come to be here, or why.’

‘Your riddles are worse than the xenos,’ Joghaten said. ‘And I have had enough of both. A decision must be reached.’

‘My visions have failed the brotherhood thus far,’ Qui’sin said eventually. ‘You yourself see the options before us, my khan. I will not presume to offer counsel any longer.’

‘You are wise for your years, Qui’sin,’ Joghaten responded. ‘But those years are still few. There are no easy answers to the troubles of command.’ There was silence before Joghaten spoke again.

‘My heart yearns to die here, brother,’ he said eventually, his hawkish, warlike expression grown dull and distant. ‘To flee now, to abandon the honour world… it is unthinkable.’

‘To a hunt-brother rising through the ordu, perhaps,’ Qui’sin said. ‘But it should not be unthinkable to one of your rank, khan-commander. With all respect, you can no longer act like one of Arro’shan’s bondsmen, bound to honour and personal glory. The lives of the entire brotherhood are in your hands, not just your own. If we stay and die here, needlessly, the Chapter will suffer. Even in the best of times, Chogoris can ill afford the loss of an entire ordu. And these are very far from the best of times. All of us yearn to meet an honoured death, rather than abandon whatever remains of these peoples. But honour and duty are not one and the same, and we have a duty beyond Darkand. A duty to the Khagan.’

‘The Khagan,’ Joghaten echoed. ‘What would he think of us now, weathermaker? The Imperium stood upon a precipice, yet he carried the Great Hunt on into the unknown of the webway, seeking glory and vengeance. If such an act befitted our primarch, would it not also befit us?’

‘Vengeance,’ Qui’sin said, slowly and firmly. ‘Arro’shan’s spirit still wanders, lost while his killers remain unrepentant. To abandon this place to its fate risks dishonour, yes, but there is no dishonour in skinning the xenos scum who took him. If we are doomed regardless, I can think of no better end for the Brotherhood of Blades. I am sure my hunt-brothers would concur.’

‘I will hesitate no more,’ Joghaten said, one fist clenched to a tulwar’s hilt while he activated the brotherhood-wide vox frequency. ‘All hunt-brothers, standby for priority transmission.’

Remember young ones, your truest and most constant companion is your own shadow.

– Jodagha, Master of Braves,
Khan of the Windspeaker Brotherhood

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ETERNITY’S THRESHOLD

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

The Slope Road, Heavenfall

The brotherhood rode. Joghaten rallied the hunt on the Slope Road running between the temple and the government districts. The brotherhood’s air cover closed in above, lacerating the surrounding streets with heavy bolter rounds, assault cannon bursts and frag rockets. Aerial spotting and auspex readouts showed a swelling mass of hostile contacts – a vile morass of hybrids and their genestealer masters – flooding Heavenfall’s slopes. They burst from hab basements and sewer chutes, warehouse blocks and storage depots. The nearest were flocking towards the assembling brotherhood from all sides, driven on by whatever alien will directed them from Heavenfall’s depths.

‘Lance, take us forward,’ Joghaten commanded over the vox. The booming discharge of a battle cannon, echoing like a thunderclap up the long, steep road, came back as an answer.

The brotherhood’s armour was to spearhead the breakout. The Vindicator, Khan’s Lance, took the lead, its heavy dozer shield starting to grind xenoforms mercilessly as it lurched forward. Its battle cannon hammered out another shell, obliterating a clutch of onrushing gaunts in a hail of fire and shattered masonry. The air filled with dust and exhaust smoke as the Rhinos followed, flanked along the wide thoroughfare by the remnants of the bike squadrons. Joghaten kicked Whitemane forward down the column’s right side, horsehair plumes snapping overhead.

Around them there was nothing but xenos infestation. Aliens and deformed hybrid monstrosities swarmed from alleys and side streets towards the Slope Road, the unbearably hot air thick and heavy with the scraping of their claws and carapaces, and the hissing of their reptile-like communications. Joghaten and his bondsmen helped keep the flank of the column clear, the khan slamming Whitemane into one alien swarm-beast after another, the tyres running with ichor, one tulwar snapping out at anything that came too close. Qui’sin led the other flank, force staff crackling with the energies of the storm. Organic bio-weaponry rained down on the White Scars, their proud armour long reduced to scarred silver or splattered viscera. The column’s firepower, however, stopped the xenos from massing an effective amount of force at any single point along the route of their advance. Joghaten and the other bikers would snap a warning when a particularly dense knot of aliens burst from the adjoining streets, and bolters and heavy weapons from the squads firing from the Rhino’s opened tops would disperse the swarm.

The brotherhood’s Predators brought up the rear, turrets rotated back, savaging any pursuing broods that drew too close. From the rooftops either side Joghaten tracked the twin assault squads keeping pace. On three occasions they caught packs of hybrids armed with grenade launchers and tube charges preparing ambushes from the roofs of hab blocks, ripping them apart with chainswords and bolt pistols before they could decimate the armour below.

They failed to catch the fourth attempted ambush. Two xenos-twisted humans had secreted themselves in the upper storey of a yat wool loom mill. They waited until most of the column had passed before revealing themselves. A krak rocket corkscrewed from their vantage point, twisting wildly off course before darting back down onto its intended target – the rearmost Predator, Hetman’s Pride. It struck the weaker top armour just behind the turret, penetrating before detonating. The tank’s thermic combustor reactor ignited, a mushrooming fireball killing the crew instantly and shrouding the end of the street in flames and smoke. The Predator’s killers didn’t have time to reload before a vengeful salvo from White Road’s autocannon riddled the upper floor of the mill and shredded them both.

Another ambush caught Shontai’s assault brothers three blocks short of the remains of the Mountain Gate. The hybrids attempting to set up a heavy autocannon on the top of a fast food outlet were simply bait. As the Assault Marines dropped down to slaughter the pathetic creatures, their masters – a brood of genestealers – burst from the access stairwell and flooded the rooftop. Two hunt-brothers, Chimbai and Dargan, were torn apart by the lightning-fast attackers before the rest of the squad could pull away, dropping a clutch of frag grenades in their wake.

By the time the brotherhood had broken out to the gateway the city was completely overrun. They had seen no tribesmen during their withdrawal, only a sea of xenos. The communications channels now returned nothing at all but static. Heavenfall was a slaughterhouse. Joghaten knew he had failed, and the realisation made his stomach clench and every muscle burn with a violent, passionate shame.

The Mountain Gate was no more, reduced to a breach of crushed rubble by the pounding entrance of hulking xenos monsters. Khan’s Lance rumbled through the remains, its great cannon primed, but there was no resistance. Beyond, the plains of Darkand stretched, bare but for the dark piles of xenos dead. Jaw set, Joghaten looked back over his shoulder. Behind, up the long Slope Road towards Heavenfall’s Pinnacle, there was nothing but a dark morass of alien xenoforms, all pouring after them. It was already far, far too late to turn back. After one more moment of hesitation he opened the link to the rest of the surviving White Scars and raised his right hand, fingers splayed.

‘Brothers, ride.’

The Chamber of Seers,
Iyanden Craftworld

‘They are coming.’

Yenneth stood before the council of Iyanden, robes drawn tight around her, runelights playing over the wraithbone arches of the seeing chamber. Her kindred remained silent, critical, she was sure, of her every breath. Regardless of what the fates willed, what she was about to do risked the fabric of reality itself.

‘I have dispatched Arianna and her phalanx to the City of Pillars,’ she continued, her voice echoing around the dark chamber.

‘We know,’ Hildar replied. ‘We shall soon discover whether your trust in the mon-keigh is misplaced or not.’

‘I do not trust them,’ Yenneth said. ‘I trust the path I have set them upon. I have reactivated the gateway, to the best of my abilities. I will join Arianna while my spirit walks on Darkand.’

‘We shall see soon enough whether the path you have chosen does indeed run straight and true,’ Hildar said. ‘Go now, sister, and complete the act you have begun, for better or for worse. We shall be waiting.’

The Gates of Eternity, Darkand

The remains of the Fourth Brotherhood reached the stone pillars of the Gates of Eternity as dawn was turning the steppes blood-red. The pollution in the atmosphere had grown worse, the rising sun given the appearance of an angry, infected wound-scab as it climbed wearily into Darkand’s discoloured sky. The Furnace Season had lost its edge due to the infestation, the heat burning away countless billions of alien microbes in the atmosphere but barely reaching the plains beneath.

The White Scars had ridden through the night. Three times they had engaged – purging xenos spore stacks, digestion pits and birthing pools, taking root like foul plants out around what had been the largest tyranid seeding areas. The Rhino transports remained at the heart of the column. Half of them were now like tribal mortuary carts, filled with the brotherhood’s precious bodies and what equipment they had salvaged from Heavenfall. Dorich’s narthecium was bloody and full.

As the brotherhood arrived power was arcing between two of the pillars of stone that constituted the Gates of Eternity, bolts of energy leaping from one to the other with reports that boomed out over the plain. The eldar witch, Yenneth, was waiting for them, standing on one of the great, jagged yellow rocks at the edge of the erratic formation. There was a strange wind whipping around the stones, snatching at the eldar’s robes and making her charms and stones rattle eerily. Her form seemed to flicker when Joghaten focused on it, like a faulty pict-feed. Another illusion.

‘This is the heart of your portal on Darkand?’ Joghaten called up to the xenos as he brought Whitemane to a halt at the base of the rock. Behind him the battered column waited, engines growling, weapons primed. ‘This is where you have plagued our systems from all these millennia?’

‘It is one gateway, yes,’ the farseer allowed, her voice sounding strange and distant on the scything wind. ‘The largest, but there are others, as I’m sure you now know. Even in your fallen city.’

‘What lies beyond?’ Joghaten demanded. He’d already drawn a tulwar, and now gestured with the wicked weapon at the crackling nimbus of energy wreathing the stone pillars.

‘The webway,’ the farseer responded. ‘And your nemesis. She and her kindred occupy an abandoned, dead place we call the City of Pillars. Slay her there and scatter her band, and I will lead you back here. All will be remade.’

Joghaten turned to Qui’sin, who now rode beside him at the head of his bondsmen. The Stormseer’s helmet was mag-locked to his belt, his features tight and grim. He merely shook his head.

‘All is as the Khagan wills it,’ Joghaten said, as much to himself as to his brothers. ‘Did he not face this very same choice, almost ten thousand years ago?’

Behind them the remains of the brotherhood watched on, tense with expectation. They had been quiet since leaving Heavenfall, their oaths and boasts turned to ash by the defeat they had suffered. Joghaten knew their souls were torn, pride sundered by their failure to protect the hundreds of thousands who had looked to them as champions and saviours.

‘Make your decision,’ the farseer called.

Joghaten twisted in the saddle and raised his blade. The dawn light caught it, running with the actinic blue of the portal to create a kaleidoscopic brilliance that glimmered before the eyes of the brotherhood.

‘We have reached the end, brethren,’ the khan called out, routing his words through every vox band and frequency. ‘Our end. Let there be no doubts. We have failed. Our charges lie dead, and many of our own brothers have been sacrificed for nothing.’

None replied. Joghaten went on, words punctuated by the booming discharges of the webway portal.

‘You all know me. You know how I cleave to the memory of our great Khagan, how I have sought to emulate him and honour his memory since the first day I was taken from the steppes to the mighty Quan Zhou. We all know his story, and we know where he rides still, beyond the ken of man.’

He lowered his tulwar, so that it pointed at the alien gateway.

‘There, beyond the veil of reality, our primarch hunts. There we will find vengeance for our brothers fallen on this same plain, all those years ago. I will personally take the head of the xenos filth who slew the great Arro’shan Khan. And, if we are found worthy, I will lay it at the feet of the Khagan. We shall find him, and in doing so we will atone for what has happened here.’

This time there was a response, a low growl undercut by mutterings of affirmation and vengeance. Joghaten ignited his tulwar, energy streaking across the weapon’s razor edge.

‘We ride from reality into the unknowable beyond. We shall not return, not in this life. Our fleet will carry word of what happens here today back to Chogoris. All will know of the Tulwar Brotherhood. All will know of our last hunt.’

It is never about trying to convince the mon-keigh to trust us, for they never will. It is about showing them that they have no choice in the matter.

– Attributed to Farseer Eldarian, Yme-loc craftworld.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CITY OF PILLARS, CITY OF BLOOD

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
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TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
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The City of Pillars, the Webway

The City of Pillars had become a place of death, a slaughter-yard for a cousin’s feud. Skalorix, archon of the Kabal of the Pierced Eye, let out a shriek as her raider dipped into a stomach-turning dive, giggling like a young drukhari at her first slave-whipping. She clutched the edge of the barbed skimmer’s cupola with just one hand, revelling in the rush, in the knife-edge danger of the transport’s twists and turns. Its pilot, Vornex, was her favourite. More so than any in the Kabal of the Pierced Eye, he knew how to fly the drukhari way – unnecessarily risky, unbeatably exhilarating. Skalorix’s incubi, impassive behind their daemonic white masks, remained locked to the deck around her, like guardians watching over a child while its parents were absent.

‘Hit them again,’ the archon hissed into the communicator. The splinter cannons spat once more, and her sharp features twisted with delight as her raider made a low pass over another spirit-phalanx, riddling the wraithbone automatons with razor barbs. Though none fell, they shuddered and buckled beneath the barrage. Reality screamed and shuddered around the speeding raider as it took return fire, wraithcannons tearing hairline cracks in space and time. None could hit the skimmer, however, as it darted up over the edge of the broken amphitheatre the aeldari were making their stand in.

The attacks had started mere minutes earlier, and in truth Skalorix was more than happy to see her cousins converging on her kabal’s positions once more. Holding the City of Pillars had never truly been about defending the webway gate. She needed slaves and, even more importantly, spirit stones if the fortunes of the Pierced Eye were to be truly revived.

She’d known Yenneth and her ghost-constructs would return, seeking to dislodge her either by force or misplaced lies about the Devourer. This time, however, Skalorix would make sure she did not let any of her foolish cousins leave the City of Pillars.

It was like waking from a dream. For the briefest moment, Joghaten didn’t know where he was. He found himself and his bondsmen racing through a wide, deserted street, flanked by the husks of tall, pale stone buildings. The eyes of alien gods looked down upon him from either side, the graven images scarred by time and neglect. Overhead impossible constellations swirled through a deep blue sky, etheric brilliance shining down on a forgotten city locked in a bubble of unreality. Whitemane’s roar was his only comfort, rebounding from the walls around him.

Then figures flitted across his vision, barbed shadows at the far end of the street. He remembered.

He’d been the first through, the first to pass beyond the crackling gateway and into the unknowable realm of the aeldari. The strange city he found himself in now had been built by the eldar, that much was clear, for in the tall, slender buildings, crystalline trees, broad boulevards and statues carved from strange, bone-like substances, their handiwork was certain.

The vox was down and Whitemane’s auspex display was a scrambled mess, but Joghaten needed neither to tell him that he wasn’t alone after all. Behind him he heard the roar of assault bikes, and the keening battle-yell of the steppes. Grinning wildly, the Master of Blades depressed his firing studs.

Two figures ahead convulsed and fell, spindly forms eviscerated by the hail of bolts. Joghaten recognised the wicked, sickeningly slender forms of dark eldar raiders, scurrying to respond to the sudden attack from the reactivated webway portal.

If there was any force in the galaxy – or beyond it – that was not going to give them time to recover, it was the White Scars.

The remains of the Fourth Brotherhood speared from the active webway gate, actinic energies trailing after them. The forgotten streets and alleys of the City of Pillars were suddenly alive and throbbing with the fury of dozens of overcharged engines as the Space Marines ploughed straight into the first contacts that registered on their auto-senses.

It was the brotherhood’s pilots who reaped the swiftest tally. The Stormhawks and Stormtalons came through the eldar gateway with unerring speed and accuracy, climbing immediately into attack runs on the first airborne xenos craft they spotted.

There were plenty, but none had expected to find their rear echelons under attack. Heavy bolter and assault cannon rounds punched through the light xenos, sending two raiders slamming with fatal speed into roofs and walls.

Drayang caught another flyer as it rose from what looked like some sort of ancient amphitheatre. The area around the tiered stone seats bore the heaviest enemy presence, and Drayang’s Stormhawk took fire from a darting xenos fighter that almost took out his left afterburner. It was while twisting away that the Stormhawk found the raider rising directly up into its sights.

The alien skimmer jinked and turned away with more speed and skill than any airborne object had any right to, but it was too late. A spray of assault cannon rounds hammered its fuselage, causing it to tip suddenly and violently. It clipped the amphitheatre’s flank and dropped back into it, vanishing from Drayang’s target lock. The whole exchange lasted perhaps three seconds before the Stormhawk had passed overhead and then dropped down to street level to shake its new pursuer. The dark eldar fighter followed with a skill not even the Adeptus Astartes could match. Two streets beyond the amphitheatre, its dark lance speared straight through the Stormhawk, blasting it apart in mid-air.

Drayang died without knowing he had brought down the drukhari archon’s raider.

In the shadows of the City of Pillar’s ruinous temple of Khaine, Iyanden’s assembled warrior council waited on their farseer’s command. Yenneth stood with her head bowed and both hands grasping her staff, feeling Arianna’s mind caress her own. The mon-keigh had arrived, she realised. Even better, their sudden assault from the webway portal had left Skalorix and her personal retinue stranded.

‘We must strike,’ she said to the council, who were standing, robed and armoured, in the jagged shade of the temple’s broken columns. The sound of splinter rifle fire and the rip-scream of wraithcannons echoed around the neighbouring streets.

‘It will take them only minutes to recover the initiative. Skalorix must die.’

‘What of the mon-keigh?’ one of the warlocks, Yetoc, asked. ‘What if they attack us as well?’

‘Focus on the drukhari,’ Yenneth urged. ‘But, if need be, slay the mon-keigh too. There is no time now for hesitation.’

As the council set off Yenneth reached out with her mind, seeking the mon-keigh’s leader one last time. This was what she had brought them here for. For better or for worse, the path she had chosen for them all was nearly at an end.

The witch was in his mind again. Joghaten had come to a halt on the corner of some sort of shattered temple, eldar blood dripping from his blades and bike. His White Scars had rallied to him, those who had managed to stay at his side thus far – his bondsmen, Qui’sin, Feng’s riders and the Fourth Tactical Squad. Vox communication was seemingly impossible. At this stage there was nothing to do but kill. Until the farseer spoke to him again.

+She is close, huntsman,+ said the voice. +Travel east. Your vengeance is at hand.+

Joghaten turned to Qui’sin, whose bike was idling next to Whitemane. The Stormseer merely nodded. Joghaten raised his right hand, palm open, fingers splayed.

‘Ride.’

Skalorix and her retinue were stranded at the bottom of the City of Pillar’s crumbling amphitheatre, their raider brought down by a crude mon-keigh flyer. Aeons before, the open-air space had played host to the troupes of the Harlequinade and their breathtaking recreations of the heights and depths of the aeldari’s existence. Now it was a scene of slaughter, brutal and uncomplicated.

Skalorix’s mirth had turned to rage. She should have known. Of course a craftworld like Iyanden, which tortured its own dead and forced them to serve its whims, would trick the brute mon-keigh into aiding them. That Yenneth would actively bring them into the webway showed how desperate she was.

‘Kill them!’ Skalorix shrieked. ‘Kill their weak shells again!’

Her incubi were cutting into the wraithguard lining the amphitheatre’s tiers, glaives cleaving through wraithbone with bursts of cutting energy. The burning wreck of her raider lay at the centre of the open space, its beautiful, hook-like form twisted and broken. Her pilot, Vornex, lay among the remains, impaled on his own barbed control panel, and a lone piece of shrapnel from the battered fuselage had sliced over Skalorix’s right cheek, leaving a single ruby line defiling her porcelain whiteness. For that alone she would hire the Altered Coven’s most talented haemonculi to recraft Yenneth’s flesh.

A fresh hail of splinters began to rain down from the amphitheatre’s sides. Vayne’s kabalite warriors had managed to scale its sides and were now catching the battered wraithguard in a vicious crossfire. The whole kabal was converging on the clash, drawn by their archon’s demands for support. In a few more moments the aeldari would once more be overwhelmed, and she would turn her vicious passions on the idiot mon-keigh who dared defile this place with their presence. Battling with the constructs across the gladiatorial space, it felt for the world as if she was back in the pits of Commorragh. The thought made her pulse race.

One of her incubi fell mere feet away, neck snapping in the relentless grip of one of the wraithguards. Even with a warlock guiding them the constructs were sluggish and ill-suited to melee, especially against warriors such as Skalorix’s bodyguards, but they were still far from harmless. The incubi’s killer turned its wraithcannon on the archon.

She was moving long before it fired, rolling beneath the tear the construct’s strange weapon ripped in reality. Her twin splinter pistols were in both hands in the same instant as she came up, lithe as an angry felid. The pistols spat, and there was a shuddering clatter as a thousand tiny, wicked barbs perforated the construct’s wraithbone shell. It stumbled backwards, half of its long, smooth helm riddled with shards. A second salvo at point-blank range caused it to slump, the spirit stone inset into its breastplate growing dim.

They were no fun, these ghosts. They didn’t scream. The thought had barely entered Skalorix’s mind before she heard the revving of engines, reverberating around the amphitheatre’s sides. She whipped around, both pistols raised and primed, in time to see new arrivals tearing into the blood-slashed arena from beneath the vault of the primary gateway. Mon-keigh warrior-breed, plated in white, splattered in the blood of her warriors.

Skalorix couldn’t resist a shriek of bitter laughter. Things just kept getting better.

Joghaten saw her the moment Whitemane roared beneath the amphitheatre’s gate and into the main arena. It was impossible to miss the archon – while surrounded by heavily armoured drukhari bodyguards, she cut a lithe, simple figure. That, and she bore the cracked helm of Arro’shan hanging from her belt. The sickening laughter that she greeted the Space Marines with only sharpened the khan’s hate.

Joghaten charged her where she stood, near the burning remains of her raider at the amphitheatre’s centre. Whitemane roared across the arena, kicking up grit, while his bondsmen and Qui’sin followed. The tactical squad’s Rhino had slewed to a halt beside the gateway, the squad within dispersing and opening fire on the dark eldar shooting down from the amphitheatre’s sides. It was chaos, and the Master of Blades was at the heart of it.

His assault bike slammed into one of the archon’s bodyguards. The eldar crumpled with a wet crunch, but its death was enough to arrest Whitemane’s motion. Joghaten was already out of the saddle before his mount hit the bloodied dirt, a blade in each hand. The archon met him with a burst of splinter pistol fire, still laughing viciously as she skipped back from him. Joghaten grunted as he felt multiple impacts, and his armour told him what his flesh already knew – the barbs had cut deep in half a dozen places, drawing blood that couldn’t clot while the razored metal remained lodged.

He lunged at the archon, a snarl of pure hatred twisting his face. She was nowhere near where his blow fell, however, her speed outstanding even for the natural abilities of her race. Joghaten’s tulwars cut only air, and another spray of barbs hammered him from his left, the damnable creature’s laughter ringing in his ears.

Then Qui’sin was at his side. The Stormseer had dismounted, his force staff raised to the maddening heavens. A blast of psychic energy slammed past Joghaten like a slipstream, catching the lithe drukhari. The archon’s laughter turned to a shriek of panic as she was snatched up and flung a dozen paces, bouncing in the dirt of the arena.

Joghaten was on her in an instant, tulwars scissoring towards the pale flesh of her throat. There was a flare of energy, and the khan’s oath turned to a grunt of effort and then a bellow of frustration as the tulwars rebounded off an invisible field. Power flared for the briefest moment as the strike was deflected, and the one unbroken eye-lens in Arro’shan’s helmet glowed red before fading again.

The helmet contained some sort of protective energy sphere installed by the drukhari. The agony of the dozen barbs studding Joghaten’s flesh faded into nothing, drowned in the sea of his fury. He flung himself at the eldar with a vox-roar that shuddered the air around him, tulwars a blur of cutting power. But the archon was up and moving again, dancing away around the arena, cackling once more as she taunted her multiple adversaries. As another maddening burst of splinters battered his armour, a distant, disconnected part of Joghaten’s mind realised that this was where his hunt ended.

Timchet and his new brothers were pouring fire up into the amphitheatre’s flanks, trying to suppress the dark eldar before the xenos’ superior positions began to tell on the exposed White Scars. The Space Marine braced his feet and spread his arc of fire wide, armour locked as he hammered heavy bolter rounds into the upper tiers of the amphitheatre. Old stone burst and exploded as the xenos scattered, reduced to dark, dripping smears wherever the stream of firepower caught up with them.

The rest of his adopted tactical squad were laying down similar fire support from the shadow of the Rhino, parked just inside the arena’s entrance. The high arch of the gateway offered the squad some protection from the return fire, but it was coming in from all angles. The dark eldar had turned the arena into a kill zone, and they were filling it with splinter death. One of the Tactical Marines, Ughan, had already fallen with a shard through his visor, while Timchet had taken three penetrating strikes to his left pauldron. The barbs were agonising, overcoming even his enhanced ability to subdue pain, but he forced himself to focus. He tracked left and right with his heavy weapon, dispersing or cutting down the largest concentrations of darting xenos warriors, even as the air around him hummed and whizzed like a living beast, given voice by the passage of a thousand deadly shards.

‘Supporting fire, right side,’ Uygai voxed. A moment later Timchet saw the dark eldar firing down from the amphitheatre’s crest start to convulse and fall, their spiked armour riddled with shuriken. They were replaced immediately by more eldar figures, but these wore bold blue-and-yellow heraldry, like the larger constructs battling at the centre of the arena. They opened fire on their dark cousins on either side as more reinforcements joined them, scaling the amphitheatre’s outer flanks.

‘Only target them if fired upon,’ Uygai said, indicating the new arrivals on the visor display. ‘We must support the khan.’

‘Enemy reinforcements to the centre,’ Janggi observed. A fresh rush of drukhari warriors had abandoned their shooting positions on the tiers and rushed towards the melee swirling across the arena, locked around the crashed remains of the dark eldar raider. Joghaten, his bondsmen and Feng’s bikers had been swallowed up by the vicious three-way combat and there was no way of offering them fire support without risking hitting them.

‘Blades,’ Uygai said. ‘For the Khagan and the Emperor.’

Timchet uncoupled his heavy bolter and set it down in the dirt before drawing his kindjal.

‘Guide me, brother,’ he murmured, his mind on Wind Tamer and Hagai, on better times in a now-distant place.

Fourth Squad advanced.

Lau Feng had lost himself to the fury. He was no longer aware of where he was or what was happening around him. All he knew was that his brothers – his slain brothers – were screaming for vengeance, and their killers were before him.

He’d dismounted, when or how he couldn’t recall. How many had he killed? Not enough. He slammed his dao down, the charged blade slicing through a raised alien rifle, then its crested helm, then its skull, parting it from head to groin. He was shouldering through the bloody remains before they’d even slumped, dao now cutting into another’s flank as it struggled with a blue-and-yellow automaton, gutting it with a furious twist. Feng then turned the dao on the construct, hacking into wraithbone, toppling it like a felled tree. He carved open its smooth, elongated helm and, finding nothing inside, turned his dripping blade on a glaive-wielding warrior with a horned white helm. The two energised weapons clashed, the discharge forcing them both back. They re-engaged, Feng keening a mindless, frenzied scream.

This one was faster. It parried Feng’s stroke deftly and turned his recovering jab with the flat of its long blade. In the same fluid movement it spun inside his guard and brought its long weapon down in a stroke that almost cut the White Scar from collarbone to abdomen. Feng twisted his own body, and the blade instead bit into his left pauldron, jarring off the bloody white ceramite.

What was meant to have been the alien’s killing stroke had brought it too close. Feng lashed out with the back of his gauntlet, smashing the creature’s twisted white mask and knocking it to one side. Before it could recover he slammed a boot into its shin. There was a gristly snapping sound and the xenos went down. It tried to roll in the dirt, lashing out with its blade as it did so, but there was no force behind the blow and it scarred harmlessly off Feng’s leg. The White Scar pinned the dark eldar with one foot, raised his dao, and brought it down like a lightning bolt. The drukhari’s horned head was severed, the dao impaled in the ground.

Feng bellowed his victory. Around him the revenants of Ajai, Tenjin, Oyuun and Tayang screamed with approval, the sound drawing further agony from Feng. He plucked up his weapon and flung himself forward once more.

Qui’sin spun his staff in a tight arc, deflecting the glaive that would have opened his stomach. With a word he channelled a wave of psychic energy into his counter-thrust, the skull tip of his staff slamming into the drukhari’s breastplate with enough force to shatter its ribcage and fling it back into those behind. The Stormseer just had time to bring the staff back up again before another blade rang off its haft, the impact shuddering up Qui’sin’s arms.

Around him the warriors of the brotherhood seemed to have lost themselves to madness. Even the tactical squad had flung themselves into the assault, blades drawn, bathing themselves in the mania that gripped the arena. To his right Joghaten was locked in a dance of death with the drukhari archon, both warriors clashing around the small space their vicious combat had created. The khan was bleeding from a dozen splinter wounds, and his armour was scarred silver in a thousand places, but still he could not land a telling blow through the archon’s energy shield. Every time Qui’sin attempted to find his focus and lash out at the mocking alien, one of its minions would come at him in a blur of razored steel. Twice Kemich had bought him time, darting down from where she had been circling the arena to drive his attackers back in a flurry of feathers and talons. Joghaten was fading however, every fresh nick accompanied by a burst of agony that intruded into the Stormseer’s mind. He had moments more before one of the drukhari’s pistol shots proved fatal.

A presence intruded in Qui’sin’s mind as he turned aside another attack. It was one he had felt before, though it still sickened him.

‘The witch,’ he voxed to Joghaten, though he doubted the khan was aware of his words. He’d barely spoken them before a shockwave blasted through the arena, kicking up a hail of dirt and staggering the combatants. The force of Farseer Yenneth’s arrival made Qui’sin’s hand go up to his cable-studded scalp, his psychic hood pulsing with painful energies. He stumbled and the next thing he knew a drukhari dagger was digging into the joint between his thigh and his groin. The agony of the monomolecular blade seared away the pain in his skull and made him lash out reflexively, crumpling his attacker’s helm. The knife remained lodged in place though, the Stormseer’s blood painting his white thick plates a bright red.

He parried two more strikes from two separate drukhari, each coming at him from opposite sides. A third blow deflected off his breastplate, jarring away to the left. A fourth would have caught him above the gorget and cut his throat, were it not for the presence of the aeldari.

The tall, robed warrior was suddenly at his side, its witchblade turning away the dagger stroke before a riposte of flawless perfection cut off the drukhari’s head.

Qui’sin used the moment’s respite to drag the knife in his thigh free, grunting with pain. The wound was refusing to clot, kept open by some vile agent coating the alien blade. He tossed it angrily aside, as Kemish alighted on his backpack, her beak bloody. Around them, a sudden calm had settled, a psychic bubble only his attuned senses were aware of.

The seer council of Iyanden had entered the fray.

Fate leads those who embrace it, but pushes those who do not. Eventually it masters them all, regardless of their own will.

– Ancient Chogorian steppe proverb

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

PREDESTINATION

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
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TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

The City of Pillars, the Webway

The City of Pillars resounded with the sound of battle, and no more so than in its ancient amphitheatre, where the strands of fate came together to form a tangled, blood-soaked knot. Joghaten did not notice the aeldari witch’s intervention until one of his blows broke through the archon’s energy field. The tulwar’s edge passed a few inches from the drukhari’s face, where before it had rebounded. The realisation that the shield had been overloaded struck them at the same time. The archon, however, was faster. As one of her pistols came up towards Joghaten’s helm there was a flash of light, and a thudding sound. The drukhari let out a shriek, no longer of delight but of raw frustration. Something, moving with a speed not even a regular aeldari could match, had impacted into her side and thrown her off balance. She was forced to turn her stumble into a dive as a witchblade shrieked from the figure who had collided with her, the wicked, psychically charged edge barely missing her pale throat. The desperate motion saved her from the robed aeldari’s blade, but it had carried her, for the briefest moment, within reach of Joghaten’s.

He did not hesitate. Roaring Arro’shan’s name, he swept one tulwar from right to left with all his strength. The archon’s head left her body with such force that it sailed across the surrounding combatants and was lost in the press. The body collapsed at the khan’s feet, its twitching death-throes sending blood pattering across his boots and greaves.

The eldar witch who had struck the archon was beside Joghaten, her alien blade vibrating with potency. The khan rounded on her without a thought. Even the aeldari, it seemed, could be taken by surprise. The farseer found herself gripped by the throat and hauled into the air.

‘She was mine to kill,’ the khan bellowed furiously.

+You took her head,+ the farseer responded, forcing the words directly into Joghaten’s mind as she choked in his tightening grasp.

‘I did not need your aid, witch. You shame me with your presence.’

+If you kill me, you will never be able to return to reality. You can still save your city and your brothers.+

Joghaten’s grip lessened slightly as he felt something scrape against his breastplate. One of the farseer’s council had the tip of a black spear, shuddering with alien energies, planted against his side. The rest had surrounded him, and he could feel their psychic presence teetering on the edge of his consciousness, unwilling to intervene lest the slightest motion snap their leader’s neck, but ready with the speed of thought to tear his mind apart. The realisation pierced the Chogorian battle lust that had consumed him. His every instinct demanded he break the lying xenos and turn his tulwars on the rest of her kindred. After a moment’s resistance he overcame the killer urge, and released the farseer.

The alien leader landed on her feet, gasping but upright. The battle still raged around them, but within ten paces of Joghaten all seemed eerily calm. He was surrounded by aeldari seers, with only a few of his brethren caught in the sphere of their psychic trickery. Steedmaster Feng was on his knees, dripping with xenos blood, his eyes distant. A blow had shattered his helm and left a jagged slash down the side of his face. The wind-brother, Timchet, was there also, turning in a slow circle with his kindjal held point-down as he watched for any signs of attack from the aliens around him.

‘So show me,’ Joghaten snarled at Yenneth. ‘Show me how I can save Darkand.’

‘Only a few may come,’ Yenneth said, straightening with the aid of her staff. ‘What we do runs too much risk if more intervene.’

‘Whatever you do witch, know that I shall hold you to account,’ said Qui’sin as he strode to Joghaten’s side, his armour painted with dark eldar blood. The khan had never seen the Stormseer looking so wrathful and battle-ready.

‘Your trickery has shrouded this world for long enough,’ he went on. ‘You will atone for it now and deliver your side of our agreement, or I will break you.’

‘Stand close,’ Yenneth said, slipping a hand into her robes. Joghaten gestured at his brothers, bringing Qui’sin and Timchet to his side. After a moment, Feng followed. The farseer had produced a shard of stone, black, its edges sharp.

‘A waystone,’ the aeldari said. ‘One that I myself have imbued with guiding power. Clear your thoughts, mon-keigh. We must turn our actions in on themselves.’

Before Joghaten could respond, he realised that sudden silence had fallen over them. The sound of the vicious combat in the arena had not faded, it had simply vanished. Joghaten looked around, marvelling at the perfect quiet, even while robed and armoured xenos danced around one another, blades flashing, blood spraying the air. As he watched, the action itself began to dissolve, the light that radiated off gemstones and sword edges, helmets and barbed armour growing until it became a brilliance so intense even the Space Marine’s helmet could not properly filter it.

Joghaten took a step, lips parted in a snarl, one arm up and shielding his face. His boot rang against stone. He knew instinctively that was wrong, not just because it broke the other-world silence that had engulfed them, but because the floor of the amphitheatre had been blood-slashed sand, not stone. He realised the light was gone. He lowered his arm.

They were not in the arena anymore, nor even in the strange, alien city the farseer had led them to. Joghaten, Qui’sin, Timchet and Feng, flanking Yenneth, were standing back in Heavenfall. They were in a deserted street in what appeared to be the temple district, an arching devotarium building lying directly in front of them.

‘Impossible,’ Joghaten breathed. ‘This is xenos trickery.’

+Trickery would serve no purpose at this stage,+ spoke Yenneth into his mind, though her thought-voice sounded strained. +I offer you this one chance to work together and help to turn fate back on itself. Save the world you have died on so many times before.+

Joghaten checked his armour’s auto-senses, but the chrono display, locator beacons and time stamps were non-functioning, cycling constantly through their digits. He deleted them all, scanning the street as he did.

It was quiet. The upper slopes of the city, if indeed it truly was Heavenfall, had not yet been consumed by battle.

+If we hurry we can cut out the cancer in this place,+ Yenneth willed. +And forewarn you and your brethren in time to resist them when they rise from below.+

‘Forewarn me?’ Joghaten snapped. ‘What madness is this?’

‘She is right, brother,’ said Qui’sin.

The Master of Blades turned to his Stormseer, and saw by his rigid posture and shaking grip on his force staff that he was under a tremendous amount of strain.

‘I do not know how but… I sense a presence here,’ he went on. ‘I sense myself, just as I now realise I did before. We… we are all here already, my khan.’

+You must not be seen,+ Yenneth urged. +I have laid a glamour about us, and I will seek to redirect any focus away, but if you directly interfere above the surface you risk more than your lives, or the fate of just this place. Stay at my side at all times.+

The farseer began to move towards the devotarium’s open gateway. Joghaten looked to Qui’sin. Eventually the Stormseer nodded. They followed.

The khan checked the vox-net as he passed into the shade of the devotarium’s courtyard. What he heard sent a chill running up his spine. The voices of his brotherhood, repeating words he’d heard before, mere hours earlier. Worse, his own voice, clear and distinct, snapping orders for clarification over the link as he realised that the swarms out on the plain began their fresh assault on the Founding Wall. He blink-clicked the vox transmission sigil on his visor display, but it was unresponsive.

+Do not attempt to communicate,+ Yenneth warned. +I have already sent a subtle imperative warning of the cult’s presence. You will act on it, Joghaten Khan, and save many lives, but we must also do our part without being discovered. The leader of the swarm lies below.+

Joghaten’s response was interrupted by Feng’s curse. The small band had entered the devotarium’s cloistered heart. There, between the shadows and the sunlight, just beyond a spore-clogged fountain, a squad of White Scars was passing by. It was a squad Joghaten recognised immediately. Lau Feng’s riders. The steedmaster himself was there, half turned away as he prepared to enter one of the devotarium’s side rooms. Joghaten looked from him to the Feng by his side, thoughts baulking. He felt a presence in his mind, encouraging but urgent. Yenneth, desperately trying to keep them moving.

+I am concealing our presence,+ she thought to them. +But I cannot maintain it for much longer. We must descend. Do not hesitate.+

As though in a dream, Joghaten and the others passed through the shadowed cloisters, barely a dozen paces from where the other Feng and his hunt-brothers were conducting their clearances, seemingly oblivious to them. As he went, the khan realised he and the others were making no noise at all – even their footsteps had become silent, masked by the incredible power of Yenneth’s witchcraft. She led them to an open grate, an entrance to the darkness of the devotarium’s undercroft.

Feng brought up the rear. He refused to look at his double, so oblivious to his presence. He knew what was about to happen. He remembered it exactly, from the other side. He was about to look up, and see himself – his helmet gone, scalp gashed, battleplate scarred. The impossibility of it all drove him on into the darkness, even as he felt his own disbelieving eyes fall on himself.

‘He will follow,’ he hissed to the rest of the group as they descended the narrow stone stairway into the undercroft.

+I will stop him,+ Yenneth responded. +I have conjured an illusion of his fallen brother to halt his pursuit.+

Feng recalled Eji’s screaming, acid-scarred face, blocking his path down into the undercroft. Despite his best efforts, he shuddered. Were they all tricks? Was his very existence a lie? How many times had he descended these stairs? How many times had he seen his own ghost, dragged from another reality? How many versions of this place, altered beyond recognition, existed?

Such thoughts would have broken the will of lesser warriors. The White Scars, however, could only respond to adversity with greater determination. It had always been the way of Chogoris, even before the coming of the Khagan. Tense and with weapons drawn, they made their way into the darkness of Darkand’s underworld, guided by a witch’s promise.

The Founding Wall, Heavenfall

Qui’sin turned sharply, his force staff raised. Below the xenos assault was still slamming against the unbroken rock of the Founding Wall. All about him the carnage of battle unfolded, Pinnacle Guardsmen loading and firing down into the rising tide, or shooting up at the gargoyles battling the Space Marines’ combat flyers overhead.

And yet, a part of the Stormseer remained detached from it all. There was a presence, if not here then somewhere in the city, somewhere nearby. A presence he knew he recognised, though its exact identity remained just beyond his grasp. A sense of foreboding prickled at the edge of his senses. He patched a link to Joghaten.

‘There is something in the city,’ he told the khan. ‘Something’s coming.’

‘Have you received word from the squads deployed to the catacombs?’

‘No, but I fear the xenos presence is far greater than we anticipated. I would strongly advise reinforcing our rear lines, and those units sent underground, as well as moving into the evacuation catacombs. If the xenos are using the tunnels below the city, they could slaughter most of the population before we even became aware of them.’ After a moment’s pause, Joghaten responded.

‘Very well, weathermaker. I shall come to you directly, and send combat squads up the slope to occupy the shelters and evacuation tunnels right now. If the xenos come, if they truly are as numerous as you believe, we shall be ready.’

Time is the devourer of all things.

– Ovarid, Imperial scholar

CHAPTER NINETEEN

ECHOES

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 10 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

The catacombs, Heavenfall

They encountered no more White Scars beneath Heavenfall, though it wasn’t long before they engaged the first xenos. They were alone initially, in the crypt and mausoleum levels below the temple district, hybrids concealing their deformities beneath the heavy gowns and caps of the cult of the Voice of the Emperor. Yenneth and the Space Marines fought side by side, guided by a white light glowing from the intricately carved tip of the farseer’s runestaff.

None of the White Scars spoke as they descended ever deeper into Heavenfall’s depths. It felt as though to do so would be to shatter the dream they had become lost in. As they went further though, and the man-made tunnels gave way to narrow, natural fissures and passages scarred with vile xenos bio-infestation, a sense of revulsion began to intrude on their thoughts. It was accompanied by a scratching, like claws on the inside of the skull, grinding away. Even Qui’sin could not block it out – Kemich’s distressed cries echoed through the winding tunnels as her master struggled on, bearing the full weight not only of the twist in reality they now occupied, but also the unshielded psychic horror of the monster lurking below.

Eventually, just as Joghaten was becoming convinced they had been cursed to wander the underworld for eternity, Yenneth signalled back to them. They had reached their destination.

The cavern that opened out before them was vast, and irrevocably tainted. Lit up on the Space Marines’ visor displays, its rugged floor and the thousands of great jagged stalactites that studded its ceiling would have been an awesome sight, were it not for the horror that now infested it. Great globules of alien flesh wormed and burrowed into the cracks and fissures that lined the uneven floor and walls, and coiled like monstrous parasites around stalagmites and stalactites. A web of xenos meat, throbbing and alive, had turned the entire chamber into a vast, living nest, a place of unnatural growths and chitin-plated tumours. The other-worldly, stomach-turning stench of the Great Devourer – spilled guts, digestion juices, waste and bile – permeated everything.

Even worse were the things nesting in the chamber. The walls were studded with thousands of pale amniotic sacs, row upon row nestled into the uneven Darkand rock. Multi-limbed alien forms were visible within the milky depths, writhing and churning with new life. Hundreds of the sacs had already split, their fluids oozing across the worm-infested floor. Their former occupants – slick genestealers with see-through flesh and carapaces that were still hardening, scuttled in an ever-rotating circle around the thing dominating the centre of the cavern, the sounds of thousands of claws scraping off rock creating a deep susurration that had risen through the tunnels and burrows and into the catacombs above.

The beast they surrounded was a monstrosity. Far larger than even the mawloc they had faced outside the city, it filled the centre of the mountain’s heart with a wall of pulsing, leathery skin and chitin plates as thick and gnarled as the flanks of a fleet escort. The beast’s primary maw was large enough to swallow a Land Raider, while scything talons and tendon whips the length of an Imperial Knight bristled from its multiple limbs. It was shrouded in a miasma of spores, churned out from its vapour chimneys and spine ducts. The mere sight of it painted across the auto-senses of the Space Marines caused a surge of sickening revulsion to wash over them.

And yet it was not the true master of the swarm. The source of the synapse link, identified now by Qui’sin as so powerful that it was able to reach the swarms still gathering out on the plains, was the patriarch latched parasitically to the larger monster’s back. The dominatrix was a symbiotic creature, a carrier host for a synapse leader of tremendous power, its reach extended by the as-yet unknown means by which its flesh meshed with that of its host. Magos biologis usually listed the synapse master as something akin to a withered hive tyrant, yet this one was different. The spade-like nature of the dominatrix’s talons and the size of the tunnels that branched off from the cavern implied it had been deposited by the hive fleet somewhere out on the plains and had burrowed its way beneath Heavenfall, where it had linked with the genestealer cult’s patriarch. From there it had controlled not just the swarm, but the cult secreted within the city as well.

+The symbiotic creature,+ Yenneth thought as the small band stood staring up at the beast dominating the cavern. +The mistress of the swarm. She has sensed us.+

The genestealers circling the dominatrix had changed direction. The nearest peeled off and were skittering along the cavern floor towards the intruders. Their shrieks filled the air, and were answered by a deep, earth-shuddering bellow from the dominatrix.

‘Glory be!’ called a human voice, cutting through the alien uproar. It was a voice Joghaten recognised. Septimus Traik. The High Enunciator of the Emperor’s Voice was standing on a high rocky ledge to the right of the tunnel they had entered through, apart from the alien swarm that filled most of the chamber. He was clad in his heavy ceremonial gown, though the beads of his broad-brimmed hat had been drawn back to reveal a gaunt, wicked old face, as white as Joghaten’s armour. He grinned down at them from his perch, revealing teeth sharpened to wicked fangs. The two dozen Pinnacle Guardsmen surrounding him mirrored the unsettling expression; their own helms were removed, revealing skulls left bloated and deformed by the hybrid effects of the xenos.

‘I had not heard her great voice until this moment!’ Traik called over the thunder of the oncoming swarm. ‘A blessing upon you for bringing this about, on the eve of our ascension!’

‘He is the cult magus,’ Qui’sin said, realisation mixing with disgust in his voice.

‘He must die,’ the farseer said aloud. ‘As must the symbiotic creature. Only then will the swarms on the surface scatter.’

‘You dream, witch,’ Joghaten said, staring up at the hulking alien leader-beast as it shifted its bulk around to face the tiny prey-things that dared disturb its nesting. ‘It is too vast for us to harm.’

‘Individually yes,’ the aeldari agreed. ‘But not if we combine our powers. Qui’sin, will you take the rock with me?’ She raised her runestaff, pointing towards Traik’s perch.

‘If it means tearing that traitor apart,’ the Stormseer replied darkly.

‘The rest must keep the swarm at bay. We have to be fast.’

The small band set off, making for the rocky promontory occupied by Traik and his hybrids. The magus laughed openly as they approached, gesturing at his twisted guards.

‘More flesh for our saviours, my children,’ he shrieked. The Pinnacle Guard responded by meeting the charge of the White Scars with blades and claws. Joghaten parried a Darkand knife not unlike a Chogorian kindjal and used his momentum to carry his second tulwar through the snarling hybrid’s guard, opening its throat in a jet of discoloured blood. Beside him Feng had struck with the force of a stampeding ux horn, roaring incoherently as he used his armoured bulk to shatter ribs and snap grasping claw-limbs. Even he, however, could not match the sheer destructive power of the aeldari farseer in those first few seconds of contact.

The witch was a blur, her already fearsome speed and agility given a further edge by a psychic quickening even the likes of Qui’sin could never have hoped to emulate. Three rapid heartbeats and a dozen razor-blows, and six deformed cult members lay clinically beheaded at the base of the outcrop. Qui’sin had barely struck down the first hybrid to come at him before the farseer had opened a path for him to the top of the rock. He hefted his force staff and scrambled after her, grasping on to hideous alien flesh-growths to help clamber up the uneven stone.

‘You cannot stop what is coming!’ Traik was screaming. ‘You cannot stop the Great Devourer. We will consume the entire galaxy, and your flesh and blood and bone will fuel our next conquest!’

Traik was still screaming when the farseer reached him. She got there before Qui’sin, far faster than the heavily armoured Adeptus Astartes. The magus’ ranting was cut short as the aeldari’s blade flashed out, a tracer of white light in the foetid darkness. Qui’sin saw Traik’s head tumble, the white beads of his ceremonial veil turned red as they broke and scattered into a thousand specks of brilliance. The body toppled backwards, gown flapping, and was lost in the mass pressing against the base of the rock.

A howl of dismay arose from the hybrids, and Joghaten, Feng and Timchet struck all the harder, chopping left and right with tulwar, dao and kindjal. The mass around them, however, did not lessen. It only increased, as the first wave of purestrain genestealers struck.

‘The beast is the last unbroken link between the swarm and the hive mind,’ the farseer said to Qui’sin, gesturing up at the dominatrix. ‘We must sever it.’

‘How?’ the Stormseer demanded through clenched teeth. The presence of the symbiotic creature, the scratching in his skull, was almost unbearable. Only Kemich, perched loyally on one shoulder, gave him a degree of focus, a psychic anchor which he could tether his mind to.

‘Crush it,’ the farseer said, raising her runestaff and stretching out her free hand.

‘We cannot make contact with its mind,’ Qui’sin said. ‘We’ll both be consumed the moment we do.’

‘I did not refer to crushing it psychically.’

Qui’sin followed the seer’s staff, and realised where it was pointing. He understood. Widening his stance on the flesh-veined rock, he planted his force staff and began to chant in the ancient tongue of Chogoris.

While below him, his brothers died.

Timchet’s kindjal was stuck. It had lodged itself between a hybrid’s ribs, and now the deformed creature was scrabbling at his armour as the blade twisted and sliced its insides. He snatched it by the neck and physically dragged it away, separating the body from the blade through sheer strength.

But by then it was too late. He was already aware of the next hybrid behind him, already turning, but the thing’s lasrifle discharged at point-blank range, searing through the back of his left knee joint. He grunted as his leg gave out, alien flesh pulping beneath him as he went down on one knee.

He would have died there with a las-bolt to the back of his head had Feng’s energised dao not severed first the rifle’s barrel and then its wielder’s skull. The türüch was a perpetual web of keen-edged motion slashed with gouts of blood and ichor, his power lance inscribing bright, deadly arcs in the chamber’s darkness. The manic fury he had displayed during the fighting in the arena appeared to have gone, replaced by what native Chogorians called the sword song – the metamorphosis from killing to artistry.

Joghaten too danced to the song’s cutting tune. He did not know it, but he grinned. His body, battle weary and wounded in dozens of places, could only carry on for so much longer, yet the khan was no longer aware of the aching in his muscles or the pounding of his hearts or the blood trickling down inside his armour. He thought only of death and glory, and how his soul soared to the song of his blades as they split skulls, severed limbs and opened alien bodies.

Timchet regained his feet as Feng and Joghaten killed, killed and killed again. He did not dance as they did. He was weary, so weary. He yearned for Hagai’s presence. If the xenos witch could manipulate time surely that meant he was out there, somewhere, if not in this reality then in another?

Perhaps, in some strange and unthinkable parallel, he was still by his side.

Back against the rock, kindjal in his fist, Timchet fought on.

The witch was trying to bring down the stalactites. Her fist was clenched and her knuckles were white where she gripped her runestaff. Qui’sin could sense the pressure she was exerting over one of the jagged rock shards above the dominatrix. He felt the stone tremor and shift fractionally. She was not strong enough, however. Not alone.

So Qui’sin began to chant. He beat the base of his staff against the defiled Darkand rock, slowly and rhythmically, eyes rolling into the back of his head as he found his rhythm. Kemich had gone still, seemingly as lost to the trance as her master. Abruptly, the Stormseer’s hand shot out and gripped the farseer’s slender shoulder. For a second it seemed as though the Space Marine’s strength would snap her bones, but she did not resist, and Qui’sin did not remove his hand. Instead, force staff raised in his other fist, he let out a bellow of exertion. Lightning sparked and coruscated around the horned skull topping the psy-reactive haft, before exploding with whiplash force across the cavern. It struck the base of the stalactite with a boom that made the entire cavern shudder, the actinic flare accentuated by a burst of sparks that scattered across the chamber. Before the echoes of the thunderclap had faded, the sound of collapsing rock heralded the stalactite’s fall. It struck the dominatrix left of its spine ridges, crunching through the thick chitin and causing it to hunch its arched back and shudder.

‘We have to hit it again,’ the farseer panted, reaching out once more towards the cavern’s roof. Qui’sin couldn’t respond – he was lost, mind overcome by the ancient tribal energies surging through the rock beneath his feet. Lightning lashed out once again, this time leaping between three of the jagged rocks. The farseer’s groan of exertion rose to a scream as she ripped another of the weakened shards away. It struck one of the tyranid’s weapon limbs with a gristly crack, shearing it to the bone. Another stalactite followed, and then another, the great spears of Darkand bedrock lancing the huge creature’s carapace in half a dozen places. It wailed, and was answered by a fresh uproar from its children. They were scrambling up the sheer face of the outcrop Yenneth and Qui’sin occupied, a rising tide of berserk talons and fanged maws.

‘One more,’ the farseer panted, her whole body shaking. But Qui’sin no longer had the strength. Kemich rose from his shoulder with an agitated shriek as the Stormseer collapsed.

‘No!’ shouted Yenneth as she felt his grip on her shoulder disappear, their psychic link broken. The presence was replaced a second later, however, by the sensation of talons digging into her wraithbone armour. The Space Marine’s familiar, the cybernetically altered raptor, had alighted on her shoulder. She felt the immaterial locus contained within its altered form, a bond with the warp that she could grasp on to, if only for a moment. In that fraction of calm, a time within time itself, she reached out once more and channelled her will into Darkand’s bedrock.

There was a cracking noise, greater than all the ones that had come before. Qui’sin’s lightning had weakened the structure of the cavern’s roof. Now the largest of the remaining stalactites, like a great stone fang, was crumbling beneath the pressure of Yenneth’s efforts.

With one last scream of exertion, the farseer tore the stone free.

You are not lost. The tide of time has merely carried you away, but all tides must come back in. The next one will return us to ourselves, and right the wrongs heaped upon us by this cruel existence.

– Jaem Pulvar-Jorrow, Scion of Navigator House Jorrow

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE BEGINNING ENDS

TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 9 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

The catacombs, Heavenfall

Fighting at the base of the rocky outcrop, the genestealer that finally caught Timchet came from above. It had dug its diamond-hard claws into the cliff face at his back, scaling halfway up and then crawling sideways, like some vicious insectoid. It dropped onto him with a hiss, its claws gouging great, bloody rents in his shoulders and scalp as it bore him to the ground.

He managed to roll, trapping two of its six limbs beneath his armoured bulk. That pinned it enough for a quick, clinical slash across its throat with his kindjal, but the damage was done – a cut above his right eye had not only shorted out his auto-senses, but had also left him half-blind with his own blood.

Somehow he managed to find his feet, dragging a hybrid down onto his blade as he did so. He left the Chogorian steel lodged in its windpipe and smashed his gauntlet into the snapping maw of the next genestealer to come at him, shattering fangs and pulverising translucent, newborn flesh. His fall, however, had carried him away from the rock at his back, and a hybrid managed to work his way in behind him with a lasrifle. It hit him on full auto from a range of three paces, punching through his armour in half a dozen places and causing his backpack’s generator to enter shutdown. He stumbled, even his enhanced physiology unable to stem the flow of blood from the wounds now covering him.

Hagai’s name was on his lips as the final stalactite fell, the sound of crashing rock drawing his gaze even as a xenos blade punched up beneath his fused ribcage, and another broke the seal beneath his helm. Darkness took him.

Joghaten saw the final moments of the combat via his auto-senses, the scene picked out with flares of colour and heat recognition mapping. The stalactite struck the master of the tyranid cult, the patriarch meshed into the flesh of the dominatrix’s upper back. It pulverised its bloated skull before splitting its body in half, a shard of rock twice the height of a man cutting deep into the symbiotic beast. Even unattuned as he was, Joghaten felt the psychic death knell wash over him, a sickening sense of dread and loss that was accompanied by a fresh wailing from every xenos in the cavern. The horrific clamour painted a broad grin across the khan’s face. He struck out again, cutting the talon-limb from one purestrain at the same time as his second tulwar took the eyes of a hybrid attempting to bring its lasrifle to bear. Even with their master’s death, the creatures around the khan fought with a bestial fury, their animalistic instincts bent towards slaughtering the intruder violating their nest. The khan fought on, still smiling.

He would be with the Khagan soon, he was sure of it.

Feng’s dao had shorted out, its disruptor field overloaded. The steedmaster did not care. Its blade was wicked enough to pierce xenos carapace without the cutting technology, especially when wielded with the force he now exerted. Unlike Timchet he hadn’t backed away to the rock where Qui’sin had fallen, but had planted both boots in the open space beside it, defying the creatures that came from every corner of the cavern. Great swings of his glaive were keeping the tyranids at bay, any that came within range of the constantly moving arc of death being cut down in an instant. A hybrid in the uniform of a Pinnacle Guard guardmaster had almost led a rush that would have seen him overwhelmed. Now the creature’s twisted head lay at the White Scar’s feet, and the blood of its brood kindred slashed in thick droplets from his dao with every swing.

Feng felt calm now, calmer than he had in a long time. He could no longer see his long-dead hunt-brothers, or feel their presence. They had finally gone. Or perhaps he had joined them. Perhaps he was already dead.

The thought seemed curiously irrelevant. He wondered how Jakar, Oda and Sauri fared in the webway. Were they even there still, or here on Darkand, above where he now battled? Did they exist at all?

He had given up wrestling with such questions the moment he had glimpsed himself for the second time in the devotarium. He had always known that the secrets of the galaxy were beyond the wisest of the Zadyin Arga, let alone a hunt-brother such as himself. Let others strain their minds. His purpose was to honour his khan and his Emperor with the blood of their enemies. That was what he did, right up until the earth shifted beneath him and he found himself flying through the dark, dank air. Bones snapped wetly as his heavy body slammed into those seeking to kill him, followed by a wall of dirt. His hands went out, finding alien claws and carapace instead of purchase, and he realised his dao was no longer in his grasp. He didn’t have time to unclamp his kindjal before a genestealer’s claws punched through his breastplate, puncturing flesh and scraping off his ribs.

He snarled with frustration, blocking out the pain. It wasn’t time, not yet. He hadn’t killed enough.

His fist shot out, gripping the twisted, alien features of the genestealer. With a bellow he forced two fingers into its sockets, jellying its eyes before forcing its head back until it snapped. The thing collapsed on top of him, pinning him down, while its own kin savaged and tore at its remains in their frenzied desire to get at him.

Feng barely noticed their efforts. Head pressed forcefully to one side by the stinking alien corpse, he was aware of the earth-churning motion of a great, serpentine body, seconds before its shriek split the air.

The mawloc had returned.

The vast, burrowing tyranid caught Joghaten as it ploughed upwards from Darkand’s ichor-slick soil. The khan felt the earth shifting and threw himself forward, but he was already being lifted up, his armour grating against the dirt-caked shell of the mawloc as it burst up in the swarm leader’s defence. With a lurch, Joghaten realised he had been snagged by its maw.

He lashed out as he felt the membranous, distending flesh stretching over his legs. There was no purchase though – he was caught in freefall, half in, half out of the huge serpentine alien’s dislocated jaw. One tulwar struck one of the monster’s great fangs, and the khan grasped it desperately as he felt its snag-teeth and digestion tendrils latching on to his armour. They were physically attempting to drag him down its open gullet.

He snatched on to another fang as his grip began to slip. His armour was reading the corrosive bite of acidic bile rising up the mawloc’s throat. According to the battleplate’s integrity sigil, the burning liquid would eat its way to his flesh within the next thirty seconds. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold on for that long anyway.

The last sight he saw, as the alien’s fleshy maw closed over him, was the aeldari farseer. She was still atop the rock, the waystone in her hand and her runestaff raised, white light shining like a beacon from its tip. Qui’sin lay prone at her feet, while Kemich was on her shoulder, her great wings spread. Around them a sea of xenos had clambered up, the runestaff’s light reflecting from their black eyes and bared fangs as they surrounded her.

Even in their frenzied rage, the cult would not get an opportunity to tear apart the two psykers. Fatally weakened by the blows of Yenneth and Qui’sin, the cavern roof had started to collapse. Joghaten saw it all for no more than a second, yet it seemed to hang in his mind for an eternity. It would be with him forever, he was sure. However long that was.

Then it was all gone, lost in the darkness, and the crashing, crushing finality of a planet’s vengeance.

Archival tunnels, Heavenfall

They didn’t need the auspex to detect the severe earth tremors that gripped the city fifteen minutes after Qui’sin had ordered reinforcements into the catacombs. Whole blocks in the Old Town had collapsed, while cobbled slope-streets had ruptured and tiles had cascaded like hail from the roofs. An entire section of the city slumped, as though the heart of the mountain itself had given out.

Qui’sin didn’t have time to ponder the meaning of such seismic events. He was leading Jeddah’s tactical squad through the archival tunnels below the government district’s Administratum quadrangle. They’d been encountering xenos ever since using krak charges to break into a set of natural rock passages detected on the squad’s auspex. Hybrids, many clad in Pinnacle Guard uniforms, had tried to halt them, to no avail. There had been purestrains too; their subterranean lairs now reeked of their charred meat, where the Stormseer’s lightning had flensed them. Thus far none of the xenos had attacked with any degree of coordination, certainly not that which was usually experienced when engaging a genestealer cult on the cusp of revealing itself.

Reports coming in from elsewhere beneath the city carried similar messages. One group of hybrids, masquerading as a Pinnacle Guard security detail, had even attempted to gain access to a heavily stocked reserve artillery armoury at the rear of the Founding Wall. A combat squad redeployed to patrol the wall’s rear echelons had gunned them down as they tried to storm the bastion, demolition charges primed.

Everywhere the White Scars had caught their enemy off guard, and seemingly without a central intelligence or driving force. Qui’sin refused to dwell on just how he’d known to give the order to strike at certain parts of Heavenfall’s convoluted underworld. That was a riddle for another day.

‘They’re withdrawing,’ crackled Joghaten’s voice over the vox. ‘The swarm at the wall has been thrown into some sort of confusion. They’re turning on one another again.’

‘It is the Khagan’s blessings,’ Qui’sin responded, knowing in his heart that there was something far more to it than that. Something had intervened on their behalf, a power beyond his current understanding. He had felt it ever since the moment on the Founding Wall, and in truth he had seen it in the weave of fate since they had first set a course for Darkand. This world had taken more than any other from the Fourth Brotherhood, but it had also given. Given in impossible, unknowable ways.

‘Shen is nearly in high orbit,’ Joghaten went on. ‘He reports the swarms out on the steppes have turned feral again. Whatever was driving them, it’s gone now.’

‘It is,’ Qui’sin agreed slowly, as the sounds of bolter fire continued to echo through the subterranean tunnels around him. ‘It is gone. And so are we.’

The Gates of Eternity, Darkand

The sun was setting. It was not a Chogorian sunset, of course, not the red and gold glory of the Plain Zhou. But it brought home to mind for the White Scars who watched it, and listened to the wind singing soft and low around the rocks of the Gates of Eternity.

The swarms were broken, scattered. Fighting still flared in Heavenfall, but the cult there was directionless and uncoordinated. Pinnacle Guard, assisted by Darkand’s tribal warriors, had purged the temple district, while squads from the Fourth Brotherhood did sweeps of the levels below the government district. The vox-net spoke of further casualties – Shontai had fallen leading his assault brothers through the vaults of the scriptorium, while Chokda’s bikers had suffered in an ambush sprung by what turned out to be the hybrid’s last stand, near the centrum dominus. Governor Harren had fallen there amidst a hail of las and bolter fire, the Imperial Commander almost unrecognisable, given over to alien infection. Despite the losses, the outcome was a far cry from what had come before.

The aeldari was still with them. Joghaten turned his back on the setting sun and faced her. She had removed her tall blue-and-yellow helm, so that the golden light fell on features that were at once disconcertingly recognisable, yet quite alien – too sharp, too slender. Try as he might, the Master of Blades could not meet her fathomless black gaze, for doing so only reinforced the impossibility of the events in which he had just participated.

‘I remember nothing between the darkness of the cavern and finding myself here,’ he said eventually.

‘Your mind rejects what it cannot comprehend,’ Yenneth replied, her voice seeming to merge with the murmuring of Darkand’s wind.

‘Are we dead?’ Joghaten demanded.

‘Perhaps, in some worlds and times, long since passed.’

‘We cannot stay here though,’ Joghaten went on, unwilling to slip any deeper into her race’s interminable riddles.

‘To do what I have already done stretches the bounds of reality to its very limit,’ Yenneth said, the barest hint of remorse colouring her words. ‘To bend it further would be to break it, at least in this sphere of existence. Besides, I see in your heart that you do not wish to remain anyway. Those in the city right now are not your own. Your brothers lie elsewhere.’

‘The webway,’ Qui’sin said before Joghaten could respond. ‘When we left it was in the heat of battle. What if they are already dead, in your lost city?’

‘Even I do not know their fate, yet,’ Yenneth admitted, turning towards the Stormseer. Kemich, perched on his shoulder, ruffled her golden feathers.

‘Then there is only one way to be sure,’ Timchet said eventually, pointing towards the arching rocks where the webway gate stood. The strange stones were not as active as they had been when the brotherhood had first ridden through, but the air between them now was rippling gently, as though caught in a heat haze.

‘I cannot force you to pass over,’ Yenneth admitted. ‘But I suspect you cannot stop yourselves. To remain here would be a lonely and meaningless existence.’

‘It would be an abandonment,’ Qui’sin admitted, then trailed off when he saw that Joghaten, his helm removed, was beginning to smile.

‘What is it?’

‘The Khagan calls,’ the Master of Blades said softly, with all the relish he might have displayed when he was still Arro’shan’s prized bondsman, thinking only of glory. ‘Can you not hear his hunting cry, weathermaker? It echoes from the beyond.’

‘The eternal hunt,’ Feng said, joining the other three before the farseer. ‘It is a worthy fate for any son of Chogoris. My brothers wait for me to join them in it. I can already see them there, on the other side.’

‘I can accompany you some of the way,’ Yenneth said. ‘I will take you back to the City of Pillars. After that, whatever path you choose to wander will be your own.’

‘We will see our brothers again,’ Joghaten said, louder now, with vigour in his voice. ‘All of them. And when we are reunited, the Tulwar Brotherhood will embark on the hunt that will end all others. We will seek neither rest nor sustenance, but only our Khagan, until we are with him once again. And when we are, we will ride at his side for eternity, as we have been fated to do since the dawn of time. What do you say, weathermaker?’

Qui’sin nodded, and when he spoke there was no more hesitation, no more uncertainty in his voice.

‘Truly we are blessed, my khan. Our last hunt shall be eternal. The Ayanga will not know of our true fate, but we shall return to them in glory. Such has been our purpose all along. I am sure of it.’

‘You shall see your brother Hagai too,’ Feng added, a hand on Timchet’s unblemished pauldron. ‘Nothing can keep true kindred separated, not for eternity. Of that I am sure.’

Finally, Timchet nodded, and a sad smile touched his lips.

‘I do not know if I can endure that fool for an eternity. Regardless, let us be on our way. It will be good to see him again.’

Yenneth led the White Scars to the edge of the shimmering portal. Joghaten went first, unhesitating, bold and sure as ever. Feng followed, after only a moment’s pause, and then Timchet, now smiling broadly. Only Qui’sin remained behind.

‘You still doubt, Stormseer,’ Yenneth said softly.

‘The Master of Blades is an incomplete soul,’ Qui’sin said, still facing the portal. ‘At times, he lacks a sense of reserve. I am that reserve.’

‘It is not just your natural predilection that is making you hesitate. You wonder whether you will see your father again, the one you call the Khagan.’

‘It is what we yearn for, more than anything, more so even than the other brotherhoods. We believe in being reunited with him. We believe the Khagan still hunts.’

‘Whether or not he does, I cannot say,’ Yenneth admitted. ‘But one thing I do know. To find out, you must pass through.’

‘Yes,’ Qui’sin said. ‘And that is why I must stay at my khan’s side, guiding him as best I can. That is my fate, just as it is his to seek out the Khagan.’

‘Seek him you shall,’ Yenneth said.

Qui’sin nodded, and stepped through the shimmering light. She followed, her form melting into the haze between the stones.

The portal blinked from existence, leaving only the ancient, weather-beaten stones, the wind sighing through the steppe grass, and the last of the day’s light vanishing amidst the long shadows.

EPILOGUE

Qui’sin tossed the scrap of flesh to Kemich, before lowering himself down onto the prayer mat. The scrying chamber was silent, once against lost in the flickering light of lumen sticks laid out around the Stormseer. Qui’sin closed his eyes, reached out and–

A chamber of shrieking xenos spawn. Stygian darkness. A piercing white light, emanating from a slender, robed figure. Impossibility, reined in only by death. One reality shrinking and merging with another–

He realised he was back on his feet, a protective ward on his lips. Kemich, still on her talon-marked perch in one corner, cocked her head to one side. The Stormseer rubbed his fingers over the worn bone of his force staff’s skull, trying to shake off the vision’s aftershock.

That was the third time since leaving Darkand’s high orbit that he’d sought contact with his brethren in the Ayanga, and it was the third time his mind had instead been flooded with memories of events that had never happened. The first had been of an alien city, desolate but for screams, and the terrible whizzing sound of splinter weaponry. The second had been of Darkand’s plains and a collection of strange, mighty standing stones. Now he was seeing caverns and xenos infestations. He had fought long and hard beneath Heavenfall in the week since the breaking of the main swarm outside the Founding Wall, but at no point had he or any of the Fourth Brotherhood come across a cavern that matched the one in his memory. Nevertheless, all three recollections had been clear, as though the places he was witnessing had been visited mere days earlier.

At the same time, somehow, he was certain he had never experienced any of them.

He settled himself once more and drew a calming breath, taking up a slow, low throat-cant that helped steady his mind in times of duress. Kemich alighted on his shoulder, her heavy burden a sudden relief.

One way or another, he would find the source of these vision-memories.

They were behind him, a deadly presence in the Pride’s sparring ger. For a moment, Lau Feng didn’t move. For a moment his world was reduced to the beating of his hearts, the tension in his limbs, the well-balanced weight of his guan dao grasped in both hands.

A noise ended the stillness, the merest brush of bare feet on the sparring mat. He turned, a whirl of keen-edged steel.

They were coming at him at the same time, Jakar with an overhead stroke of his tulwar, Oda cutting in from the right, angling up beneath his guard. Jakar, however, had struck a fraction too soon. That was all the advantage that Feng required.

He parried Jakar’s stroke with the notched haft of his dao, then knocked aside Oda’s strike by spinning the broad-bladed lance in his palms. The blade was slicing back towards Jakar before the hunt-brother had recovered from the shock of the parry, driving him back and keeping him off balance. Oda, understanding the danger of letting the steedmaster divide them, sprang back in with an over-hasty lunge. The bold thrust was almost met with reward – it sliced open the right thigh of Feng’s white silk leggings, but failed to touch his flesh.

Oda payed the price for his attempt at a swift victory. The haft of Feng’s dao whipped around, cracking into his nose. A splatter of blood pattered onto the sparring mat, and the stocky hunt-brother had no choice other than to bow out.

All the while, Feng’s eyes hadn’t left Jakar’s.

The türüch saw resolve there, but also acceptance – this bout was only going to end one way now.

Feng flicked aside another slash and turned defence into attack with a rapid three-step. The dao stabbed towards Jakar’s abdomen as he was forced back once more. Though the riposte fell short, Feng used his momentum to carry him into a spin to Jakar’s right. A heel in the back of his brother’s knee, perfectly timed, was enough to drop him to the mat. Before he could rise, he felt the kiss of Feng’s weapon on the exposed nape of his neck. After a moment’s stubborn recalcitrance, he let his tulwar drop to the sparring mat.

Feng helped Jakar back onto his feet, and alongside Oda the three Space Marines bowed to one another. From Jakar’s first blow the entire clash had taken twenty-six seconds, according to the chrono ticking over on the wall of the deserted sparring ger.

It had been a long time since Feng had won so convincingly. In truth, his brothers had noted the difference the moment they had engaged the cult beneath Heavenfall. It was as though the steedmaster had remembered the warrior and the leader he had once been.

He helped Jakar and Oda roll away the mat, then stood alone as they left for their rest cycle. The lights in the echoing ger began to thud off, one by one. In the lengthening shadows, he waited. Even after the final lumen had clicked off, even after he had walked the corridors of the Pride of Chogoris and returned to his busad cell, he waited. But they did not come.

It had all been different since he had seen himself in the quadrangle of the devotarium. It had been a sign, he now realised. A moment of resolution – a part of him, no longer able to bear his sorrow, had departed and gone to join his lost brothers. And they had accepted him. From the nightmare moment when he had seen his double, everything had changed. They had fought well against the cult, into the depths of Heavenfall’s subterranean heart. Himself, Jakar, Oda and Sauri, honouring Eji’s death. The brotherhood had brought a slaughter-end to the alien and the hybrid with bolt and flame, kindjal and tulwar. And since the devotarium Feng had seen nothing of the revenants of Ajai, Tenjin, Oyuun or Tayang. Their baleful presence had lifted like the passing of night before a steppe dawn.

Feng stayed fully conscious through the night cycle, still watching, still waiting. In truth he knew he didn’t have to. His brothers had passed on. He was sure a part of him had done likewise, leaving what remained to carry on. Freedom, and freedom’s price.

Feng paid it gladly. He did not need to see their shades to honour their memories.

After taking a moment to ensure the wooden board beneath the vellum was angled correctly, Joghaten Khan leaned over and picked the aduu-hair brush from its pot. For a moment he stared at the white blankness of the page – furious white, old Arro’shan had once called it. Then, his spot picked, he raised his brush and administered the first long, steady stroke.

It had been a hard struggle, and desperate, but ultimately as successful as any in the proud history of the Tulwar Brotherhood. The xenos had been broken out on the plains, in the slope-city, and in the void of space. The people of Darkand had suffered, but a great many had been saved, and the nomad tribes were now beginning to emerge once more from Heavenfall, parties of horsemen accompanying motorised Pinnacle Guard units in hunts across the plains for the xenos that yet survived, scattered and leaderless. It would be many months, perhaps years, before the planet had been truly purged, but the greatest danger had passed. The Devourer’s hunger had been weathered and the White Scars hunted elsewhere.

And yet, and yet… victory had come at a price, and it had been paid in more than just the lives of many members of the Fourth. Sitting in his busad, sliding the ink across the vellum’s crisp surface in long, steady strokes, Joghaten Khan sought to pin precisely what had happened in the final few hours before they had purged Heavenfall of the cult’s taint. He knew he was not alone in believing some force, some strange, external knowledge, had guided them. Qui’sin was still struggling to identify and explain it, his wisdom taxed by their seemingly miraculous success. It was as though the Khagan himself had been with them towards the end, guiding their deployments and helping to scatter the alien filth.

As he pondered such a possibility, Joghaten found his thoughts overwhelmed by a surge of memories. He saw a Space Marine, tall and warlike, with twin tulwars at his hip and furs about his shoulders. With a start he recognised his own armour and weapons, and yet when he tried to focus upon his face, he found he could not. The warrior’s features were an indistinct blur in his mind’s eye, somehow insubstantial and ethereal. The khan shuddered away from the vision, realising that his grip had grown so tight on his brush that it was close to snapping.

He looked down at the vellum. A part of him expected to see his vision played out across it – the Master of Blades rendered faceless, a champion without either time or place, a ghost.

But the parchment was blemished with no violent vision-scrawl. Instead he saw a pattern, not the one he had set out to inscribe, but delivered as cleanly and precisely as any of his calligraphy pieces. It was a labyrinthine knotwork design, the ulzi, the ancient Chogorian symbol for the inescapability of fate.

For a moment, the khan considered taking such a portentous sign to Qui’sin. Then, instead, he sifted a portion of sand across its surface, blew, and slipped the dried parchment into the frame-drawer that held the rest of his work.

Whatever had become of them on Darkand, they had emerged victorious. There was no turning back, and no escaping. For better or for worse, they would hunt again.

The time for words was over. Joghaten Khan sat astride Whitemane, blood still slowly dripping from his armour. He looked out over the smoking desolation of the City of Pillars, following the plumes of smoke upwards, until he beheld the strange constellations that ruled over this unknowable place. The webway, where the Khagan still hunted, outside the normal boundaries of time and space.

The Fourth Brotherhood was at his back, mounted and ready. His honour guard surrounded him, Dorich and Jubai, Khuchar, Tamachag and Bleda, fully armed. He looked right, to Qui’sin. The Stormseer held his force staff across his saddle, likewise staring up into the firmament. Kemich was at his shoulder. Neither reacted to Joghaten’s gaze, but the khan sensed their readiness. He glanced to his left, checking that Jubai was holding the brotherhood’s horsehair standard high. One last moment’s contemplation and then, wordlessly, the Master of Blades smiled. He raised his right gauntlet, palm open, fingers splayed towards an alien sky.

Ride.

BLOOD OATH

PHIL KELLY

CHAPTER ONE

QUAN ZHOU
FORTRESS-MONASTERY OF
THE WHITE SCARS CHAPTER,
CHOGORIS, 713.999.M41

A thousand decapitated heads. One for every battle-brother in the Chapter.

By the time they had left Tarotian IV, the Third Company’s kill count had been closer to a million. He had killed over a hundred rebels himself. It was often the case. But like all White Scars, Kor’sarro knew the value of symbolism, and a round thousand was enough to make the point.

He wanted to be there to see them. An ending, of a sort, a cauterising of the wounds the Chapter had sustained on Tarotian IV.

Kor’sarro Khan stared out into the heat haze of Plain Zhou. From his vantage point within the highest eyrie in the fortress-monastery, it felt like he could see to the edges of the world. His topknot of greasy black hair flew erratically in the thermals, its thick strands mimicking the victory pennants waving high above.

Though the khan’s narrowed eyes flicked from scrub to bunker to a herd of stallions galloping in the distance, his hands had their attention elsewhere. Calloused fingers worked mechanically but precisely at the balcony’s edge, always in motion. The tip of the khan’s curved dagger scratched like an awl, carving the Khorchin word for ‘seeking’ onto the side of a dormant bolt shell.

Forty-nine more of the deadly little cylinders shone in the evening sun, ranged along the balcony neat as dominoes. Those to the khan’s left were finished, and those to his right were bare. Three full crates hid in the shadow of the buttress arch, the tiny golden curls of swarf around their bases rolled back and forth by a playful wind.

The thud-stride-thud of Sudabeh crossing the eyrie yurut’s rugs in full battleplate made the khan’s cheek twitch. He placed the last of the unfinished shells to one side.

‘Sunning yourself between hunts, my khan?’ said the newcomer.

‘Stormseer. Your… gifts.’ Kor’sarro looked at the sky for a second. ‘They are wasted here.’

‘Anyone with half a nostril could tell that you’ve been standing in the sun. If you ever run out of promethium, you could scrape your skin and use the run-off to feed Moondrakkan’s engine instead.’

‘Ha!’ shouted the khan, grinning and clenching his fist in triumph as if Sudabeh had helped him solve a difficult problem. He would not take the Stormseer’s bait today, he was in too good a mood for it.

Like all White Scars, Kor’sarro loved to feel the play of the elements first hand. For the last three hours he had been meditating in the boiling heat of Quan Zhou, clad in little more than loose white fatigues. His olive leather-like skin practically glowed, shining with oily sweat.

The khan raised a thick bare arm covered in zigzag scars, revealing a tuft of armpit hair that protruded from the sutured edge of his torsal glove. ‘Have a proper sniff then, naysmith.’

‘I respectfully decline your generous proposal,’ said Sudabeh, using the formal Chogorian dialect. Both men chuckled, two sets of white teeth sparkling in the sun. They had been Space Marines long enough to know that moments of humanity were to be treasured, no matter how simple. In fact the simpler they came, the better.

The khan pulled a cube of meat the size of his fist from one of the ammunition crates, picking off the largest bits of swarf before taking a massive bite. He turned to face his old friend, stale blood running down his long black moustache as he chewed loudly. Eyebrows knitted in mock concern, he motioned the Stormseer forward, his frown fading to a wet red grin.

Shaking his head in resignation, Sudabeh joined his captain on the balcony. He looked up at his distorted reflection in the silvered, eyeless skulls that were spitted on pikes along the balcony’s edge. Most of the trophies were human-sized, but the largest was the size of a Land Speeder.

To the south, a large gunmetal lander was lowering its bulk towards the perimeter of Third Bronze Yurut. The squat ship’s backblast sent waves of plains-dust outwards in concentric circles before its striped underskeleton finally touched down.

‘Cargo?’ asked Sudabeh, squinting through the dust.

‘Trophies,’ the khan replied around a mouthful of raw meat.

The bulk lander’s front jaw lowered with a distant hiss of hydraulics. One at first, then a dozen, then hundreds upon hundreds of human heads poured down the ramp towards the yurut wall. Though the first to emerge bounced and rolled as if freshly taken from the neck, those spilling over the rear part of the lander’s jaw slopped over in a state of advanced decomposition. Their smell was unpleasant on the wind, but the khan’s stomach growled in appreciation nonetheless.

‘Heretics,’ said the khan, savouring the word. ‘Tarotian IV.’

Sudabeh nodded thoughtfully. He watched the servitor work teams retrieve the disembodied heads by the armful and dump them onto the vector carriages parked along the bronze yurut’s walls. Inside each carriage, wizened eyethieves rode the cupolas upwards towards the lances that jutted up from the wall’s crest. As they went, they took it in turns to stoke the carriage’s braziers and burn each trophy’s sockets clean with a length of red-hot iron.

Out past the dropsite, steed-beasts broke from distant herds. They galloped in to fall upon those heads left unattended, gnawing strips of meat from faces and scalps before the low blast of the lander’s horns drove them away. Part of Kor’sarro longed to be back in the saddle at the head of his tribe, hurling his spear into the flank of some doe-eyed zellion or marauding felid with a taste for human flesh.

‘Spit it out, then,’ said Kor’sarro.

‘My khan?’

‘You didn’t hide your scars under battleplate just to come out here and bait me, Stormseer. My temper’s not that tight.’

‘Of course,’ said Sudabeh, his tone suddenly formal. ‘The astropathic choir has a message for you, my khan. The Third Company is needed on Agrellan immediately. We are to eradicate a tau infestation, as loudly and as memorably as possible.’

‘Out of the question,’ replied Kor’sarro, but there was doubt under his tone. ‘You told me yourself, the Tarot indicates that Blackheart’s renegades draw closer with every passing hour. We are needed here, to defend our home world.’

‘Our elders have decided that our duty lies elsewhere, my khan,’ said Sudabeh. ‘Many other companies are ready to repel the Red Corsairs. Chogoris will endure without us, I can feel it. Quan Zhou will stand.’

A wordless pause stretched out, both men staring upwards as if Huron Blackheart’s fleet would glimmer into being at any moment.

‘Tau,’ sighed the khan. ‘So we face their cursed weapon-magicks again.’

‘Indeed,’ said Sudabeh. ‘I believe they seek to use the planet Agrellan as a staging post in order to seize the mineral-rich tithe worlds on the cusp of the Damocles Gulf.’

‘Agrellan,’ the khan continued, fingering his long moustache. ‘Dovar System, yes?’

‘Correct again.’

‘Ha. Terrain?’

‘Unremarkable, for the most part. Technically a hive world, but mostly scorched deserts and open plains.’

The khan’s grisly smile reappeared, bits of meat bleeding between his teeth.

‘Anything else?’

‘It’s haunted,’ said Sudabeh, matter-of-factly. ‘The place was subject to Exterminatus centuries ago. The Malleus alone know why.’

‘No doubt they do. The stain of Chaos is not easily erased.’

‘As you say. Reading between the lines of the data-slate, it seems the virus bombs left a highly toxic legacy. The planet still bears the marks of its former death, both physically and spiritually.’

‘Ghosts, then,’ said the khan, shrugging. ‘Common enough.’

‘Not these ones,’ the Stormseer replied.

CHAPTER TWO

IRONDELVE PLAIN
SOUTH OF THE ACACIAN BASIN,
AGRELLAN, 742.999.M41

A shimmering black dot scarred the centre of the Agrellan sun. It grew by the tiniest of fractions, slowly expanding until it resolved into a smudged figure silhouetted against the blinding orb. Three smaller dots swirled around the figure like electrons orbiting a nucleus. Slowly, steadily, the outline swelled until it eclipsed the sun all but completely.

The figure’s lines hardened into those of a tau battlesuit, bulky yet somehow still strangely feminine. The accompanying dots became a trio of discus-like drones, thick antennae canted in a perfect compromise between aerodynamics and sensory acuity. Only thin jet streams in low orbit gave any hint of how this solar angel and her strange attendants had come to earth. The marks of her Orca’s passage were two faint scars amongst hundreds of others lining the azure sky.

Then, as soon as the figure and her retinue came within half a mile of the planet’s surface, they disappeared.

Commander Shadowsun touched down with such measured delicacy that the puff of dust from Agrellan’s scorched surface was barely noticeable.

Her appointment as the face of the Third Sphere expansion had been no accident. Tall for a tau and with a dancer’s perfect posture, on those occasions when she wished to be seen, she cut quite a majestic figure. When entering hostile territory, however, her highly sophisticated XV22 battlesuit rendered her practically invisible.

Technically speaking she could be seen by the naked eye, Shadowsun reminded herself, albeit as nothing more than a vague haze. Tiny cells honeycombed not only the surface of her battlesuit but also her underslung fusion blasters. One side of each sensor cell was a miniscule camera, and the other side a pinpoint hologram array that could replicate that camera’s footage with unprecedented accuracy.

Once she was back on her flagship after a military engagement, Shadowsun would transfer the footage from these cameras to a suite of holodrones and walk through a full-spectrum projection of her own performance, analysing, highlighting and consolidating her manoeuvres with the dedication and patience of a master.

The master, come to that.

‘Oe-ken-yon, please begin your initial dataharvest,’ said Shadowsun, turning to the largest of her three drones. ‘Take as much time as you require, my friend. As Commander Puretide taught us, when utilised correctly, the battlefield itself is a potent weapon.’

The drone blipped once in assent and moved away, sensor spectrums panning.

Data was vital in the business of waging war. Shadowsun was one of the three finest tau commanders of her generation, due in no small part to the fact she considered every angle and outcome before committing her forces. Diligence was one of a great many things she had learned on Mount Kanji under the wisdom of Commander Puretide. She had absorbed every drop of knowledge she could from dawn to dusk. The perfect pupil, he had called her, albeit only after her training was complete. Those three small words were still the best gifts she had ever received.

For four long years Commander Puretide had challenged her with gruelling trials. Trials so harsh she could never forget the lessons she had learned from them, even had she wanted to. The lessons were hard won indeed. Her body still bore the scars – scars she sometimes traced when she was alone, dwelling on what she had learned.

Only two other tau in the entire galaxy could truly understand what she had gone through in the name of the Greater Good. Strange young Kais, the Monat Supreme, cadre of one and founder of Fi’rios Sept. Kais, and… and the traitor Shoh.

She shuddered, acutely aware of her skin brushing the inside of her suit. No time to think of him now.

‘Commander Shadowsun,’ blipped her c-link drone, its datatone prim and formal as it returned to her side. ‘My report is complete, and ready for your inspection.’

‘My thanks, Drone Commandant Oe-ken-yon,’ she transmitted back in kind, rapid-scanning the drone’s datacompile with one eye whilst her other remained fixed on her battlesuit’s sensor suite, just in case.

There was something strange about Agrellan’s data… a feeling of a glitch, rather than the anomaly itself. She dismissed the notion as illogical.

‘It appears that the environment itself is hostile, Oe-ken. Not unusual for an Imperial world, and well within the parameters of the earth caste to fix once we have taken this world for the empire. Please remain within shield radius of either Oe-nu or Oe-hei from now on.’

‘Affirmed. Any additionals, commander?’ transmitted Oe-ken-yon.

‘Not at this point, little one. Be content to wait.’

Back when she had simply been Shaserra, student of the fire caste academies, Commander Shadowsun had shown great talent in the arts of waging war. She had consistently excelled in every simulation and battlescape her mentors could devise. After her training was complete, she had been accorded the signal honour of further study under Commander Puretide himself.

At the foot of her master’s hover-throne, she had learned every nuance and tenet of the martial style that had lain closest to her natural skillset. Hers was the oldest and most well established of all the tau ways of war. It was known formally as Kauyon, and informally as the Patient Hunter.

Kilometres below the peak of Mount Kanji, Shadowsun had sat shrouded in snow at the side of a beast-trail for days. Her skin had been as cold as death, and her breathing as shallow as the tiny sighs of a hibernating mouse. She had remained so still that a large family of arctic spiders had used her as a frame for their tickling webs.

Inert as stone, at one with the mountain, when the one-eared snow lynx had finally wandered past her, she had simply lunged out and broken its neck.

Over the decades since her promotion to commander, Shadowsun had honed her natural patience and sense of timing to a lethal point. She had applied it like a scalpel to everything from the delicacies of diplomacy to the sudden destruction of alien battlefleets. And yet, despite her forces having overcome the tau empire’s foes for minimal loss on countless occasions, there remained a stubborn few who still questioned her ways.

One in particular.

The traitor Shoh had shunned Kauyon from the day they had begun their training together, concentrating solely on Mont’ka, the Killing Blow. Just recently Revered Aun’shi, the Ethereal Supreme and speaker of great truths, had told her in person that the Traitor believed the philosophy of Kauyon was only for the weak.

She shook her head in disgust and despair, her smooth brow creased. The idea of ignoring patience in favour of aggression was utterly alien to her. Surely, demonstrably as far as she was concerned, Kauyon was the path that led to the Greater Good. How else to use the foe’s own confidence against him, to do the maximum damage at minimum cost to the tau race? The Master himself had often said ‘To triumph with the least amount of risk must always be the goal.’ Unlike her headstrong peers, she had listened well.

Shadowsun amped her audio pickups high for a moment, and they relayed the telltale whine of a nearby VX1-0 dronenet gathering topographical data. Behind it was the high, triple purr of a Piranha squadron on patrol. High above the T-shaped skimmers, Manta missile destroyers hummed by in stately grace. Each of the giant supercraft was enacting one of Shadowsun’s overlapping heavy recon loops, scouring Agrellan’s surface for signs of the foe. Their airborne comrades would detect the blundering fools of the Imperium before long; the patterns on her suit’s distribution array described overlapping geometries that would have pleased even the most precise earth caste scientist.

There was something else there, though, something on the data-cusp. She blink-masked the audiosigns she recognised, cutting out all background elements until all she was left with was a subtle susurrus over a baseline of white noise.

The anomalous waveform was not regular, like that of a machine, but something with the erratic spike of the biological. In fact – she isolated it and amped it high – it sounded a lot like distant whispers.

‘Commander!’ boomed her audio bead, jolting her senses. ‘Stealth team report!’

She spun round, shield drones flying to her flanks. Her sensor suite’s blacksun filter revealed the ghostly heat signatures of a dozen XV25 Stealth suits. Whilst she had been lost in her reverie, Shas’vre Drai and his team had been standing behind her in full salute formation.

‘Stealth team until it suits you!’ she spat, her hot spike of anger simmering to cold disapproval in the space of a few heartbeats. ‘This is a suboptimal time to show off, Shas’vre Drai. We are within warzone parameters.’

‘I offer contrition, my commander,’ said Drai, his body language deferential even in the swollen bulk of his battlesuit.

Even the fire caste’s standard-issue Stealth field generators were advanced enough to baffle the senses. Without state-of-the-art optical sensors, Drai and his team-mates would have been little more than heat shimmers against the cracked and lifeless landscape. That was little excuse for one with a multispectrum sensor suite, though. Shadowsun blamed her momentary lapse of concentration on the strange whisper-hiss that had distracted her. She still felt on edge even now.

It was a well-known fact amongst the fire caste that Drai’s mastery of the silent approach more than made up for his habit of announcing his presence as loudly as possible, whether with a formal greeting or a salvo from the truncated burst cannon that formed his battlesuit’s right arm.

‘Have your assessments reached a satisfactory conclusion, my commander?’ asked Drai.

‘They have, Drai, and I thank you for your inquiry. No Imperial forces have been pinpointed as yet, though at least three capital-class transport ships have made planetfall to my knowledge. I have assigned forward bait elements.’

‘And the planet itself, my commander?’

Shadowsun stepped back and to the side, revealing the c-link drone behind her. ‘Oe-ken?’

The drone rose slightly. ‘Designation Imperial hive world, human population approximately 16.7 billion, apex conurbation Agrellan Prime,’ said Oe-ken. The drone’s artificial voice was strangely lyrical, as if it were reciting an abstract poem. ‘Surface primarily plainsland, topographical map appended. Atmosphere highly toxic to all carbon-based clades, anomalous readings high…’

‘Excellent. I believe that will be sufficient for now, Oe-ken,’ interrupted Shadowsun. ‘We can assimilate the rest from your compile. We do not want the gue’la brutes alerted to our presence by you rattling out every last finding, after all.’

‘Rattling, commander?’ said Oe-ken, its elevation sinking.

‘An artefact of speech,’ said Shadowsun, waving the comment away. ‘I meant no aspersion.’

The tau’s artificial intelligences were hard-wired to behave as much like their makers as possible in all social situations, and Oe-ken-yon was the most advanced of his kind. Regardless of size or duty, every drone strived to emulate its masters and fit in seamlessly with tau culture. It was a safety measure that covered most eventualities. When a purely objective viewpoint was necessary, personality protocols could be temporarily deactivated at a single blip.

Such a course of action had proved problematic in the past – the disastrous Pech Incident was one example. In recent years, the earth caste had made it standard practice to build the tau empire’s artificial intelligences with a personality best suited to their role. Even so, Shadowsun often wondered if a machine that could simulate emotion wasn’t just as likely to affect operational efficiency as one without it.

‘May I append an observation, Commander Shadowsun?’ said Oe-nu quietly as it hovered in close.

The MV52, much like lesser shield drones, had twin projector aerials that reminded Shadowsun of the plain-hoppers she used to catch on Vior’la as a child.

‘By all means, Oe-nu.’

‘The background electromagnetic field upon Agrellan is having a detrimental effect on my battery source, commander. I cannot guarantee optimum performance throughout.’

‘Noted, little helper, but in truth you say that every time. It is rare that I deploy the fire caste into an idyllic environment.’

‘This time is different, Commander Shadowsun,’ the drone whined. It dipped the front of its rim in a gesture of dutiful obedience. ‘Rest assured that in the interests of longevity, Oe-hei and I will utilise the least possible amount of energy in order to ensure your protection. We shall not use one iota more than necessary.’

‘That is… indeed reassuring, Oe-nu. Thank you in advance.’

‘Merely doing our duty, Commander Shadowsun,’ the drone said obsequiously, dipping its disc-like body once more before withdrawing to slowly orbit its mistress.

‘May I ask what you make of these anomalous readings, my commander?’ said Shas’vre Drai, tapping his sensor antenna with the quad-barrelled end of his burst cannon.

‘Of course. I believe they are residuals, echoes of a sort after some cataclysmic event. That would certainly fit with the geological samples my punch-cylinders have taken thus far.’

‘A robust theory, my commander… up to a point,’ said Drai warily.

‘I realise it is the nature of the cataclysm that concerns you, Shas’vre Drai, but I would not divert attention to it at this point. We have more pressing data to obtain.’

As Shadowsun finished her sentence, a sheet of red shapes flared across the topographical display above her command suite.

‘Excellent. The air caste have located the Imperial vessels. Approach on my mark.’

As one, the Stealth suits and their drone escorts rose into the air, revolved eight degrees west, and hovered invisibly towards the Acacian Basin.

The hive cities of Agrellan were truly mighty examples of their kind. Giant, slab-sided monstrosities, they reminded Shadowsun of insect mounds out on the Vior’lan plain. Each spire-dotted metropolis was teeming with human life, and somewhere within the basin were the occupants of the three Imperial vessels that had escaped the air caste’s lethal attentions. Finding their exact location would not be easy. At Oe-ken-yon’s estimation, the entire population of Shadowsun’s home sept could have fit within the endless levels of the nearest hive and still had its upper half to spare.

According to the latest scans, the sides of each hive were dotted with gun nests, laser banks, gravity mine channels, ferrocrete plates, observation towers and docking plates. Sculptures of alien saints and living gargoyles loomed and crawled upon their facades, each a hideous reflection of the heroic monuments that stood outside each tau training academy. Shadowsun felt a forbidden twinge of excitement at the idea of smashing the human icons to dust.

As the commander and her skimmer-borne cadres sped towards the mountain range that girdled the hives, she found herself recalling the day she had personally destroyed the statue of Shoh that stood outside his old battle dome. That had been a day long talked about. After that the traitor’s despicable sympathisers had branded her the Iconoclast.

She rather liked the term.

The vast caldera that formed the walls of the basin loomed up ahead, the narrow pass at its southernmost point guarded by a kilometre-high gate-fortress. The giant bastion looked every bit as indomitable as the peaks around it, and infinitely more deadly.

‘A warrior who wears his strength openly is easily countered,’ she said to herself, imagining her master’s stony glare. She remembered learning that particular lesson well, after her boasts that neither Shoh nor Kais had a hope of finding her when she wished to remain unseen. Commander Puretide had ordered her to prove it. All those weeks she had thought her bond-mates were looking for her, all those painful hours sat stewing in her tree stump, hoping to be discovered. Commander Puretide had never sent them out at all. She had eventually slunk back, starving and chastened, having missed out on almost a month of training. The Commander had turned her greatest strength into a punishing weakness with a single off-the-cuff command. It was an object lesson in humility – a quality the Imperium of Man had left behind long ago.

She blipped the cadre-level datanet, denoting the looming fortress’s icon. ‘Needless to say,’ she transmitted, ‘we will not stray within range of that ridiculous thing.’

Symbols of affirmation blinked over each team’s icons. She eye-flicked alternative lines of approach across the mountains lining the basin, coloured pathways that zigzagged in from a dozen different points on the outside of the mountain range that girdled the basin. The air caste’s satellite scans, overlaid with the topography from the dronenets, had given her a hundred potential routes of approach, each shielded from hive artillery and remote gun nests. She would need no more than a handful of them to lure the Imperials into her trap.

The cadres fanned out from a dust storm of their own creation, circumnavigating the giant caldera’s toxic peaks and joining the routes designated to them without slowing. Over and around the mountains they went, grav-skimmers, drones and battlesuits keeping in tight formation as they hovered up gullies, glaciers and crevasses.

The skies flared white for a second, right on cue. The explosion left a concentric ring of light expanding high above the basin, as hypnotic to the hives’ sensor arrays as it was to mortal eyes.

After securing victory in space scant hours before, the air caste’s commanders had been only too pleased to grant Shadowsun’s request for a grand distraction. The Supreme Admiral, Kor’O Li’men Ka, had transmitted back in person. The detonation of In Vigilus, an Imperial wreck burning in high orbit, would form a perfect coda to their symphony of supremacy.

The death throes of the In Vigilus had bought Shadowsun a few seconds of electromagnetic backwash, a space of time in which the Imperial scanners were rendered blind and the Acacian Basin was lit in stark monochrome. In the blinking aftermath of those stolen seconds, every cadre hiding behind the lip of their respective mountains slid smoothly over the crest and boosted neatly into new hiding places.

‘Phase two is complete, commander,’ said Oe-ken, floating just behind Shadowsun.

‘Yes, thank you, Oe-ken, I have already observed that,’ she replied through a smile. ‘It’s phase three that will prove critical.’

‘I concur. It must be most satisfying to physically demonstrate the supremacy of the Greater Good in such a manner,’ the drone said wistfully.

‘It is pleasing to do so, but it is data I seek at this stage, not violence. Thankfully the air caste keep extensive records of the sigils and markings that the Imperium displays upon its battleships. According to my contacts, the first of the three vessels to have made planetfall upon Agrellan contains common gue’la soldiers and their support vehicles. The second, and this is the one I believe we must locate at all costs, contains the gue’ron’sha that the humans call Space Marines. I trust you are familiar with their reputation.’

‘I have assessed all available data. And the contents of the third vessel?’ prompted Oe-ken.

‘Unrecognised, and that has me intrigued. The ship has a cavernous cargo hold, though, and its symbol appears to be the riding-beast the humans call a “horse”. The water caste have appended the name “Terryn,” along with a report that seems to have been made in haste.’

‘Cross-correlating… hard data not found. Commander,’ it said ruefully, ‘past the designation “Terryn” there’s very little on the fire caste databases about this warship.’

‘Interesting. Perhaps it contains beast-riding warriors, much as the kroot like to use. Keep searching, Oe-ken. I would rather not have any unwelcome surprises when the time comes to enact the takeover. Still, do not fear, little helper. We will force them to commit their strength, and the data will flow.’

On Shadowsun’s command suite, the fire caste’s icons were sliding down the mountainsides into their designated zones. As the glare of the air caste’s high-orbit diversion gave way to dull moonlight, each cadre’s heavy elements began to move into position. Hammerhead and Skyray gunships prowled forward, each flanked by Devilfish transports, a wall of sleek ochre tanks waiting to show their true colours as killing machines.

It was then that the hives awoke from their slumber.

The skies were filled with such thunder it made a Vior’lan deathstorm look tame. Heavy munitions roared downwards in a hail of shells that could tear a ferrocrete bunker apart as easily as it could a wooden box. The air above the Acacian Basin was darkened by the firepower roaring out of the hives, each Imperial metropolis hurling everything it could at the interlopers approaching their position.

Yet despite all the fury, despite all the noise, not a single tau life signal faded to charcoal on Shadowsun’s command suite.

The commander smiled thinly as she watched the Imperial hives vent their mindless, pointless wrath. Go on, she thought. Waste your ammunition. Waste as much as you like.

The hive cities that dotted the Imperium grew almost organically over the centuries. New structures and statues were erected even as old ones sloughed away, complicating the already labyrinthine structures with every dubious new addition. Even comparatively young hives were so large, so moribund in their construction, that they were crippled by their own immense proportions. To Shadowsun, they were like fat old men that had undergone reconstructive surgery one too many times.

During their approach to the Acacian Basin, Shadowsun had used the air caste’s orbital data to determine the location of each of the hive’s guns, and their possible fields of fire. She had correlated them against the data streams transmitted by each cadre’s pathfinder teams, projecting the elevation range of those guns and their estimated reach.

Using Oe-ken’s formidable processing banks, she had then constructed a three-dimensional map of each hive’s blind spots. The charcoal grey of death denoted those areas covered by its guns, and healthy gold lit the zones that the hive’s bulk had occluded from its own sight. Her cadres’ symbols had glided into the golden slivers of safety overlaid on the master map she had transmitted. If her calculations were correct – and they invariably were – the warriors inside these zones were fundamentally safe.

Convinced of their own idiot brawn, the hive’s gunners threw obscene amounts of ordnance towards the tau tanks lurking on their perimeters. They achieved nothing more than swathing the valley with shrouds of dust and foul-smelling smoke.

It took the best part of an hour before the Imperials realised their mistake. It was time enough for Shadowsun to prepare detailed battle plans and approach vectors for every team under her command, and to arrange for the basin’s lines of reinforcement to be cut off.

The cutting of the supply lines connecting each hive was a simple enough matter. The vast bulk of the Imperium’s armour took the form of tracked vehicles, so the air caste made neutralisation runs in the arid deserts between each hive, staying out of range of the Imperial guns to drop pulse bombs where the ferrocrete superhighways were weakest. Whenever the Imperium’s scrambled reinforcements left the ruined roads in favour of the parched wastes, they would throw up clouds of dust that would hang in Agrellan’s poisonous air. With such advance warning of their foes’ approach, the fire caste’s anti-gravity skimmers could roam the planet unimpeded.

Once the last of the metallic mountains finally fell silent, Shadowsun slunk forwards invisibly, the Stealth elements of each of her cadres advancing on her cue. Barely a swirl of smoke marked their passage.

They had reached the gold zones next to each hive before the echoes of the Imperial bombardment had stopped resounding from the mountainsides.

Then the heavy elements of the tau cadres took their turn.

The distinctive whip-crack of heavy railgun fire rang out across the basin, a quiet, precise sound after the tooth-rattling roar of the hive’s guns. The hypervelocity rounds they projected left tunnels of displaced air in their wake. Smoke and dust swirled around them like desert spirits startled from a lamp. The rounds thudded deep into the exterior slabs, at first achieving little more than to introduce a series of artificial fault lines. Yet each Hammerhead’s target had not been chosen at random.

Pathfinder teams debarked from the Devilfish transports and painted each impact site with their markerlights. Moments later, massed squadrons of Skyray missile ships sent seekers soaring after the railgun volleys. The guided missiles detonated with pinpoint accuracy, each volley bringing hundreds of tonnes of ferrocrete tumbling down.

To a casual observer, the hives had been grazed, nothing more. To those that could perceive the heat signatures of each hive’s walls, every exit, hangar and missile bay was at least partially buried by a small avalanche of rubble.

The gold zones on Shadowsun’s command readout blinked, reconfigured and multiplied, a geometric landscape of possibilities that Oe-ken-yon updated for each encircling cadre to exploit.

‘Warriors of the fire caste, you may take these ugly monstrosities apart at your leisure,’ transmitted Shadowsun. ‘They cannot harm you now.’

CHAPTER THREE

HIVE ACACIA SECUNDUS
ACACIAN BASIN
AGRELLAN, 742.999.M41

A gun-studded slab of ferrocrete that could have crushed a Titan slid inexorably down the central spire of Hive Acacia Secundus. It crashed through the concentric circles of the hive’s waist and toppled sideways with majestic slowness, flattening a swathe of the underdistricts as it thundered to a halt. Rock dust billowed upwards as secondary landslides took yet more of the hive’s outer layer with them.

Kor’sarro Khan grimaced. With the hives as densely populated as they were, that little disaster would have claimed tens of thousands, perhaps millions of human lives. If these xenos were allowed to continue their methodical destruction of the Acacian Basin, the death toll would soon reach the billions.

‘This has gone on long enough,’ the khan said to Sudabeh. ‘Let the others look to their own battles.’

‘Hives of this size can withstand a lot of punishment, my khan,’ replied Sudabeh. ‘Would it not be better to wait for Patriarch Tybalt’s Knights, or for Redstone’s Devils at the very least? With their help, we could cripple the foe’s chances of escape.’

The khan just frowned, staring out as more tau missiles arced into the weak points of the hive’s architecture. Another set of spires crashed down, taking a wide strip of barnacle-habs to a dusty death.

‘No,’ said the khan, turning on his heel. ‘Mobilise and deploy all air units,’ he voxed to his men. ‘I want both Thunderhawks with a full complement and in the air immediately. Two outriders at all times.’

A series of terse acknowledgements crackled in response from the Third Company’s sergeants and Techmarine pilots.

Sudabeh sighed heavily, picking up his totemic staff and following his captain who was on his way to the Kisma’s launch deck.

‘It’ll be good for them,’ said the khan over his shoulder, loosening Moonfang in its scabbard.

The Kisma, the Imperial drop-ship that had seen the White Scars to their landing site, was a fat-bellied whale of a craft. It had been built to withstand direct barrage from warships a size category larger than itself. Just as well, for its sides were still buckled and burning from its terrifying journey planetside.

The Kisma’s ablative armour robbed it of a great deal of potential speed, a fact that had gnawed within at the patience of the White Scars just as acid eats at metal. Yet after communing with the Emperor’s Tarot, the Stormseer Sudabeh had ordained the Kisma the safest vector of approach. Given that the Imperial fleet was being torn apart by a lethal assault from tau airspace, the khan had been ill-disposed to argue with him.

The Kisma had done her job well enough, bearing them safely if inelegantly to the planet’s surface. It was no longer the time for caution. Now was the time for speed.

The Thunderhawks Khan Spear and Headseeker roared out from the underflank launch bays of the drop-ship like missiles from the wings of an immense fighter plane. Burning upwards on trails of refined promethium, they raced around the basin’s inner mountainsides, keeping to the smoking clouds as they banked parallel to Hive Acacia Primus.

In theory both of the assault gunships had firepower enough to take on a scout-class Titan. In the case of Khan Spear, the fact was indisputable. The long-barrelled turbo-laser destructor mounted atop the Spear was powerful enough to punch through one side of a hive spire to the other. During the Tarotian Suppression, the khan had seen it obliterate half a kilometre of plasteel, ferrocrete and adamantium in one searing, blinding blast. It was one of the khan’s most favourite weapons in all the galaxy. Though it greatly irritated the Spear’s dour Techmarine pilot, Debedian, Kor’sarro would often shout out targeting solutions during an aerial engagement, claiming the credit if the subsequent kill shot hit home.

Even shorn of its dorsal cannon the Thunderhawk could still embarrass a battle tank. Under its primary wings were sets of Hellstrike missiles whose individual payloads could collapse a hab-block. Lascannons graced its secondary wingtips, and twinned heavy bolter arrays swivelled on gimbals under the frontal stabiliser fins. White as snapped bone and marked by the lightning-split ingot of the White Scars, the Khan Spear was the pride of the company’s armoured elite. Its opposite number, the Headseeker, was just as formidable a sight. These were no mere aircraft, but deadly and sacred relics released from their sanctums to wage the bloodiest of wars.

As the Thunderhawks set a breakneck pace, two pairs of Stormtalon gunships came alongside them. Each craft was a balled fist of stub-nosed guns and powerful engines. The Techmarine pilots at the helm of each escort craft levelled long-range auspex scans at the plains, binding their findings together in a lattice to better inform their charges of the tapestry of battle.

The Khan Spear’s engines flared as it pushed ahead of Headseeker, arrowing round the lee of the hive in a tight arc. Inside its passenger holds three squads of White Scars grinned as G-forces pulled hard at their flesh. The valley shook with raw sound as the Thunderhawks came hurtling into full view of the tau ground forces, the element of surprise manifesing itself. Up ahead the tau vehicles had formed a series of dense wedges, their deployment seemingly at random. The tip of each formation pointed towards the hive.

‘Why in the Emperor’s…’ said Kor’sarro. Suddenly it hit him. ‘Sudabeh! They are in the blind spots of their prey!’

‘I can believe it,’ voxed back Sudabeh. ‘I told you they were cunning.’

‘Ha. Not cunning enough,’ said the khan, leering as the Spear lanced towards the nearest of the tau wedges.

For a split second the Thunderhawk’s turbolaser destructor stabbed out in a boiling, blinding column. The Spear hurtled past, leaving behind a smoking gulley where a quartet of tau hover-tanks had been moments before. Leaning over Debedian’s shoulder the khan chuckled darkly, already tapping the next targets on the Techmarine’s screen.

From the smoky gloom up ahead, dull flickers of light turned to hammering cylinders of force as the next tank wedge’s railguns took pot shots at the approaching Space Marine craft.

‘Headseeker, attend us,’ voxed Kor’sarro, ‘stop skulking in our slipstream and make your presence felt.’

In answer the heart of the tau wedge up ahead was wrenched into the air by a blossoming black explosion, thick pieces of xenos tank spinning off in all directions.

The Headseeker’s primary weapon was not a laser like its brother the Spear, but a heavily modified battle cannon. No ordinary breach gun, this was a piece of ordnance longer than a Leman Russ tank. When passing over dense urban environments, the weapon was difficult to use in anything other than a suppression role. Out in the open, the full force of its destructive power could be brought to bear.

Another shell hammered into the scattering tau tanks, and great plumes of toxic earth flew upwards. Within them were more ochre hulls, and entire squadrons were sent spinning into the smoke. As the Headseeker launched its Hellstrike missiles with a chain of whooshing roars, the skimmers on the edge of the formation backed away. They were too slow. A triple detonation blasted into the gun-tanks at the tip of the wedge, two of them flipping over before their burning remains crunched to a halt.

‘Better shoot sharp, Debedian,’ said the khan, leaning in so close the Techmarine could smell the raw meat on his captain’s breath. ‘The Headseeker’s catching up.’

Then the world turned black.

Hive Acacia Secundus had finally taken the shot it had been waiting for, and a shell the size of a maglift had detonated amongst the tau tanks scattering at the Thunderhawks’ attack. Mort-signals blaring, the Spear bucked and rolled as the macrocannon shell’s blast turned the air tornado fierce. Debedian’s helm chattered machine code as he fought not only to appease the ship’s machine-spirit but also to wrestle its steering array at the same time. A century of dutiful maintenance had bought the dour Techmarine some leeway with the Thunderhawk, and the gunship allowed itself to be brought back under control.

The Spear pulled back up alongside its brother the Headseeker, both soot-streaked gunships ploughing out of the black wall of smoke and angling towards the next wedge of tau armour. Though one of their Stormtalon escorts had been caught in the hive’s vengeful strike, the other three escort craft burst from the billowing clouds intact.

They were not alone.

Commander Shadowsun’s frown was lit by a wildfire of flashing red icons. The gue’ron’sha had revealed themselves, their giant gunships soaring through the air high above. They were most definitely making their presence felt.

‘Primary threat denoted,’ Shadowsun transmitted. ‘All units at hives one and two, continue apace. Hive three units relocate, staggered pattern southward, seventh wedge first. Watch your gold zones. Once the strike passes, resume serrated echelons. Hammerheads continue destruction duty, Skyrays cover the air. For the Greater Good.’

Symbols of assent flashed in instant affirmation, blinking everywhere around the crescent of tank wedges that surrounded the hive.

Shadowsun’s command suite blipped audio. ‘This is Team Vre’Esta reporting a pair of direct seeker hits on the primary target. Damage minimal. Requesting optimised targeting solution.’

‘Continue to occupy their attention, Vre’Esta,’ Shadowsun transmitted back. ‘The air caste will deliver the kill. Admiral Li’men Ka, proceed immediately.’

‘Affirmed, commander,’ transmitted the air caste admiral. ‘Razorsharks inbound. Air superiority will be secured in a matter of minutes.’

Two triangular sets of blue-grey darts appeared on Shadowsun’s sensor screen, falling in behind the gue’ron’sha gunship icons as they curved towards the next armoured wedge.

‘They have taken the bait, Drai,’ said Shadowsun to the ghostly shimmer next to her. ‘Stay alert.’

Shas’vre Drai had known his commander a long time. The moment before the kill was always the same.

Under her rapid commands and cold demeanour, a smile was waiting to pounce.

The khan was not pleased.

‘You let three enemy craft tail you? Get rid of them!’ he shouted, hammering his fist onto the pilot throne right next to Debedian’s russet helmet.

The Spear banked right with surprising agility for such a massive craft, then left and up, roaring high before plunging down into the smoke. Though the Stormtalon gunships struggled to stay close to their charges, three blunt-nosed, T-shaped craft hung right behind each Thunderhawk as if mindlinked to their machine-spirits.

‘Shake them off or kill them, Techmarine,’ said Kor’sarro, ‘unless you want me to do it for you.’

Debedian merely inclined his head slightly before throwing his craft into more evasive manoeuvres. The T-shaped xenos craft stayed the course, the energy cannons underneath their long tails spitting blue-white pulses of ionic energy. Mort-signals flared on the control panel as the Thunderhawk’s engines took several direct hits.

Suddenly the two Stormtalon gunships were back, bursting out of the smoke banks beneath to interpose themselves between the Spear and its pursuers. Incredibly, both of the one-man escort craft flew after the Thunderhawk whilst facing backwards, the rotary engine pods on their flanks canted a full half-circle so their pilots could see the foe.

The paired assault cannons underslung beneath each Stormtalon whirred, spitting bullets in a stream so solid it forced one of the xenos fighter craft to peel off. A moment later the first escort craft’s skyhammer launchers sent a volley of air-to-air missiles streaking out, smashing into the retreating pursuer and blasting it apart in an explosion of purple flame.

The other two xenos craft came in close, missiles of their own rising up from hidden compartments on their wings and lancing out to follow the Thunderhawk’s powerful heat signature. One seeker whooshed under the Spear’s wing, but the other three detonated amongst the Thunderhawk’s engines. Smoke plumed and flames coughed as the Spear lost speed, the upper spires of the hive blurring past within arm’s reach of the wing.

The second of the two Stormtalons suddenly dropped into the smoke below, its engine pods twisting as its opposite number laid down suppressing fire. The two remaining xenos fighters closed in, quad turrets panning stuttering ion streams towards the flaming ruin of the Thunderhawk’s engines.

With a tight lateral swerve, the first Stormtalon hurled itself into the path of the deadly blue-white energies spitting from the closest xenos craft. The ion streams hit home, burning right through the armourglass of the gunship’s canopy and coring its pilot in his seat.

As the gunship’s wreckage spiralled downwards, the second Stormtalon burst upwards from the smoke banks right behind both of the T-shaped fighters. Assault cannons blazing, the Stormtalon’s typhoon launchers filled the sky with blossoming flak. Its wrath was all but indiscriminate, for though its pilot scored several inadvertent hits on the Thunderhawk, he knew the Spear could shrug off the threat of solid-shot firepower without incident.

Not so the xenos craft pursuing it. The barrage tore gaping holes in the fuselage of both tau fighters, sending them veering out of control. First one fell, then the other, spiralling away to crash headlong into the hive city below. The victorious escort came alongside the Spear, voxing the all clear as the gunship banked around for another killing pass.

Shadowsun watched the last of the Razorsharks wink red and disappear on her sensor suite. Though one of the giant Imperial craft had been trapped in a crossfire of seeker missiles and forced to disengage, the other, despite taking severe damage to its engines, had been bought a reprieve by its ugly little escort. The gunship’s symbol pulsed white and active on her screen as it veered around the hive’s largest spire for another attack run.

She would make it suffer for its tenacity.

‘I must effect direct intervention. Oe-nu, electrofield lock onto my back, please. Maximum shield, or at least what you feel you can part with. Drai, please take care of Oe-ken and Oe-hei down here. I cannot let that vulgar craft up there take another chunk out of our armoured comrades.’

‘Affirmed, my commander,’ said Drai, his tone rueful at the thought of his commander fighting alone.

Shadowsun saluted briefly with her fusion blasters before rocketing up from her command position at the edge of the hive, battlesuit jets flaring white. Knowing well that her Stealth cells struggled to cope at extreme velocities, she ordered the nearest Skyray gunships to mask her approach by firing seeker missiles parallel to her coordinates. From a distance her ascent looked much like a set of munitions arcing towards the human gunship as it came about for another attack run.

Shadowsun broke off her headlong charge as the seekers detonated harmlessly upon the Imperial gunship’s underside, instead cutting in horizontally to match the giant gue’ron’sha vessel’s velocity. Once her suit had synched its speed with the gunships, she touched down with both feet on the broadest part of its primary wing and blink-pushed the electrofields that would lock her steady. Maniac winds wrenched at her armour as the hive’s spires blurred past at dizzying speed. As she had known it would be, her battlesuit was up to the task, and held her in place.

It was a constant danger to the battlesuit pilot that within their control cocoon they felt danger only as a removed, academic emotion. One wrong step up here, Shadowsun reminded herself, and she could be twisted in half by the torque of the Thunderhawk’s aerial rampage.

‘Intercept phase complete,’ she blipped to Drai, aiming her deadly fusion blasters at the middle of the giant craft’s wing.

Twin beams of molten white light blazed out, scoring through the skin of the wing and leaving a finger-wide furrow across its length. Shadowsun blink-pushed a memogram in disbelief. She checked her gun readouts; they were still practically at full charge. Fusion blasters were designed to cut through bulkheads. They should have taken the wing clean off.

A side panel on the Thunderhawk’s prow clanged open, and a towering, armoured beast of a human burst out.

For a split second, Shadowsun was impressed.

The giant in the ornate white armour had pulled himself up onto the frontal stabiliser fins with an athlete’s agility. He crouched, leapt, and smashed bodily into the secondary wings jutting from the gunship’s hull barely five paces from her. Even through her suit she felt the dull thud of his exosuit’s mag-clamps fastening his boots to the fuselage, locking him fast before the tumultuous forces that roared around them could tear him off. She raised her fusion blasters and fired, but the gue’ron’sha had already ducked behind the secondary wing.

The figure came out the other side hard, an archaic sword glimmering in his double grip. His mag clamps thudded on the wing as he closed the distance. With the exaggerated slowness of a dream, she knee-folded to the left and aimed into the Space Marine’s midsection. The square barrel of her fusion blaster was tugged by a sudden surge of turbulence, and the deadly energies went wide.

Shadowsun had already muted the raging wind and the craft’s screaming engines, every sense bent towards her attacker. Her sensor suite’s autotrans picked up the figure’s battle cry as he barrelled forwards, blade raised.

‘- - - FOR THE GREAT KHAN - - - DIE XENOS WITCH - - -’

There was a brilliant flash as the Space Marine’s glowing sword arced down, only to strike the invisible shield of force that Oe-nu was projecting around Shadowsun. Taking her chance, the commander lifted her right boot and kicked out hard, blink-setting its plates to maximum repulsion. Her kick struck the Space Marine in the knee just as her electromagnetic push broke that leg’s mag-clamp grip. Reeling, the human turned his one-legged stagger into a pivot, raised his great blade in one hand, and brought it down in a powerful diagonal slash. The air crackled in a confusion of light as the gue’ron’sha’s powered sword fought Oe-nu’s shieldsphere.

A split second later a volley of mass-reactive shells spat from the heavy bolters beneath the Thunderhawk’s stabiliser fins. The bolts slammed into Shadowsun’s side and detonated with violent force, blasting her clear from the Thunderhawk’s wing and sending her spiralling down towards the hive below.

Alert signifiers blazed across Shadowsun’s coresystem as she plummeted towards the jagged spires, a dozen critical readings fighting for her attention on her damage control hub. Panic gripped her, panic and the unbidden sensation of whispery laughter.

Only with total focus can we avoid the falling blade.

Shadowsun exhaled slowly, eyes wide as she processed and enacted several subroutines at the speed of thought. To her left hive levels flashed past, scattered lights and sneering gargoyles blurred by her spiralling descent. She rerouted power from her weapons, from her command suite, even from Oe-nu’s shields. All of it, every iota, she poured it into her battlesuit’s damaged jetpack.

It coughed once, twice, and then caught.

She felt relief spike through her, eclipsing the searing pain in her lower back as a fantail of flames billowed out from her armour. The heat was unbearable. She released as much sealant gel as she could as her vertical plummet levelled out and then turned into a wobbly ascent. As she climbed, she narrowly avoided the sainted colossi that bracketed the hive’s postern gate.

Rerouting her power to normal hazard settings, Commander Shadowsun flickered and disappeared. As the battered Thunderhawk disappeared from sight behind the hive spires, the collared necks of the two largest postern statues blazed white in a wide garrotting loop.

The solemn, sacred heads of the stone saints nodded as if falling asleep and toppled over, tumbling down into the underhive to claim yet more human lives.

CHAPTER FOUR

HIVE AGRELLAN PRIME
ACACIAN BASIN
AGRELLAN, 743.999.M41

The White Scars had regrouped in the triumphal boulevard that led to Agrellan Prime’s monolithic Gate Victorius. Their battle-scarred Thunderhawks had set down amidst the sprawling Victorius skyshields and were already being attended to by their Techmarines, each glad of their narrow escape during the battle in the Acacian Basin.

Mechanicus-grade incense wafted around the stricken gunships as the repairs began in earnest. White-armoured tactical squads marched out from their bellies ten by ten, each group descending the ramps that led to the boulevard and curving off towards the Rhinos and Razorbacks waiting nearby. To a man they had their helmets mag-clamped to their waists, the warm column of pollution that whistled down the boulevard pulling at their topknots and ruffling the fur worn by their sergeants. It had no true soul to it, Agrellan’s air, a toxic hivewind that an unaugmented human could not breathe without risking severe damage. But to the enhanced warriors of the White Scars it was still better than nothing. The baring of heads in a warzone was a lapse of protocol that the khan was apt to forgive, especially after being trapped for hours in the dimly lit womb of a Thunderhawk.

Three groups of heavily built, squat-bodied Space Marine bikes growled in readiness nearby, prime examples of the mechanical steeds so beloved by the sons of Chogoris. Several attack bikes were being tended nearby, their suspension blocks cleaned with psalms of purity and jets of compressed air. Their riders tested the throttles, as much for the love of the noise as for any real assessment of the engine.

Emerging from the gun district to the west were loose, skirmishing mobs of Catachans, rebreather masks covering their mouths and lasguns held loosely at their sides. Rugged tanks fanned out in their wake.

To the khan, these were Imperial Guardsmen only in the loosest sense. The planet Catachan was a violent mother, and she raised a different breed of man. No pomp and circumstance here, no ranks, no fanfares. Some said no discipline, either. Just hard-bitten, physically powerful men raised in a jungle world so deadly that even a White Scar would struggle to survive there for long.

The khan strode towards the bikes, sketching a loose salute towards Veteran Sergeant Djubali as he closed in. The sergeant saluted back, an easy grin spreading across his hairy face.

‘Straken’s taking his own good time getting into position,’ muttered the khan.

‘At least Terryn has deployed,’ Djubali replied. ‘Slow but sure, I suppose.’

The khan looked over to the war machines of House Terryn standing stock still at the end of the boulevard. To a casual glance they looked like the last six statues in a procession of armoured Imperial heroes that led from Gate Victorius to the slums of the hive’s core.

‘Straken’s Catachans are worth the wait, I hear,’ said Djubali. ‘Redstone’s too. Even if they are, you know. Human.’

The steedmaster shook his thick mane of hair as if shivering, brushing it from his face with a practised sweep of his hand. It didn’t make much difference. The man had a beard that crept up almost to his eyelids.

‘I’m not certain the jungle fighters will be in position when the tau arrive, horseborn,’ said Kor’sarro. ‘Come to that, I’m not convinced Tybalt’s Knights will be, either.’

‘When the eagle carries the tortoise,’ said Djubali dolefully, ‘both go hungry.’

The khan nodded sagely. There was a shout from behind, and the clank of power-armoured feet on rockcrete. The khan frowned, turning in his tracks to see Sudabeh striding up to them.

‘My khan,’ the Stormseer began, consternation scored upon his weather-beaten features. ‘Hive command’s astropathic choir has received a message-psalm intended for the Third Company. It is a psychic communion, from Chogoris.’

‘Speak on,’ said the khan, his brow furrowed.

‘We are needed elsewhere, captain,’ breathed Sudabeh. ‘The message-psalm says that a heretic fleet, red as blood, has translated from the warp above Chogoris. It isn’t alone. The battlefleet is…’ The Stormseer shook his head as if trying to dislodge a painful memory. ‘We must return to Quan Zhou at the first opportunity.’

The three men stood facing each other, their eyes sharing unspoken thoughts.

The khan was the first to speak. ‘We can’t,’ he said.

‘Our Chapter is in danger,’ said Sudabeh, ‘I consulted the Tarot as soon as I received the astropathic psalm. It indicates the Heretic Ascendant over the Brotherhood of the Storm.’

‘Not good news, I’ll wager,’ said Kor’sarro, grimly.

‘No, my khan. It… it shows the Tor Mortalis as the sole majoris. Destruction incumbent.’

‘Emperor’s bones,’ grimaced Kor’sarro. ‘So we’ll make it quick here, and translate back into the warp as soon as possible. The tau are all over this planet like flies on a carcass, but we can’t leave Agrellan’s people to die – or worse, to be turned against the Imperium by snake-tongued xenos.’

‘Besides, we’ve barely given them a bloody nose,’ said Djubali. ‘I say we close them down with blades and bolts, fight them face to face.’

‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your counsel as objective, horseborn,’ said the Stormseer, lips curled. ‘I can smell your anticipation from here.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Djubali, his eyes twinkling behind the curtain of his hair. ‘My khan? What does your instinct tell you?’

‘We stay,’ said Kor’sarro. ‘And we hit the tau so hard they never come back.’

Circled by Drai’s Stealth team, Shadowsun and her drones touched down in the white forest that girdled the peak south of Agrellan Prime. With her suit’s self-healing resins already hardening, she had left the repair protocols to themselves and funnelled power back to her suit functions. In the process she had announced her arrival at the muster point and called the coalition’s heavy elements to blip their position. A constellation of symbols pulsed gold amongst the swathe of desiccated woodland that spread across her topographical display. At its heart was the symbol denoting the metropolis the humans called Agrellan Prime. Over five kilometres in height, the spear-tipped triangle was so tall its spires were lost to the clouds of pollution fanning out from the innumerable chimneys studding its thick bulk.

Shadowsun took stock of her situation, linking into Oe-ken-yon’s datacompile as her underclaw punch-cylinders took stratified samples of the ground beneath. Less than a second later new information spooled across her sensor suite.

The soil was completely sterile. There were no life forms at all within the forest’s borders.

She reached out to touch a jagged stump, and it crumbled under her fingers, leaving a fine white powder. Whatever had killed this planet prior to its resettlement had done a terrifyingly thorough job.

The glitches whispered in, louder in the forest than out on the scorched earth of the plain. Some of the sound waves looked a lot like words. Shadowsun’s right eye hovered over the autotrans field, its fat golden bar awaiting her blink.

She thought of Traitor Shoh looking down at her, his face a blur in the darkness, gently admonishing her for talking of ghosts in the night.

She knelt, muted all audio save emergency channels, and blink-pushed the autotrans.

The words hissed and crackled as if coming from a very great distance, but they were words, there was no doubt. They had meaning. The autotrans ran its conclusions underneath each sound wave, the fragments that it could isolate and decipher causing Shadowsun to frown in confusion.

‘- - - DEATH - - - ONLY DEATH - - - SHOULD NOT HAVE COME HERE - - - YOU WILL FAIL - - - YOU SHALL FALL - - - JOIN US - - - JOIN WITH THE DUST - - - KEEP YOU IN THE NOTHINGNESS - - -’

Shadowsun blipped off the audiostream, cancelled the autotrans and stood up straight. The urge to fight, to kill, rose in her chest.

‘All forward teams to begin bombardment immediately,’ she transmitted across the cadre.

A series of icons blipped gold in readiness, though a few still bore the dull silver of incompletion.

‘Commander, this is Tank Veteran Shas’ui Lir, we are six minutes from the nearest gold zone.’ Another voice was queued close behind. ‘Commander Shadowsun, Shas’ui Domor reporting, gold in eight minutes estimate.’

‘Begin bombardment as soon as you reach range, Shas’ui Lir,’ she transmitted, sketching a direct line of approach on the shared command grid. ‘Domor, stand by in silver zone with the rapid insertion forces and await further commands. The Imperials have as yet undefined assets of their own behind those walls.’

‘Affirmed, commander.’

The forest filled with the whip-cracks of Hammerhead gunships opening fire as the tau began their persecution of the towering metropolis. Broadside battlesuits raised their own railguns in a rifleman’s stance, each giant ochre warrior tall enough to fire over the open canopies of the Piranha skimmers that hovered nearby.

As one the Broadsides locked, piston-sited, and fired. Streaking shafts of air connected them to the hive’s weakest points for a split second, the dull thwack of impact reaching Shadowsun a moment later. Seeker missiles zoomed out from the Skyrays behind her, flying parallel to the cylinder of displaced air left by each railgun shot. The missiles altered their trajectory at the last moment to hammer into fault lines, sending tumbling sheets of ornamental stone into the hivers scurrying below.

‘Repeat protocols,’ said Shadowsun. ‘Remain at full alert. I doubt it will take long for those gates to open.’

Less than a minute of punitive bombardment later, the blare of klaxons rang out into the gloom. Autolanterns bathed the superhighway with pools of light. The enormous wall of metal-ridged ferrocrete that guarded Agrellan Prime’s main entrance slid upwards, a portcullis clanking open to allow its castle’s defenders to sally forth.

Shadowsun’s gunships were already making their attack run. Sleek but wide in the manner of undersea glider-beasts, her Tigersharks had wingspans to rival those of the gue’ron’sha’s indomitable gunships. Their chin-mounted ion cannons spat pulses of bluish energy that hurtled under the opening gate, blasting low into whatever was waiting to emerge on the other side. Upon impact a great sheet of white light flashed out with a deafening clap of displaced air. A heartbeat later a cloud of dust was thrown up, confusing the vid-feeds of the tau waiting in the desiccated forest.

‘Reveal yourself,’ muttered Shadowsun. Preoccupied and more than a little disturbed by the autotrans spool, she had inadvertently transmitted her exhalation across the cadrenet’s open frequency. Next to her, Shas’vre Drai blipped the symbol of mild confusion to his team-mates.

Shadowsun projected her sensor suite’s vid-feed through a gap in the white trunks of the forest, seeking to make out the wreckage of whatever her Tigershark squadron’s ion cannons had engaged under the gate. The markerlights of her ranged support cadre’s pathfinder teams flickered across her vid-feed, their ruby-red lines seeking purchase in the billowing dust.

Increasing magnification once more, Shadowsun thought she could make out hunchbacked warriors moving in the dust. She zoomed back out again, thinking for a moment she had originally pushed the magnification too far.

In the lower quadrant of her sensor suite, the whisper-hiss changed shape, its wavelengths become less like words and more like laughter.

Then the gate slid up to reveal the metallic goliaths of House Terryn.

During the subtle conquest of the Damocles Gulf that had led to the war on Agrellan, the ambassadors of the water caste had found that there was one rock they could not erode. Many of the human worlds at the fringes of that impassable abyss had become bitter and disillusioned by the relentless grind of Imperial rule, and they were easily swayed by the promises of a better future. Even Agrellan had been infected by their insidious statecraft.

Yet the Knight world of Voltoris stood firm.

No matter how much the water caste bargained and explained and manoeuvred during their audience at Furion Peak, the seeds of their subtle conquests fell on barren ground. Patriarch Tybalt of House Terryn was too old, too mean and too suspicious to fall for the courting of xenos diplomats, and he told the tau ambassadors as much to their faces. Tybalt saw the offer of peaceful and mutually beneficial integration into the tau empire for what it was – a veiled choice between assimilation and destruction.

The patriarch banished the ambassadors from his keep on pain of death, roaring an oath to destroy the tau should they ever threaten a sovereign world of the Imperium.

And Tybalt, for all his many faults, was a man of his word.

The powerfully built walkers emerging from the hive gate were living monuments to the blunt power of mankind. Each was a colossus to rival the dreams of the most ambitious earth caste visionary, a stamping, killing relic that epitomised mankind’s unsubtle approach to war. Out from the dust surrounding Gate Victorius came six of the giant machines. They were resplendent in regal blue, a white horsehead icon glowing under the pooling light of the gate’s lanterns.

So impressive were they, so mighty in aspect, that not even Shadowsun noticed the white-armoured bikes roaring through the dust clouds between their legs.

Effigies of crude iron and grease-slicked pistons, the Knights’ riveted limbs were pillars of emblazoned alloy. They were constructed as bipeds, as if the dull machine-smiths of humanity had once witnessed the glory of a tau battlesuit and built flightless effigies in much the same fashion, but far, far larger. Their arms were massive weapons systems that swivelled beneath wide carapaces that were painted with heraldic designs. Yellow lenses glowed behind the eye-slits of featureless helms. As they came forward, long saw-toothed swords blurred through the air in slashing arcs. Each titanic blade looked more than capable of tearing a Hammerhead gunship to mangled scrap.

Shadowsun had no desire to see them put to use.

‘All units operative at current range, neutralise them immediately,’ she transmitted. ‘Closest targets first, sequential reach.’

Even before the commander had finished her orders, the Hammerhead gunships at the edge of the desiccated forest punched railgun fire into the leading walkers. Shadowsun had expected the hypervelocity ammunition to smash right through the ancient relics, but the volleys merely flared white a few metres before they struck their targets, atomised by convex shields of force.

As the red-dot markerlights of their diminutive pathfinder comrades picked out eye sockets and hip joints, the Broadside battlesuits of Shadowsun’s ranged support cadre added their own firepower. More railguns fired, and more solid-shot ammunition was burned to atoms before it could strike home.

On the Knights came, closing the distance with every swinging stride.

The Tigersharks had banked around for another attack, looping in perpendicular to the ground before firing a stream of ionic energy spheres into the Knights. The blue-white bursts fizzled into nothingness upon each walker’s shields, strobing pulses that lit the night but nothing more.

Then, with a blare of war-klaxons loud enough to wake the damned, the Knights of House Terryn broke into a run.

Kor’sarro Khan’s lips drew back into a grinning snarl as Moondrakkan reached full throttle. The cursed xenos were so preoccupied by Tybalt’s stamping, blaring distractions that they had missed three whole squads of bikes roaring out into the gloom. They would live to regret their mistake. But not for long.

The khan gunned the engines as he took the lead of the triple arrowhead of bikes. He could hear the throaty roar of Djubali’s customised steed, Vendrujin, not far behind. Kor’sarro’s blood pounded in his ears, the thrill of the chase filling him with electric energy. These xenos thought themselves so clever, skulking in that poor excuse for a forest. Yet every time the cylinder-shot of their heavy munitions hurtled across the plains, it left a brief trail in the air that led back to its source. They may be able to hide from Agrellan Prime’s guns, thought Kor’sarro, but he would be damned before they could hide from the wrath of the White Scars.

Behind them, House Terryn’s Knights had doubled their pace. Through the vibrations of Moondrakkan’s wheels, the khan could feel the hard-packed wastes shiver with their loping tread. He chuckled to himself inside his helmet at the thought of the xenos reaction to the monstrous Imperial Knights. They would not have been expecting their appearance, let alone their headlong charge. The Knights were smaller than the Titans of the Mechanicus, but by the Great Khan, they were a damn sight faster. He wouldn’t mind trying the helm of one of those things himself, one day.

As the White Scars arrowed around the tau’s flank one of the Knights went down, its knee buckling. With a protesting creak it crashed headlong into the dust. It had been sniped by a xenos battlesuit, by the look of the fire-trace. To its pilot’s credit, even when sprawled in the dust the Knight hammered shell after shell into the desiccated forest, stabbing blind at its persecutors out of spite. Its brother Knights opened up in support, laying down a fusillade of large-bore shells in a barrage that any tank company would be proud of.

Kor’sarro and his men hurtled around the thick waist of the desiccated forest, scanning for the foe and taking the measure of the battle as it unfolded. In their wake the foremost Knights levelled their thermal cannons. Each mighty gun’s barrels glowed cherry red, then amber, then unbearably bright white. As one the Knights unleashed six blinding spears of energy into the tau skimmer-tanks lurking in the forest. Everything the beams touched, everything even close by, was annihilated in a single searing moment. The tanks disappeared completely, simply erased from existence by the sheer power of the Knights’ weapons.

Despite their lethal salvo, the walkers themselves had not slowed their charge. They crashed into the forest with the force of industrial wrecking balls. Jagged tree stumps were smashed to powder wherever their thick legs swung, fine white dust coating their heraldic colours up to the waist. Ion shields flashed as they were struck by a hundred projectiles and pulse bursts at once. Before even one could be taken down, the Knights of House Terryn fell upon the skimmer-tanks that had been trapped by their own close deployment. Reaper chainswords growled and juddered as they carved left and right, the chewed-up remnants of xenos skimmers flung far and wide. The khan’s eyes crinkled in approval. Nothing could mangle a tank quite like a reaper.

With a great shout, the khan led his own charge into the forest. He stood up slightly in the saddle as he rode, jinking the bike around the desiccated stumps with twists of his hips as he scanned for xenos to kill. A pocket of shimmering dust appeared up ahead, a will-o’-the-wisp that would have been easy to miss. The khan squeezed Moondrakkan’s trigger bar and sent a volley of hand-engraved bolter shells streaking through the forest. He was rewarded by scarlet blossoms of blood and a chorus of thin shrieks that could only have come from alien throats.

Djubali raced past him, hammering up the sloping wreckage of an alien tank and launching off the other side. Mid-flight, the White Scar twisted his hips and brought his bike’s rear wheel round so the whole vehicle flew sidelong. He barked a war cry as the heavy vehicle slammed through a slender trunk and ploughed right into a knot of kneeling tau snipers with blunt, crushing force. Djubali rode out the skid, revving his engine amidst a confusion of powdered stone and broken alien limbs. A couple of bolt pistol shots boomed as the veteran executed those victims he had not killed on impact.

The khan blew out his cheeks, squeezing off another slew of bolt shells as he jinked left and right through the trees. Suddenly a trio of giant alien battlesuits loomed up ahead, and he drew the sword Moonfang crackling from its scabbard. Kor’sarro lopped the weapon-arm from the nearest battlesuit, sliding his bike low under the spitting plasma of the second before shoulder-barging the last of them through a tree.

The first battlesuit recovered quickly from the shock of its lost limb, boosting away from the khan on twin trails of fire. Missiles popped from its shoulder launcher and lanced out towards him. Instinct took over, and Kor’sarro leant over fully into the lee of his hurtling bike, just as the tribal riders of Chogoris used their steeds as shields against the arrows of their rivals. Letting the machine’s armoured bulk take the brunt of the explosion, he grabbed a krak grenade from his stowage rack and tore the pin out with blood-slicked teeth. Moondrakkan’s back wheel swung out wide as the khan flung the grenade high. Its detonation snapped a blinding burst right in front of the airborne battlesuit, ensuring his escape.

Up ahead his men were engaged with the enemy. Some fired searing bursts of plasma into the rifleman battlesuits that were hammering solid shot into the rampaging Knights. Their shots tore great holes that fizzed with electric malfunction. Others swung chainswords and power swords at the skulking tau infantrymen shimmering in the trees, arcs of blood splashing red across the white tree trunks.

Up ahead and to the right, a hovering skimmer-tank loosed salvo after salvo of missiles at a Knight struggling to dislodge a wrecked battlesuit from its whirring chainblade. Djubali cut right across the khan’s path, sliding his bike sidelong into a wheels-first skid that was all but horizontal. Rider and bike passed right beneath the tank’s anti-grav field in a cloud of stone dust, emerging unscathed before righting and speeding off again. Kor’sarro mentally counted down – three, two, one. Right on cue, the sergeant’s krak grenades detonated with a deafening crump, flipping the tank over onto its missile turret.

The tight formations that the tau had adopted, coordinated to avoid the big guns of the hive, were proving to be their downfall. The White Scars and their allies in House Terryn sowed mayhem in every quarter. The air filled with the acrid stink of burning circuitry, the stench of molten plastics and the tang of alien blood. The khan gave a great shout of exultation as he took the head from a fleeing tau infantryman. His war cry was echoed by his Chogorian brethren as they killed their way through the forest acre by acre.

Through the vibrations of Moondrakkan’s handlebars, the khan could feel his response force closing in. The bass rumble of his Rhino and Razorback transports was underscored by the trundling thunder of the Catachan armoured division.

The battle was as good as won.

‘Targets sighted,’ transmitted Shadowsun. ‘Switch to multispectral and pick them out. Bait units, leave the walkers for now. Avoidance tactics only.’

Assent signals blipped across her command suite as her assault cadre closed in. The humans had struck hard, as was their custom. Predictable to the last, they were more concerned with the power of the deed than the thought behind it. Six bipedal war engines – five now, she corrected herself – and half a company of Space Marines. Fierce enough foes, but no match for multiple cadres of the fire caste’s finest.

Close behind her was the Crisis bodyguard team that Aun’va had assigned her. All five of them were proven heroes in their own right, chosen for those occasions when concentrated force was needed more than subtlety and stealth. This was one of those times. Engaging their blacksun filters to pick out their prey from the clouds of wood-powder, the airborne battlesuits sent streams of plasma hissing down into the gue’ron’sha bikers. They incinerated a Space Marine or cored a bike with every shot.

‘Air support, occupy those walkers. All bait units to immediately embark and rise, maximum elevation. They’ve revealed their strength, now we rob them of it. Crisis team, with me. We have monsters to hunt.’

Hidden by the clouds of white powder that the Imperial assault had thrown up from the desiccated forest, the surviving tau infantry mounted up into their Devilfish transports as fast as they could. The giants in their midst fought on, their stamping feet claiming the odd drone and crushing wrecked tanks into scrap. Shadowsun’s assault cadre closed in, announcing their presence with volleys of missiles and ion streams.

The Imperial walkers turned to face the new threat, and the decimated bait cadre took its chance. By twos and threes the skimmer-tanks began to hover upwards until they were out of reach even for Terryn’s Knights. Before a minute had passed, not a single tau remained earthbound. The Space Marine bikers and the vehicle-borne reinforcements roaring towards their position threw a smattering of fire into the air, and though the odd Piranha recon skimmer or light battlesuit fell smoking back to earth, it was not enough to prevent the cadres rallying and forming up above them once more.

By withdrawing into the skies, the tau had effectively turned the tables on their foes. Shadowsun’s battlesuits arced through the dust-choked air until they were directly above the giant walkers, sending tight beams of plasma and fusion blaster fire into their emblazoned carapaces. The hatch atop one of the giant walkers popped open under the buckling heat that washed across it. Shadowsun landed deftly atop the walker’s broad back, pushing the muzzle of her own blaster into the cockpit and consuming the pilot in a blast of blinding light and molten metal.

One by one, the four surviving Imperial war engines turned and stomped back towards the hive. The roar of bike engines dwindled in the forest, impossible to pinpoint in the white mist that fogged it from end to end.

‘No pursuit,’ transmitted Shadowsun. ‘All cadres, do not pursue. Stay in gold zones only. You may fire at will.’

The walkers made their way back to the Gate Victorius, sullen giants denied a promised feast. The tau levelled as much fire at them as they could, but the walkers’ convex force fields now protected their riveted backs. The great gate of Agrellan Prime slid upwards once more, allowing the walkers to stamp their way back inside.

In the shelter of the forest, Shadowsun checked her image banks and replayed a sample clip of the battle they had witnessed. The Imperial forces had taken a heavy toll on the bait cadre, but the way of the Patient Hunter required sacrifice, and the tau did not begrudge lives spent to ensure victory.

By luring the human armies to reveal their most potent assets, the tau had taken the measure of their foe, and would be all the more lethal when next they crossed swords.

The great kill was so close Shadowsun could almost taste it.

The khan stormed into the vaulted hall, his ceramite boots clacking loud against ancient flagstones. The shafts of light that angled from the stained glass wall-slits played across gore-spattered battleplate as he strode forward. A clutch of decapitated tau heads bounced at his waist, bound through the eye sockets by a hemp rope that was already stiff with dried blood. At his side were Djubali and Sudabeh, their faces masks of white powder streaked with sweat.

The low hum of conversation in the vault ebbed away at the arrhythmic thud of their approach. It died altogether as the khan tossed a high-backed datathrone out of his path and loomed over the assembled delegates. He slammed his armoured knuckles onto the round oval table at the vault’s heart, and all but two of the dignitaries seated around it flinched backwards as if stung.

‘Where in the warp’s darkest hole were you?’ he growled at the assembly.

‘Huh. You Chogorians love a dramatic entrance, don’t you,’ drawled a tough-looking officer in the military vest and loose fatigues of a Catachan jungle fighter. The khan met his gaze, evaluating him in a single glance. A born warrior, and a veteran at that. One eye was hooded and unafraid, the other a bionic replacement that glowed dully in the gloom. Below the neck a knotted mass of muscle and tendon met extensive cybernetics that would have done a pit slave proud.

‘You test me, Catachan,’ said the khan, his teeth gritted hard. ‘Your regiment failed to make an entrance at all.’

‘You go racing off after glory and medals, there isn’t much chance us mere mortals are going to keep up,’ chuckled the officer, swinging his boots up onto the table and leaning back in the throne. He took a greasy lho-stick from behind a cauliflower ear and struck a match on the triumphal mosaic at the table’s edge. The stench of Catachan tobaccine filled the air.

Fuming at the human’s tone, the khan strode around the long table towards the officer. As he bore down on the Catachan, an old man in a fur-collared greatcoat pushed his datathrone backwards into Kor’sarro’s path. He reached up to lay a gloved hand on the gold eagle of the khan’s breastplate.

‘Captain Khan of the White Scars Chapter,’ he said. ‘Remember that we are your allies.’

‘Remove your hand, Patriarch Tybalt, or Moonfang shall remove it for you,’ said the khan, his voice the rumble of an oncoming storm.

‘Be not so hasty,’ admonished the white-haired elder, his strangely goat-like face twisted into something he presumably believed was a smile. ‘The tau would like nothing more than for our armour to be riven from within. We are here to deny them their prize, not to serve it to them on a silver platter. Please sit.’

‘I will not “sit”,’ the khan spat, making the very idea sound like the gravest of sins. ‘But you at least fought well, Tybalt. As you committed your strength alongside ours, I will listen to you as an equal. Perhaps you can explain your insubordinate friend’s failure to deploy.’

The patriarch’s face turned sour as month-old cream. ‘Colonel Straken is no friend of mine,’ he said, casting a glance at his opposite number.

The Catachan officer leered over at them both, tobacco-stained teeth yellow in the gloom. ‘You better find some patience, Space Marine,’ said the jungle fighter, pointing a metallic finger at the khan. ‘You can’t win this one by speed and brute force. They’re tau, the Damocles lot. Sure, they aren’t as fast as the eldar, but they are likely faster than you. Even on those lumpy battering rams you call bikes.’

The khan’s nostrils flared wide, his breastplate rising and falling as a hot coal of anger burned in his chest. Tybalt met his gaze out of the corner of his eye, and gave Kor’sarro an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

‘They’re beyond caring about ground taken, and there’s no way they’re dumb enough to try a frontal assault,’ continued Straken. ‘They aren’t idiot orks, or maniac zealots either. They only care about the long game, this lot, and they’ll pull any trick they can to win it. Even then, they’ll happily die like fish if they think it’ll do their mates back home a favour.’

The khan turned the full force of his glare upon the Catachan, his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘You will address me with the proper respect, colonel,’ he said, his voice as cold as steel in the dark, ‘or you will not speak at all. I promise you that.’

The Catachan took a long drag on his lho-stick before stubbing it out on the priceless Pluvian marble of the vault’s table.

‘Yeah, yeah. Like I said, you aren’t even waging the same war as this lot. They’ll run rings around you if you keep fighting them on their terms, nipping at the bait like a starving rippyfish. I know a good ambush tactic when I see one.’

The Catachan’s tone was blunt but genuine, and the khan found his anger cool.

‘Perhaps you are right,’ admitted the khan. ‘Patriarch Tybalt, where do you and your Knights stand on this matter? You fought against the tau on Voltoris, I believe?’

‘I fought them with words, not blades, I’m afraid,’ said the patriarch archly. ‘Today was the first time House Terryn has jousted with them on the field. These tau have formidable ranged capabilities, perhaps formidable enough to pierce our shields in a prolonged engagement. But they lack courage, and bladesmanship to boot.’

‘Yes,’ said the khan. ‘It’s the mind behind those weapons that is their deadliest weapon.’

‘Any idea who that might be, then?’ said Colonel Straken, the knotted scar tissue of his one remaining eyebrow raised high.

‘I have indeed,’ replied Kor’sarro. ‘My blade would have already taken her head if it weren’t for her xenos techno-heresy.’

‘Hmm,’ mused Tybalt. ‘A female, then.’

‘I believe so, by the way she moves,’ said the khan. ‘She wears a warsuit that can cast her invisible, though it is compromised by high speeds. She is adept in the use of melta-class guns, but has not might enough to fell our Thunderhawks. It was her that burned your fellow noble in his command throne, Patriarch Tybalt.’

‘I saw only an ethereal shimmer before Gensen met the Emperor,’ said Tybalt, his eyes downcast. ‘But nonetheless I saw something atop his carapace. Was that her?’

‘She was there all right,’ said the khan, striding over to the stained glass window. ‘Her thermal signature was baffled, some xenos illusion hid her from sight, but it was her. I recognised the weapon discharge. If we are to win this war, she must die.’

‘Emperor help you with that, then,’ said Straken, flexing the fingers of his cybernetic arm. ‘She’ll be well out of it by now. Cautious lot, these grey-skins. I’ve got no air transport under my command, and we just found out the hard way that my Chimeras can’t reach her on the open plain. My lads’ll either have to lay a trap or chase ghosts for the rest of the war, and there’s enough of them crowding the vox-net as it is. A frontal assault just isn’t going to work a second time, even if Tybalt’s fancy walkers did give ’em a nasty surprise back there. Might as well try to run down the wind.’

‘You may be right,’ admitted the patriarch, stroking the tuft of white hair on his chin. ‘A foe borne on invisible wings, no matter how weak of limb he might be, finds it easy to stay out of blade’s reach.’

‘Set your traps, then,’ sneered the khan. ‘Wage your slow and costly war. I shall be waging mine on the open plain, as my primarch intended.’

The captain looked out through the stained glass wall-slit, peering at the wasteland below with his jaw set firm. The flat landscape reminded him of his home world, Chogoris. A beautiful planet of stark wilderness and endless skies, where his brothers were likely giving their lives in battle even now. Where old friends were bleeding out and dying with each passing minute.

Yet the khan had a duty to perform before he could return. He would not abandon it, not this side of the grave.

‘I’m coming for you, you xenos witch,’ he said to the world outside. ‘Surround yourself with the greatest warriors at your command, or cower in the deepest and darkest hole you can find. It matters not. I shall take your head, for the Great Khan and for the Emperor.’

With her cadre hidden in the lee of a wasteland mesa, Shadowsun had taken a moment’s meditation in the midst of some shadowed boulders. Her drones keeping lookout, she played back the footage she had taken from the battle outside Agrellan Prime. At first she examined the giant walkers, paying particular attention to the perimeters of their force shields. Brutish things, powerful engines of destruction indeed but easily circumvented if necessary. Not so the speeding white bikers that had assailed them in the forest. They had a shocking turn of speed and the bravery to capitalise upon it. One mistake against this new breed of gue’ron’sha could be fatal.

‘- - - FATAL - - - FATAL - - - THEY SHALL BRING YOU PAIN - - -’

There it was again, the whisper-hiss, somehow overriding the mute she had assigned it. Her back went ramrod straight as she realised the whispers had somehow responded to her thoughts. Was that even possible?

‘DEATH - - - DEATH - - - THE GRAVE OPENS FOR YOU - - - SHASERRA - - - LIE WITH US IN THE DUST - - -’

‘Commander!’

Shadowsun’s jetpack engaged as she spun around in an aerial pirouette, all three drones whipping in close. Her fusion blasters gave a rising whine.

‘For the love of the Greater Good, Drai,’ she huffed, downpowering her guns. ‘Blip me first, or next time I’ll put a hole in you.’

‘I am greatly contrite, my commander,’ said Shas’vre Drai. A deactivation wave crackled across his battlesuit as his truelight appearance was slowly revealed.

‘I assume there is some report you needed to make in person,’ said Shadowsun, ‘or did you disturb my meditations purely to remind me that you have no sense of timing?’

‘There are… developments, my commander.’

‘Go on.’

‘During active reconnaissance, my optimised Stealth group… We located the gue’ron’sha outside one of the principal dwelling-peaks. It appears they had searched the metropolis they designated as “Hive City”, hoping to neutralise the water caste operating within. Once they had emerged and revealed their presence by destroying the kroot salvage operation outside Agrellan Prime, we were able to get close enough to hear them talk of their plans.’

‘Excellent,’ said Shadowsun. ‘Transmit them immediately.’

Shas’vre Drai paused for a second before continuing. ‘Of course, my commander. In summary, they have determined you to be the primary threat. They intend to locate you and neutralise you via the means of decapitation.’

Nearby Oe-hei and Oe-nu buzzed in alarm, circling each other in agitation.

‘I see,’ said Shadowsun. ‘Yes, I imagine death by decapitation would affect my ability to prosecute the war.’

‘Be assured I will not allow this to occur, my commander. My life is your shield.’

‘That is kind, Shas’vre Drai. Yet it seems the most efficient way to force these gue’ron’sha into committing a fatal mistake would be to offer myself as bait.’

‘I… I cannot allow that, my commander,’ replied Drai. ‘I shall go in your stead.’

‘You and I shall do exactly what the tau empire requires of us, Shas’vre,’ said Shadowsun, her tone authoritarian. ‘Even if it means killing everything we can find, or the demise of every tau life on the planet.’

‘Of course, my commander,’ replied Drai, chastened. ‘For the Greater Good.’

Those tau with advanced sensor suites heard it first, a distant roar that shook fine black shale from the high ridge above. Two dots appeared on the horizon, closing fast.

‘Enact,’ transmitted Commander Shadowsun. In the shadow of the ridge behind her, a squadron of Sun Shark bombers took off into the air.

The white-hulled Thunderhawk gunships of the gue’ron’sha arrowed towards their position at breakneck pace, each trailed by smaller escort craft. Shadowsun had predicted their presence – indeed, made herself a visible target in order to invite it. For all the ridiculous superstition and ritual that bound the Imperium’s earth caste equivalent, they were clearly capable enough to effect complex repairs. The gunship with the ridiculously long barrel atop it should not have been flight-capable at all.

Something churned in her chest, a desire to see the great engines brought low and smashed to pieces in the dust. She frowned, confusion bleeding into the cold certainty of her battle plan. Such emotion before an engagement was… untoward.

‘- - - KILL - - - KILL THEM ALL - - - BATHE IN THEIR BLOOD - - -’ spooled the autotrans.

She shuddered, aware of her skin brushing the inside of her battlesuit as the words rang around her head. She blink-pushed the translation ware off, but the strangely compelling whispers remained at the forefront of her thoughts. Perhaps it was because there was a part of her that wished to resolve things in as quick and as deadly a fashion as possible. Maybe that was how it felt before the initiation of a Mont’ka strategy. Perhaps… perhaps that was how the Traitor Shoh felt inside, all the time.

Shadowsun did understand – intellectually, at least – that the raw aggression and pitiless violence of the Mont’ka had its uses. But of the two macrostrategies, the Kauyon was unquestionably the most efficient way. She would prove it here, as the enemy gunships roared into the jaws of her trap. Just as she always did.

The enemy gunships were seconds away now, at most. Out from the blind edge of the giant ridge where they had exposed their position came two squadrons of Sun Shark bombers, their elegant tan hulls flying with the sun behind their tails. Paradox squadrons, their underslung bomb arrays fitted not with the plasma-based pulse bombs standard to their kind, but unstable stasis fields that could introduce a glitch into the timestream itself. Dangerous, thought Shadowsun, but extremely effective.

The Imperial gunships loosed a salvo of missiles towards the tau out in the open, the dull thump of detonations blasting Crisis battlesuits across the wastes in showers of black shale. Intent on their prey on the plain beneath the ridge, the gunships did not notice the Paradox squadrons converging on their position. Shadowsun watched intently as her bombers cut an intercept course, dropping localised stasis anomalies towards the enemy craft.

There was a flare of eye-watering unlight for a second, and the fabric of space-time bulged around the Imperial gunships. For a second the giant aircraft froze, the angry bellow of their engines stuttering in and out of existence. Then, as the bubble of time that had encapsulated them popped, all four of the aircraft roared over the top of the ridge, missing it by metres and ploughing nose-first into the hard, cracked earth.

Her blood pulsing with excitement, Shadowsun boosted upwards to see the destruction her trap had wrought. A dozen battlesuits and a score of drones escorted her, hovering forwards with all weapons systems primed.

The Thunderhawks lay at the end of the two great furrows they had ploughed in the earth. Their fuselages jutted at awkward angles, wings torn from their frames and fires licking across their thick hulls.

‘Circle to the front, a hundred metres berth at all times,’ transmitted Shadowsun. ‘If anything somehow staggers out of there, I want it dead before it has taken two paces towards us.’

Golden signals of assent blipped across her command suite, the deadliest weaponry in the cadre’s arsenal primed and ready for the kill.

As Shadowsun completed the half-circle that brought her to the front of the Thunderhawks, she heard a dull hiss. A white-edged circle glowed wide in the middle of the giant jaws jutting from the front of each gunship, reducing the mighty drawbridges to molten rain.

There was a throaty growl of bike engines followed by a whooping, ululating war cry. Bolters blazing, their blades and their voices raised, the steedmasters of Chogoris roared out from the darkness and plunged into the tau lines.

Bare-headed, bloodied and bruised, the White Scars hurtled out of the Spear’s melta-cut door. Kor’sarro Khan himself led the charge, with his champions Jebe Sabrehand and Djubali Steedborn gunning their steeds’ engines in his wake. Each of the three warriors had a glowing powerblade clutched in one fist and his bike’s handlebar triggers in the other. Staccato bursts of muzzle flare lit their swarthy features from below, each battle-brother snarling or shouting as he channelled the war-lust in his soul.

Behind the trio of leaders came paired squadrons of armoured bikes, two abreast and slewing out fast to open fire with their front-mounted bolters. As they clanked over the fallen jaws of the Thunderhawk, the side doors of the gunship clanged open. More white-armoured Space Marines piled out to add their bolter fire to the fusillade.

The khan could clearly see the xenos cowards that had shot them down. They were maybe two hundred metres away at most, a loose circle of large bipedal warsuits already pulsing plasma at their position. Most of their shots went wide or scorched shale, though a few sizzled into fairings and reinforced wheels. Kor’sarro’s feral smile grew wide. The tau were clearly ill-prepared for a mounted charge, whereas the White Scars were experts at the art of the sudden attack, turning each stolen second into a lethal advantage.

The khan quickly scanned the undulating hillocks and ridges ahead, teeth grinding in anticipation of the beheading to come. Sure enough the xenos witch was there, bracketed by bodyguards and drones. Her snow-white armour was already shimmering to blend with the dark shale underfoot. Kor’sarro gunned the throttle and accelerated towards her, hungry to part her head from her neck.

The volley of firepower from the circle of ochre battlesuits was thickening as the White Scars closed in. Long-barrelled rifles sent thin lozenges of plasma sizzling in the khan’s direction, and the captain ducked down low. A second later his flaring nostrils picked out the stink of scorched hair over the ferroplastic tang of burning bike. His helmet display flicked up two, three, four mortis-runes from the squad behind. No time to look. No time to do anything but charge.

Those coming in fast behind the Khan and his followers veered serpent-fast around the tumbling wrecks that had once been proud riders, plumes of shattered shale arcing up from the heavy rear wheels of their bikes. Ahead the tau battlesuits were rising up, the loose scree flattening in circles beneath them as their jetpacks boosted them higher. Their pulse weapons fired quadruple-burst volleys into the massed bikers, and though many blossomed ineffectually from thick ceramite plates, half a dozen kill shots hit home.

And the White Scars were amongst the foe.

The khan stood up in his saddle and brought Moonfang around in a high loop that severed the nearest warsuit’s leg and cut away half of its crotch in a spray of green sparks. Behind him, Jebe couched his power spear against his pauldron and used the momentum of his charge to spit another warsuit through the chest. As the company champion rode underneath the alien warsuit, he twisted his body like a lancer rolling with the impact of a hit, yanking his spear free in a spurt of blood. The xenos machine’s legs and weapon-arms dangled corpse-limp even as its jetpack kept it hovering three metres above the earth.

Djubali steered hard into a large flat stone and yanked hard on the handlebars to pull the nose of his bike high for a moment. At the apex of the jump his bolters blasted a double shot into the jetpack of a warsuit turning to evade the attack. Djubali’s front wheel slammed back down into the shale and he veered off after the khan whilst the stricken warsuit pirouetted wildly downwards into the shale. The red-helmeted Veteran Sergeant Koghai roared past, taking the fallen machine’s head from its neck with his powered tulwar blade as he went.

And then, as the loose circle of battlesuits boosted further upwards in the skies, the riders of Chogoris found themselves with nothing left to charge.

‘Rally and re-engage!’ shouted Shadowsun, her voice tight with tension. ‘Vertical vectors wherever possible. Do not meet them on the horizontal plane!’

Golden signals of assent flicked on all but two of her subordinate registers. Shas’vre Tu’la Rin’s vital signs had turned the charcoal grey of death, and Shas’vre De’re La’s gunmetal was fading quickly to ash. Still, if the rest of them kept their altitude high, no more tau lives need be lost to the gue’ron’sha’s ugly but effective ambush.

The broken formation of her battlesuit cadre re-established its noose as it rose higher. Weapons systems spat fire into the heavy bikes that growled beneath them like a pride of angry hyperfelids. Those that roared out of the encirclement were met by streams of burst cannon fire from hidden Stealth teams. The chameleonic shadows of Drai’s battlesuits shimmered low as they cut down the escaping foe with clinical precision.

Shadowsun picked out the enemy commander at the edge of the pack, the same scarred giant that she had fought on the gunship’s wing. The war-leader and his comrades had drawn blunt pistols and were firing explosive, rocket-propelled bolts towards them. The commander was shouting something up at her, pointing what looked like a long ceremonial sword in her direction. She spared a quick glimpse for the autotrans as it converted the gue’ron’sha’s words into tau.

‘- - - FACE ME YOU SKULKING HAG - - -’ his challenge read, ‘- - - COME BACK AND FIGHT - - - HONOURLESS COWARD - - -’

Eye-flicking a top-down vector of attack, Shadowsun boosted in close, bracketed by her shield drones and the two closest Crisis battlesuits. As they approached, a gue’ron’sha riding next to the bellowing war-leader stood in his saddle and flung a long, spear-like weapon right at her. Warning lights flickered red inside her helmet, bip-bip-bipping in rising alarm. She twisted her hips to steer her jetpack’s course left, curving around the spear’s path so her shield drones did not have to intercept it with their spheres of protective force. Oe-nu transmitted a tiny thanks-symbol, its reservoir band still a healthy copper hue.

The spear-thrower carved his bike around, and her sensor suite linked the rider’s projected route with the trajectory of his arcing weapon. Anticipating his course, she dropped suddenly and kicked him in the back of the head as he drove past, sending him careening into a shale-dune. The spear thudded down, impaling its owner’s shoulder and pinning him to the ground. The corners of her mouth twitched upwards at the sight. She would enjoy replaying that moment once this was over.

The gue’ron’sha war-leader was coming around, looking right in her direction despite her Stealth field. She levelled her fusion blasters and loosed parallel shots right at him. As the vaporising blasts hit his bike, the vehicle burst apart in an explosion of molten metal and steam. Somehow, though, the warrior had hurled himself free a matter of microseconds before the shot hit home.

The warrior rolled in a loose shoulder-curl, clattering to a gunman’s kneel behind a smoking mass of human remains and firing a two-handed pistol shot right at Shadowsun’s head. Warnings bipped once more, but this time Oe-nu intercepted with a timely shield-flare. The mass-reactive bolt detonated prematurely, and the explosion washed like fiery liquid across the dome of the drone’s protective sphere. She blipped her own thanks-symbol, boosting back upwards as her fusion blasters recharged with a high-pitched whine.

A rough wedge of the bikers was trying to blaze a path out of the hail of firepower that was cutting them down. By their vectors, they were hoping to reunite with their comrades back at the fallen gunships. More than a third of their number had fallen now, and white-armoured bodies lay sprawled amongst the burning wreckage of their armoured bikes. All across the ridge the gue’ron’sha were fighting desperately to break out, but wherever they pushed their advance, a team of battlesuits was there to meet them.

‘Firestream squadrons intercept, Sun Sharks, reinforce,’ Shadowsun transmitted, her tone terse. ‘Flanking cadres deploy heavy armour. Ensure none escape.’

Barely a second later three squadrons of skimmers and a trio of Sun Shark bombers rose into view over the ridge. The shadows of their T-shaped hulls flitted across the shale, like a shoal of fish cutting close to the bed of some soulless ocean. Anti-grav motors humming, they bore down on the white-armoured gue’ron’sha. Their burst cannons levelled quadruple plasma blasts into the bikers, taking five of them from the saddle in as many seconds. The fusion blasters of the squadron behind them killed the same number again.

One of the surviving riders, a savage-looking brute whose head appeared to be little more than an unruly mass of hair, skidded his bike around and drove it hard up a jutting spire of rock. Rider and bike sailed through the air to land wheels first on an oncoming Piranha. The dead weight of the flying bike bore the skimmer to the ground below with a crushing impact that saw the tau pilots broken and bleeding in the remains of their craft.

Two of the hairy rider’s comrades were inspired to follow suit, launching their bikes from the same spire. One was immediately torn apart in mid-flight by a blast of fusion energy, but the other caught the edge of a passing Piranha’s wing with a cupped hand and yanked it so hard the skimmer was tipped wildly off course. The Piranha ploughed into the dark scree at the ridge’s edge before exploding in a burst of violet flame.

Just as Shadowsun was coming in for another pass, her meteorological readouts spiked hard. The anomalies seemed to centre in a spiralling vortex around one of the bikers at the heart of the gue’ron’sha pack, a totem-clad elder who had drawn to a halt with arms outstretched. Guttural syllables spilled from the shamanic figure’s lips, non-words that her autotrans could not understand.

A second later a gale force wind thick with razor-edged shale flew out from the elder’s outstretched arms and blasted into the tau skimmers. The sudden hurricane caused most of the light craft to careen out of control. Some clashed wings and collided, whilst others were hurled away over the ridge as if a giant invisible hand had flung them away in disgust. Seeing the destruction ahead, the Sun Sharks peeled off, flinging their craft into evasive manoeuvres to avoid the chaos of the storm.

Shadowsun wanted to explain the phenomenon away as some advanced weapon system built into the shaman’s gauntlets, yet something in her chest told her otherwise. Here was the impossible mind-science of the gue’la, once thought a mere rumour coming from the edges of the Damocles Gulf. In truth it was clearly a very real threat, and all the more dangerous to the tau if they did not understand it.

A warrior capable of destroying two squadrons of skimmers at range could not be allowed to live. Ignoring the vulgar challenges spooling across her autotrans, Shadowsun altered her flight into a swoop towards the shaman, her shield drones buzzing in close.

There was a low roar from the east, a rumble of thunderous engines that shook the dust from atop the smaller ridges. Anticipating her request, Oe-ken-yon’s telesensors blipped her long-range visuals. Five squadrons of Imperial gun-skimmers were coming in at breakneck speed, the gue’ron’sha equivalent of the Piranhas the shaman had crippled seconds before.

‘Flanking cadres engage and repel inbound gun-skimmers,’ said Shadowsun, ‘First and second Crisis teams, enact Rinyon encirclement. Priority kill on the indicated leader. Then engage at will.’

Her own cadre blipped golden assent, but as for the reserve cadres in the canyons below the ridge, only dull steel icons pulsed flat.

‘Flanking cadres! Where are you?’

‘Commander, we… we have encountered an unseen force of gue’ron’sha in the ravines,’ came the reply. ‘We are already… fully engaged. I offer… contrition for our absence.’ The voice was strained, its pauses indicative of a gunfight that raged even as they spoke.

Shadowsun cancelled her order for reinforcements with a blink-push, her lips set firm. They would have to deal with this new foe themselves.

At the lip of the ridge, her Sun Shark squadrons had rallied for another attack run. They were coming back in low over the wrecked Imperial gunships and the gue’ron’sha sheltering in their lee. One by one the Sun Sharks dropped more of their temporal anomaly bombs, each detonating with a shimmering burst of white light. In truth Shadowsun did not understand how the earth caste had devised such weapons – despite the fact she had slept in stasis herself for many long years – but their efficacy was beyond question. Oe-ken-yon’s telesensors blipped footage of a low blitz that force-aged each gunship’s wreckage into rusting scrap and left the warriors nearby as slumped skeletons inside yellowed suits of armour.

Around her, six battlesuits shouldered their way through a smattering of pistol fire to converge on the leader of the gue’ron’sha force. Bolter fire thudded home, knocking two shas’ui off balance but failing to score a kill. The Crisis teams closed in, weapons raised. They formed a circle within a circle, converging upon the leader of the enemy riders.

The air was suddenly filled with a crossfire of heavy-gauge bolts. They hammered through the air to burst like flak on the armour of the hovering battlesuits, some of them long-range fire from the advancing skimmers, others from the still-operational turrets of the downed gunships at the ridge. Both of Shadowsun’s forward Crisis teams were caught in the teeth of the double fusillade, jerked like the marionettes of a mad puppeteer as they were buffeted by the explosions. Two battlesuits were blasted limb from limb as they desperately tried to escape the lethal storm of detonations around them.

‘All teams rise, maximum thrust!’ shouted Shadowsun, a molten pool of anger burning in her stomach, ‘Get up high so the Broadsides can add their fire! Then re-engage!’

Her battlesuit teams climbed into the sky, their jetpacks heat-shimmering columns of air behind them. Shadowsun’s meteorological readouts spiked again, and the unnatural storm came in once more. This time it was more tornado than hurricane, a wall of angry wind and razored black stone.

Shadowsun saw one of her shas’ui pilots caught by the wind, his battlesuit hurtled around by its uncanny forces and flung in a smoking tangle of limbs onto a scree-covered ridge. The battlesuit’s ochre paint had been stripped away, leaving little more than a landscape of dented alloy and ruined circuitry.

The black tornado whipped around the rallying bikers below, interposing itself between her battlesuits and their prey and moving eastwards at speed. Several of her teams made to pursue, but the Imperial skimmers moved in parallel, sending streams of explosive bolts towards any who got too close.

‘Leave them,’ said Shadowsun. ‘Disengage. Their mind-science must be studied before it can be effectively countered.’

Golden assent signals blipped, though not nearly enough of them for her liking. Perhaps a quarter of her team-symbols had faded to the charcoal grey of death.

Shadowsun surveyed the carnage left behind in the wake of the gue’ron’sha’s retreat. Sighing, she flicked through Oe-ken-yon’s footage of the battle in order to consolidate whatever knowledge she could at first glance. From above, the path of the gue’ron’sha’s mounted assault had formed two thick zigzagging columns that shot out from the frontal ramps of their downed gunships, then at the last moment fanned out in a wide delta formation to strike home. She was reminded of the lightning storms of Vior’la she had watched as a child – magnificent, deadly, and all but impossible to predict.

A learning experience, then, and a costly one. A harrowing number of tau bodies lay scattered about the ridge, some cast from their skimmer cockpits, others dangling from the smoking tombs of their mangled battlesuits. Her frown deepened as she realised there was something wrong, something even more unsettling than the sight of so many tau dead.

Though at least a dozen of the armoured bikes the Imperials used to such effect lay scattered and smoking in the shale, not a single gue’ron’sha body was amongst them.

INTERLUDE 1-0

‘- - - SO MANY CORPSES - - -’ the autotrans scrolled, its whisper-waveform jerking peaks and troughs. Shadowsun eye-flicked it off, and the buzzing in her head subsided a little. Yet it was still there, reminding her of the death, the blood.

The symbol of the Supreme Ethereal blipped on her interior command screen for a second, and she transmitted a halt designation to her cadre.

‘Master Aun’Va, greatest respects,’ said Shadowsun, averting her eyes as the Ethereal Majesty appeared on her central screen. Even with her gaze cast down she could see his reflection on the inactive side of her battlesuit’s interior dome. A drawn, grey slab of a face with the wisdom of aeons etched into its angles. Aun’Va’s visage was framed by the Crown of Communities, the headdress that denoted the blessing of the entire tau empire. Shadowsun found her heart quicken in her chest at the thought that he was speaking to her, and her alone.

‘O’Shaserra,’ the projection intoned, his voice grave and resonant. ‘I hope your preparations are complete.’

‘They are, master,’ she replied. ‘Gue’la weaknesses are many, and easily exploited.’

‘Excellent. This world must fall, my child, and soon. The Greater Good demands it.’

‘Its demise is imminent, master.’

‘O’Shassera, did you just tell me the demise of the Greater Good is imminent?’ said Aun’Va, incredulity twisting his features.

‘No!’ protested Shadowsun, fear grabbing at her ribs with its cold claws. ‘No, of course not, master! The demise of Agrellan, I mean… I mean the Imperial forces upon Agrellan.’

‘I see. State clearly what you mean to say in future, child. There is no room for ambiguity in times of war.’

‘As you say, master.’

There was a long pause, stretching out until it seemed to fill the battlesuit dome’s interior with suffocating silence. At times like this, she was very glad it was forbidden to meet her master’s gaze. She would rather have pushed hot coals into her eyes than witness his displeasure.

Eventually Aun’Va spoke. ‘Am I to understand the gue’la military forces remain active?’

‘There have been… developments, master,’ she said, recovering herself. ‘Three lander ships escaped the air caste’s orbital cordon: a gue’ron’sha strike force, a gue’la regiment ship and the Imperial force recently designated as House Terryn.’

‘Have they not been dealt with?’

‘We are whittling them down, master. Their reinforcements were unexpectedly… capable.’

She appended Oe-ken-yon’s clearest sensor capture of the colossal walkers the Imperium had deployed at Agrellan Prime.

‘Whittling them down,’ repeated Aun’Va. ‘I see. So in fact you have failed to destroy them in the time frame allocated. In doing so you have allowed these… monstrosities to regroup with their gue’ron’sha allies.’

Shadowsun said nothing, her eyes all but closed in shame.

‘Commander Puretide would be disappointed in your progress. The empire requires more than patience to realise its destiny.’ The Supreme Ethereal’s long grey lips turned down slightly, a pout of disapproval that Shadowsun realised she hated and feared more than anything else. Perhaps even more than the Traitor.

The Supreme Ethereal paused, his hooded eyelids low and his large black pupils flicked back in brief meditation. His grey mask could well have been stone for all the life in it.

‘I shall be leading the final assault on Agrellan’s principal fortress,’ he said, returning to his former statesmanlike demeanour. ‘It is time the empire is reminded that none are exempt from strife in the name of the Greater Good. Not even those who watch over it. My ship is already inbound upon your position.’

‘But… Master, I…’ stammered Shadowsun, her mind whirling.

‘This shall occur. Within three kai’rotaa this world will be given a more fitting name – Mu’gulath Bay, the Gate of New Hope. The empire’s assimilation of this mineral-rich region will continue apace. You have command of an entire coalition in order to ensure it. The matter of the military details I leave to you.’

‘Of course, master. It shall be done.’

‘I am sure of it. The earth caste have assured me their fusion array upon Agrellan’s moon is essentially complete. The planetoid is only a matter of decs from its orbital zenith. The water caste are already in influential positions within those hives that will provide us gue’ve’sa for the next phase of expansion. The air caste have ensured total superiority of transfer for my fleet. It is only the fire caste that slow the empire’s progress.’

‘That… that is my fault, master,’ said Shadowsun, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘I shall work all the harder, forgoing sleep to ensure my caste’s success whilst remaining at optimum operational efficiency. I shall adopt,’ – she took a shallow breath before saying it – ‘I shall adopt the strategy of Mont’ka.’

‘What you will do, O’Shaserra, is accompany me in the creation of a breach in the primary hive’s walls,’ said Aun’Va, his orb-like eyes wide. ‘This breach will be secured by a contingency cadre inbound on your position, details appended. There shall the killing blow land. I intend for the footage of our glorious military victory to be broadcast across the entire empire.’

Shadowsun spared an eye-flick to scan Aun’Va’s transmitted append. ‘XV104s…’ she said, her eyes growing wide. ‘They are to be field-tested upon Agrellan, master? How many?’

‘A number sufficient to the task.’

‘Master Aun’Va, with these resources we shall create a legend here, that I promise you.’

‘Yes. I shall.’

A moment of silence passed. Aun’Va nodded slowly, staring hard at her as if he was reading her thoughts.

‘Master…’ said Shadowsun, her voice catching.

‘My child?’ the Supreme Ethereal replied. His tone was tired, as if he knew what was coming next, and had nothing but contempt for it.

‘Has there been any word of Shoh?’

The Supreme Ethereal’s grey lips grew thin.

‘Concentrate on the matter at hand, O’Shaserra,’ he said. ‘We shall speak of the Traitor soon enough.’

The flickering firelight caused the shadows of the fur-clad Chogorians to dance across the circle of bikes surrounding them. Their powerful machines faced outwards in every direction, ready for the White Scars to mount up and disperse at a moment’s notice.

The khan’s warriors listened in attentive silence as he prepared to issue instructions for the next stage of the hunt.

‘Our quarry is cunning, and not to be underestimated,’ he began. ‘The xenos witch has had the better of us once, but will not do so again. At sunrise, we will–’

Kor’sarro’s voice broke off as a faint silhouette began to take shape amid the darkness. As one, every White Scar aimed his bolter at the ebon figure’s head. The stranger did not flinch.

‘In the name of the Great Khan, identify yourself!’ roared Jebe, Kor’sarro’s company champion, as he unsheathed his sword.

‘Stand down, brothers,’ ordered the khan, gesturing to his men to lower their weapons. ‘I know him.’

Kor’sarro Khan was aware of only one person in the entire galaxy that could infiltrate a Space Marine camp undetected. The khan’s warriors obeyed his command without question, though the scornful sneer he wore did little to ease the tension.

Without a word, the newcomer reached up and unclasped his helm to reveal a narrow, pallid face beneath a veil of lank, black hair. It was Shadow Captain Shrike.

‘We meet again, Raven Guard,’ the khan growled. ‘What brings your kind here? Have you come to spill xenos blood, or skulk in the shadows and leave the fighting to real warriors?’

‘My “kind” have been engaging the enemy in covert operations for ten days,’ stated Shrike. ‘We engaged the tau relief forces in the canyons either side of your position at Blackshale Ridge. Did you not wonder how you managed to escape the ambush against such odds?’

The khan’s eyes narrowed at this, but Shrike continued before the White Scar could respond. ‘I bring orders from my master, Corvin Severax. This world is lost. The xenos forces arrayed against us are too great, and my scouts report that the tau are massing for a final assault.’

The realisation of what Shrike was about to say hit the khan like a sledgehammer. ‘You wish us to retreat? Craven!’

‘Severax has assumed full command of all Imperial forces in this sector and has called for the evacuation of all military assets and personnel on Agrellan – including you, brother. Given our history, he thought it prudent you heard this from me. He knew these orders would not be to your taste. The Wings of Deliverance awaits us in orbit, and two Magnus-class drop-ships are berthed in the hive’s triumphal boulevard for transfer. You are to accompany me back to Agrellan Prime for immediate extraction.’

‘Then he was wise to send you and no other, lest I gut them for their cowardice,’ growled the khan. ‘But if these are indeed my orders, then I will do my duty, even though it stains my honour. White Scars, we ride! See you in Agrellan or hell, brother!’

‘Hell awaits us all at Agrellan Prime,’ Shrike muttered grimly.

The curving corridors of the Undeniable Truth were still haunted by the sterile tang of its production dome. Through the spaceship’s white reaches shuffled the squat-bodied, muscular shapes of earth caste scientists. Each of them paused every thirty steps or so, raising a flat grey wand and taking complex readings from the oblong viewing ports that soared up to the roof high above. So far, every one of the nova reactors nestled within the corridors’ inhabitants had been emitting ideal data.

One of the earth caste scientists stepped up to the viewing port. Wiping the condensation from the plastiglass, he moved his face in close, looking up like a child who had been raised underground and brought out to see the night sky for the first time.

An armoured colossus stood there in the near-darkness, its sensor-lenses pulsing gently in harmony with the terrifying potential energy at its heart.

The XV104 Riptide – a hero’s mantle of magnificent and terrible beauty – was soon to be unleashed.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE GREAT HIVES
ABSALOM CONTINENT
AGRELLAN, 747.999.M41

One by one, Agrellan’s great metropolises began to fall.

The first to face Shadowsun’s impeccably planned onslaughts were the three hives of the Acacian Basin. This time the White Scars, after being humbled at the battle of Blackshale Ridge and ordered to retreat to Agrellan Prime, were unable to prevent the tau offensive that hammered out from the hives’ blind spots. With the main gun nests and artillery domes of each Acacian hive buried under thousands of tonnes of ferrocrete, Shadowsun’s cadres picked apart each mountainous city like razor ants dismantling the carcass of a dying grox.

The Imperium was slow to learn from its mistakes, but it was not incapable. The war council of Agrellan Prime, forced to admit that the Acacian hives were as good as lost, resolved that those cities yet to be attacked would not be caught slumbering. They placed every hive on full alert, ensuring their artillery domes were manned around the clock and their vigilis-class servo-skulls were actively questing for signs of tau invaders.

Imperial Knights strode around the fractured borders of each vast city, ready and eager for battle at a moment’s notice. In the meantime they turned their cannons upon those outcrops and spires that occluded the hives’ fields of fire, methodically demolishing them with melta blasts or the relentless pounding of battle cannon shells. Despite the evacuations preceding each clearance, many citizens were lost in the landslides of rockcrete that were created by each barrage. Yet as each hive’s cataracts were removed one by one, its vision was sharpened once more, and the gold zones that Shadowsun had used to such effect in the Acacian Basin were eliminated.

With the tau’s advantage of surprise spent in the initial phases of the war, Agrellan was ready and waiting for the next bout of bloodshed. A world given over to the production of war materiel was now armed and armoured to the hilt.

Ultimately, it made little difference.

Imortis Hive, whose outer walls were so thick that conventional bombardments were useless against it, fell to its own defences. Though dormant gravity mines studded the folds in its walls, each intended to drag enemies into a preprepared kill zone, their locations had been determined long ago. Even before she had made planetfall, Shadowsun’s orbital scans had uncovered their unusual energy signatures. At their commander’s behest, tau ranged support cadres edged towards the hive and sent their nimble gun drones to make a simultaneous approach. Small enough to evade the auspice arrays of the monolithic structure, the drones closed in, disc-like beads on a gossamer-thin garrotte closing around the hive’s throat. The drones triggered every one of the mines in a single diving assault, and the resultant gravitic dissonance was so strong that, although the gun drones were crushed flat, the hive’s walls were made momentarily vulnerable by their own density.

The cadre’s subsequent railgun volleys spread hairline cracks that turned to finger-wide gaps, then gaping fissures until the impossibly strong gravity fields tore the walls down under their own weight. Under the cover of the colossal dust clouds thrown up by the ruinous collapse, hunter cadres by the dozen powered inside, debarking from their anti-grav Devilfish transports to cut down the hive’s defenders in a merciless urban war.

Gorvus Hive, the fiercest and most vigilant of all its kind, fell to the wiles of Shas’vre Drai. In the shadowy depths of the hive’s industrial layers, Drai’s chameleonic battlesuit teams were all but undetectable. Each Stealth group fought its way through the territory of fierce underhive gangs and up to the sloping shoulders of the hive, emerging bloodied but undetected onto the artillery eyries overlooking the plains. The precision violence of their ambush cut down the crew of each artillery battery with ease, their fusion blasters reducing the Hydra flak tanks themselves to molten scrap.

By robbing Gorvus Hive of its anti-aircraft capabilities, the Stealth groups had ensured that their air caste allies could close in unmolested. Razorsharks shot down those few aircraft the hive could launch in its defence as Paradox squadrons circled the spires like vultures, dropping stasis bombs on the canopies and domes that protected its people from Agrellan’s toxic atmosphere.

The deadly zephyrs of the planet’s wastes slowly filtered into the hive’s innards, and soon panic had broken out in every district. It was as potent a weapon of conquest as any bomb. Gorvite citizens fought tooth and nail for the rebreathers and puritan canisters that were worn by the richer members of the populace, just as Shadowsun had known they would, for humans were selfish and had little concept of a greater good.

Before the hour was out, the hive’s gates had been flung wide by swarming refugees seeking the safety of neighbouring cities. The people that formed the hive’s lifeblood spilled out onto the toxic plains in screaming rivers and desperate, pooling crowds. So it was that whilst Imortis fell from without, Gorvus fell from within.

Rebellion took Barantius Hive, a fortress famous for the great macrocannons that girdled its thick waist. After inveigling their way inside the underhive, water caste ambassadors had traded cutting-edge plasma weaponry with every gang leader they could find in exchange for little more than a handful of Imperial silver. When the Adeptus Arbites came for the tau that had been anonymously reported as lurking in the gangers’ midst, the trigger-happy hivers were more than ready to test out their new guns in defence of their new ‘friends’.

Skirmishes turned into bloodbaths as the enforcers of the noble houses came down heavily upon those gangs that had dared resist them. With the temper of the oppressed masses already dangerously short, the tau ambassadors found it easy to fan the spark of revolt into a raging inferno. The entire underhive mobilised into an uprising that coursed through the hive city, consuming it layer by layer as the wordcraft of the tau ambassadors worked its subtle magic. Before the day was out even the highest spires were taken – not by tau warriors, but by human guerrillas only too glad to turn the tables on their long-time oppressors. In the end, Barantius fell without a single one of its macrocannons being fired.

Predominus Hive was next. Huge shield discs jutted from every structure sturdy enough to hold them, a profusion of hemispheres reminiscent of the plate-fungus that clusters to the trunk of an ancient tree. Though they were individually weak, when all of these discs were at maximum output the hive was shrouded by a shimmering cloak of energy that could deflect artillery shells and lascannon beams alike. With every generator in the lower hive given over to these defences, the populace considered themselves invulnerable.

The hive’s citizens were to be disabused of this notion in the most horrific and final of ways. As Agrellan’s great cities were taken apart in a dozen locations, the planet’s moon appeared full and gloating directly above the spires of Predominus. From the armourglass balconies and vivariums of the hive’s upper levels, a tiny blue flicker could be seen in the planetoid’s deepest crater. The flicker grew larger, then larger still, until it hurt to look at the sky.

Then, with a window-shattering thunderclap, a column of fusion energy the width of a mag-train stabbed down into the topmost spire of Predominus. It blasted the hive apart from within, a hundred thousand gun ports and archways venting sheets of blue-white energy in a single cataclysmic explosion. As Shadowsun had predicted, the fusion lance’s fell energies were contained within the same protective force fields that had been designed to protect the hive. Instead of being released they raged like a trapped firestorm, burning away every living thing inside and out until the hive was little more than crumbling ash.

The price of such destructive power was high, for the titanic release of energy from the earth caste mega-weapon upon Agrellan’s moon caused a fusion reactor meltdown of unprecedented scale. The backlash consumed half of Agrellan’s moon in blue fire, cracking the rest of the honeycombed orb into little more than space debris. Yet the deed was done. For the loss of less than fifty earth caste scientists, the tau coalition had obliterated over seven billion hivers.

Adronicus Hive fell next, then Stormspire, then Olnius, each taken down by a military masterstroke that turned the hive’s power against itself. Shadowsun’s worldwide Mont’ka strategy had halved the planet’s population and reduced its fortresses to rubble in the space of a single day.

Yet for all the deadly genius that Shadowsun had exhibited elsewhere on the planet, it was the conquest of Agrellan Prime that was to become legendary.

Kor’sarro Khan leant forward out of the cupola of the Rhino Steelsteed, toxic winds whipping across his face as the transport hurtled through the desiccated forest. The air was foul, and he could feel his multi-lung pumping at maximum capacity next to his spine. At least he could see his surroundings. Moondrakkan would take weeks to replace, and in the meantime there was no way he was going to hide from sight like a tau coward.

The khan’s transport was the arrowhead point of an armoured column that made all speed towards the evac site at Agrellan Prime. Each vehicle bore the white and red heraldry of the White Scars, the remains of its biker squads acting as outriders on either flank. Inside each Rhino and Razorback was a squad itching for battle, praying for the xenos to bar their path so they could take a measure of revenge before the evacuation craft bore them into the night sky.

Less than a hundred metres ahead of the Steelsteed, the contrails of Raven Guard jump packs flickered blue. The khan’s allies shot through the forest, their fast but stealthy approach in stark contrast to the White Scars juggernaut charge. Shrike had insisted the khan’s men take the forest road, sticking to the natural camouflage of the white trees for as long as possible before making a break for the walls of Agrellan Prime. After his losses at Blackshale Ridge, Kor’sarro had reluctantly acquiesced, part of him silently grateful that his loss of the steed Moondrakkan would be less evident if they rode through woodland instead of the open wastes.

‘Slippery tau hag,’ he muttered into the wind. The enemy commander had twice escaped him now, twice evaded Moonfang’s steel bite. If the witch hadn’t have been xenos, perhaps… perhaps the hatred he felt for her would be closer to respect.

A cloud of orange flame flickered up ahead, and the trunks of dead trees threw out stark shadows as shrill screams rose into the night. On either side of the forest road, baleful eyes flashed in the gloom. The khan caught flashes of heavy-set figures with their backs flattened against the desiccated trunks, white tree-dust smeared across their muscled frames.

Catachans. Kor’sarro knew fellow hunters when he saw them. But as for what they were waiting for…

An avian caw jolted Kor’sarro from his thoughts, and there came a clang of clawed feet on metal from behind him. He ducked on instinct just as a jagged blade attached to a hunting rifle swept overhead, ripping a clump of black hair from his topknot.

Face set in a grimace of contempt, the khan punched upwards and grabbed the rifle’s shaft, yanking it forwards to draw its owner into his line of sight. A gangly xenos stared down with beady black eyes, beak open and head-quills shaking in a primitive threat display. A kroot mercenary, savage in a fight but easily broken.

The creature’s head exploded, showering the cupola and its occupant with foul-smelling gore.

Kor’sarro shouldered up to lean out of the hatch once more and scan his surroundings. He could hear bolter fire, and see the flicker-flare of mass reactive shots detonating in the distance. To the right of the Steelsteed rode Djubali, grinning fiercely under his mask of whipping black hair. He had a smoking bolt pistol in his hand.

‘That kill was mine!’ bawled Kor’sarro, wiping xenos blood from his face.

‘My apologies, steedless one!’ laughed his battle-brother over the din of the armoured column’s engines. ‘At least you look a bit more like your old gory self now!’

The khan shrugged, picking up the remains of the xenos corpse’s arm and biting down into it so that blood ran down his chin. The muscle was stringy and foul, but he could feel his gut thanking him for the protein nonetheless. He smiled redly at Djubali and flung the rest of the arm at his head.

‘There are whole tribes of the things!’ shouted Djubali, expertly swaying his bike so the khan’s improvised projectile flailed past him. ‘Straken’s lot are hunting them!’

‘No time to join in!’ replied the khan. ‘Stick to the plan!’

A solid slug pinged hard from his pauldron, some tree-hidden kroot sniper’s best shot. Kor’sarro snorted in irritation, picking his helmet from the mag-clamp at his waist and pushing it down hard over his head. ‘Do not fall to this distraction,’ he voxed to his men. ‘We’ve a real battle to fight. Punch through the thick of it, then on to the hive walls.’

Djubali nodded his understanding and peeled off, the bolters on the front of his bike thumping out shells into the night.

The noise of battle up ahead was intensifying. Blossoms of flame illuminated long-limbed kroot and thickly muscled Catachans as they darted through the darkness. Catachan blood spurted in black arcs, hunting staves swung and chopped, alien flesh sizzled as lasguns stabbed pinpoint volleys through the darkness. The khan breathed in the heady scent of war, opening a vox-channel to his brethren whilst the White Scars column bullied its path through the sparse forest.

‘Engage only those in your path, brothers, do not slow,’ the khan said. ‘Deliver what wrath you can from atop your steeds.’

His men answered only with gunfire, those in the armoured column behind throwing open the top hatches of their Rhinos to send bolt shells blasting into the kroot snipers crouching in the trees. Xenos remains pattered out of the white boughs like the flesh of burst fruit.

Up ahead, a squadron of squat-bodied Imperial Guard tanks bulldozed their way into a clearing. The khan chuckled evilly as he recognised the silhouettes of their giant promethium barrels.

Hellhounds.

The oily scent of ignited promethium billowed through the forest, and a roiling bow-wave of flame blasted a nearby copse of trees to burning splinters. The khan saw long-limbed figures blaze like tallow candles in a bonfire before falling away to ash.

Dozens of kroot fled from the Hellhounds, sprinting right towards the armoured column. They flitted and darted from tree to tree like shadows given life. Shouting a wordless war cry, the khan pivoted the cupola’s storm bolter and sent a volley of rocket-propelled shells thudding into scattering aliens and desiccated vegetation alike. Each deadly little cylinder detonated on impact to spray bone-white powder and xenos remains in a wide radius. The weapon bucked hard in the khan’s hands as it killed foe after foe, and the Rhino kicked like a mule as it crunched over those xenos too slow to scatter out of its path. Kor’sarro savoured the prickly feeling of hot adrenaline pumping through his system. Armoured warfare. There was nothing quite like it.

The Raven Guard, as focused and driven as ever, had avoided the fighting entirely to boost out of the forest and onto the parched earth girdling the hive’s walls. The khan almost envied them their focus. He could no sooner pass through a forest of foes without taking a few kills than he could devour a Land Raider. Still, their advance had not slowed, and the edge of the desiccated woodland was in sight.

The White Scars column bullied its way out of the forest at breakneck speed, the crushed remains of kroot mercenaries gumming the tracks of many of its vehicles. A few kilometres distant the man-made mountain of Hive Agrellan loomed impossibly tall. Its spires disappeared up into the glowering clouds, though its perimeter wall loomed close, a promise of safety wrought in brutalist rockcrete. On its upper slopes ancient guns clanked and huffed, steam gouting from their gargoyle-mouthed vents as they ground into new firing positions. The khan could swear they were taking a bead on his armoured column.

Or perhaps, thought the khan, aiming at an unseen foe closing in upon it.

‘Beware the flanks, battle-brothers!’ shouted the khan. ‘Close all hatches! The alien is near!’

No sooner had the khan given his command than a shoal of xenos war machines hurtled down out of the low-hanging clouds towards them. Grav-skimmers, fighters, drones, battlesuits, every one of them bore down upon the White Scars with their guns spitting blue-white plasma. The Raven Guard jetting off ahead and the Catachans sprinting across the plains behind them were easy targets, but the xenos ignored them entirely. The khan could feel it in his bones. This was about revenge.

Several bikes tumbled away into the dust as the tau volleys hit home, and a Razorback flipped over as a volley of missiles struck its tracks. Rhinos were rocked on their suspension by seeker missiles that slammed into their hatches over and over again, hammering in hard as if trying to get at the Space Marines inside. The khan growled in frustration, longing to change tactics and engage them head on, but knowing the time for such tactics had passed.

‘Force Jekobah, Force Khenik, introduce yourselves,’ Kor’sarro growled into the vox. A moment later he heard the signature boom of turbo-boosted engines as eight Land Speeders and a Stormraven gunship roared out from the forest road to fill the skies with heavy bolter fire. Many of the shells hit home, and the blazing wreckage of tau drones and light aircraft fell out of the skies, long plumes of smoke trailing behind them as they corkscrewed towards the parched earth.

A guttural chanting came from behind Kor’sarro. Sudabeh had shouldered his way out of the Steelsteed’s top hatch, his force staff raised high. The seer’s eyes filled red, the air around him crackling faintly as his conjuration reached its zenith. Far above, the clouds above the approaching tau strike force began to curl.

‘Ha!’ barked the khan. ‘Show them a real storm, old friend!’

The curling clouds turned into a spiral, then a vortex, its interior lit with ruddy streaks of lightning. Here and there an electrical bolt would crackle out with a loud snapping sound, discharging towards the tau warsuits that were sending missiles arcing down towards their position. Several of the bipedal weapons platforms took direct hits, and though they were left physically intact they fell away nonetheless, dropping like falling statues to the earth.

The khan’s breath came quick. The vast city’s walls were less than three kilometres away. They could still make it. Even under heavy fire, they could make it.

He looked to the west, and saw dim shadows. He looked up, and his eyes widened.

Drifting down from the lightning-haunted skies came a new kind of death.

Four alien war machines emerged from the roiling clouds, so large and powerful that any one of them could have flipped the Steelsteed with one hand. The ever-present warsuits of the tau the khan had fought before. They were usually as tall as a Dreadnought and carried much the same firepower. Yet even those deadly things would barely have come up to the waists of the technological horrors that now came for them.

A single cyclopean eye glowed dull red in each boxy head, nestled small amongst the massive bulk of their segmented torsos and jetpack arrays. On the left arm of each massive warsuit discus shields shimmered, tiny flickers of Sudabeh’s red lightning dancing across the domes of force they projected. On their right arms were guns almost as large as the Khan Spear’s turbo-laser destructor.

The paired giants at the front of the formation raised their cannons, complex rotary weapons whose multiple barrels whirred into black and ochre blurs. The rising whine of the spinning barrels was soon joined by great bass pulses, the weapons booming voh-voh-voh-voh as arm-sized plasma bolts blitzed into the Raven Guard. Wherever the blinding white lozenges struck home, black-armoured Space Marines were bowled six metres into the dust, skidding to a halt in a tangle of smoking limbs and charred ceramite.

Behind them came two more of the monstrosities, boosting forwards to take up kneeling stances in the dust. Bluish light poured from the vents in their double-barrelled cannons as their thrumming reactors powered up for the shot. A krak missile shot out from one of the Rhinos in the middle of the armoured column, its firer hoping to disrupt whatever barrage was to come. His aim was true, and the missile smacked right into the leftmost warsuit, detonating with a clap of percussive force. It did nothing more than discolour the colossus’s ochre hide.

Then the warsuits returned fire.

With an enormous, blaring tzonng, two starbursts of ion energy flared out from the underslung cannons. Each boulder-sized sphere burned a trail through the air before smacking straight into the armoured column.

One of the blinding balls punched into the side of a Rhino, annihilating a full half of its hull in an instant. Flailing Space Marines spilled out amongst the smouldering remains of their comrades a moment before the vehicle exploded with a ground-shaking boom.

The other energy sphere burst upon the hull of a Razorback, incinerating its upper half and turning its lascannon turret into a pillar of crackling smoke. The stricken vehicle veered, tilted and slowly toppled over, sending nearby bikers scattering away from its burning wreck.

‘Keep moving!’ shouted the khan, waving at his men to circumvent the ruined transports. ‘Full throttle! Full dispersal!’

Muting the vox for a second, Kor’sarro clucked his tongue in frustration and anger. With the Thunderhawks gone, they had nowhere near enough firepower to deal with this new threat, let alone the massed tau strike force on their right. Their only hope was speed and determination.

Luckily, those were qualities the White Scars had in great measure.

The Rhinos and Razorbacks broke into a loose pack and accelerated hard, their biker escorts swerving and kinking in a loose perimeter around them. The Land Speeders, still harrying the strike force descending on the right flank, wove interlocking patterns that made it all but impossible to settle cross hairs upon them.

Then Agrellan Hive spoke, a single word of death that shook the earth.

One of the giant tau warsuits was blown to scrap in an instant, its internal reactor sending a mushroom cloud high into the air as the hive’s ordnance hit home. The other three suits rocked back in surprisingly human stances, their discus shields flaring as their force fields soaked up the worst of the baleful energies.

Turning back to the White Scars, the warsuits opened fire once more, as intent on the kill as any true hunter. The multi-barrelled rotary cannons of the foremost warsuits perforated the Steelsteed in half a dozen places, and the khan ducked low into the cupola as the vehicle shuddered like a frightened beast. Yet the stout machine kept going, carving a zigzag path into the shadow of the hive walls.

The same could not be said for the men inside. Three of the runes corresponding to the khan’s command squad flickered red in his helmet display.

‘Apothecary Stebekh, tend to those hit by that last volley,’ snapped the khan, the medic in the Steelsteed’s hold voxing acknowledgement.

‘Solarus Gate, harken all stations!’ shouted Kor’sarro, watching in envy as the surviving Raven Guard triggered their jump packs to bound effortlessly over the perimeter wall. ‘We require immediate entry! We’re under heavy fire out here. We request entry!’

The vox-net crackled, but there was no response.

Behind him, another blaring tzonng was followed by the dull crump of a vehicle detonation. In the distance, two more explosions erupted from the transports at the rear of the column. Orange death-fires illuminated the cloud of smaller battlesuits hovering above them like a host of predatory angels.

‘By the Emperor’s holy throne, Solarus, give us an open port or I’ll cut my way inside and kill you myself!’

‘Quite impossible,’ came the gatemaster’s reply, his prim tone failing entirely to conceal the panic beneath.

Then, in a blaze of light, an opening appeared in the great Agrellan wall.

But it was not the warriors of the Imperium who had made it.

The yield capacitors of Shadowsun’s fusion blasters blipped gold. She dropped down from the flickering skies towards the column of boxy Imperial vehicles and triggered another full shot, twin beams of destructive energy spearing vertically downwards. She hit one of the lumpen things full on, an olive-hued tank that was little more than a mobile box filled with gue’la troopers. The transport exploded with a satisfying thump, and its passengers spilled out, grabbing for rebreathers or rolling out the fires that clung to their disgusting porcine flesh.

Yelling in defiance, the gunners in the cupolas of the other transports pivoted their pintle-mounted weapons towards the source of the killing shot. Shadowsun swung her hips back and her chest forward, her battlesuit smoothly boosting away from the chattering streams of slugs sent in her direction. Even a raw recruit could have avoided the ill-timed volley fired by the human soliders, and her Stealth cells made her all but invisible against the flickering clouds above. Such poor warriors did not deserve to face the might of the XV104s. As if to prove her point, Drai’s team came alongside her, levelled their burst cannons, and tore apart the cupola gunners in a storm of blood and plasma.

This really is too easy, thought Shadowsun. There was little honour in shooting a fleeing foe, especially one as dull of wit as the Imperial Guard. Even their name was ridiculous. She was almost regretting ordering the Riptides to engage the gue’ron’sha instead of tackling them herself. Still, she reminded herself, Aun’Va had other duties in mind for her.

It was time for the killing blow to fall.

‘Counterstrike cadres,’ she transmitted, her tones clipped and sure. ‘Neutralise as many of these transports as possible. Firststrike cadre, I want that wall breached immediately. Approach on appended vectors, Riptides at the fore. Full nova, then sentinel protocols. Oe-ken-yon, use the dronenet to get high-yield footage. Skystrike cadre – your Riptides have the honour of being the first inside. Prepare a path.’

The assent symbols of the Riptide wings flashed gold, their size and unfamiliarity filling Shadowsun with quiet pride. To have such warriors at her command, to be the first in the empire to wield them as her blade… it was an honour beyond measure.

She could feel the pull of Mont’ka tugging at her soul. With weapons such as these…

‘- - - YES - - - KILL - - - SEND THEM TO THEIR GRAVES - - -’

Shadowsun felt a hot prickle of unease cross her skin. She could have sworn she had turned the autotrans off when she was mustering the cadres in the cloud cover, to prevent… to prevent unnecessary distractions. Mont’ka required total focus.

Ahead of her the Riptides she had claimed for her Firststrike cadre dropped out of the clouds above the hive’s wall. Their nova reactors thrummed to a crescendo as they hovered to a halt in front of the gate’s towers. Suddenly, blue-white spheres shot from their energy cannons, hitting home with such force they chewed a wide breach in the eagle-emblazoned gate. The walls around the opening were riven by a web of cracks, tumbling rubble carrying those Imperial Guardsmen that had been manning the gate’s battlements to a rocky demise.

The XV104s had blasted open the human fortress in a single devastating salvo. Behind the breach, the hive’s sprawling innards were laid bare. An iron-grated perimeter road met a cliff wall of pipes and platforms across which hundreds of antlike citizens scurried, desperate to escape. Imperial Guard troops pushed their way through the teeming hivers to take up positions on landing pads and crenulated defence stations.

Shadowsun flew in close to the hive’s outer wall, blasting the face from a statue of an Imperial saint as she passed by. The paired Riptides that had ripped open the city’s wall bracketed her like armoured giants escorting an airborne goddess. Behind her, the three surviving Riptides that had mauled the gue’ron’sha tanks hovered towards the breach at speed, boosting over the postern gate on contrails of blue flame. They unleashed a hail of heavy burst cannon fire as they came back down in the perimeter streets, splayed metal feet landing with a rockcrete-shattering crunch.

The other two Riptides stood guard, interposing themselves between the oncoming armoured column and the safety beyond the breach. Shas’vre Drai’s Stealth teams were already inside, sowing confusion and distraction amongst the gue’la troopers rushing to reinforce the breach. This would be the battle that the tau empire demanded of her – loud, spectacular and bloody in the extreme.

‘The way has been opened, master,’ she transmitted on a secure frequency. ‘My teams are securing it now.’

Aun’Va’s grey face flickered large.

‘Not before time, O’Shaserra. I shall begin my descent.’

‘Acknowledged, master,’ sent Shadowsun, her heart beating hard. Soon she would fight alongside the Supreme Ethereal himself.

If their plan succeeded, a scene of timeless glory would blossom on every screen and hologram across the empire.

And if it failed, she would die in utter disgrace.

The Riptides of Shadowsun’s Firststrike cadre blocked the breach completely, the towering XV104s standing shoulder to shoulder as they discharged accelerated ionic blasts into the scattered gue’ron’sha below. Too brave or stupid to seek cover, the enemy still came on, despite over two-thirds of their number lying dead or dying across the cratered battleground outside the hive.

Though she could not directly see the three Riptides of the Skystrike cadre, their symbols glowed gold on her command suite as they strode impervious along the perimeter walls. Those enemy warriors ensconced in the hive’s bulk were firing upon them with missiles, large-calibre bolts, even plasma fire of their own. Yet not one of the three battlesuits showed anything other than a healthy gold of full operative capacity.

Shadowsun watched a double string of heavy burst cannon fire pulse white across the battlements. Wherever the plasma bolts struck, the human soldiers manning the walls were reduced to a fine red mist. Those who had hidden from the Riptides’ cannonades were torn apart by the smart missiles fired by the launchers mounted atop their shoulders, contrails snaking through the crenulations to double back hard and detonate with killing force.

These beautiful new machines were a vision made real for the fire caste. Shadowsun felt sad that Commander Puretide was not here to witness them.

With the enemy reeling, the rest of the commander’s Counterstrike cadre had approached the walls in their skimmer transports and were deploying in a tight guard formation. So far so good, thought Shadowsun. The next stage was already upon them.

Soaring out from the flickering clouds over the plains was the pride of the air caste’s sub-orbital fleet, the Manta missile destroyer Burning Hope. Red lightning played across its splayed wings, but even the mind-science of the gue’ron’sha shaman had no hope of stopping such a massive craft. Shadowsun smiled thinly. Tau technology, in sufficient measure, could overcome any challenge.

The Burning Hope soared over the plains, coming in so low that the flattening force of its engines bowled over the human warriors darting amongst the wreckage beneath. As it bellied in close, the gunship’s rail cannons let loose a volley with a deafening whip-crack, shattering one of the hive’s artillery domes before it could fire and blasting the proud statuary above the secondary gate to powder. Burst cannons on the edge of the Hope’s graceful hull poured plasma into the ruined battlements around the breach, forcing the black-armoured gue’ron’sha taking position there to dive for cover.

Then, as the rear portal of the Burning Hope irised open and his escort cadre deployed in parade formation, the Supreme Ethereal Aun’Va entered the fray.

Aun’Va’s fire warrior escort marched determinedly towards the breach, their pulse rifles levelling volley after volley at those Imperial troops disrespectful enough to look upon their leader. In the centre of the formation came the spiritual leader of the tau empire, seated comfortably upon his disc-like gravity throne. An expression of grim serenity radiated from his stately features as he intoned words of inspiration and conquest to his men. How Shadowsun wished she were one of them, a rank and file trooper shorn of the burden of command and free to drink in the heady sensations of the Supreme Ethereal’s presence. Drink it all in as she killed in his name.

The Riptides standing sentinel on either side of the breach knelt in respect at Aun’Va’s approach, stabiliser pistons thunking out from their thighs as their ion accelerators hurled yet more glowing spheres at the oncoming gue’ron’sha. Oe-ken-yon hovered high amongst a swarm of fellow drones, his networked artificial intelligences recording every angle of Aun’Va’s glorious entrance into the city.

Then, with an ear-splitting screech of tortured metal, a giant chainsword blade burst out from the chest of the leftmost Riptide and juddered through its torso in a shower of sparks.

A twisting burst of feedback roiled out, an artificial death cry that rang in every tau ear as the indomitable Riptide fell in crackling halves to the rubble-choked ground.

Shadowsun cried out and boosted in close, her cadre’s Crisis battlesuits behind her. Behind the dying Riptide stood a hunchbacked Titan clad in the matt black of the grave. Skulls were emblazoned on every flat plane of its riveted armour, and red eye-sensors glared out from the vision slit of its impassive metal helm. The apparition’s upper half twisted around with an oily scream, bringing its tapering cannon-arm to bear upon the head of the second Riptide.

The battlesuit, its shield arm lowered to protect Aun’Va instead of itself, took a close range battle cannon shell right to the head. The blast sent it reeling backwards, violet sparks fizzing from its decapitated torso to crackle from the rubble of the breach.

The Riptide staggered upright, its systems whining hypersonically as it struggled to recalibrate. Shadowsun darted in close and levelled a double shot at the helm of the metal monster bearing down upon her battlesuited comrade. Her fusion blasts fizzled harmlessly across the thing’s ion shield. The iron beast ignored her and stomped across the breach, contemptuously kicking a spray of rubble at the fire warriors loosing ineffectual volleys at its flank. It raised the giant chainblade that formed its left arm and brought it slashing down at the stricken Riptide just as the battlesuit triggered its jetpack. The obsidian Knight’s chainblade caught the ascending Riptide’s leg, ripping it bodily out of its hip socket. The monster’s battle cannon clank-pumped shell after shell after the fleeing machine, a grating machine-sound coming from its mask that sounded uncannily like laughter.

‘A worthy adversary,’ transmitted Aun’Va over the open channel. ‘Commander Shadowsun, allow your blade to fall.’

‘Yes, master,’ she replied. ‘Skywing cadre, engage and neutralise that beast.’

Before she could finish her command a third Riptide shot horizontally across the breach on twin trails of fire, bodily smashing into the rear of the black-armoured walker and wrapping its arms around the thing’s waist. Twisting hard, the Riptide yanked the obsidian machine onto one foot, causing its massive shoulders to smash into the perimeter wall with such force that several black-armoured gue’ron’sha toppled from the battlements, guns blazing as they fell. The gue’la walker fought to right itself. Its chainblade slashed the air as a second Riptide ran past just out of reach, heavy burst cannon stitching plasma blasts across the monster’s ion shield.

The Imperial troops pouring into the breach had taken heart from the black-armoured Titan’s attack. The Space Marines amongst the rubble cut down fire warriors left and right with their bolt-spitting sidearms, several of their number even causing Aun’Va’s personal force shield to flash bright. Shadowsun darted a horrified glance at the ancient’s image on the command screen, but she was greeted only by a serene mask.

‘None can shrink from sacrifice in the name of the Greater Good,’ Aun’Va boomed, his gaze directed at the c-link drone that hovered above.

Around him, the fire warriors were being forced back by the renewed assault of the black-armoured gue’ron’sha and the supporting infantry that overlooked the battle from the platforms high above. More bolter fire hammered in, this time from outside the hive’s walls. Shadowsun felt her mouth go dry as she realised the Supreme Ethereal was in danger of being caught in a lethal crossfire.

The shield can often be more dangerous than the sword.

‘Full defence upon the Supreme Ethereal’s escort!’ she shouted. ‘I want a shield over Aun’Va immediately! All Firststrike units, enact now!’

The tightknit teams of her cadre hastened to obey, coming in low to the side of the breach where the Supreme Ethereal was hovering forward. They flew in dense formation, guns bristling outwards to shred anything that got close.

Shadowsun jetted in close to her master, her tanks and battlesuits closing in tight as a turtle’s shell. She blipped a symbol of strength and stability to her cadre, but inside, she was dying. One stray shot is all it would take. One random, senseless bullet, and the flame that lit the heart of the tau empire would be extinguished forever.

Trailing smoke, the Steelsteed careened across the cratered earth, making haste for the section of the breach that was not choked with tau bodies. In the Rhino’s wake came the battered remnants of the armoured column, bouncing and slewing through the rockcrete that was scattered around the breach.

‘Ha! Looks like Severax’s little surprise has caught them unawares,’ laughed the khan. Sudabeh harrumphed in disapproval from the opened top hatch behind him. ‘Stop gloating and get us in there, Kor’sarro,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ replied the khan, nodding and opening the vox-channel to his men. ‘We have our chance, brothers,’ he said, ‘By the Emperor’s grace, let’s take it.’

The drivers of each Rhino and Razorback ground their tracked vehicles through the dense rock of the felled wall as fast as they dared. Incredibly, the heavy concentration of tau sheltering at the side of the breach let them past, firing only at the Raven Guard that were moving in to harass their position at close quarters. The remnants of the Catachan regiments followed close behind the khan’s company, their olive-armoured Chimeras grinding rubble to dust as they covered the last few metres into the hive.

The khan grabbed the storm bolter and swung it around to point at the tau cadre’s defensive huddle, but he did not fire. There was no sense in kicking that particular hornet’s nest when salvation was within reach.

‘Solarus Gate!’ he voxed. ‘Drop a macrocannon shell onto that nest of xenos cockroaches and all is forgiven!’

Static crackled, but nothing more. High up in the artillery domes, the snap-crack of xenos plasma weaponry gave the khan the impression the only thing dropping from their positions would be human corpses.

A tremendous clang of metal on metal rang out, and the massive black walker that Corvin Severax had set upon the tau staggered into view, locked in a wrestler’s clinch with one of the massive xenos warsuits. Both were fighting for a clear shot. Although the Knight was clumsy in comparison to the tau machine, it was far stronger. Levering a limb between itself and its assailant, the obsidian walker pushed the xenos warsuit into its line of fire with the flat of its whirring chainblade. The khan watched the black-iron walker blast its tau assailant backwards with a well-placed cannon shot. Stepping forwards into the space it had cleared, the Knight brought its whirring chainblade down in a coup de grâce that chewed its victim apart from shoulder to hip.

As the obsidian Knight’s war-horns boomed in triumph, another massive xenos warsuit descended from on high, smashing feet first into the Knight’s back and pitching it forwards into the sparking remains of its kill.

‘Make all speed to the grand promenade!’ shouted Kor’sarro across the vox. He levelled a stream of storm bolter fire at a knot of tau infantry darting through the rubble in the shadow of the wall, only to be greeted by the serial click of his empty ammo cache running dry. No sooner had he sworn in frustration than a new clip was passed up from inside the transport’s hull. The khan reloaded, watching the alien forces fan out as they loosed pulse beams in all directions. Their defensive firepower, formerly a spattering shower aimed only at those who got too close, was intensifying into a blistering hail.

In the shadow of the perimeter wall, the obsidian Knight blasted itself upright with a close-ranged volley to its fallen victim’s guts. Riding the recoil, it staggered drunkenly backwards in a half-circle, righting itself before clank-thumping another battle cannon shell towards the xenos warsuit hovering above. Its airborne foe twisted, letting the shell bounce from its torso with a dull thump. Its return fire blazed a stitching path of plasma bolts across the black walker’s hull, overloading its ion shield and burning deep holes into its carapace.

The Steelsteed swerved hard, banking around the obsidian walker’s legs to veer into the streets beyond. The khan whooped as the crenulated perimeter gave way to a triumphal parade ground with no less than five of House Terryn’s Knights stomping down it. Behind him the rest of the White Scars transports fanned out into arrowhead formation, the remains of their biker escort accelerating hard towards the evac zone.

The khan turned all the way around in the Steelsteed’s cupola, thudding explosive bolts into the ochre-armoured alien tanks swerving in pursuit. A score of streamlined gunships hovered into view, their rectangular cannons cracking hypervelocity rounds into the walkers on the boulevard beyond. The khan heard the fizz of ion shield discharge over and over again, punctuated by the occasional clang of a solid impact.

Suddenly, there she was – a flash of white blurring high along the grey rockcrete at their flank – the xenos war leader, speeding on plumes of fire like a statue of some graven tech-daemon given life. She arced elegantly upwards, disc-like drones trailing in her wake, and loosed lengthwise fusion blasts into the Raven Guard manning the walls. Three of Severax’s men burst into crackling cinders.

The khan plucked a krak grenade from his belt and flung it as hard as he could towards the xenos commander’s back. Somehow she saw it coming, and she twisted in midair, connecting a perfect toe-punt before turning back to her prey. Kor’sarro was forced to duck as the krak grenade came in hard, detonating against the Rhino’s roof with a deafening bang and a stink of fyceline.

Despite himself, Kor’sarro raised his eyebrows and nodded in grudging appreciation.

Engines growling, the White Scar transports gunned down the promenade until they passed through the iron wall of Terryn’s walkers. Djubali passed right underneath the lead walker, the rest of the bikes behind him. At the other end of the boulevard, tau tanks and heavy battlesuits smashed railgun fire into the massive bulk of the Imperial Knights. The walkers returned fire, their battle cannons spitting shells at a rate that would make a Cadian tanker sick with envy.

‘Captain Khan, glad you could make it,’ voxed Patriarch Tybalt, his tone dry even as he loosed a blast of superheated air from his thermal cannon. ‘Kindly board the drop-ship, or I fear that Master Severin will let neither of us forget it.’

Kor’sarro grunted his assent, waving his men up the yawning ramps of the drop-ships that awaited them in the triumphal plaza.

In the battle behind them, one of Terryn’s Knights fell slowly backwards with a creak of protesting metal. Its impact on the flagstones of the boulevard was so heavy that the khan could feel the Steelsteed jump as if it had taken a direct hit. Another of the looming walkers burst into a thick pillar of flame as its inner core gave out, the stress on its ion shields killing it from the inside out.

A thick worm of guilt writhed in Kor’sarro’s guts at the idea of leaving the planet to the mercy of the tau, but he had little choice. Agrellan Prime stood on the brink of collapse, and if the hive-voxes told true, every other defensive position had already fallen to the tau.

Sudabeh seemed to sense his old friend’s thoughts, and laid a gauntlet upon his pauldron as they debarked from the smoking hull of the Steelsteed into the shadow of the drop-ship’s cargo bay.

‘To linger here would be to sacrifice more lives on the altar of wounded pride, my khan,’ said the Stormseer. ‘Nothing more.’

Kor’sarro spat in frustration as his vehicles mounted the ramps of the evac zone, the surviving Catachans close on their tracks. Even the Knights of House Terryn that had been blocking the promenade had turned their mighty war machines around, ion shields flaring at their rears as they stamped towards the hangar bays of the drop-ships.

At the far end of the triumphal road, the giant tau warsuits that had blasted open Agrellan’s defences hovered high. Speaker arrays slid out from their torsos to blare a message in accented but precise Imperial Gothic. As the piston ramps of the drop-ships closed with a hiss, the rumble of their engines slowly drowned out the broadcasts of the alien invaders.

Not quickly enough, for the khan’s liking. The tau’s message would ring in his ears for weeks to come.

‘People of Agrellan Prime!’ the speaker arrays called. ‘Your protectors have abandoned you! Watch as your Emperor’s finest warriors flee, leaving you to your fate. Yet that fate is kinder than you suspect! Throw down your arms, and the killing will cease immediately. We bring enlightenment, peace and freedom from tyranny – yes, even freedom, blessed freedom from an Emperor that would bleed you white! We bring safety for you and your families, safety and boundless prosperity. Citizens, lay down your arms and listen, listen to the undeniable truth of the Greater Good…’

INTERLUDE 2-0

At the heart of the Raven Guard battle-barge Wings of Deliverance, the Sphere of Councils hung suspended by a thousand clanking chains. Built into the arched windows of the armoured sphere were baffles and dampeners that prevented the slightest whisper from getting out of its lead-lined walls.

Inside the strange construction was a toroid loop of polished bone. The names of the Chapter’s heroes were inscribed upon it in tiny, spidery script. Ten figures stood around it, united in silence if not appearance. Each of their faces was cast in shadow by the candelabras dangling above. The atmosphere was thick with trails of verity-incense that wound around power-armoured Space Marine and uniformed human alike. The figures had been standing around the bone toroid inside the sphere for the best part of six hours.

‘This is futile!’ blurted Kor’sarro Khan, throwing his hands up for what seemed like the tenth time that day. ‘There is simply no time for the waiting game. We must strike back at these upstart tau, finish what we started on Agrellan. Sever the head and the body will die.’

His words were met only with a stony absence of reply. Up in the dome above, a perched corvid cawed its ill omens.

‘Perhaps…’ said Chapter Master Severax, his sonorous tones resonating around the chamber, ‘perhaps it is that same haste that has led us to this point, Captain Khan. A foe with the power of flight is not easily slain by an earthbound blade. We must strike unseen.’

‘But even should we find a location for this ambush,’ protested the khan, ‘what guarantee is there that she will take the bait? That xenos b… the tau war-leader is highly intelligent. I want her head silvered and spiked on the walls of Quan Zhou, more than any other warrior in the Imperium. I swore an oath to do so. But she will not fall so easily to a base ploy. We must strike hard and true, before she has a chance to prepare. I favour aggressive warp translation, then a killing strike.’

‘Even if it were successful, Captain Khan, that would doom us all,’ said Patriarch Tybalt, twisting his long goatee beard around a beringed finger. ‘We cannot engage the tau armada in fleet-to-fleet combat and hope to prevail. Our best hope is to use their overconfidence against them. A warrior with a newly forged sword is always keen to test the blade.’

‘The old tortoise has a point,’ drawled Colonel Straken, drawing cold daggers from the patriarch opposite. ‘We’re on the edge of their empire, here. That means their nearest strongholds are a good sight closer than ours.’

‘So?’ put in Sudabeh, his dislike of the Catachan plain.

‘So we hit them hard, they hit us back even harder. This time they do it for keeps. They got old Agrellan sewn up good and tight, took the whole planet down in the space of a day. You’re a fool if you think they didn’t let us evacuate, all the better for their propaganda vids. You can bet your straggly beard on that. But if we lure them further into the Imperium, goad them into a trap, well… they won’t be able to resist rolling out those shiny new suits for the pict-thieves. Spread them thin enough, cover the skies, and we can close them down.’

‘We’ve been over this,’ said Kayvaan Shrike, his fingers planted in the corners of his eyes. Wax dripped from one of the candelabras above him, but the shadow captain pivoted fast, and the trickle missed his power armour by a finger’s breadth. ‘All this strategy is of no use without a battlefield to enact it,’ he said, setting his feet once more as the gloom surrounded him like a funeral shroud.

Severax stared hard at Tybalt, though only Shrike caught the meaning of the glare.

‘Very well,’ said the patriarch, testily. ‘We shall use Voltoris herself as our castle, much as it pains me to suggest it. She is shielded from sight by the Damocles Gulf, though we can lead the foe there easily enough. With our fleet on the coreward side of the planet, we will give the impression that our portcullis is unbarred.’

The room lapsed into silence once more. Any world that stood in the path of the tau empire’s relentless expansion would bear heavy scars indeed.

‘But how will we know where the tau will strike, even if they do take the bait?’ said Kor’sarro, his tone full of polite respect.

‘Voltoris has but one city, Captain Khan,’ Tybalt sighed. ‘Furion Peak, seat of my throne, abode of my sons and grandsons and the pride of House Terryn. The rest of the land is either forest or desolate mountain range. Put simply, the planet has nothing else of consequence to conquer.’

There were murmurs from around the toroid. The khan shared a glance with Sudabeh before nodding his assent.

‘We set a snare at the peak, and wait for them to wander into it,’ said Kor’sarro. ‘I suppose that could work.’

‘Quite so,’ continued Tybalt. ‘Patience is the key. If we use Voltoris as bait, then we shall know the exact location of where they will aim their blade. The skies will tell us of the timing.’

Corvin Severax’s lips curled, the tiniest hint of gratitude tingeing his ashen features. Tybalt smiled back, though there was no mirth in it, and plenty of bitter steel.

‘Thank you for your offer, Patriarch Tybalt,’ said Severax. ‘On behalf of the Imperium, we recognise the sacrifice to come, and thank House Terryn for every life it gives.’

‘Thousands of my people will die, no doubt,’ said Tybalt, sighing heavily. ‘I suppose at least it’ll liven the place up a bit.’

Commander Shadowsun shut the iris door to her quarters behind her, glad of a moment’s respite. She splashed water on her face, rubbing her eyes hard before shuffling over to the concave egg of her bed. She was too tired to even take off her armoured bodyglove. She’d do it in a moment, she thought, lulled by the soft purr of the ship’s engines. Just a few minutes of rest first.

It had been so long.

Suddenly the side door that led into her war room hissed open. The Supreme Ethereal drifted through on a cushion of anti-grav, his robes of state billowing around him. Shadowsun shot out of her bed only to fall down once more into a skidding kneel, her head bowed as her mind scrambled to full alert.

‘O’Shaserra,’ boomed Aun’Va, the Supreme Ethereal every bit as real as the pooling hydration fluids that Shadowsun had spilled across the floor. ‘I find you ill-prepared for war.’

‘I offer contrition, master,’ she blurted, ‘I merely sought to meditate on a military phenomenon that disturbs me.’

‘Indeed. I have another matter for you to consider.’

‘Master?’ she said, eyes cast low.

‘The progress of our expansion throughout the Dovar System is on track once more, despite the setbacks you placed in its path. Our enaction of Mont’ka upon Agrellan was a resounding success. For this the empire thanks you. Scenes from the breaching of Agrellan Prime have been… optimised, and subsequently broadcast to every screen in the empire.’

‘I am honoured, master.’

‘Yet your work is far from done.’

‘I… I realise that to be the case, O Supreme One.’

‘You do not!’ said Aun’Va, his eyes wide. ‘You do not.’

He hovered over to Shadowsun’s meagre possessions and picked out a holosphere from amongst them, gazing idly at the images of himself that were projected from its faceted core. ‘I sense that my magnanimous decision to allow our foes to leave Agrellan gnaws at your warrior heart, my child. You wish to bring death to the barbarian war-leader you encountered there.’

‘You are as wise and perspicacious as ever, Supreme One.’

‘It is a matter to which I have given much thought.’ The Supreme Ethereal turned to Shadowsun, drifting over to where she knelt on the floor to loom above her. He spread his arms out at his sides, his robes of state floating around him. Though Shadowsun was still kneeling on the floor, she could feel his majesty filling the room.

‘I am allowing you a single chance to hunt down and destroy those who you allowed to escape, O’Shaserra. You will be given the necessary materiel to ensure their destruction. I have seconded half the fleet to the cause. The other half shall continue the pacification of the Dovar System under my guidance.’

‘Master, I swear to you that it shall be done,’ enthused Shadowsun, though inside of her something broke. ‘My thanks can never be sufficient.’

‘Indeed they cannot. You will repay my faith by destroying the gue’ron’sha and their allies as soon as they make planetfall, ending them one and all. Oe-ken-yon will accompany you. Once this is done, you may return to the expeditionary fleet and attend me once more.’

‘Of course, master. I shall send out far-ranging surveillance drones with immediate effect. I long to leave, to enact Mont’ka upon our foes so that I may sooner return to your side.’

‘Then make your preparations immediately. I expect you to have mustered your cadres and launched your fleet before the dec is out.’

‘It shall be so, Supreme One,’ said Shadowsun, her head bowed so low she could smell the faint antiseptic whiff of her master’s hemmed robes.

‘Farewell, then, and may the Greater Good guide you,’ said Aun’Va, turning with stately grace to drift out of the iris portal that led to the main corridor and the Ethereal Guard that now waited outside.

Shadowsun stayed kneeling in supplication until the iris door hissed closed. Once she was certain she was alone, she let her forehead slowly cover the last few centimetres to the cool, hard floor.

Spume glittered diamond-bright as Voltoris’s verdigris sea lapped softly onto the shoreline. Wavelets rich in photosynthetic algae swilled onto the wet sands, and as they receded once more, iridescent crabs darted sidelong to feed on the tiny shrimps. Barefooted children splashed and played near the waterline, laughing in joy as the crustaceans scuttled crazily between them. Far to the west, a kroktar hauled its tentacled bulk onto a shelf of flat stone, sunning itself in the infrared rays of the planet’s crimson sun. The children shrieked at the beast’s appearance, pointing and making finger-tentacles close to their faces.

The tallest of the children called out, his face stern as he pointed to his servo-skull’s chronometric. He motioned to the winding path that wound back through the thick forest. The smaller youngsters reluctantly gathered their little nets and headed into the verdant eaves, inspecting the prizes they would show their parents upon their return. The path wound up and up, avoiding the howler-dens and quagmires that dotted the forest which led to the Furion plateau.

Several kilometres away, a massive fortress pushed its towers high from its perch atop the peak. Forbidding and terrible to most, but a safe haven to the children making their way towards it.

The little group passed underneath the thick canopy and into the verdant gloom. They swung sticks they had recovered from the jungle path as they went, telling each other tall tales of terrible monsters and brave knights.

In the skies high above, a cluster of distant spaceships burned their way across the firmament. Shooting stars to most, but death itself to the people of Furion Peak.

CHAPTER SIX

FURION DROPSITE
MOURNFALL JUNGLE
VOLTORIS

A dot appeared in front of the Voltorian sun, three smaller dots orbiting around it. This time, the commander and her drones shot from the heavens on contrails of fire, vengeful envoys from another world that bore only the message of death.

Shadowsun landed hard in the peaty earth of the Mournfall jungle. Mere seconds later her entire Firststrike cadre had mustered on her coordinates. Orca drop-ships lifted back up into low orbit, the fire warriors they disgorged forming up into disciplined phalanxes on the wide jungle road. Scores of Crisis suits hung in the air overhead; both of her Counterstrike cadres were on sentinel duty as her ground forces deployed below.

Oe-ken-yon hovered in close, bobbing upwards smugly.

‘Dataharvest complete, commander! Designation Imperial feudal world, human population approximately 7 million, apex…’

‘Be silent, Drone Commandant Oe-ken-yon,’ snapped Shadowsun. ‘I know what this world is, and I know where the foe have mustered. The gue’la clearly consider us so localised a threat they can skulk upon backwater worlds without fear of reprisal. They will pay a high price for their ignorance. We shall deliver the killing blow and leave before the sun is set.’

‘May I append my datacompile, commander?’

‘If you must, but I have more important duties to attend to at this moment. Speed can be a weapon too, drone commandant.’

‘As you say, Commander Shadowsun,’ said the drone, its elevation sinking as it drifted away once more.

‘Shas’vre Drai, is your team ready for battle?’ said Shadowsun, spinning around hard to face the treeline.

‘Ah… yes, my commander,’ said Shas’vre Drai, emerging from the jungle in a shimmer of emerald light. ‘May I speak?’

‘You may. Make it quick.’

‘I see that you have deviated from your usual strategies in order to adopt Mont’ka, my commander.’

‘Continue with caution,’ she replied, her fusion blasters whining to full charge.

‘Ah… I also theorise that strategy could yield optimum results, though I have served alongside… alongside other commanders in my time. Timing is everything, as Commander Puretide taught us. The preparatory phase and the subsequent honing of this operation seems… perhaps… a little perfunctory?’ The Stealth-suited veteran took two small steps back, his body language defensive.

‘We took extensive assessments of our prey upon Agrellan, Shas’vre Drai,’ said Shadowsun, her brow furrowed. ‘I have analysed them several times over. These are the very same warriors – if anything, they are fewer in number than predicted. All that remains is to enact the slaughter. Yet you quote Commander Puretide’s teachings, much as a teacher would to a novice. Do you intend to oppose me?’

‘No, my commander,’ said Drai, horrified at the very idea. ‘Your word is final!’

‘- - - HE LIES - - - HE SEEKS YOUR CROWN - - - SEND HIM TO HIS DEATH - - -’

Shadowsun snarled in irritation, but did not blink-push the autotrans away. No time to think about whatever inexplicable glitch had taken hold of her battlesuit on Agrellan. Not now.

Not when she was about to turn this green and peaceful world into a boiling cauldron of war.

The tau cadres swept along the mist-wreathed road, Shadowsun a shimmering white blur at their head. She was ready and willing to blast a breach in the fortress walls herself, if it came to it. Yet part of her would relish the sight of the Riptides in action once more. If they could blast open the perimeter wall of an Imperial hive city, they could certainly deal with the lumpen stone fortress that squatted on the plateau ahead.

The tower-capped stronghold reminded Shadowsun of the tales her dome-tutors had told her as a child. Tales of the Mon’tau, the time of terror, the great darkness before the ethereals had brought the tau the light of a shared destiny.

In the dim prehistory of their race, the castes had been at war, and Shadowsun’s hot-tempered predecessors had sought to tear down the castles of the builder tribes. Their primary settlement had been Fio’taun, a mountain plateau much like the one they were approaching along the misty jungle road. Atop it had been the mightiest of earthen citadels, a fortress long-besieged by an alliance of fierce plains tribes and the winged tau of the peaks. Five long seasons her primitive ancestors had braved the cannons of the citadel atop the peak. Such wanton bloodshed. So many deaths, for so little reason.

Strange how the cycles of time revolved.

Something flashed in the jungle mists, a string of illuminations like will-o’-the-wisps in the distance. The autotrans bar slid unbidden into her helmet’s viewscreen.

‘- - - BEWARE LITTLE ICE MAIDEN - - -’ it spooled, ‘- - - YOUR DOOM IS CLOSE - - -’

Crawling suspicion covered Shadowsun’s skin, and she boosted one of the smaller audiobars that had sprung to life alongside the autotrans. There it was, the telltale whistle of solid ordnance.

‘All castes crouch and shield your south!’ she transmitted as widely as possible. ‘The gue’la attack!’

As one, the fire warriors in the jungle road dropped to one knee and raised the large oblong plates of their shoulder armour to face the hard-packed road leading back the way they had come. A heartbeat later, the peaty earth was torn upwards in an ear-blasting string of explosions that echoed from the jungle eaves. Dozens of Shadowsun’s rearguard were flung high into the air, their limbs ripped from their bodies. Here and there pulse rifles discharged random sprays of plasma as disembodied fingers clutched tight.

Shadowsun’s sensor suite flared the trajectory of another incoming barrage, but this time it came down behind her rearguard. Just as she was turning to survey the damage the treeline erupted into life. Hundreds of pale gue’la brutes roared out from the jungle in crude but effective camouflage, many of their number crying out praise to the Imperium’s dead god. As the tau reeled in surprise, more and more of the gue’la emerged from the mists from either side of the road, their rifles spitting laser blasts into fire warriors and battlesuits alike. Some of them charged headlong at the fire warriors hunkered down at the side of the road, drawing knives the length of a tau’s arm and plunging them into the weak points of their armour.

One in every ten of the gue’la emerging from the trees carried a cylindrical tank of the volatile liquid the Imperials loved to employ so much. Cackling with alien glee, the gue’la troopers sent whooshing clouds of flame into the ranks of the tau firing back at them. Whole crowds of noble fire warriors were caught in the deadly clouds and transformed into burning, flailing puppets. One Imperial soldier caught a pulse rifle volley in the chest, its bolts slamming right through his torso and igniting the tanks on his back with a loud whooompf.

The thick smoke of burning flesh mingled with the jungle mists, turning the ambush into a hellish confusion of half-glimpsed tableaus. Shadowsun boosted up high, blasting columns of energy into the hollering gue’la troopers wherever a clear shot appeared.

‘Riptides, target the treelines! Heavy burst cannon only! Rearguard, move in to engage at close quarters! For the Greater Good, engage!’

The XV104 battlesuits at the heart of the fire warrior phalanx stood inviolate in the chaos, each pivoting on their waist gimbals to level their arm cannons at a different section of the treeline. Nova reactors thrummed to full charge, the rotary whine of their multiple barrels in stark counterpoint. As one the Riptides opened fire, a bass voh-voh-voh-voh booming from their cannons. Thick cylinders of plasma scythed down trees and gue’la warriors alike in a storm of indiscriminate violence.

The blazing weapons systems panned back and forth across the treelines, reaping a madman’s toll on the gue’la platoons charging in. Here and there close-range las-fire picked at the Riptides to no more effect than light summer hail. Well-aimed krak grenades detonated against their joints, blackening paint but leaving the superstructure shining undamaged beneath.

The reactors that powered the battlesuits pulsed blue light into the mist as their rate of fire grew steadily higher. With a loud bang, something overloaded inside the Riptide closest to Shadowsun, a thin shriek coming from the battlesuit’s shuddering torso as it vented a geyser of steam.

It was all the chance the gue’la needed. They swarmed up the giant’s legs like arboreal simians, knives stabbing into the gaps between its armoured plates as their wiry fingers wedged into cracks. Shadowsun scythed past to cut two of them from the Riptide’s back with a precision blast of fusion fire. Oe-nu and Oe-hei hurtled after her, Oe-nu ramming bodily into a third and pitching him from the Riptide with a crack of broken bone.

Curving upright once more, Shadowsun glimpsed a scar-ravaged gue’la with a glowering bionic eye climb up high on the malfunctioning Riptide. He plunged a metallic arm deep into the battlesuit’s neck joint, rooting around before yanking half of a bloody tau head from the aperture he had torn in its metal hide. Shadowsun’s stomach turned. She pivoted in midair in preparation to loose a blast right at the scarred gue’la, but the obscuring fog closed in around her once more, hiding him from sight. Her meteorological readouts showed that the strange mist was thicker than any natural phenomenon had any right to be. She eye-flicked through her secondary perception modes. Sonar sight was next to useless with the crump of artillery fire so close by, and strange red lightning haunted the electromagnetic spectrum.

More gue’la mind-science.

‘Counterstrike cadres! Open a path, pressing north!’ she cried, her voice high above the confusion of battle. ‘Oe-ken-yon, maximum altitude! Locate the area where visibility is poorest and append details as soon as possible!’

In the mists below, black-armoured gue’ron’sha hammered out from the mists on columns of blue fire, slamming into the Stealth battlesuits that stalked the perimeter of the battle. Everywhere the Space Marines struck they bowled over their targets, each battlesuit’s chameleon cells flickering a hundred colours at once as their owners slammed into the dirt.

There was no way Shadowsun could get a clear shot, especially as the Stealth battlesuits were already recalibrating to disguise them against the mud. Their Space Marine attackers had them up close, a terrifying thought even to a veteran like Shadowsun. Chaintoothed swords sawed through elbow and knee joints in spurts of dark blood, lightning-sheathed talons ripped right through armour to carve apart the pilots beneath. Death-symbols flickered charcoal grey in her command suite. Crying out, Shadowsun loosed a blast that cored gue’ron’sha and victim alike as she hunted desperately for the orchestrators of the ambush.

An isometric plane opened in her sensor suite as Oe-ken-yon blipped an aerial view of the battle. She read it with one eye as the other traced a sword-wielding gue’ron’sha in the mists ahead. Her right-hand blaster tore his torso in two in a cloud of vaporising blood. The thickest part of the mist clouding Oe-ken-yon’s isometric was at the road’s edge. Somewhere in that vicinity was the gue’ron’sha elder, thought Shadowsun, the summoner of mists and wielder of mind-science. If he was the architect of the trap that had closed around them, then he would be the next to die.

Twisting to kick an oncoming gue’la flame-trooper back into the mist, Shadowsun eye-flicked through her recorder console’s footage until she reached the battle at Blackshale Ridge. She isolated the elder with the raised staff, blink-pushing his silhouette into her ambient scan.

Less than a heartbeat later, her sensor suite blipped a lock.

Kor’sarro pounded through the mists towards the battle, Sudabeh chanting strange low syllables at his side. Though the khan was not accustomed to simply running into combat like a steedless stripling, their entire strategy hinged not upon the sudden thrust of the spear, but upon a noose drawn tight with stealth and sorcery.

It felt strangely freeing. With no less a leader than the Chapter Master of the Raven Guard in command, he was better able to enjoy the primal thrill of the chase and the anticipation of the killing to come. Up ahead were Severax and Shrike, powering through the jungle shadows with controlled bursts of their shielded jump packs. Gloomy souls both, but by the Great Khan they knew how to spring an ambush.

The mists parted to reveal a knot of tau warriors. Those on the outside knelt to stab bolts of plasma into the Catachans rushing towards them from their flank. Making use of the distraction, Severax hit the xenos infantry like a Donorian fiend high on the scent of its own blood. His crackling talons slashed left and right to cut apart those tau he had not flattened with the sheer crushing weight of his charge. A second later, Shadow Captain Shrike boosted up and over his master, plunging both lightning claws into the back of a battlesuit twice his size before ripping the thing into three pieces with a cruciform slash.

The khan laughed in exultation, activating Moonfang’s power field and bringing it round in a sweeping slash to carve a pair of tau in half at the waist. One of their kneeling comrades blasted a point-blank volley right at his chestplate, knocking him back a pace and filling his flaring nostrils with the scent of burning ceramite. The tau warrior scrabbled for a reload, his fingers shaking with fear. Kor’sarro cut him down with contemptuous ease.

Up ahead, the mist parted to reveal a trio of the massive warsuits they had encountered upon Agrellan. The closest of their number ceased stamping a Catachan into a mess of shattered bone and turned with a whirr of servo motors, its comrades following suit. Blue light poured from the barrels of their weapons as they levelled their cannons at the khan and his brothers.

Kor’sarro roared in denial and sprinted forwards, planting his foot on the helmet of the kneeling tau warrior and launching diagonally upwards. He bounced hard from the giant’s cannon, forcing the shot wide just as the xenos pilot discharged it. The khan felt the violent backwash of the cannon’s blast catch him in midair, slamming him upwards into the giant’s midsection. On instinct he grabbed the ring of armour at its waist, dangling with one hand as he fought to bring Moonfang to bear with the other. With his hair on fire and half-blind from the close-range explosion, the khan hacked at the giant’s leg joints, spitting acid-laced blood onto its ochre hull.

As Kor’sarro sawed the point of Moonfang into the warsuit’s hip joint it stuck fast, lodged deep in the ball of the articulated socket. Growling in frustration, the khan planted one armoured foot on his blade and used it to boost upwards, climbing hand over hand up the monster’s torso. Stepping backwards, the warsuit brought its shield arm in tight, smashing the captain so hard his nose broke upon its chestplate. The White Scar hung on regardless, spitting teeth. Heat boiled out of the vent on the side of the thing’s torso, its backwash so intense that the white paint of his ceramite peeled away across a full half of his body. Barely a metre behind him the warsuit’s cannon-arm blazed blue, no doubt powering up to slay yet more of his battle-brothers.

Inspiration struck, and the khan swung his lower body across the chestplate as he grabbed a krak grenade from his belt. Riding the momentum of his return, he pulled the grenade’s pin with his teeth and reached out to slam it hard into the vent on his right. The impossible energies boiling out of the vent cooked the flesh of his fingers inside his armoured gauntlet, but the grenade stuck tight. Kor’sarro let go and kicked away from the xenos machine hard, rolling with the impact once his backpack slammed into the jungle road below.

The looming warsuit brought its cannon’s muzzle to bear, the light of its barrel-slits blinding in its intensity. The khan dived sidelong into the corpse-strewn mud, grabbing a dead tau and raising its cadaver as a pathetically inadequate shield.

The tau machine’s torso thrummed, screeched, and exploded in a fountain of blue-white light.

‘Ha!’ shouted the khan. ‘Not so clever!’

The warsuit’s explosion had burned away much of the mist around it, revealing Severax and Shrike as they ripped into the second of the towering machines. With their jetpacks to keep them airborne the Raven Guard were pitiless and predatory in their attack, a pair of black hyperfelids mauling a savannah mammut. Sparks flew as they stabbed their lightning claws in and out of the warsuit’s torso, seeking tau blood. Suddenly Severax cried in triumph and ripped open the machine’s breastplate door. The pilot crouched inside looked pitifully vulnerable as the hissing mist of decompression revealed him to the world. Shrike swung under the thing’s shield arm, punching a four-taloned claw deep into the pilot’s chest before kicking away to find more prey.

As the khan worked Moonfang free from the remains of his own warsuit kill, the third of their number stomped in, shrugging shouting Catachans from its massive shoulders. Its heavy burst cannon cut down a trio of Raven Guard, scattering their remains bodily into the mist. To the khan’s eyes the oncoming machine appeared to crackle, spidery red bolts playing over it from head to toe.

The psychic lightning intensified as the entire warsuit glowed red, disappearing with a thunderclap boom to leave nothing behind but the stink of ozone. Kor’sarro turned to look for Sudabeh. Sure enough he was striding through the mist towards them, his eyes still glowing the colour of fresh blood.

‘Stormseer! You teleported it, brother!’ cried the khan in delight. ‘Where to?’

‘I have no idea,’ laughed Sudabeh.

The khan’s eyes creased as he raised his blade in a warrior’s salute.

Then Sudabeh burst apart in an explosion of superheated blood.

‘Mind-wielder neutralised,’ transmitted Shadowsun, launching backwards and away from the screaming war-leader that was firing his pistol at her from the jungle road. ‘All Crisis units, close on indicated position. I have located their leaders. Mont’ka is…’

Her words trailed off as the mist shrouding the forest stirred, thinned, and then dissipated completely.

Two columns of white gue’ron’sha vehicles were grinding along the shallow rivers on either side of the jungle road, their occupants deploying into the undergrowth and fanning out to cut off all routes of escape. A disaster in the making, but that alone, her cadres could have coped with. It was the sight on the road ahead that left her speechless.

Up on the plateau, the gates of the stone fortress had opened. A thirty-strong army of Imperial walkers was striding out towards them, the black-iron devil at their head.

‘All cadres, back to the dropsite!’ shouted Shadowsun, her mind whirling as she desperately sought a tactic or strategy that would see them safe. Even as she spoke, she saw that yet another Imperial army was moving into position – a phalanx of green gue’la tanks were driving up the jungle road right where she had intended to rally. Fear’s cold claw closed on her throat; a fear of failure, and of causing the unnecessary death of so many tau. They were trapped, she thought, her mind drifting from the battle around her to a point of abstract thought. Trapped in the final act of a masterfully disguised Kauyon.

A tide of self-loathing rose within Shadowsun as she realised she had fallen for the same strategy she had used upon her foes a hundred times and more. She forced herself to focus, blink-pushing mute the screams of her dying comrades so she could think straight.

‘Cancel that last command,’ she transmitted. ‘Manta wings, rapid insertion forces, reinforce and clear the indicated dropsite of enemy operatives. Concentrate fire on the outermost tanks, congest and deny mobility wherever possible. All battlesuits to stay airborne, but without ascending within view of inbound gue’la walkers.’

She eye-flicked details onto Oe-ken-yon’s latest isometric, turning her attention back to the metal goliaths pounding down the jungle road towards her.

Suddenly a pair of blunt-nosed shells whistled past her, each larger than her torso. Three more thundered over the canopy scant metres from her position, detonating amidst a knot of Crisis battlesuits and forcing the survivors to hunker down low. Shadowsun too dropped like a stone, touching down in the blood-slick peat of the jungle eaves. A dome of ruby energy crackled around her as Oe-hei intercepted a lasgun shot aimed for the back of her head. She whipped round, her fusion blasters whining high as her targeting reticules sought a gue’la to kill.

Her cross hairs glowed gold over a small human female clutching a tattered net like a blanket. Glittering crustaceans crawled at her feet as she mouthed something too quiet to hear.

‘- - - ARE YOU THE STAR PRINCESS - - -’ the autotrans spooled.

‘I’ll have your head, you xenos hag!’ shouted Kor’sarro, barrelling off the forest road. His augmented sense of smell could pick out the dry clay tang of his foe’s fusion weapons even over the foul bouquet of battle. She would die at his hand yet.

A glimmer of distorted light and a patch of pale cloth caught the khan’s eye to the right. He stormed towards the undergrowth like an enraged bull, the trophy-skulls on his power pack catching at the looping vegetation of the boughs above. It made no difference. Nothing could have kept him from his quarry then. Her head would be his.

Sure enough, there she was – the xenos witch, blurred in outline but frozen in place in front of some foolish Terryn child that had chosen the wrong day to stray. Moonfang raised high, the khan launched himself headlong at his prey only to clang hard against an invisible wall and bounce back into the trunk of a twisted tree.

A shimmering outline blurred in front of his vision for a second. ‘Surprise,’ the shimmer said in accented Gothic, putting a multibarrelled cannon to the khan’s head.

Shadowsun came to her senses in time to see the human war-leader dive to one side, tucking and rolling as Shas’vre Drai blasted the trunk behind him into splinters. Nimble despite his size, the gue’ron’sha warrior came up into a crouching run, outdistancing Drai’s volley as it carved through the foliage. The war-leader caught the small human female around the waist and hurled her into a thicket of bushy flora. Shadowsun took a double shot as soon as the diminutive human was clear, but the human warrior’s own force field glittered bright, absorbing the fusion blasts with an ultrasonic ring of protest.

Drai stomped forwards, his burst cannon blazing balls of plasma. The warrior turned his armoured shoulder to deflect the volley and shot blind with his bolt pistol once, then twice. The first of the bolts ricocheted from Drai’s armoured mantle. The second punched right through his lens array and detonated within his brain.

As Shas’vre Drai slumped to the floor, the gue’ron’sha warrior launched himself right towards Shadowsun, silvered sword swinging hard. Appalled by the sudden death of her friend, she stumbled backwards with her firing impulses at maximum.

Both her fusion blasts went wide.

Just as the massive warrior slashed a mighty backswing at Shadowsun’s neck the battle flashed monochrome, the jungle lit starkly for the space of a single searing moment. Oe-nu dropped out of the canopy and fell smoking to the earth. Driven by the weight of rage and grief, the swordblow would have taken Shadowsun’s head had Oe-nu not pumped every iota of its power into her personal force field.

Even so the human warlord’s sword landed a telling blow. Its cruel edge carved deep into Shadowsun’s breast, opening the muscle of her heart and smashing her backwards into the mulch.

The last thing she saw as her lifeblood pulsed onto the jungle floor were blazing angels silhouetted against the Voltorian sun.

EPILOGUE

‘Awaken her,’ said Aun’Va, his serene expression tainted with distaste.

The thick-set earth caste scientists bowed low, hurrying to impart the correct chemical balance to Shadowsun’s recuperation pod. A data strip at the side of the pod flashed copper, then gold. A string of numbers blipped across its front as it hissed open in a cloud of condensing air.

‘O’Shaserra,’ boomed the Supreme Ethereal, ‘The time for sleep is past.’

Commander Shadowsun slid one eyelid sideways, then the other, blearily struggling to focus on the figure in front of her.

‘Oh,’ she slurred, ‘it’s you.’

An awkward silence blossomed. The earth caste attendants turned quickly away.

‘Given your condition, I shall forgive that lapse of protocol,’ said Aun’va. ‘You may seek atonement for your slip at a future date.’

‘Whatever you say,’ croaked Shadowsun, her long-unused voice difficult to read even for an ethereal. ‘Please, tell me one thing before we proceed. What was the fate of the Voltoris expedition?’

‘Unmitigated disaster, my child,’ said Aun’Va gravely. ‘Eight hundred and twelve tau lives were lost to the gue’la’s guns before extraction was complete.’

‘And yet… and yet I still live?’

‘For now,’ said Aun’Va. ‘I understand your reinforcement cadre was able to wound your gue’ron’sha assailant to the point of neutralisation.’

There was another long silence. Shadowsun’s eyes were cast down, the Supreme Ethereal unable to see the depths of sorrow that pooled there.

‘The shame of your defeat is difficult to erase, O’Shaserra, if not impossible. Yet the empire shall prevail. The Dovar expedition proceeds as planned, and the earth caste assure me that you will be at maximum operational efficiency within a single kai’rotaa. It seems the Greater Good still has use for you.’

‘Then I shall serve it,’ said Shadowsun, a measure of conviction returning to her voice.

‘You shall, until death.’

Shadowsun set her jaw firm as if to receive a blow. ‘Will I be subjected to the Malk’la ritual for my failure?’

‘I have not yet decided. I shall seek the counsel of Aun’Shi. In the ways of war, he is more learned even than I.’

‘A wise choice.’

‘Of course it is, my child. Now, I sense a matter disturbs your soul, a matter that keeps you from realising your true potential. This conflict must first be resolved if you are to defeat your foes and retake your rightful place at the head of the Third Sphere expansion.’

‘What matter is it to which you refer?’

The Supreme Ethereal paused, cocking his grey head to one side by an almost imperceptible amount before answering.

‘Let us speak of the Traitor Shoh.’

HUNTER’S SNARE

JOSH REYNOLDS

CHAPTER ONE

The tau base was not hard to spot, even through the swirling, wind-borne snows, and hidden as it was amongst the harsh-edged crags and white-capped slopes of Rime Crag. It rose out of the snowy rock like a blister, and the peaks it nestled beneath were parasite-like. It was too smooth, too serene for the wilderness it sought to dominate.

In that way, the tau bastion was much like those who had built it. They sought to inflict an unnatural and ill-fitting harmony upon the universe, a universe which was not theirs, not by right of blood or battle, and to force around a manufactured aleph that which had required no centre, or, rather, had many centres to choose from.

They wished to tame the storm. That alone proved them mad at best and monstrous at worst. These thoughts were uppermost in Kor’sarro Khan’s mind as his bike hurtled through the driving snow towards the tau bastion, the icy flakes melting against the bare flesh of his scarred cheeks and stinging his golden-hued eyes. He could have worn his helmet, but the thought of even that little amount of constriction upon his senses was anathema to the huntsman, protective photolenses be damned. The air of Agrellan was so toxic that it seared even his altered lungs, but the pain only added spice to the experience. He’d conquered worse worlds than this, poisonous atmosphere and all.

The captain of the Third Minghan of the White Scars and the ordu’s Master of the Hunt leaned into the snow, glorying in its bite as he urged his bike to greater speed. The enemy fortress loomed up, growing larger as he drew nearer. Lights flashed across the top of the outer wall. The enemy had spotted them at last.

Instinctively, he leaned to the side, and his borrowed bike responded with a growl of its engines. Wheels skidded, and a half-second later the pulse burst seared the air where he’d been. More followed, and he guided his steed through the oscillating web of weapons fire with the grace of the berkut – one of the great, golden-feathered eagles which nested in the mountains of Chogoris. To Kor’sarro’s eyes, the bursts of energy moved slowly. He did not bother to speak a warning into the subcutaneous vox implant mounted beneath his jaw. Those who travelled in his wake could see as well as he, or he would not have chosen them.

Each was a warrior without parallel, even among a Chapter which was reckoned full of such, and their trophy-racks were as heavy with skulls and scalps as his own. If the Emperor had decided that the lives of some of them must be claimed as the blood-price for a successful hunt, well, so it was, and would ever be.

And this hunt would be successful. He had sworn such, during the Rites of Howling, and had come to the Damocles Gulf and the hive world of Agrellan to see to the keeping of that oath. He would take the head of the alien known as Shadowsun and hang it from his lodge-pole or else he would die in the attempt. Her ugly xenos skull would be added to the White Road, to sit sentry with the rest of the Chapter’s enemies. A sudden urgency gripped him. Enthusiasm flushed caution from his veins. It was always the same when a hunt drew to a close. The feeling of anticipation, the joy of the kill-to-be, roared through him, prodding him on, like spurs in the flesh of a balky horse. There was no greater pleasure than this, the culmination of months of patience and focus, the release of the killing stroke across his prey’s neck.

He had tracked Shadowsun across Agrellan, from one battle zone to the next, from bunker to trench to bastion, harrying her trail. If he could take her head, the tau would waver. Without her cunning, they would be easy meat. And she was cunning; the fact that she had avoided and outpaced him this long was proof enough of that. He had nearly had her head at Blackshale Ridge. But he had her now. She was cornered, in a trap of her own making. And he would have her head before the sun rose.

‘Old man, rattle their paddock,’ he growled. Besides the bikes that rode at his heels, his hunting party included a quartet of heavier vehicles: two Rhinos, a Razorback and a Whirlwind, their engines adapted for greater speed so that they might keep up with Kor’sarro’s bike-mounted demi-company. Three of the four carried those hunt-brothers who were content to fight on foot, rather than from the back of an iron steed, and the fourth was there to ensure that they could do so with the blessings of the Emperor and the Great Khan.

The comm-bead in his ear squawked as a familiar voice acknowledged the order, and a moment later fire lit the night from somewhere behind him. Old Shatterhand at his appointed task and unspoken joy, the busting of bunkers and the shattering of bastions. Kor’sarro smiled as the face of his second-in-command flitted across the surface of his mind. Wrinkled, white-haired Cemakar, whom aspirants and khans of the ordu alike called Old Shatterhand, but never to his face, for even now, old as he was, he had a fist that could fell a Dreadnought and a snarl that could strip the ceremonial unguents from a suit of armour.

Cemakar had refused, and quite vehemently, to return with the rest of the company to reinforce Agrellan Prime in the wake of Shadowsun’s escape from Blackshale Ridge. Where his khan went, so did he, even if, in his opinion, said khan was a puling whelp of an aspirant, with fewer scars than was healthy and a decided lack of respect for the vaunted wisdom of elders such as the Stormseer Sudabeh and Cemakar himself. Despite this, Kor’sarro was gladdened to have the old man along on the hunt. Too many of those who had stepped forward at his call were like the berkut, bloodthirsty and glory-hungry. As he himself was, even after all this time as Master of the Hunt. Cemakar was a calming presence, and a bulwark against more of the same foolishness which had enabled Shadowsun to squirm out of his grip the last time they’d clashed.

The wall ahead of him disintegrated into burning chunks, some of which spattered across the white-daubed ceramite plates of his power armour. Kor’sarro laughed as more fire split the snow and darkness, and the thunderous cries of the Emperor’s hunting eagles boomed across Rime Crag. Let the xenos cower in their burrow for as long as they might; the hunters had come to root them out. He tapped the firing stud for the twin-linked bolters mounted on the front of the bike to herald his arrival as he rode through the welcoming flames.

Alien weapons opened up as his bike cleared the rubble-strewn opening and slewed about. The flat disc-shapes of a number of qarthai – their gun drones – bobbed into view, descending from the walls and rising from the snow that lay like a blanket across the inner courtyard of the bastion. It was an insult that these soulless automatons should be the ones to greet them; one more insult to add to the list of Shadowsun’s crimes against the Imperium.

He gunned the bike towards the largest knot of drones and tapped the firing stud again. Several burst apart, struck by the bolter shells. The remainder swooped to meet him, the pulse carbines slung beneath their flat bodies firing without pause. Kor’sarro drew the curved sword sheathed on the side of his bike, activating its powercell, and the long, wide blade was suddenly enveloped in a lethal haze of disruptive energy as he whipped it around and bisected a drone that had drifted too close. The sword was called Moonfang, and like the bike he rode, it was a relic of his Chapter, and possessed a lethal spirit all of its own. The sword had claimed the lives of a thousand of the Emperor’s enemies, but it was never sated. The hunter’s purr of energy that writhed about the length of the blade was mirrored in the growl of his steed engines and in his own soul, calling out for battle.

With a roar of joy, Kor’sarro Khan gave in to the call.

Thursk, champion of the Dark Hunters Space Marine Chapter, leapt out into the cacophony of battle with some relief, as Torguhn’s Smile, the Rhino transport he’d been riding in, rumbled into the bastion courtyard through the breach in its outer wall. He thumbed the activator switch on the power axe in his hand and spun the brutal-looking weapon in a lazy arc. He hated being inside the boxy transport. Better to trust his two legs than any rumbling, squalling machine. Though, that said, he didn’t mind having a certain thickness of armoured hull-plates between him and the guns of the enemy.

One of the enemy’s qarthai raced towards him, spitting death. A number of Khorchin terms had become lodged in his vocabulary like errant kernals trapped between teeth. The language of Chogoris had a rhythm all its own, far different to the crude dialect of Gothic that he and his brothers used for their own battle-cant. It was musical, in its way, and unless your mind and ear were trained to it, it was almost impossible to unravel the full complexity.

Bursts of energy struck his dark-hued power armour, but he ignored them, confident in his armour’s ability to absorb the punishment. As the qarthai drew within arm’s reach, Thursk swatted it to the ground with a casual swipe of his axe, and then stepped on it, crushing the fragile mechanism easily.

‘I hate these things,’ he said, his voice becoming a harsh rasp as it was filtered through the respirator vox-grille of his helmet. ‘They’re more irritating than Phobian nettle-flies.’ He looked around, taking in the structure that rose up around him. It was somewhat disorientating, being all swooping curves and rounded edges, rather than the sharp angles he was used to in Imperial fortifications. The tau thought in curves and soft angles, he’d been told, and everything they built was like a bubble atop a trickle of water. The bastion was mostly wall, with a central command centre that was latched to the rocky slope like a splatter of ice. The latter was dotted with a profusion of antennae and receivers.

‘But easily dispatched, brother,’ a similarly distorted voice said. Thursk glanced sideways at the speaker. Like himself, the warrior was a Space Marine, built for battle and armoured in the Emperor’s grace. The other Space Marine was neither khan nor captain. Instead, the blue pauldron and vambrace of his right arm and the crystalline force hood that hung over his bare head, as well as the ornate and highly stylised force staff he clutched tightly in his right hand proclaimed him a Stormseer – a Librarian of the White Scars Chapter, a zadyin arga, a master of lightning, and the spirits of land, air and prophecy. His armour was covered in line upon line of delicate Khorchin characters, so many, in fact, that the white parts were almost grey. A trio of thick, curved knives was attached to his equipment belt, their bejewelled sheaths gleaming in the light cast by the battle. The Stormseer sniffed, patted the knives, and gestured. ‘There’s another one.’

Thursk heard the whine of antigravity motors and spun, chopping the drone in half as it swooped towards them. He turned back. ‘See, Ambaghai? Nettle-flies,’ he said.

‘More like Chogorian wasps,’ Ambaghai said, ‘but I gather your meaning. One stinging insect is much the same as another.’ Thursk knew that the Stormseers were unlike the Codex-trained Librarians of most other Chapters. In any other Chapter, Ambaghai would have been a Codicier – a strategist and advisor. Among the White Scars he served a similar role, his calm counsel keeping Kor’sarro Khan from making a misstep in his hunt, but he was more in the way of a shaman or holy fool. They said he ate ghosts, and spat lightning the same way his superior, Sudabeh, commanded the allegiance of the winds. Thursk had yet to experience either of those things while in Ambaghai’s company, but he looked forward to asking what a ghost tasted like.

Thursk stepped aside as a squad of Space Marines trooped out of the Rhino, their bolters at the ready. They quickly went to work isolating and dispatching the swarms of drones accosting the invaders. The xenos devices weren’t much of a threat without support from living troops, but they could still prove deadly in the right numbers, even to a fully armoured Space Marine. ‘And speaking of stinging insects, Jebe looks as if he’s having fun.’

Thursk glanced in the direction Ambaghai had indicated and snorted in amusement. The company champion of the White Scars Third Company did indeed look as if he were enjoying himself, surrounded as he was by an oscillating ring of gun drones. Jebe was rangy and proud-featured. Like his khan, he disdained the use of a helmet, save when absolutely necessary, and his dark topknot whipped about him like a halo as he leapt and spun, his sword blocking the gun drones’ shots and deflecting them back at their firers. He had leapt from his bike as soon as he had entered the compound, ready to engage the enemy one-on-one. He moved swiftly, and with a dancer’s grace, though there was a feral lethality to every step of this particular dance. Jebe had fought and beaten his weight in lesser khans for the right to become company champion, a fact he rarely went long without mentioning. He whirled into place, and the last trio of gun drones swarming about him dispatched themselves with his aid.

‘Nicely done,’ Thursk called out. Jebe glanced at him, sniffed, spat and turned to look for something else to kill. Thursk looked back at Ambaghai. ‘I don’t think he likes me.’

‘He doesn’t,’ the Stormseer said. Thursk didn’t bother to ask why. He knew the reason well enough. Like Jebe, he was a company champion, of his own chapter’s Fourth Company. Jebe, for whatever reason, took that as an insult to his prowess. There was a competitive streak in the warrior that grated on Thursk’s nerves.

‘And what about you?’ the Dark Hunter asked, leaning his axe across his shoulder. Jebe wasn’t the only one who was unhappy with his presence. At a loss for what to do with him, Kor’sarro Khan had made him Ambaghai’s designated keshig, or bodyguard, for the duration of the hunt. Given the fierce competition among the battle-brothers of the ordu for such an honour, it hadn’t engendered any affection for Thursk amongst them.

‘I find you off-putting and overly talkative, but not offensive,’ Ambaghai said. ‘I thought it was a tradition of your Chapter to fight in total silence.’

‘Yes, but I’m not fighting right now, am I?’ Thursk said. ‘Besides which, you White Scars are hardly silent. I’m simply trying to fit in.’ He spun his axe again and watched as the White Scars took the base with a speed that would have awed any but a Space Marine. They did not maintain the comm silence that Thursk’s own battle-brothers considered a battlefield rule. Jokes, snatches of song and laughter, altogether too much laughter for Thursk’s liking, clogged the vox-channel, most of it in Khorchin. The White Scars did not care if the enemy overheard their jocularity, given that no enemy had yet managed to translate their native tongue. At least not that they knew of.

Thursk had never particularly enjoyed the quiet, but the White Scars seemed to revel in noise, be it singing, talking, or merely the cry of the wind or the growl of engines; just one more difference between the Founding Chapter and its Successor. But there were similarities as well. The Chogorian way of life wasn’t wholly alien to a Phobian. And it was those connections which the White Scars insisted on exploring, in order to ensure that their Successors kept to the proper way of things. ‘That is why I’m here, after all. It’s the Dark Hunters turn to kneel at the trophy-rack, and swear fealty to the Khan of Khans,’ he said. Once every cycle, the White Scars Successor Chapters met, and pitted their chosen champions against each other in the Rite of Blooding. The winner was sent to join the White Scars for a full cycle, to learn all that the Founders had to teach them.

‘It’s not about fealty, cousin,’ Ambaghai said. ‘It is about tradition. The traditions of Chogoris, of the steppes and wild, thunder-struck hills, of the plains wind and wildfire that are in your blood, whether you are Chogorian or Phobian, whether you are a brother of the Storm Lords, the Marauders or the Solar Hawks. We are all sons of Jaghatai, and it was his decree that all those who share his blood know the traditions of the world which bore him in fire, blood and glory.’ Ambaghai tapped the head of his staff against the Imperial aquila on Thursk’s chestplate. ‘We are many tribes, gathered beneath a single horsetail banner, and we all ride the White Road together, guided by his wisdom, so that our blades may shed blood as one.’

‘Do you rehearse that speech, or does such poetry flow naturally from your lips?’ Thursk asked. He watched as the White Scars who’d been aboard the same Rhino as himself moved quickly towards the entryway of the xenos bastion, while their bike-mounted brethren herded and harried the remaining gundrones to a safe distance for ease of dispatch. Another squad had disembarked from the second Rhino, the Tulwar of Shiban, and moved to join the first. The Wheel and the Spoke… that was what they called it. Those mounted, the Wheel, drove the enemy back and kept them running, while those on foot, the Spoke, set up a temporary hard point which the bikes could retreat to, if necessary, or, as in this case, take an objective while the enemy was distracted. It was, as with all of the Chapter’s tactics, simple enough at first glance, but became more complex the longer you studied it, with dozens of moving parts working towards a central goal in perfect harmony.

‘You see? Off-putting,’ Ambaghai said. ‘Even Vayren wasn’t so frustrating when he was with us, and the Storm Lords have as much appreciation for poetry as they do for orks.’ Thursk watched as Jebe joined the squads at the entryway, and felt a brief flicker of envy. The champion barked an order. One of the White Scars produced the round canister shape of a melta bomb. He tossed it to Jebe, who caught it, activated the grav-clamp on the bomb’s canister and slapped it against the doors. The entryway exploded a moment later, and the two squads entered the bastion, Jebe in the lead.

‘Vayren can barely speak Gothic, let alone comprehend poetry,’ Thursk said. He had fought alongside the champion of the Storm Lords Third Company during the Siege of Vhot. He’d been impressed by Vayren’s single-minded murderousness, if not his personality. ‘I once saw him head-butt an ork to death, and without his helmet.’ He settled his axe in the crook of his arm. Above and behind him, the storm bolters mounted on the cupola of the Rhino added to the cacophony, as they blew a swarm of gun drones from the air. There weren’t many drones left, and those that remained seemed confused and easy prey for the bikers. ‘Have you noticed a distinct lack of enemy presence here, or is this usual for the – what do you call them?’

‘Khamar – it means “noseless”, and no,’ Ambaghai said.

‘No to which?’ Thursk said. He stepped aside as a spinning, smoking gun drone struck the side of the Rhino and exploded. Fragments of metal struck his armour and fell to the ground.

‘Jebe has secured the bastion,’ Kor’sarro Khan said as his bike slewed to a halt before them, scattering grit and snow. ‘I would have you by my side when I pierce the beast’s heart, Stormseer.’ After a brief hesitation, he added, ‘and you as well, cousin. I would see how the Dark Hunters earned their name.’

‘It would be an honour, my khan,’ Thursk said.

Kor’sarro gazed at him for a moment, and then nodded tersely. ‘Ambaghai, call the lightning and clear the air,’ he said, gesturing to the remaining gun drones, which continued to hover and fire at the White Scars. ‘I grow tired of sparring with these toys.’

‘I never thought you’d ask,’ Ambaghai said. He gripped his staff in both hands and held it up. The air took on a sharp, metallic odour and seemed to congeal for a moment, as if every molecule of oxygen and water had suddenly contracted. Then Ambaghai stabbed the ground with the butt of his staff, and the air was filled with azure strands of electricity, which arced from drone to drone, frying the sensitive circuitry of each one in turn. The remaining drones in the courtyard fell to the ground, their hulls charred black.

‘Impressive,’ Thursk said.

‘Yes. Consider that, the next time you insult my poetry,’ Ambaghai said, tapping the Dark Hunter’s shoulder plate with the tip of his staff.

‘Duly noted, Stormseer,’ Thursk said.

Kor’sarro led the way into the alien bastion, as was his right as Master of the Hunt. Ambaghai followed, in his shadow as ever, and off to the side, the Dark Hunter. He did not know what to make of the Phobian yet. He did not ride, nor did he seem to understand their way of war. He might as well have been a scion of Russ or Dorn, for all the kinship Kor’sarro felt with him. He reflected, not for the first time, on the Great Khan’s insistence that they welcome these strangers in all but blood into their tents and war councils. He understood the reasoning for it, but that didn’t make it any easier to take.

Jebe felt the same way, and took no pains to hide it. ‘What is he doing here?’ he said, as Kor’sarro approached. If the Dark Hunter noticed the rancour in his tone, he gave no sign of it, which only fuelled Jebe’s dislike, if Kor’sarro were any judge. The Dark Hunter used silence as a weapon, deflecting and antagonising in equal measure with his obtuse refusal to speak to any but those he absolutely had to. He just watched, and listened and it was getting on everyone’s nerves. Then, given that he could barely speak Khorchin, that might have been a blessing.

‘If he is not here, how will he learn?’ Kor’sarro said, stepping past the champion. He had no time for Jebe’s petulance. Not now. The explosion that had allowed them ingress had blackened the entry chamber, warping the walls and causing the floor to bubble and buckle. Ruptured power conduits dangled from the ceiling, spitting and crackling, and the strange, flat glow-panels the xenos used for illumination had cracked and gone dark. The whole place stank of tau. The sloping walls and soft curves did not offend his senses as much as they might once have, however. There was much to learn from an enemy’s architecture, as there was from their art and language. To properly stalk prey, one had to learn how said prey’s mind worked. And the best way to do that was to study how they built their lairs. Orks constructed crude but sturdy structures, where the hrud burrowed in like mites, and the tau… the tau changed the landscape to suit themselves.

‘Status, Toguz,’ he said, looking at one of the Space Marines who stood near the bulkhead that led into the heart of the base, his bolter held ready. The way into the command centre was open. It was all very inviting, like meat dragged beneath the nose of a beast of prey.

‘No hostile contact, my khan,’ the warrior said. ‘Not even any alarms.’

‘The internal defences were offline as well,’ Jebe said, quietly. ‘It was as if they expected us to get in.’

‘Odd,’ Kor’sarro said. Unease filled him. This wasn’t the first empty base they had attacked, but this one was different. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it look as if it were occupied. The others had had automatic defences, but nothing like what they’d encountered outside. Bait for the beast, he thought again.

‘Unlikely is what it is,’ a new voice said.

Kor’sarro didn’t turn. ‘Is that a warrior’s considered wisdom, or merely the grumblings of an unappreciated elder?’ he asked.

Cemakar grunted. He stumped into the entry chamber, his helmet tucked under his arm. His topknot and moustaches were as white as the snow outside, and his skin was the colour of leather, making the scars on his cheeks stand out all the more. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘are they here or not?’ His armour was of an older mark, and studded with rivets. The chestplate was covered in ceremonial embossment, depicting scenes from ancient victories of the ordu. The battleplate had been worn on a thousand battlefields, even before it had been gifted to Cemakar. Like the warrior who wore it, it was a relic of the ordu.

Kor’sarro frowned and stepped through the interior bulkhead, one palm resting on Moonfang’s pommel. Even sheathed, the sword vibrated slightly, as if it couldn’t wait to be free once more. If he had his way, that would be soon. Though not, apparently, soon enough. The lack of resistance nagged at him. All of the intelligence they had gathered had pointed to Rime Crag as where Shadowsun would be, but here they were, and she was nowhere to be seen. Had his enemy already fled? Or had she never been here in the first place? Was this another distraction? She was good at that, he was forced to admit. She thought in layers, something a Chogorian could respect, even if she was a xenos witch.

Shadowsun was more dangerous to the defence of Agrellan than his fellow commanders had wanted to admit. Patriarch Tybalt’s dismissal he understood; it offended the old Knight Commander to imagine that a mere alien could threaten his forces. Straken, the commander of the Catachan regiment deployed to Agrellan, was a different matter; he’d faced the tau before and knew better. Shadowsun was the lynchpin, the central mind of the tau strategy. That was why he had left the defence of Agrellan to Tybalt, Straken and Sudabeh, and set himself the goal of taking her head. Without her, the xenos would falter.

The problem was she knew that as well as he did. And thus far, she had refused all attempts to bring her to battle after the encounter at Blackshale Ridge. Including now, it seemed. He gave a grunt of frustration and looked around. The command centre was online, but empty of life. A holographic projection of Agrellan as seen from orbit floated over a wide, flat dais, and the circumference of the room was dominated by the computer consoles and view-screens that lined the walls. The latter had been gutted. The only light in the room came from the hologram.

Kor’sarro swept a hand through the hologram of Agrellan, and the image wavered and changed from an orbital perspective to a substratospheric view. Symbols that he didn’t recognise were clustered about Rime Crag. He touched one, and the image changed again. He blinked in surprise as he recognised a pict capture of his face. A red circle, far too much like a targeting icon for his liking, surrounded the image of him.

‘We should have brought the Khwarezmian,’ Cemakar said, looking around. ‘He has a way with these xenos toys.’ Kor’sarro smiled at the thought of the commander of his reserve force. Gharchai the Khwarezmian, whose folk had not been steppe-riders as Kor’sarro’s clan had been – indeed, as most White Scars clans had been – but instead the armoured hill-men of the Khwarzm, who thundered to war not on beasts built for speed, but for strength. Of all the diverse tribes and clans of Chogoris, the Khwarzm had held out the longest against the armies united by the Khan of Khans, and had bought their freedom first, earning it in iron and fire. Gharchai was a true son of the Khwarzm, built like a thunderbolt and with a mind like water. He was the opposite, in many ways, of Old Shatterhand.

‘Gharchai is more useful where he is,’ Kor’sarro murmured, still examining the hologram. The Khwarezmian and his Land Speeders had been deployed to sweep the basin craters to the south and east of Rime Crag, in order to test the tau defences there. They were due to rejoin the main force in twelve hours, but could be recalled sooner, if necessary.

He and his hunt-brothers had harried the tau across Agrellan, striking hard and fading away before the xenos could mount more than a token resistance. They had made great wounds in the invaders’ infrastructure, opening their lines and forcing them to regroup and delay their stratagems. But for every bunker destroyed and every communications array silenced, the enemy seemed to have three more at peak operation by the time the White Scars had returned to the hunt. The gaps they had created in the front lines of the enemy had long since closed behind them, he knew, even as he knew that they were being drawn deeper into tau-controlled territory. Shadowsun had led them on a merry chase, but this night should have seen the end of it. So where was she?

Kor’sarro considered ordering his men to sweep the base again, but discarded the thought before it reached his lips. He already knew that they would find nothing. The base was running on auxiliary power, and it had been stripped of everything of value. It had been abandoned, but pains had been taken to hide that fact. The alien mind was a mystery, and their tactics and strategies seemed bereft of meaning, even to one who had fought them as often as he had. But he knew enough to know that just because a thing looked one way, did not make it so. He straightened. ‘The base is empty, but it was made to look occupied, to draw us in. Why?’

‘I see only two reasons for a ploy such as this,’ Cemakar said. He looked at Kor’sarro. ‘I’m sure you do as well.’ He hiked a thumb at Jebe. ‘Even he sees them.’

‘What?’ Jebe said.

‘It’s a distraction,’ Thursk said. It was the first time the Dark Hunter had spoken since they had entered the base. He tapped the hologram dais with his axe.

Kor’sarro nodded. ‘Or a trap,’ he growled. As soon as he said the word, he felt it, and cursed himself for not recognising it sooner. He had been too focused, too intent on his prey not to see the trap she was leading him into. Rime Crag could simply have been a diversion, to pull the White Scars out of response range for a planned assault, and thus deprive the Imperial forces of an asset. But that was no more Shadowsun’s way than it was his own. She was not an ork; the witch could think. The tau had the advantage of mobility, an advantage he and his huntsmen negated, or at least countered. They were too dangerous to the tau to be left riding free. The conclusion was reached and the decision made in microseconds. ‘To your vehicles. We must ride. Cemakar, alert the Khwarezmian. We’ll need support.’

He led them out of the command centre, and hurried back towards the courtyard. Even as he stepped out into the cold night air, he knew he had been too slow. The trap had been sprung, and its jaws had already snapped closed. It happened fast. The snowy air blurred above the courtyard, and his ears caught the hum of alien technology, offensive and smooth.

‘Take cover,’ he roared, but too late. A White Scar was flung backwards from his idling bike, his cuirass melted to slag, superheated blood issuing from the grille on the front of his helmet in a burst of red-tinted steam. Kor’sarro cursed.

To their credit, the others reacted in the millisecond between their brother’s death and his collapse, swinging off their bikes and pulling the heavy machines over to act as improvised cover as they fell flat upon the snowy ground.

Strange, hunched shapes flickered in and out of view through the gaps in the wall, stalking towards the bastion. Kor’sarro could hear the familiar, waspish hum of tau weapons being readied to fire. Kor’sarro swung back around the edge of the ruptured bulkhead and drew his bolt pistol. ‘Ambush,’ he said, looking at the others.

‘Good,’ Jebe said, drawing his blade. ‘I was getting tired of killing machines.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘Communications are jammed,’ Cemakar said, finger pressed to his ear. He looked at Kor’sarro, his features grim. ‘They’ve lured us in and wedged the door shut. We’re trapped.’

‘Then we’ll just have to pry it open, won’t we?’ Kor’sarro said, as Cemakar’s words sunk in. Before he could say anything further, the whine of anti-grav units pierced the air. A trio of gun drones shot over the parapet of the wall, and sped through the air over the courtyard. But these weren’t the annoyances they’d faced earlier. Instead, each of the new drones had a long, blocky rifle-shaped weapon slung beneath its disc-shaped body.

As Kor’sarro watched, one of the drones rotated and fired. A White Scar went limp as the shot struck him in the head and punched through his helmet with apparent ease. The remaining White Scars hunkered down behind their bikes and began to return fire as the drones swooped upwards and vanished into the falling snow. Another trio swooped into position as the first vanished, coming from the opposite direction. Their long-barrelled weapons fired, chewing the courtyard, and throwing dust and steam from the melted snow into the air.

‘They’re keeping us pinned down,’ Thursk said. ‘If we go out there, we’re as good as dead.’ Kor’sarro was pleased that there was no trace of fear in the Dark Hunter’s voice. It was merely a statement of fact. He hadn’t been eager to have the newcomer in his hunt, but there were other things to consider than his own preferences. Inter-Chapter relations must be maintained. The sons of Chogoris could not be allowed to forget the ways that had made them strong, ways that had carried them to the stars and beyond, no matter how diluted their blood. Perhaps he was a true son of Chogoris after all.

‘A child could see that, Phobian,’ Jebe snarled. ‘The question is, what do we do about it?’ The storm bolters atop the Rhinos opened fire, but their efforts to track the swiftly moving drones were in vain. Bolt shells struck the bastion and stitched a line up the walls, pursuing the second group of drones as they too vanished into the snowy darkness. Silence fell, but only for a moment. The two groups of drones returned, flight paths interweaving as they plummeted downwards like angry wasps.

‘We do what we always do. We act,’ Kor’sarro said. He glanced at Cemakar. ‘I recognise that type of qarthai. They have controllers. Keep their heads down.’ Cemakar barked an order into the vox and in the courtyard, the Whirlwind and Razorback gave vent to furious bellows of indignation, shattering the night with contrails of fire. The weapons of both vehicles oscillated in a slow arc, firing at nothing in particular, but simply filling the air with death.

The drones faltered, if only for a moment. But a moment was all that Kor’sarro required. He stepped out into the courtyard, bolt pistol levelled. Coolly, he fired, and one of the drones was knocked from the air. The remaining five focused their attentions on him, weapons rotating towards him. ‘Ambaghai,’ he said.

‘Make room, brothers,’ the Stormseer said, stepping out into the open. Lightning crackled around him, curling the length of his staff and ionising the air around him. Snow melted beneath his armoured feet, becoming steam as he filled the air with snapping, writhing serpents of lightning. The drones shuddered as they were ensnared in the coils of electricity. Ambaghai’s eyes began to glow, and, face tight with strain, he said, ‘I see them.’ He pointed with his staff, and Cemakar spat an order.

The Whirlwind’s missile rack rotated in the direction Ambaghai had indicated and disgorged its remaining payload at the rocky escarpment above. The darkness was washed away in a blaze of light as the missiles from the Swift Vengeance hammered the ridge. Snow and rock tumbled down from the point of impact to strike the bastion, causing the structure to shudder around them. As one, the drones tumbled from the sky, striking the ground, smoke rising from them. Cemakar kicked one aside as he stomped towards the Whirlwind, shouting, ‘Reload! Castellans, by the Khan, or I’ll have your topknots for my trophy rack.’ He swung himself up onto one of the Rhinos and swatted the Space Marine in the cupola on the top of his helmet. ‘Get back down there, Ojai or I swear by the Star-Horse I’ll kick your teeth in,’ he snarled.

Kor’sarro watched him, bemused, and then turned and dropped his fist on Ambaghai’s shoulder plate. ‘Good trick, Stormseer,’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to fry the drones.’

Ambaghai ran his fingers through his wispy beard and gave it a satisfied flick. ‘The xenos were watching us through the eyes of those drones. I decided to return the favour.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘For one who can speak to the lightning, following the signal between device and controller was easy enough.’

‘Congratulate yourself later, those were just the preliminaries,’ Cemakar said. Sitting in the cupola of Tulwar of Shiban, he hammered on the top of the hull with the flat of his hand and the Rhino wedged itself hull-first into the largest gap in the wall, effectively blocking it. There was enough room for him to swivel the storm bolter and he let off a burst at something out past the wall. ‘Hostiles incoming, multiple points,’ he said. Past the Rhino, Kor’sarro caught a glimpse of flickering, indistinct shapes. They were sirguma, he realised, the ‘sneaky ones’, what some Imperial reports called ‘Stealth suits’. They raced past the gap in the outer wall, burst cannons whirring. They weren’t trying to get in, he knew. They were merely keeping the White Scars heads down. Delaying tactics, even the sniper drones. But why were they being delayed?

Kor’sarro boosted himself up onto the Rhino and crouched in the gap beside Cemakar. His keen eyes picked out the flat hammer-headed shapes of several tau troop transports, gliding over the snow. They weren’t in any hurry, by the looks of them. They might as well have been out for an evening ride. Then, it wasn’t like their enemies were going anywhere, was it? He shook his head, disgusted with himself. Of course, he thought sourly, you are a cunning one, witch. Shadowsun had used their speed against them. She’d laid a bait trail, and he’d fallen for it like an overeager aspirant. ‘Snares within snares,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve led us into a trap.’

‘Looks like they came ready to fight,’ Cemakar grunted, not looking at him.

‘Good. I intend to give them one. If you can manage to pry yourself out of that cupola, I’d like your counsel,’ Kor’sarro said. Without waiting for a reply, he slid off the Rhino and dropped lightly to the ground. Cemakar followed him, grunting and cursing as he hauled himself out of the Rhino’s turret, with some assistance from the crew. Kor’sarro strode back towards the command centre, rattling off orders as he went, and the White Scars moved to obey quickly. Most took up positions around the gaps in the walls, ready to repel an assault. Others picked up the bodies of their slain brothers and carried the corpses to one of the Rhinos. Kor’sarro would leave none of their dead on this alien-defiled ridge, if he could help it. Additionally, he wanted the enemy to have as little knowledge of their remaining numbers as possible. Information was as deadly as a bolt-round, in the right circumstances.

‘Ambaghai, Jebe, and…’ he trailed off, motioning to the Dark Hunter. ‘Cousin,’ he said, finally ‘we have time, and we must make use of it. Come.’

Inside the command centre, he waited for them to file in and tapped the hologram. As he’d expected, the map of Agrellan was replaced by a three-dimensional cutaway image of Rime Crag. The bastion was illuminated, as were markers representing the forces now approaching it. ‘Nice of them to leave us a picture so we could see just how badly we’re caught,’ Cemakar grumbled.

‘They taunt us,’ Jebe said. Kor’sarro had come to much the same conclusion, after wondering whether it was an oversight. What he knew of the tau had never suggested a sense of humour, but then, even orks taunted their foes. Shadowsun wanted him to know she’d caught him. He could almost admire that sort of bravado, if it weren’t so infuriating and, more importantly, aimed at him.

‘We’re the enemy. Would you have them fete us, and throw a feast in our honour?’ Thursk asked.

Jebe glared at the Dark Hunter and made to reply, but Kor’sarro gestured sharply, cutting him off. ‘Taunt or oversight, this is our situation. Suggestions?’ he asked.

‘Tortoise,’ Cemakar said promptly. ‘We seal this bastion and wait for the Khwarezmian to seek us out, jammed frequencies be damned. He’ll rip from the belly, and we’ll smash their snouts on our shell.’

‘Eagle,’ Jebe countered. The champion stabbed the hologram with a finger. ‘We punch through their lines before they have a chance to cut us off. We swoop out of jamming range and contact Gharchai. Then we ravage them as we move, and take them apart before they can pin us down again. That is the White Scars way. Leave shell-games to the sons of Dorn.’

Kor’sarro’s eyes narrowed as he studied the hologram. Silently he meditated on the advantages and repercussions of both stratagems. He knew which he preferred, but preference was not always wisdom. His eyes flickered to meet Ambaghai’s. The Stormseer met his gaze placidly. If Cemakar were a rock, and Jebe a bird of prey, then Ambaghai was a storm, implacable and impossible to predict. The Stormseer’s mouth quirked in what might have been a smile and Kor’sarro raised an eyebrow. ‘What is it?’ he said.

Ambaghai reached into one of the many pouches that dangled from his equipment belt and retrieved a handful of something, which he scattered across the hologram dais. Finger-bones, Kor’sarro realised, from an ork or some unlucky heretic. Ambaghai was said to collect them himself, with one of the ceremonial knives sheathed at his waist, after every battle. He made a special effort to claim the fingers of witches and psykers, for they channelled the will of the spirits more easily. Each length of bone was covered in delicately carved Khorchin characters, and each represented a symbol from the Chogorian zodiac. Ambaghai raised his hand, and the finger-bones rose like domino tiles, standing at attention. He made a circular gesture, and they rattled and fell, making a strange pattern.

‘What do the spirits say?’ Cemakar asked.

‘The spirits say why does it have to be one way or the other? Why not both at once?’ Ambaghai said. ‘There is no one true path, my khan. There are only potentialities, stories yet untold and horizons yet unseen. Which story we tell, and which horizon we seek is up to us, and we are free to do as we wish,’ he said and looked at Jebe. ‘We strike the enemy from as many directions as possible. We give them more targets than they can handle, and carve them up at our leisure. That is the White Scars way.’ Jebe glowered at the Stormseer but said nothing.

‘What do the spirits say of Shadowsun?’ asked Kor’sarro, softly.

Ambaghai looked at him, his face unreadable. Then he twitched his fingers, and the bones rattled. ‘She is here, my khan. Close, watching, waiting,’ he said. He met Kor’sarro’s gaze and added, ‘But you already knew that. You are the Master of the Hunt for good reason, my khan. Even the spirits defer to your tracking expertise. If you have brought us here, trap or no, here is where we should be.’

Kor’sarro stroked his moustaches with the side of his thumb, thinking. Ambaghai’s words had heartened him, but the tactic the seer had recommended would divide his forces even more than they currently already were. But if the enemy were counting on them hunkering down, it might throw them into disarray. And if they were counting on the White Scars to make a breakout attempt, leaving behind a force to hold the bastion might force the enemy to split their own forces in ways that they hadn’t planned for.

He gazed at the hologram, trying to discern the nature of the ruse he faced. He was not, by nature, a strategist. There were other khans for whom the subtleties of the great game were as meat and drink, men for whom war was nothing more than a game of Go writ large. They thought in terms of ploys and feints. For Kor’sarro, however, war was an art. Every battlefield was a canvas, every drop of spilled blood a brushstroke. Watching a battle unfold was like watching an image appear. The trick was to see what the image was before it was completed, and to ensure that the picture you had was the one you wanted. He touched the hologram, considering. To hesitate, either way, was to be lost. The Emperor frowned on vacillators and the overcautious.

‘Ambaghai is correct,’ he said, decision made. ‘The enemy seek to deny us our advantage, to limit our mobility by pinning us here. Those out there are merely the hand on our throat, but the blade will be descending soon enough.’ He looked around the room. ‘Wheel and Spoke, my brothers. Cemakar, you and Jebe will be the Wheel. Ambaghai, you and I shall be the Spoke.’ He looked at Cemakar, who was already making as if to argue. ‘You will punch a hole through the tau lines with our armour, and half the bikes. Take Hasik. He’s our best rider, and he’s outrun the tau more than once. Don’t stop until you make contact with Gharchai.’ He looked at Ambaghai. ‘And we will hold the tau’s attention here. If that becomes untenable, we shall ride out after you.’

‘We’ve got a load of Castellans in the Whirlwind ready to fire,’ Cemakar said, begrudgingly. ‘That will buy us some time. But mark me, when they come, it’ll be with those blasted two-legged tanks of theirs.’ The others in the room growled or muttered at the mention of the enemy aburgma - the battlesuits. Such constructs were the bane of any battlefield, their destructive potential rivalled only by that of the Imperial Knights.

Kor’sarro smiled. ‘I’m counting on it.’

‘This is the most powerful weapon in the universe,’ Thursk hefted his axe and spun it in a tight figure eight as he followed Ambaghai out of the command centre. ‘Axes can topple empires. They kill kings, daemons and monsters. On Phobian, axes are passed down from father to daughter, mother to son. This is the axe my mother used, and her father before her. She gave it to me, the day I was chosen to become a god of war. And though it has changed, as I have changed, it is still my axe.’ He glanced at Ambaghai. ‘Do you understand, Chogorian?’

‘Yes,’ Ambaghai said. He smiled. ‘However, your axe is here, and the enemy is, as yet, over there.’ He gestured at the outer wall. ‘Hence my question, would you like a bolter, cousin? Bok will not mind.’ He extended the bolter towards Thursk again. He was holding two, both claimed from the White Scars who’d fallen earlier.

Thursk took the weapon. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Which one was Bok?’ He checked the clip.

‘The dead one,’ Ambaghai said. He looked away.

Thursk looked at him, and then back at the bolter in his hands. It was an ornate thing, lovingly edged in brass and silver, with a dragon’s head embossed on the barrel. An iron ring, heavy with the teeth of orks, had been attached to the grip, which was plated with bone, likely taken from the same orks who’d provided the teeth. ‘On Phobian, we left the bodies of the dead for the bats,’ he said.

‘We did the same on Chogoris. Save we left them for the great eagles.’ Ambaghai sniffed. ‘Or we burned them.’

‘Fire attracted the bats,’ Thursk said.

‘I can see where that would be a difficulty,’ Ambaghai said. ‘Were they big, these bats?’

‘Fairly,’ Thursk said. ‘They ate horses.’

‘I’m given to understand there are large wolves on Fenris,’ Ambaghai said, after a moment. ‘They eat men, or so the Space Wolves claim.’

Thursk made a rude sound. ‘Wolves,’ he said.

‘The sons of Russ are quite particular about their wolves,’ Ambaghai said. But he smiled as he said it. Thursk chuckled.

‘By the by, that was enlightening, back there,’ he said. The Stormseer looked at him, and the Dark Hunter held up a hand. ‘No mockery intended, I assure you,’ he said. ‘Among my brothers, command is not so fluid. One voice speaks, and all others listen.’

‘That has never been our way,’ Ambaghai said, somewhat chidingly, Thursk thought. ‘Even the great Jaghatai did not move without seeking council with his sub-khans. Men are not machines, cousin. They are not inclined to move in unison, or to act as one. A wise khan gives equal weight to every subordinate. He does not hesitate, but he considers, and then makes his decision accordingly, as every man must decide for himself to follow that decision. They must move as the spirit wills.’

‘By which you mean, they listen to you,’ Thursk said.

‘Of course,’ Ambaghai said, ‘Wasn’t that what I said? I speak for the spirits, after all.’ He spread his arms and sucked in a lungful of the harsh, cold air. ‘This is the best time, cousin. This is the right place for us. The battle’s red edge is our tent, our battle-brothers, our kinsmen, and the haze of war is our meat and drink.’

‘Did your spirits whisper that to you?’

‘Don’t they whisper the same to you?’ Ambaghai said, tugging on his beard with a flick of his wrist. ‘Other Chapters merely wage war, cousin. The White Scars are war. We are the crash, the noise, the thunder. We are the confusion, and the madness and the inevitable end. We are the Star-Hunt. Where we ride, worlds die.’

‘One side, Phobian,’ Jebe said, brushing past Thursk, before the latter could reply. ‘Some of us have aliens to kill.’ The champion bounded out of the command centre, a spring in his step and a feral, childlike grin on his face.

‘He looks cheerful,’ Thursk said.

‘Of course he’s cheerful. He’s going to get to kill something,’ Cemakar grunted, joining Thursk and Ambaghai. Cemakar looked at the Stormseer. ‘Guard him well, Stormseer,’ he said. His face wrinkled up, as if he were uncomfortable saying the words.

‘Always,’ Ambaghai said. He inclined his head. Cemakar nodded tersely and stumped away. Thursk watched Cemakar follow Jebe towards the Razorback. Kor’sarro’s second-in-command barked orders with rapidity, gesticulating about him for emphasis. Of the two squads of White Scars that had ridden in the Rhino, one was staying behind, while the other was splitting its strength between the two Rhinos, both of which would be providing the muscle for the breakout attempt. The squad who’d come in the Razorback was staying behind as well. The transports were all but useless in the bastion, save as improvised barricades, and Kor’sarro had other plans for the defence of the place.

While their commanders conferred, the White Scars had dragged rubble into position to create a series of zigzag strongpoints close to the command centre. As he watched, one of the White Scars used a meltagun to sear several sections of stone together into a crude bulwark. Thursk realised that they had no plan to block the hole in the wall, and immediately grasped the implication. The tau had a number of troops with the capability of entering the bastion by air, if they so wished, making the wall all but useless for defensive purposes. But those troops that couldn’t fly would be drawn to the gaping hole in the defences as their easiest point of ingress. The makeshift strongpoints were arranged in such a way so as to catch the inevitable assault in a killing field. It was a brutally efficient means of utilising their surroundings, and Thursk couldn’t help but be impressed. His own battle-brothers would have ignored the wall, but held the gap, leaving the courtyard empty, so as to draw in the flyers for dispatch.

But that was the White Scars way, as he was coming to learn. They fought efficiently, utilising the least amount of effort for the maximum gain. It was the predator’s way, not the warrior’s. Bait and switch, induce and gut, bleed the enemy as much as possible before landing the killing blow. The tau fought in a similar manner, and he wondered whether Kor’sarro or Ambaghai had noticed. He refrained from mentioning it, for fear of giving insult. The White Scars weren’t as touchy as some of their Successors, but they could be oddly defensive when their way of war was called into question.

He moved out into the courtyard, taking it all in. The Rhinos were stripped of everything that wasn’t necessary for the assault. In the field, the White Scars used their transports as mobile armouries, loading them up with anything they might require, so that they only rarely had to stop and resupply. Frag and krak grenades, replacement storm bolters and packs of ammunition were brought into the entryway of the command centre, which had been converted into a temporary armoury. The bikes were stowed behind the strongpoints, for easy access. The courtyard was soon filled with the growl of engines, as the transports readied themselves for departure. Once a decision was made, the White Scars acted on it quickly.

The white-armoured Space Marines moved briskly, and more than one sang softly to themselves as they worked. They spoke to each other, joked and laughed, and the sense of camaraderie amongst the Star-Hunt was obvious. A hand settled on his shoulder. Thursk turned, expecting to see Ambaghai. Instead, Kor’sarro Khan stood behind him.

‘If you would go, now is the time, cousin,’ he said.

Thursk hesitated. ‘Go?’

‘With Jebe and Cemakar,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘If I were in your place, I would not wish to be trapped here. And you are not under my command. You are here to observe and learn, and if you would see us at our best, you must see us at the attack.’

Thursk looked at him. ‘In the Dellrond Campaign, my battle-brothers and I held the entrance to the Cathedral of the Emperor Ossified for five years against the greenskins,’ he said. He slung the bolter Ambaghai had given him over his shoulder. ‘By the end, we were using their bones as clubs.’ Kor’sarro said nothing. Thursk took that as an invitation to continue. ‘I am here to learn of your traditions, and see how you wage war, to learn the ways of Chogoris, and to show fealty to the Khan of Khans.’ He hefted his axe. ‘But this here, in this place, is how a Phobian wages war. Ambaghai said that the White Scars are war itself. If that is true, so too are the Dark Hunters, and I would show you that a son of Phobian can stand at the red edge as well as a son of Chogoris.’ He extended his axe. ‘And if I must fall where I stand to show you that, it is a small price to pay.’

Kor’sarro smiled. He laughed, grabbed Thursk’s helmeted head in both hands and brought their heads together. ‘Show me, brother. And then after, perhaps I will teach you to ride, hey?’ He released Thursk and stepped back. ‘Come, brother. We have blood to shed, for the Great Khan and the Emperor.’

Kor’sarro turned away from the Dark Hunter and raised his hands. The noise level in the courtyard dimmed instantly. Outside the walls, he could hear the gathering storm. The xenos were readying themselves for their first assault. It would be artillery first, he knew. That was their way, and he did not begrudge them it. He looked around. ‘Go, and laugh while you kill,’ was all he said. The engines of the transports roared, and his men cheered.

He unholstered his bolt pistol and trotted towards the wall. The Dark Hunter fell in beside him and Ambaghai as well. They, along with the remaining battle-brothers, would cover Cemakar’s assault. A Space Marine stalked past him, hefting one of the extra heavy bolters, loops of ammunition curling about him. The warrior caught his eye and patted the heavy weapon. ‘Honour of first blood, my khan?’ he asked. His tone was hopeful.

‘By all means, sing them a song of death, Godi,’ Kor’sarro said, recognising the White Scar. ‘Make it loud, and tuneful, eh?’

‘I’ll make it something cheerful as well, shall I, my khan?’ Godi said.

Kor’sarro laughed and gestured to the wall. The Rhino that had been blocking it revved up and pulled back, dislodging loose bits. Godi stepped into the breach and the heavy bolter roared. Without slowing his rate of fire, the White Scar stepped sideways, out of the breach. Another White Scar, carrying the second of the two replacement heavy bolters, followed suit, stepping out into the open, and then shuffling out of the path of the vehicles behind him. Spent shells dropped steaming to the snow from the feed-boxes of the heavy bolters.

Past them, Kor’sarro saw camouflaged vehicles rising over the snow, weapons glowing with pale energy. Tau fire warriors, clad in white armour, hurled themselves to the ground, seeking cover. They’d been moving into position to make an assault, as he suspected. He wondered, idly, why they were called fire warriors. He dismissed the thought with a shake of his head. There would be time for such thoughts later, once the enemy was defeated.

The vehicles visible behind the fire warriors were mostly transports, but there was one bunker-buster, armed with the strongest energy weapon the aliens possessed, a Hammerhead, he thought it was called. Even when they’re being sneaky, they’re predictable, Kor’sarro thought. The tau forces were as dogmatic in their way as the warriors of Ultramar. That was both their strength, and their weakness. He slapped the hull of the Razorback. ‘Ride, brothers, ride and ravage!’

As if in reply, the Razorback’s twin-linked heavy bolters roared, adding to the noise. Its driver gunned the engine and sent it rumbling forwards out through the breach. Behind it, the Whirlwind fired a barrage of Castellans, littering the ground to either side of the breach with explosive mines. The Rhinos followed the Whirlwind, breaking to either side of the latter as they cleared the gap in order to cover it while it reloaded. The Rhinos’ storm bolters added their voices to the Razorback’s heavy bolters and the air was filled with scything death. Tau warriors died, torn apart by the explosive bolts. One of their transport vehicles slewed awkwardly aside and smashed up against the escarpment, exploding in a ball of fire. The flickering shapes which had sought to keep the White Scars pinned down revealed themselves as they fired at the transports.

Kor’sarro gestured. ‘There, the sirguma!’ he roared. He’d been hoping they’d reveal themselves, if only long enough for the White Scars to teach them the price for doing so. Godi pivoted at his khan’s command, and the heavy bolter in his hands roared in harmony with the storm bolter from one of the Rhinos. The weird, bulky, insectile shapes of the armoured tau twitched and jerked as they were caught in the crossfire. Three of them fell, their armour sparking and hissing as it collapsed into mangled ruin. The others sped away, their forms blurring and vanishing in the still-falling snow that swirled thickly on the air.

The four vehicles ploughed through the tau lines, the Razorback’s reinforced hull smashing aside a tau transport in a crash of metal. The tau were not swift to react, seemingly stunned by the sudden assault. Kor’sarro hesitated, wondering if they should press the attack, but the moment passed. The air was split by the whistle of turbines. Heavy shapes dropped down through the snow, and the ground shook with the impact. The hulking shapes of the enemy battlesuits advanced slowly through the whirling snow. At the sight of them, the tau fire warriors seemed to gather their courage, and they began to advance, their pulse rifles snapping.

‘Back inside, brothers,’ Kor’sarro said quietly, trusting in the vox-circuit to carry his words despite the noise of the advancing tau troops. ‘It’s time to bait the xenos into a trap of our own.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘Reload! I want incendiaries to cover our flanks. Heat disrupts the xenos targeting scanners. Set this whole blasted ridge on fire if you have to,’ Cemakar roared into his comm-unit. Around him, the air was filled with the thrum of the powerful engines of the Hunter’s Stroke. Other than the crew, he and Jebe were the only passengers aboard the Razorback. His augmented hearing could pick up every grind of the treads and every squeal of the armoured plates flexing. Even the company’s Techmarines didn’t have Old Shatterhand’s ear for ailing pistons and fraying filters.

He grinned to himself, but was careful not to let it show on his face. The children thought he didn’t know about their name for him. He flexed his hand, feeling the pull of old wounds beneath the white ceramite. He had almost lost it once, pulling a screaming, puling wet thing out of the corrupted chassis of one of the nightmare engines of the Great Enemy. He had torn the chassis open and plunged his hand through the acidic bile that had filled it, even as the engine had tried to scissor him in half with its battle-claw. It had been a necessity, at the time. Now it was a story, to be passed around the fire. Such was the way of it.

Jebe grunted in disgust and Cemakar dropped his hand. ‘We shouldn’t be disrupting them. We should be attacking them,’ he said. ‘I thought we were fighting, old man.’ The champion crouched awkwardly in his seat, his sword across his knees. Why he didn’t just sheath the damn thing, Cemakar didn’t know. Nor did he bother to ask. The only thing more worthless than Jebe’s opinion was… well, there wasn’t really anything more worthless than that.

‘We are fighting them, or did you not notice the gunfire?’ Cemakar spat. He paused to glare at the champion. Cemakar had seen a hundred warriors take up the company’s honour for their own, and of that hundred, Jebe was easily the most annoying. He was the youngest to hold that position since Kor’sarro himself, and his trophy-pole was overbalanced with skulls and scalps. He saw a mulish glint flare in the champion’s eyes.

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Jebe said, ‘We left the khan. We should not have done that!’

‘No, we shouldn’t have,’ Cemakar said. ‘But he is khan. And we have our task. Let us try and accomplish it with what grace we may.’ He looked hard at the champion. ‘Withdraw, and then return. That is our way. Strike, ride and strike again.’ He turned and hammered on the reinforced turret, where the Razorback’s gunner was busy firing at the tau that had pursued them. They’d managed to pull roughly half of the tau force in their wake. Everything that could keep up with them had come after them. That lessened the pressure on the khan, but it was going to make contacting Gharchai almost impossible. ‘Keep the khamar from getting too close to Yesugei’s Teeth, Mongke, or I’ll have your topknot,’ he said, referring to the Whirlwind. They needed the battle tank in one piece and functional. He turned and made his way to the driver’s compartment. ‘What’s waiting for us?’ he asked, leaning through the hatch.

‘Our sensors and communications are still jammed,’ the driver said. ‘We’re charging blind.’ He paused, and then added, ‘Not that that’s anything new.’

‘So long as we keep charging,’ Cemakar grunted, dropping a hand on the Space Marine’s helmet and giving it a shake. ‘Don’t stop, Tolui. Our khan’s life depends on our speed.’

‘Speed I can give you. Just don’t ask me to get us there in one piece,’ Tolui said. Cemakar could hear the grin in his voice, even though his features were hidden beneath his helmet. He nodded, pleased. It was good that Tolui was cheerful. War was a craft, and a craftsman must take pleasure in his work, else why do it?

As Cemakar slipped back into the passenger compartment, the comm-bead in his ear crackled. ‘Report,’ he said.

‘We’ve – ost conta – ith Tulwar,’ a voice spat. The urgency of the words carried through the hiss of static, if not the words themselves. Cemakar cursed. The vehicles had limited contact, thanks to the tau jamming signal. There could be any number of reasons they’d lost contact. If the Rhino had drifted too far behind the others, even by just a few metres, the signal could have succumbed to the interference.

‘Get that damn hatch open,’ he shouted back at the crew compartment.

‘Which one?’ Tolui called back.

‘Which one, he says. The one I’m staring at, you horse’s knuckle,’ Cemakar snarled. He snatched up his bolter and stomped towards the Razorback’s rear hatch. Jebe was on his feet and a half pace behind. Cemakar thrust a finger at him without stopping. ‘You, stay.’

‘But– ’ Jebe began.

‘My Razorback, my rules,’ Cemakar snapped. ‘Is everyone going to argue with me today?’ He didn’t bother waiting for a reply. Instead he hurried to the rear hatch. He checked the bolter’s clip as he moved. The pneumatics that controlled the hatch hissed as it opened wide, letting in the cold and snow. Cemakar grabbed a dangling equipment strap and stepped to the edge, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the moonlight on the snow.

They had reached the narrowest point of Rime Crag, where the rocky ground thinned to a barely passable lip, just above a snow-encrusted slope. The slope itself was an undulating ribbon of rock that stretched down into one of the many basin valleys that now dotted the poisonous surface of the hive world. The basins were in actuality immense, kilometres-across impact craters, souvenirs of an Inquisition-sanctioned Exterminatus at some point in Agrellan’s history. Cemakar inhaled the poisonous air, snorted and spat a gobbet of acidic spittle. The planet was a death trap. The tau would have ignored it, and rightly, if it hadn’t occupied the sector of space it did. It was a key world. To take the Damocles Gulf the xenos had to take Agrellan.

Yesugei’s Teeth was just behind them, its missile pods swivelling as it sought out targets. Bikes roared past, jinking in and out of the line. Behind the Whirlwind, one of the Rhinos trundled along, a White Scar in the cupola, his hands on the grips of the storm bolter. Overhead, the roar of the Razorback’s heavy bolters had faded, leaving behind only the grinding grumble of the treads rolling over rock and snow. The tau vehicles which had been harrying them had fallen back. Cemakar grunted. He hadn’t expected that. He craned his neck, trying to spot the second Rhino. Had they fallen behind, or…? Dark thoughts flickered across the surface of his consciousness, stirring from cynical recesses of a mind hardened in the ways of war.

The explosion, when it came, was not a surprise so much as an unwelcome confirmation of his suspicions. He saw a flaming chunk of wreckage slide down the slope far behind them. He knew instantly that the warriors aboard Tulwar were as good as dead, whether they had been in the Rhino or not. He cursed. The tau had been prepared for a breakout. No wonder they didn’t put up much in the way of resistance, he thought. He considered ordering the bikes to check for survivors, and then dismissed the thought. They had their task, and he’d be damned if he’d let a few filthy khamar prevent them from accomplishing it. He tapped the bead in his ear. ‘Hasik,’ he growled. Static hissed in his ear as he tried to make contact with the leader of the bikes. He cursed and pushed on, on the off chance Hasik was receiving him, ‘Hasik, keep going, whatever happens to us. Make contact with Gharchai. That is your only duty.’

He began to order the Whirlwind to collapse the ridge shelf behind them, in order to stall whatever the tau had unleashed, when flickering shapes landed onto the battle tank from above. The Stealth suits crawled over the top of the tank, and they fired at him. Cemakar bellowed in fury as projectiles ricocheted throughout the Razorback’s interior. He let loose a burst with his bolter and slammed a fist repeatedly against the top of the hatch. ‘Mongke, you blind bovid-brained…’ he began. He faltered as a white-armoured body tumbled down onto the lowered lip of the hatch, and splashed blood across his feet. Mongke, he realised, as the kroot swung down into the Razorback. There were five of the alien mercenaries. They were covered in patchy white fur over their rubbery hide and their skull spines rattled as they came for him with raucous shrieks.

The kroot wore heavy harnesses – rappelling gear, he thought – and carried thick, serrated blades. They had likely been lurking on the crags above and pounced as soon as the Razorback passed beneath. ‘Jebe!’ he roared, smashing the first of them aside with his bolter. The kroot spun away and out of the open hatch, but the others paid it no heed. They slammed into him, knocking him off his feet. Ugly, veined air sacs decorated their wattle throats, and pulsed wetly as the creatures’ breath rasped in their lungs. The xenos cannibals had the ability to adapt to their surroundings, he knew. These had obviously figured out a way to survive in Agrellan’s virus-ridden, bomb-ravaged environment.

Their blades scored his armour as he wrestled with them. He was heavier and stronger, but they had the advantage of numbers and a raw ferocity that would have put an ork to shame. He’d lost his bolter in the fall, and he clawed for the combat knife sheathed on his hip as he grabbed a snapping beak that had darted for his face. Three of the kroot scrambled off him and started towards the front of the Razorback. Cemakar had no time to shout another warning. His attacker’s blade slid between his shoulder plate and gorget, tearing through the carapace to dig into the tough flesh beneath. He left off trying to grab his knife and instead grabbed the kroot’s avian skull in both hands and jerked it towards him. Their skulls connected with an audible thump and the kroot reared back in surprise and pain.

Cemakar grappled with it, and they rolled down the lowered hatch, bumping over Mongke’s limp body. He drove a fist into its side, and was rewarded by the snap of bones. The kroot shrilled and slashed at him. He caught its wrist and drove his palm up into an oddly jointed elbow, shattering the joint. Then, with a jerk, he drove the creature’s own blade into its throat. He booted the body off the ramp, and it was swiftly ground under the Whirlwind’s treads.

He grunted in satisfaction and looked up. The Stealth suits were too busy to notice him. They were preoccupied firing at the Rhino’s gunner, who was trying to draw a bead on the creatures with his storm bolter without damaging the Whirlwind. He turned to reclaim his bolter, and he nearly slammed face-to-beak with a kroot. Startled, he almost toppled from the ramp, but regained his balance. The kroot tumbled past him, trailing blood.

‘Is that all of them?’ Jebe asked. The champion was covered in blood, none of it his. Cemakar wondered how he’d managed to employ his sword in the close confines of the Razorback. He gestured back towards the Whirlwind.

‘Stowaways,’ he rasped, grabbing hold of Mongke and dragging him up the ramp and back into the Razorback. Jebe reached out a hand and helped him. ‘Tulwar is gone. Orchai is going to need some help. Grab my – what in the nine hells are you doing?’

‘Helping,’ Jebe said, stalking out onto the ramp, sword in hand. Without a backwards glance, he gathered himself and leapt, clearing the distance between the Razorback’s ramp and the Whirlwind’s front hull. He slammed into the latter and scrambled up. As he reached the top, his blade seemed to spin in his hands and a Stealth suit exploded and tumbled away in a cloud of smoke and snow, cloven from hip to shoulder. The remaining two turned, and Jebe charged towards them. His blade licked out, peeling an armour plate from one, and the force of the blow sent the tau spinning from the Whirlwind. The tau tried to activate its jetpack, but too late as it struck a rocky outcropping and vanished.

The remaining xenos fired, and Jebe leapt from the top of the Whirlwind. He caught hold of the side hatch, and dangled for a moment, trying to right himself. The remaining sirguma crouched on the edge of the roof and took aim, but before it could fire, the storm bolter on the Rhino roared and the tau vanished in a burst of blood, smoke and mangled armour. Jebe laughed as it fell past him and vanished down the slope.

Before Cemakar could do more than shake his head in disbelief, the face of the ridge behind the Rhino bulged outwards suddenly. Cemakar’s eyes widened as the massive battlesuit tore its way out of the concealed alcove that had been carved into the curve of the ridge and ploughed through the snow behind the Rhino. It was bigger than any other battlesuit he’d had the bad fortune to encounter, at least twice the height of the others, and roughly the same size as the Imperial Knights. He watched as the massive construct hurled the camouflaged tarpaulin that had hidden its alcove aside and raced for the Rhino, snow billowing in its wake. It was fast, too fast for its size. ‘To your rear,’ he roared, ‘look to your rear!’

The Space Marine in the Rhino’s cupola tensed, and began to turn, but too late. The battlesuit was on the transport a moment later, grabbing its rear. The engine stuttered as the Rhino’s treads lost their grip on the ground. Cemakar could only gape as the Rhino was upended and sent crashing down on top of the Whirlwind. The latter’s missile pod exploded in gouts of flame, as missiles detonated or fired automatically and the force of it flung Cemakar backwards into the Razorback. Flames filled the loading bay, obscuring the fate of the battle tank and Jebe both. He coughed and groped his way to his feet, half-blind and mostly deaf. He staggered towards the crew compartment.

‘Tolui, have you made contact with the Khwarezmian yet?’ he croaked. He peered out through the viewslit. He could see the shapes of the bikes, or what he hoped were the bikes, hurtling far ahead. Hasik had got his message – or he was seizing the initiative. Either way, the message would get through.

‘No,’ the driver said tersely. ‘Mongke?’ he asked.

‘Dead,’ Cemakar said. ‘We’re the last, besides Hasik and his riders. Keep us moving. Don’t stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop…’ he trailed off as the ridge face in front of them bulged, and a second battlesuit burst into view, blocking their path. He leaned forward. ‘Ram it!’

Tolui complied, but Cemakar knew that it was too little, too late. The battlesuit levelled its weapon, and fired.

‘Here they come,’ Kor’sarro said. He stood amidst the improvised strongpoints, in full view of the gap. Moonfang was planted in the ground before him, his palms resting on the pommel. Godi and the other designated heavy bolter gunner had retreated behind cover as soon as they’d re-entered the bastion at his command. He was Master of the Hunt, and the honour of drawing their prey in fell to him.

Kor’sarro watched the white-armoured forms of the fire warriors creep forward in silence. They moved with inhuman precision, more like a flock of birds or a herd of horses than men. Snow crunched beneath their feet as they came, and he could smell the odd, briney tang of their blood on the air. The mines the barrage of Castellans had laid had done their work. The only path of assault that remained to the tau was through the breach in the wall.

The assault had begun as the snow had slackened. He recalled from the briefings he’d only half-listened to that inclement weather played havoc with the tau sensors, and camouflage technology. They’d fired at the walls and the rocky escarpment that rose over it, dropping snow and rock on the bastion. All of it was intended to drive the White Scars back from the walls, to force them to seek cover in smaller and smaller holes. It was a simple enough plan and cunning, for all it ignored that speed was not simply a matter of space.

Behind the fire warriors, the Hammerhead had ceased its barrage. He could hear the whine of the approaching battlesuits, and smell the searing stink of the energies used by the tau weapons. The fire warriors would seek to push them back, and keep them pinned in one spot, easy meat for the battlesuits. On top of the walls, hazy shapes flickered and moved, their presence revealed by the drifting snow. Red dots suddenly appeared on his chest, bobbing across the aquila before veering off to seek out other prey. ‘Ambaghai,’ he sub-vocalised.

‘I see them, my khan,’ the Stormseer said. The Stealth suits were there only to keep them boxed in, Kor’sarro thought. He could have been wrong, but he doubted it. They likely had orders not to engage, unless absolutely necessary.

‘Can you call the storm?’ he asked. The tau had reached the gap in the wall. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a fierce smile. Come on, just a few steps farther, he thought.

‘The spirits of this world are dull-witted and the winds stubborn, but I think I can convince the snows to fall,’ Ambaghai said. Kor’sarro could hear the strain in the Stormseer’s voice, even through the fuzz of the static that afflicted the vox-channel thanks to the tau jamming frequencies. He was asking much of Ambaghai, but they needed any advantage they could get. When the assault failed, the tau would likely move straight to trying to tear the bastion apart around them. When that happened, they might have to move, Khwarezmian or no, and the snow would be as good a distraction as they could hope for.

‘Take your time,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘They owe us for Bok and Jochi. I would have them pay their debt soonest, and at once.’ The fire warriors had cleared the breach. If they noticed the way the rubble had been cleared, and situated, they gave no sign. Perhaps they saw but did not understand. Perhaps they understood, but came on regardless. Kor’sarro thought it was the latter, and bowed his head. Brave prey was the best prey. Then, he clasped Moonfang by its hilt and jerked the softly humming blade from the ground in a spray of snow and stone.

He glided forwards, palm flat on Moonfang’s pommel, the tip of the blade angled down. The tau had stopped, unprepared for an assault by a single warrior. Kor’sarro gave a bark of laughter. As if in slow motion, the pulse rifles swung towards him, and he heard the rough sibilants of the tau language crackle through the air. His laugh grew, spearing out ahead of him, like the shadow of a swooping eagle.

Alien fingers twitched on triggers, but slow, too slow. Moonfang’s pommel rolled beneath his palm and the blade arced up. His grip loosened and the blade scythed out. A fire warrior lost its head, and blood sprayed across the front of its comrades’ helmets. Kor’sarro was among them a moment later. Moonfang spun in his grip, and the machine-spirit within the power sword pulsed fiercely as it tasted xenos blood. He lopped off limbs and heads, shattered weapons and cracked armour.

Waste no movement, Kor’sarro thought. His elbow caught a fire warrior in the chest, crushing the delicate bones beneath the armour, as he pulled Moonfang across a throat. He whirled and chopped through the barrel of a pulse rifle. Do not bother with flourish or flair, concentrate on the principle, complete the canvas in as many strokes as it takes, no more, no less, he thought, leaning back as a short-barrelled pulse carbine cracked. He felt the heat of the shot as it hurtled past him and the world sped up as he hunched forwards, pivoted and drove Moonfang through the shooter’s chest hard enough to lift the tau off its feet and nail it to the wall. He jerked the blade free and stepped back, arms spread, xenos blood dripping from his armour and sword.

He gazed at the fire warrior teams that had stopped just before the wall. Their advance had faltered in the face of his attack on the first team through the breach. Arms still spread he stepped back, as if inviting them in to his tent. The snow had begun to fall more heavily, and the wind stirred what had already fallen, rousing it into undulating flurries. Kor’sarro smiled and lowered his arms. Ambaghai had done as promised. He planted Moonfang into the ground in front of him. He made a beckoning gesture and said, ‘Well, who’s next?’

Thursk shook his head as he watched Kor’sarro trot back behind cover, his path peppered with a fusillade from the advancing fire warriors. The khan had his sword resting on his shoulder, and paid no attention to the shots that sizzled through the air about him. A White Scar handed him a bolter and he nodded agreeably, sheathing his blade.

‘He’s mad,’ Thursk said, as he returned fire.

‘No, he is an artist,’ Ambaghai said. The Stormseer sat on the ground beside Thursk, his hands on his staff and his head bowed. His voice was tight with strain, and his eyes glowed with an eerie blue light. ‘A sculptor, who shapes violence the way the men of Qo-Chin shaped clay to make the fluted tea-bowls so prized by that folk.’ As he spoke, the snow flurries grew more savage, and the wind whipped through the courtyard with a shriek.

Thursk did not reply. He utilised the bolter with the precision that had been drilled into him during the stand at the Cathedral of the Emperor Ossified, one shot, one kill. Any more was waste, and in a situation like this, waste was as much an enemy as the one in front of you. The fire warriors moved swiftly, but they had nowhere to go. The White Scars had created a killing ground, and convinced the tau to walk obligingly into it. Nonetheless, the xenos seemed determined to make a fight of it.

Orks would have simply charged, and died in waves. But the tau warriors were smarter than that. The fire warrior teams leapfrogged past one another, first one team moving, and then the next, each one covering the other as best they could. More drones buzzed over them, absorbing some of the punishment meant for the fire warriors in a splash of crackling energy. Shield drones, Thursk realised.

Pulse bursts scarred the improvised barricade he crouched behind, but he ignored the dust and flinders of stone which spattered across his helmet. One of the White Scars was singing. Others took the song up, and the sound of it seemed to affect the tau as badly as the bolter shells that tore the life from their fellows. The fire warriors began to fall back, some attempting to drag their wounded with them. Thursk saw something out of the corner of his eye and slid around.

Burst cannon roared and the White Scar nearest him staggered. Thursk lunged to his feet, grabbed the wounded Space Marine and flung him to the ground behind him. Through the eddying snow, he saw the shape of a Stealth suit crouched on the strongpoint, cannon whirring, with smoke rising from the barrel. Two more suits raced across the tops of the strongpoints, seeking to cover the fire warriors’ retreat. They attacked and hopped away, seeking to divert rather than kill.

He swung his bolter up towards the one closest to him, and a gun drone smashed into him, knocking the weapon from his hand. Thursk’s other hand snapped out, snagging the drone. He yanked it in front of him as the burst cannon spat. The storm of projectiles chewed the drone to pieces and drew sparks from his armour, staggering him. He saw the other Stealth suits closing in. He’d made himself a target. He hurled the smoking, spitting drone at the closest one and leapt for his axe where he’d left it leaning against the strongpoint. He snatched it up as the burst cannon chewed the ground around him.

The wounded White Scar fired at the Stealth suit, drawing its attention. Thursk launched himself at it while it was distracted, and his axe sheared through the barrel of its weapon. It slashed at him with the ruined gun, and he ducked. As it made to leap out of range, he lunged and hooked it with his axe, hauling it forwards. The tau inside squalled as he wrapped his arm around the suit’s shoulders and drove it headfirst into the wall of the command centre as hard as he could. Metal buckled and the alien voice was stilled. He shoved the dead weight aside and rose, axe ready. The dead alien’s comrades had retreated, their jetpacks carrying them back to the wall and then over it. They had accomplished their task, however. The fire warriors had retreated back through the breach.

Thursk hauled the wounded White Scar to his feet and helped him walk to the command centre. The warrior grunted his thanks. Thursk set him down and rejoined the others outside.

‘They’ve tried the blade, now they’ll use the hammer,’ Kor’sarro said, his voice carrying clearly through the vox-channel. ‘Dig in, and ready yourselves for the storm. They’ll send in their assault troops as soon as the dust has cleared.’ The khan saw Thursk and gestured to him. ‘The Phobian is in command.’ He strode towards Thursk and knocked a knuckle against his aquila. ‘We’ve got some time. They’ll need to regroup, and Ambaghai’s snows will keep them at bay for a little while. I’m going to see if Old Shatterhand has done as he promised. Hold the line, brother.’

‘My khan,’ Thursk said. Kor’sarro nodded and entered the command centre. Thursk looked around at the watching White Scars and took a steadying breath. ‘Well, you heard him. Dig in. It’s still a long way yet until morning.’

Kor’sarro moved through the darkened base. The comm-bead in his ear sparked and spluttered, and he winced and tapped at it. The local frequencies were still being jammed. He needed to be in amongst his warriors for the vox to work. He’d left a Space Marine named Cholk in the command centre, in an attempt to boost the signal using a spare vox-unit. The White Scars had learned over the centuries of incessant warfare that specialisation was the enemy of effective battlefield operations. Or, so it was, at least, for their sort of operations. Every White Scar had to be an army in and of himself, capable of fixing his own bike, or seeing to his own hurts on the move. The Star-Hunt would not be slowed.

As such, the warriors under his command had picked up their fair share of skills. Cholk knew almost as much about long-range communication as one of the ordu’s own vox-specialists. He hadn’t been happy at being left out of the fight, but sacrifices had to be made for the successful prosecution of a hunt.

Kor’sarro smiled at the thought, but it faded as his nose caught the sharp tang of blood. His hand flew to the hilt of his sword as he stepped into the central chamber of the command centre. Cholk was dead, his armour ripped and torn, the black carapace visible, and the contact nodes exposed and bloody, as if he’d been caught in an explosion, his hand only bare centimetres from his bolter. The vox-unit was smashed. The hologram spun around and around, showing Rime Crag from every angle. He saw markers indicating what he thought were Cemakar and the others, moving along the ridge. More markers, ones he didn’t recognise, closed in, boxing the convoy in. The markers flared and faded.

‘Traps within traps,’ he muttered. It was an artful strategy, taken at a remove. He’d been baited in, and his fangs, claws and scales plucked from him piecemeal, shearing him of his weapons. And it was only part of a greater whole, he knew. That was what made it all so galling.

He’d come to Agrellan, convinced he was the hunter. Instead, he’d become the hunted, and Shadowsun was on his trail, chivvying him along to a point of her choosing. He looked around, senses strained to their utmost. He looked at the hologram again, and saw two markers that were similar. Something about them, about the colour and the crude slashes that designated them, prodded his memory. One marker was on the ridge, and involved in the affray around the convoy. The other was inside the bastion.

His thoughts crystallised. The base hadn’t been defended because it was a trap – that much was obvious. But there were obvious traps, and more subtle ones. The tau had expected them to hold, or to run, and had planned for either contingency. They knew that it would be difficult to pry the White Scars out, once they’d dug in, and difficult to slow down, once they’d begun to move, but why bother when your goal is the death of one, rather than many?

Metal creaked. Whatever had killed Cholk hadn’t been a tau. Too quiet, too vicious… he caught a whiff of an acrid, avian odour and grunted. Shadowsun wanted to bring him to heel, so she’d dispatched the best hunting dogs at her disposal to set their teeth in his legs. While the tau harried, distracted and disorientated, the true hunters struck out at their prey.

‘I hear you,’ he said, softly. ‘I smell you.’ He drew his blade slowly. They were all around him, though he hadn’t noticed them when he’d entered. They’d masked their odour somehow, or had been hiding elsewhere in the bastion. He frowned. He should have ordered a search of the bastion after all.

The first of the kroot came at him from the side. He caught sight of leathery muscles and rattling spines as it sprang for him from out of nowhere, seemingly appearing out of thin air. The kroot squalled as it chopped down at him. He intercepted the blow with Moonfang, and the alien’s crude weapon shattered. Before the creature could react, Kor’sarro brought the tip of the blade across its throat as he drew his bolt pistol. As the first kroot fell, he was already firing at the second, which slithered across the wall at him with reptilian speed. The second alien tumbled down, its skull burst by his first shot. But there were more. Blades scissored down, carving gouges in his armour as he whirled. The rubbery hides of the kroot swam with the colours of the command centre as they bled into view, coming at him from all directions, quills rattling. They carried only blades, likely hoping to avoid the attention of the bastion’s defenders. They crouched on the hologram dais, clung to the walls and stalked across the floor, croaking and clicking to one another in their debased beast-tongue. Kor’sarro smiled and stepped back, arms spread. ‘Come then, beasts. Come to the huntsman.’

The kroot swarmed forward. Kor’sarro backhanded one with his pistol, and fangs broke and flew as the beast’s avian head snapped backwards. He blocked a knife that dug for his gut, and chopped through an exposed neck with Moonfang. Alien blood splashed across the consoles as he pivoted, slashed and spun. His attackers did not retreat, leaping on him with harsh cries. They seemed eager to claim the gift of death, and Kor’sarro could not bring himself to deny them.

As he fought, he marvelled at the complexity of the snare that he had found himself in. Shadowsun had laid traps within traps within traps, paring his forces down, peeling away his weapons and defences, like a hunter isolating a lone bovid from its herd. But there was something he was still missing. So he fought, and in the fighting, found understanding. The answer, when it crystallised, made him laugh out loud. He brought Moonfang down on the skull of the last of the kroot, killing the alien warrior instantly. Then, without a spare glance for the bloody wreckage he left behind him, he strode out of the command centre.

Shadowsun was here. For all her cunning, for all her skill, she was still a huntress. And no hunter, however skilled or canny, could resist being in at the kill. Kor’sarro smiled. The night was not yet done, and he had an oath to fulfil.

‘I hear you huntress, I hear the sound of your horn. And Kor’sarro Khan is coming!’

CHAPTER FOUR

Jebe rolled onto his face and pushed himself to his knees. His armour was covered in scorch marks and dull grey patches where the colour had been stripped from it by his fall down the slope. He had held onto his sword, despite everything. That was some comfort, though not as much as he’d hoped. The explosion that had consumed the Whirlwind had hurled him down the slope, and he felt every metre of that journey in his limbs and skull.

Snow spun in lazy circles about him, and smoke boiled down off Rime Crag. He used his sword to lever himself to his feet. His power armour had absorbed the brunt of the Whirlwind’s demise, but the flesh of his face felt raw, and there was blood on his gorget. The air tasted foul as well, and for a moment, he found himself wishing that he’d worn his helmet.

Angrily, he pushed the thought aside. His khan did not wear one, so the champion would not. That was the way of it. He was the khan’s will, the company’s will, made manifest. Above him, he heard the whine of servos and pistons, and saw the massive outline of the alien battlesuit move through the smoke and the flames. He could hear the dull boom of bolter fire. Someone was still alive up there, and fighting.

Somewhere below him, snow crunched. Jebe turned. Lightly armoured tau warriors were moving up the slope towards him. Pathfinders, was what the Imperial briefing had called them. He hadn’t been listening closely. Jebe didn’t see much point in naming something that had been as good as dead the moment it set foot on an Imperial world. The red beams of several markerlights played across his battered armour, and he grimaced. His hand darted for the bolt pistol holstered on his hip, only to find the holster empty, and tattered from the explosion. He didn’t waste his breath on a curse. Instead, he whirled and sprinted up the slope. Behind him, the night was lit up with pulse bursts. They struck the slope all around him as he pushed his battered body to its limits. If he could reach the ridge, the smoke and flame would guard him from being shot down like a dog.

And he’d get to fight something worthy of his blade. His eyes locked on the bulk of the alien battlesuit as it stalked through the smoke and snow. That was prey worthy of the champion of the Third. The smoke enfolded him like a mother’s arms.

The ridge was covered in debris. Flames rippled through the air, streaking the night. He could smell spilled blood and oil. Broad shapes flickered eerily through the smoke, like hunting beasts following a scent. They were moving in pursuit of three of his brothers, one of whom was being dragged or carried between them. They fired at their pursuers, but between the snow, the smoke and the shimmering camouflage of the latter, their shots went wild. Jebe lifted his blade to his lips and kissed it lightly. Then he began to hunt the hunters.

They had no idea he was there. They were too intent on the limping, straggling figures ahead of them. When he struck them, it was without warning, and with every ounce of speed he could muster. His sword chopped into metal as his boot snapped out and up, catching a second xenos in the chest. Armour buckled as the alien fell, and Jebe tore his sword free, sending it slashing out to catch a third hunter in the shoulder. He ducked under the latter’s burst cannon as it flailed out at him, and grabbed it as he bobbed to his feet. He reversed his sword and slid it into the hunter’s chest as the burst cannon began to fire. He jerked the body around, so that the fusillade caught the remaining hunters.

As the last of them sank down, wreathed in smoke, he ripped his sword free and let the body fall. He looked at his brothers. There were three of them, one supported between the other two. ‘Running like whipped curs, brothers? Is that how the warriors of the Star-Hunt act?’

‘It is when we’re the ones being hunted,’ one of the Space Marines said matter-of-factly. ‘We were regrouping, with haste.’ He had lost his helmet, and the scars on his face stood out against his soot-blackened flesh, as did the gleaming metal campaign studs that lined the side of his skull. He carried a power glaive loosely in his free hand, and by its condition, it had seen much use.

‘We do not need to regroup,’ Jebe said. ‘The Khagan once said, “Be the centre of every engagement, and victory will come on wings of smoke and wind.”’

‘We were being the centre,’ the other White Scar said. He jerked his head in the direction they’d been going. He carried a battered bolter, its sling wrapped tight around his forearm. Polished bones and golden bells dangled from cords threaded through holes punched in his gorget. ‘We were just going to be it over there, behind cover.’

Jebe made to argue the point, when an energy burst skidded across his shoulder plate. He whirled about and saw the pathfinders approaching through the flames and smoke. The heavy shape of a large, cylindrical drone floated above them, its weapons oscillating. He looked back at the others. ‘Over there, you say?’

Cemakar bit back a groan as Tolui pried the fang of burned metal out of his belly. Blood pumped around the wound and then quickly began to coagulate. Cemakar resisted the urge to touch it and said, ‘How bad, boy?’

‘Remember when that genestealer bit you?’

‘Vividly,’ Cemakar said. They were hunkered behind a section of wreckage from the Razorback. Tolui had managed to angle the vehicle at the last moment so that the blast had struck its side, rather than its front, sparing them the worst of it. Even so, the blast had been strong enough to tear the Razorback apart and knock what was left off the ridge and down the slope. Flames crackled nearby, and the falling snow turned to steam before it reached the ground thanks to the heat radiating from the wreckage.

‘Worse than that,’ Tolui said. ‘Do you feel like you’re dying?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Cemakar said. He levered himself up onto his elbows. ‘How many survived?’ He could hear bolter fire above them, and the comm-bead in his ear crackled. Someone was still fighting. That meant they had a chance, however slight.

‘Enough to make them wish they’d killed us all, first pass,’ Tolui said. His helm was dented and scorched free of paint, and one of his eye-lenses was cracked. From the smell, Cemakar suspected that the helmet had been melted to his driver’s face. Tolui gave no sign that he was in pain, and Cemakar decided not to ask. Tolui had never been what one could call attractive anyway. ‘I salvaged the portable vox-unit.’ He hefted the boxy communications pack.

‘Good. Keep at it,’ Cemakar grunted, as he grabbed hold of the smouldering wreckage and began to pull himself to his feet. Pain rippled through him, but he pushed it down. Pain was just a reminder that he still had a job to do. When it stopped, well, that was when it stopped mattering. ‘I’ll buy you what grace I can.’

Tolui grabbed him. ‘Given that my legs still work, what say I lead the dance old man?’

‘My legs still work,’ Cemakar spat. ‘Besides, I hate those things. I can never get them to work.’ He gestured plaintively. ‘Give me a bolter, or a knife or… something. Anything,’ he said. He tasted blood and hawked a gobbet of something dark onto the ground. Tolui handed him the vox-unit. Cemakar sighed and slid back down. ‘Fine,’ he grunted. He glared at Tolui. ‘If I survive this, I’ll have your skull mounted on my bike.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ Tolui said. He rose into a crouch. ‘I’ll be back directly.’

‘Take your time,’ Cemakar said. ‘I’ll just beat any enemies who come along to death with this hunk of uselessness.’ He patted the vox-unit.

He watched Tolui creep through the smoke and then looked at the vox-unit. It squawked at him and he grimaced. ‘Where are you Khwarezmian? Never around when your brothers need you,’ he growled. He fumbled with the device, trying to pick up a frequency. They were still being jammed. The tau had done a good job. He leaned his head back, his mind suddenly awash with pain. Space Marines were built to die slowly, by increments, rather than all at once. It was unseemly to go too quickly into the howling dark.

After all, if you died too quickly, the tech-brothers couldn’t cram you into one of their boxes. He shuddered slightly, thinking of the Ghost Warriors. Being interred in the sarcophagus of a Dreadnought was at once a high honour, reserved for only the mightiest warriors, and a fate that no White Scar would wish on a brother of the ordu. To never feel the wind or the thrum of engines again was a horrifying thing.

He looked around him, taking in the wreckage. A wave of sadness washed over him. As an aspirant, he had hoped to be called to the harness and hydraulics of the tech-brothers, to commune with the machine-spirits. Instead, he had taken another path. But in his twilight, he had been allowed to move as he wished, and he had become a master of tanks. The purr of the great engines had been his balm and as welcome as the voices of old friends. He had ridden with them into battle after battle; they were as close to him as any hunt-brother. He touched a chunk of twisted metal.

‘I am sorry, my friend,’ he muttered. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them, a shadow had fallen over him. He looked up. The battlesuit loomed over him, like death incarnate, stinking of spilled fuel and burning metal. How had it got so close without him hearing it? The lens in the centre of its square head whirred and clicked as it focused on him. Cemakar eyed it, and hefted the vox-unit in a considering fashion. Then, with a grunt, he tossed the device aside. He looked up at the battlesuit. ‘Well? I haven’t got all day,’ he said.

The battlesuit raised the cannon-like weapon that occupied its left arm, and he heard the sound of it cycling up to fire. He spat again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He waited. The construct hesitated, as if listening to some voice only it could hear. It began to lower its weapon. A chill coursed through Cemakar’s heart as he caught sight of the slowly advancing tau warriors moving towards him from below, weapons at the ready. Not death, then, but captivity. ‘Oh, that won’t do,’ he muttered, marshalling what remained of his strength. For a White Scar, captivity might as well have been death. If you couldn’t get free, you died in the attempt. He began to push himself to his feet. The tau paused, startled by his sudden movement.

‘Yes, that’s right, I can stand,’ he said, conversationally. His words carried easily through the cold air. ‘No weapons to speak of, and I can taste death at the back of my throat, but I still stand. I still live.’ He flexed his hands. Beneath his gauntlets, his knuckles popped. He looked up at the battlesuit. ‘There’s a saying, on Chogoris… keep a dying tiger at lance’s length.’ He grinned. ‘You got too close.’ Cemakar leapt, hands outstretched. The battlesuit reacted predictably. It swept out one massive arm and swatted him from the air, as he’d expected. He was sent tumbling down the slope. Things ground together within him. He caught hold of the earth, digging his fingers in deep, and halted his slide. Everything hurt. But better a quick pain than the long agony of captivity.

He shoved himself up. ‘Once… or twice more… I think,’ he coughed, blood speckling his beard and moustaches. ‘No more than that. I’m an old man, after all.’ He staggered towards the tau, balling his hands into fists. He chuckled, as targeting lights squirmed across his torso. ‘Call the tune, fishbellies. I haven’t got all day.’ Snow swirled around him, momentarily obscuring the enemy. His wounds had opened again, and he could feel blood filling the crannies and crevices of his armour. This is a good death, he thought. He had always suspected he would die amongst the burning ruins of his beloved battle tanks.

He had always hoped to die thus.

The snow cleared.

The enemy had not moved. But a new element had been added to the tableau. Jebe crouched on the wreckage, a bandolier of grenades dangling from one hand, and his sword in the other. The champion leapt onto the battlesuit, and swung the bandolier about its head, activating the grenades as he sprang to the ground. He was in amongst the tau a moment later, his first blow shearing through a large drone, and his next dispatching a tau. Jebe moved with the wind, and the edge of his blade was the curve of a crimson whirlwind.

The grenades exploded and the battlesuit teetered, smoke boiling from its orifices. Jebe ignored it, concentrating on the tau. His sword swept out. There was a brutal poetry to Jebe’s war dance, a sinuous music that was made known in the rasp of steel on flesh, in the crackle of the sword’s powercell, in the dull thunder of explosions and the screams of the dying. In the moment between sword strokes, Jebe was the truest heir to the legacy of the Great Khan, and the Star-Hunt personified. No movement was wasted, no wrong step taken. Every gesture was lethal. The air was filled with the foul blood of the xenos, and they died one by one, barely able to register the strikes which punctured their chests or removed limbs.

Jebe ceased his dance abruptly. Tau fell all around him, dead or dying. He moved towards Cemakar, as the latter sank to his knees, one hand on his side. ‘Easy, old man,’ Jebe said. ‘You will not die this day.’

‘Oh, will I not?’ Cemakar croaked, ‘What a shame. I was looking forward to the rest.’ He gestured. ‘The big one is still on its feet.’

A missile snarled out of the snow and struck the reeling battlesuit. It toppled backwards with all the grace of a felled tree. The slope shook beneath the impact. Jebe sniffed. ‘No, it’s not.’ He hooked Cemakar’s arm and guided him to his feet.

Behind him, Cemakar saw Tolui and two others loping forwards, cradling weapons scavenged from the wreckage. One of the newcomers had an obviously wounded battle-brother slung over his shoulder. Tolui cradled a missile launcher that had seen better centuries. ‘Found them,’ he said. He held up the missile launcher. ‘And this,’ he added.

‘So I see,’ Cemakar grunted. He looked at Tolui. ‘Hasik,’ he said.

‘No sign of him or his riders,’ Tolui said. ‘They must have got through.’

‘Or they’re dead,’ Jebe said.

An ear-splitting whine pierced the air, interrupting any reply Cemakar might have made. A second battlesuit crashed to the ground near the wreck of the first, and unleashed a burst of fire from its cannon. Cemakar shoved Jebe aside and the barrage struck the section of wreckage behind them, sending it pinwheeling. The White Scars scrambled for cover, firing their weapons. Bolters roared, and the battlesuit advanced towards them through the storm of explosive shells, as if they were no more substantial than the falling snow. The shield on its left arm sparked and shimmered as it absorbed the incoming fire.

It pursued them up the slope, driving them before it. Its burst cannon became a blur of death, filling the air with lethal hornets of explosive energy. Jebe’s sword sparked and rang as he blocked several of the shots, and was knocked back several steps for his pains. Cemakar coughed and clawed his way up the slope.

Things were no better on higher ground. Tolui and the others had taken cover amongst the burning wreckage on the ridge. The gutted hulk of the Yesugei’s Teeth and the Rhino that had been the cause of its demise formed a makeshift bulwark. Jebe was the last up the slope. The battlesuit followed them slowly, apparently content to herd them back. Another battlesuit appeared at the other side of the ridge.

‘Form up, brothers,’ Jebe said. ‘Stockade formation, prepare to repel assault,’ he added. He took a bolt pistol from one of the others and shoved it into Cemakar’s hands. ‘You as well, old man,’ he said.

Cemakar checked the clip and looked around. The broad shapes of more hunters, armour shimmering and fading out of sight, trudged forwards through the snow. The two battlesuits waited, watching the White Scars with the patience of well-fed predators. They’d beaten the other by catching it off guard. These two were ready, and surrounded by more shield drones. And advancing up the slope were more pathfinders, more drones, and more vehicles. The swiftest forces the xenos had at their disposal were pitted against the riders of Chogoris.

‘Keep the army together, I said,’ he said. ‘Don’t go haring off after ghosts, I said. But do they listen? Ha! Do they? Of course they don’t. Who listens to the old man? Nobody, that’s who,’ he growled.

‘What are you gnashing your teeth about, old man?’ Jebe muttered, not taking his eyes off the enemy.

‘The lack of wisdom amongst my peers,’ Cemakar grunted.

‘What?’

‘I said, I wonder what they’re waiting for,’ he said. ‘We’re outnumbered, exposed and bloodied. Why haven’t they killed us?’

Jebe glanced at him. The champion made to reply, when the sudden roar of a jet pack washed over them, and a white-armoured form, slimmer and smaller than the other battlesuits, landed on the ridge with a thump. Two shield drones swept around it, and it bore two fusion blasters, one in each hand. Cemakar grunted. He recognised the battlesuit easily enough from the briefings they’d been given before making planetfall. It was Shadowsun herself, come to watch her enemies die in person.

‘Offhand, old man, I’d say that’s why,’ Jebe said grimly.

The bastion shook, down to its foundations. The ridge trembled with the thunder of alien weaponry. Superheated plasma seared through the cold air, and tore great, smoking craters in the crumbling outer wall. Snow and shale from the upper reaches of the ridge crashed down, filling the courtyard with an icy mist. Ambaghai’s snow had proven effective for a few minutes, giving the White Scars a moment’s respite, but the tau gunners had compensated more quickly than the White Scars had anticipated.

The White Scars hunkered behind their improvised barricades as the pounding went on and on. One or two of the Space Marines had been hurt, but the barrage wasn’t meant to kill them so much as it was meant to keep them from attacking the tau as they readied themselves for their next assault. Thursk crouched, ready to rise as soon as the thunder ceased. Through the ceramite of his gauntlet, he could feel the ground shiver beneath a heavy tread. ‘Here they come,’ he said. He looked over at where Ambaghai, the Stormseer, sat, head bowed. Manipulating the winds and snows had taken more out of him than he’d admitted.

‘Are you ready, Stormseer?’ Thursk said, softly.

‘Is anyone ever ready? To wait for readiness is to never move. One can only prepare and seize the moment when it presents itself,’ Ambaghai said, with a tired smile.

‘Is that a yes?’ Thursk said.

‘It’s as close as you’re getting, cousin,’ Ambaghai said.

‘Good enough,’ Thursk murmured. A moment later, the outer wall shattered like dropped porcelain. Through the smoke and dust of the explosion, heavy shapes plunged into the courtyard, weapons screaming.

A White Scar near Thursk was erased from sight by a blast that eradicated the section of rubble he crouched behind. ‘Take them,’ he roared, rising to his feet. He grabbed the top of the strongpoint and threw himself over, axe in hand. Fully half of the remaining White Scars followed him, blades in hand. Some wielded power glaives, or swords, but all were armed with hand weapons, rather than bolters. They had ammunition to spare, but the shield drones that accompanied the newcomers would simply soak it up.

Behind them, the rest of the White Scars opened up with everything they had, distracting the drones, as he’d hoped they would. The enemy constructs were annoying, but dumb. They moved to block the incoming fire, and their shield snapped and sparked, lighting up the gloom of the early morning hours. That left only the trio of battlesuits. They were forming the spear-point of a second assault. The xenos were counting on the suits to tear through the Space Marines with the same ease they’d displayed in ripping apart the wall. And, under different circumstances, they might have done so.

But Thursk had fought orks and their war machines, and he knew that the power of such a spear was easily blunted and diverted if you kept your head and didn’t let the size, speed or likelihood of your impending messy demise distract you from it. Admittedly, this was harder than it sounded, but if there was one area where the Dark Hunters excelled, it was in killing things that were bigger, louder and stronger than them.

On Phobian, the Sahrmatae people who roamed the moonlit plains of the night-world fought in silence, for to cry out, even in pain, was to attract the attention of the great bats that hunted the skies on silent wings. Normally, the Nokyros preyed on the herds of pale, cannibal horses which roamed the basin plains, but they’d eat a man just as happily, so hunting parties were often formed to clean out those roosts that were too close to human habitation. The Dark Hunters took their name from the beasts, and their tactics, swift, silent and merciless, from the people who hunted them.

Thursk had only ever seen the bats up close once, and that was when he’d been an aspirant, and sent into the black caverns below Phobian’s surface with his squad to baptise their axes in the blood of one of the great, savage beasts. That bat, monstrous as it had been, had not worried him as much as the alien battlesuit now loping smoothly towards him. The ground shuddered beneath his feet as it drew close. He set himself, and waited. Breathe, wait, strike, he thought. The words had been drilled into his head as an aspirant. Haste is the enemy of the axe-man. Strike sure, strike hard, strike again, he thought. The battlesuit closed in, blade snapping out. The air sizzled as it drove towards him. He lunged beneath the blow, augmented muscle propelling him forwards smoothly and swiftly. His axe flashed, chopping through piston and cabling.

The battlesuit lumbered past, wheezing and hissing. Smoke boiled out from the point he’d caught with his blow. The battlesuit swung about, eye-piece oscillating and whirring. Its gun swung up, humming. Thursk sprinted towards the wall. Blasts pursued him, ripping up the ground beneath his feet. He leapt. The soles of his boots struck the wall, and he pushed himself off. He flew over the top of the battlesuit as it tried to track him, still firing. His hand snapped out and caught hold of one of the armoured plates that protected the top of the construct. He twisted himself around, driving his boots into the back of the battlesuit. Then, rearing up over the top of it, he let his axe fall, shearing off the square head of the suit.

The head fell to the ground in a flurry of sparks, and he looked down into the pilot-pod, where a blue face, twisted in an alien approximation of surprise, stared up at him. Flipping his axe around, he smashed the haft down on the upraised face, pulping it like rotten fruit. He leapt to the ground as a second suit exploded. The force of the explosion nearly knocked him from his feet, and it was only that half-second without balance that saved him from the energy burst that would have taken his head off. The third suit fought on with a relentlessness that Thursk could have admired had it not been trying to kill him.

The battlesuit shrugged off the White Scars who sought to bring it down, trampling one. Its three-toed foot came down with a crunch on the unfortunate warrior’s head, bursting it like a dropped melon, helmet and all. A power glaive sizzled as it left a scar on the battlesuit’s hull. The battlesuit spun, backhanding the White Scar hard enough to flip him head over heels into the air. The tau swung around, the fusion blaster boiling the air as it fired. Thursk threw himself out of the path of the deadly weapon. He hit the ground and rolled to his feet. Axe in both hands, he launched himself at the xenos, charging towards it.

The pilot of the battlesuit was quicker to react than his comrades. He stepped aside as he swatted Thursk in the back. The blow drove the latter headfirst into a strongpoint. Head pounding, the Dark Hunter tried to stand. His vision blurred. The air hummed as more battlesuits dropped down into the courtyard. The first three had been the tip. The rest were there to make sure it struck home. Thursk groped for his axe.

‘Ambaghai, I need you ready,’ he croaked, pushing himself to his feet. The battlesuit that had struck him loomed over him, weapon glowing. It fired as he dived between its legs. Smoke and heat washed over him. His power armour felt as if it were responding sluggishly. Something in it might have been damaged. Or maybe it was him. He scrambled to his feet. The battlesuit grabbed his head in a grip that would have crushed his skull had he not been wearing his helmet. It hefted him, and he pounded at its arm helplessly. The metal of his helm began to buckle, and metal cut into his scalp. His eye-lenses burst, peppering his face with photosensitive plastics. The world went red at the edges, and then dark.

Metal shrieked and he fell to the ground. He tore the limp fingers of the severed claw from his head and saw Kor’sarro Khan spring past him. The Master of the Hunt looked as if he had swum through an ocean of alien blood, but he was laughing as he cut the battlesuit’s leg out from under it with one swipe of his power sword, and spun with the blow so that he was facing Thursk. ‘Well done, cousin,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘But the time for the Dark Hunters way has passed, I think. Now, now it is time for the Star-Hunt to ride.’

Behind Kor’sarro, the battlesuit toppled over. His White Scars lunged forward, like hounds at the kill. The Dark Hunter tore off his damaged helmet, revealing the pale features and dark scalplock of his people. Scars marked his cheeks. Not the ritualistic slashes of the White Scars, but the crude marks of close-fighting. ‘I think the tau would argue that point, my khan,’ Thursk said.

Kor’sarro turned. The newly arrived battlesuits moved forward, weapons flaring and roaring, sending White Scars scrambling for cover. He moved, still smiling, to face them. They had held their position long enough. He knew his enemy’s mind now, and that alone was worth the inconvenience and indignity of the trap he’d been led into. ‘Stormseer,’ he said, not loudly. His words carried regardless, and he knew Ambaghai had heard him.

‘My khan,’ Ambaghai said. He stepped out from behind the strongpoint, his staff hugged to his chest. He took a deep breath, and the air was suddenly charged with electricity. ‘Command me, my khan.’ Kor’sarro could hear the faint hint of exhaustion playing about the edge of the Stormseer’s words.

‘Shake the heavens and scour the earth,’ Kor’sarro said. He swept Moonfang through the air. ‘Show them the power of our storm.’

‘Gladly,’ Ambaghai growled. He raised his staff, and the air contracted about the ancient relic. It was said that the staves gifted to those brothers who showed an affinity for the ghost-road were first set into the high plateaus of Chogoris, and kissed by the storms, which imparted to them some of their elemental strength. He could feel that strength now, surging around them, coalescing at Ambaghai’s silent call. Every White Scar left felt it as well. It quickened the pulse of their blood and awoke in them the ancient fury that had carried their ancestors from one side of Chogoris to the other, carrying fire and steel to every corner of that wide world. Theirs had always been the way of the storm, the sudden darkness, the crash of thunder, the slash of lightning, the crush of wild snows and heavy rains.

Ambaghai’s necklace of teeth and bells and storm-stones rattled as the air grew wet and thick about him. Lightning crawled across the ruined bastion and crept over what was left of the wall in crackling rivulets. It sparked and coiled about the battlesuits, which had ceased their advance. Kor’sarro knew that the pilots of the large constructs were likely beginning to panic as the storm interfered with their suits’ systems, and prevented them from attacking or retreating. The tau outside would be seeing the same interference. More than once, he had used Ambaghai’s affinity for lightning to befuddle their enemy on Agrellan. It wouldn’t last long, but the White Scars would make good use of the time the Stormseer had bought them.

Ambaghai was wreathed in lightning. It caressed his power armour like a lover, and clutched at his staff. It was only by dint of their long comradeship that Kor’sarro could detect the faint tremble in the Stormseer’s arms. Calling the storm was no conjurer’s trick. It required an iron will, and a mind sheathed in steel. Ambaghai sucked in a deeper breath, and he seemed to swell for a moment. Then, with a roar like one of the ancient stone-barrelled cannons of Quan-Jo, he slammed the butt of his staff down, and released the gathered lightning.

One by one, each of the battlesuits was caught in the storm’s talons, and began to twitch and shudder, as small explosions coursed through them. The lightning swept over the Space Marines and pulsed out into their enemies beyond the walls, burning the drifts of snow to steam in its passing. The battlesuits, scorched black and gutted, had slumped, and were already being covered by the snow which had been stirred by Ambaghai’s wrath.

The Stormseer sank down the length of his staff, sweat dripping from his features. Kor’sarro sheathed his blade and caught Ambaghai as he slumped. ‘Easy, seer, summon your strength, for we have a hard ride ahead of us, and no time for rest.’ He propelled the Stormseer towards Thursk. ‘Catch him, cousin,’ Kor’sarro said. He turned towards the others. ‘What are you staring for? The wind calls us. To your bikes, brothers. Our enemy thinks us trapped. She thinks us beaten and broken on the anvil of her cunning. But you cannot hammer smoke, and you cannot trap the lightning.’ He flung out a hand. ‘To your bikes! We shall show our foe the true way of war, our way!’

Thus invigorated, the White Scars raced to their bikes. Thursk hesitated. Kor’sarro met his gaze. ‘You know how to ride?’

‘The White Scars are not the only Chapter that use bikes, my khan,’ the Dark Hunter said. ‘What of those who cannot ride?’ he asked.

Kor’sarro hesitated, his eagerness dimming. There were more white-armoured bodies lying in the snow than he’d wanted to admit. Not all of them were dead. He was saved from having to reply by Godi. The battle-brother still carried his heavy bolter, despite the wound which marked him. A blast from one of the battlesuits had ripped one of the shoulder plates from his power armour, and torn the latter open, so that sharp protrusions of metal jutted from his blistered and burned torso and arm. His breathing was ragged, and the difficulty he was having just speaking was obvious. ‘We die, Dark Hunter,’ Godi croaked. ‘Aye and gladly, for what good are we, if we cannot ride,’ he said. It wasn’t a question.

‘We will return,’ Kor’sarro said, laying a hand on Godi’s unwounded arm. ‘Dead or alive, I will come back for you, hunt-brother, with the full might of the Third Minghan at my back.’

‘As you say, my khan,’ Godi said. ‘Hopefully, it’ll be the latter. Your swiftness would be appreciated.’ He patted the heavy bolter. ‘I’m almost out of ammunition.’

Kor’sarro had meant what he said. He would come back, if only to collect the gene-seed of the fallen. Joking aside, Godi knew as well as he that the likelihood of survival for those staying behind was slim to none. Wounded, low on ammunition and too far behind enemy lines for easy extraction. They would be forgotten, until the war was won or lost.

Of the wounded, there were only a few who couldn’t ride, or otherwise had volunteered to stay behind. Godi and another hefted the heavy bolters, and the others who could walk were ready to cover their fellows. Those who couldn’t move were carried to the gaps in the wall, with as much ammunition as could be spared.

The bikes that had no riders were stripped and laid to rest as if they were dead warriors. It pained the White Scars to do so, for each was, if not a relic, then as much a brother of the ordu as their fellow Space Marines. But even as their ancestors had slaughtered horses which could not be ridden, so would they disable what they could not take with them. Nothing of the Chapter could fall into the hands of the enemy. That included the weapons they had stored in the bastion. As he mounted his bike, Kor’sarro clasped Godi’s hand. ‘You know what to do?’ he said.

‘If I live long enough, I’m to blow this cursed place off the ridge,’ Godi grunted. Blood ran freely down his armour, plopping onto the ground. ‘Deny the enemy our dead.’

Kor’sarro nodded shallowly. ‘Only if it becomes necessary,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry, my khan. Self-immolation isn’t high on my list of preferred activities, even in good cause,’ Godi rasped. ‘Besides, it’s entirely likely that they’ll kill us before we get the chance.’

Kor’sarro sat back as his steed growled beneath him. The bike had been still for too long. It yearned to ride, to hurtle forwards. He didn’t look at Godi. ‘I’m sorry, brother,’ he said, softly. ‘I led you into death.’

Godi shrugged. ‘And so,’ he said. ‘At least it wasn’t boring.’

Kor’sarro nodded and smiled. ‘No, never that,’ he said. Then, with a shout, he gunned the bike’s engine. Wheels skidded and he shot towards the largest gap in the wall. His riders fell in behind him, filling the air with noise. The bolters mounted on the chassis of each bike snarled a hymn of war as they followed him beyond the wall.

Only a few minutes had passed since Ambaghai had set the lightning on their enemy. The tau troops were unprepared for the sudden attack. Fire warriors tried to form up around the lightning-addled vehicles, and their impromptu phalanxes were shattered by the hurtling bikes. Kor’sarro didn’t even bother to draw his sword. He extended an arm as he raced past, catching a tau in the neck, and flipping the alien into the air. Godi had followed them out through the wall, and the roar of his heavy bolter, as well as the weapons of the others, followed them as they raced through the ring of xenos steel that had surrounded the bastion.

The ridge trail was blocked by one of the smooth-bodied transports. Kor’sarro urged his steed up and the bike’s wheels bit into the mottled plates of the vehicle as he rode up over it. His riders followed, shooting and shouting. He steadfastly resisted the urge to look back. ‘Onward,’ he roared, ‘for the glory of the ordu, and for the khan and the Khan of Khans!’

CHAPTER FIVE

A burst of gibberish erupted from the newcomer, but smoothed out into a stream of heavily accented Gothic. ‘Surrender, Khan Kor’sarro, and you shall be spared,’ the tau said. There was no trace of a sneer in the demand, which only made it worse.

Cemakar blinked. Then he laughed. Jebe looked at him. ‘She thinks you’re the khan, boy,’ Cemakar said, in Khorchin. A faint look of satisfaction passed fleetingly across the champion’s face. Then he spat a curse and tossed his blade from hand-to-hand.

‘She insults us,’ he said.

‘We probably all look alike to them,’ Cemakar said. He chuckled weakly. ‘He was right, though. Eagles pick his bones, he was right. She was here, waiting for him. She thought he’d make a break for it, once he realised it was a trap.’ Jebe stared at him, comprehension slowly dawning on his burned features. Cemakar waved his hand. ‘Well, go on boy, reply to her. Don’t let her realise she’s made a mistake, whatever you do. She wants the khan. Give her the khan.’

Jebe nodded sharply, his eye alight with understanding. In that moment, Cemakar was proud of him. Jebe was headstrong, and as dumb as hammer-addled auroch, but no one could fault his courage. He’d have walked backwards into the Eye of Terror if Kor’sarro had asked it of him.

Shadowsun repeated her question. ‘Captivity is not the same as mercy,’ Jebe said, barking out his reply in stilted Gothic.

The tau cocked her head, as if trying to parse his accent. Then she said, ‘If you do not surrender, your men will die.’

‘All men die,’ Jebe said.

‘Yes, but preferably somewhere else,’ Tolui muttered. Cemakar laughed, though it hurt him to do so. He pushed himself up and looked around. They were surrounded. ‘This song sounds familiar,’ Tolui said.

Cemakar nodded. ‘I’m growing tired of the tune myself,’ he said. Ever since they had left Agrellan Prime, it had been one trap after another. The khamar were too tricky by half. ‘On the whole, I’d rather be fighting orks. I– Oh nine devils take him!’ he coughed as Jebe, provoked beyond all reason by Shadowsun’s insistence on surrender, had made his final thoughts on the matter known as, with a roar, he flung himself at her, his sword slicing towards her neck. ‘When I said give her the khan I didn’t mean attack.’

The white-armoured warrior moved with a sinuous grace that contrasted with the bulky battlesuit she wore. Jebe was hard-pressed to keep up, and his blade bit only air as he attacked. The tau’s form flickered and blinked in and out of sight. He spun and whirled, trying to catch his opponent as she circled him. Every time his blade came close, one of the drones that accompanied her intercepted the blow.

Jebe snarled in fury as his sword rebounded off a drone’s shimmering shield for the fifth time in as many moments. As he readjusted, his opponent smashed into him from the side, staggering him. Cemakar winced. He glanced over and saw Tolui taking aim with his bolter. ‘Don’t even think it. It’s a waste of a shot and he won’t thank you. Keep your eyes on the others,’ he said. He levered himself up. ‘That goes for all of you. When they’ve had their fun, that’ll be the end of it, so you’d have best made your peace.’

Jebe whipped around, blade singing a deadly song. Shadowsun leapt straight up and skimmed back across the unsettled snows. She levelled the twin fusion blasters she carried and fired. Jebe flung himself aside. Even so, he only just managed to avoid the scalding blasts. He rolled through the snow, smoke rising from the patch of slagged ceramite on his side and hip. His power armour’s inner working was untouched, but the outer plates had been melted and warped. Cemakar knew that a single direct hit would end the other’s career as company champion, regardless of how tough he was.

Jebe recovered quickly enough, and shot forward. Shadowsun slid away, instinctively avoiding a slash that never came. Instead, Jebe stabbed at her. The point of his blade struck her armour again and again, carving deep ruts in the previously untouched surface. Shadowsun staggered with every blow, but she didn’t fall. Her fusion blasters slammed together, pinning Jebe’s blade between them. Shadowsun jerked him forwards, and smashed an armoured boot into the champion’s midsection. Jebe staggered back, without his weapon.

Shadowsun tossed it aside. She took aim at him, and he tensed, ready to dive at her regardless. Then she raised her arm. One of the Riptides lunged forwards and swatted Jebe to the ground with bone-rattling finality. Cemakar sighed. At least the khan wouldn’t have to suffer the ignominy of being captured. Maybe he escaped, he thought. The thought cheered him somewhat. In the end, glory and honour were as nothing to freedom. Chains by any other name, they meant little to sons of Jaghatai. If by trick and by blood they could buy an extra moment for their khan, that was the way of it. ‘Laugh while you kill, brothers. And laugh loud, so our brothers can hear us, and know what fun they’re missing,’ he said. He rose unsteadily to his feet. The world swam about him.

‘I don’t think we need to laugh all that loud,’ Tolui said, ‘listen!’

Cemakar turned. He’d heard the sound for some time, but had assumed it was coming from the tau. But now that he focused on it, he knew that no khamar engine had ever sounded so boisterous. His seamed face split in a smile. ‘I guess he survived after all.’ He pivoted and snapped off a shot at Shadowsun. ‘Well brothers – let’s light their way for them, shall we?’

Tolui gave a bark of laughter and began to fire as well. Soon, the entire knot of survivors was blazing away in all directions. The tau seemed taken aback by the apparent madness of their enemy, and it was long moments before they began to return fire.

Cemakar cackled happily as he fired. That would have been a good death, he thought, but this one will be much better.

Bikes roared through the snow, shoving aside the curtains of smoke with the force of their passage. The shattered remnants of Cemakar’s forces littered Rime Crag, but the bark of bolter fire said that there were survivors yet. Kor’sarro hunched forward over his bike’s handlebars, as if to wring more speed from its shrieking engines by sheer will. Thursk rode at his side, snow stinging his pale features. He could see Ambaghai riding on the other side of the khan. The Stormseer’s face was twisted in a grimace of concentration as he wrapped the column of riders in a swirl of snow in order to hide them from prying eyes and muffle the noise of their passage. Every time Thursk thought Ambaghai had reached the limits of his mental strength, the Stormseer dug deeper into himself, summoning up psychic might from untold depths.

The White Scars did not slow as they swept through the wreckage. Thursk could see enemy vehicles moving below, at the base of the ridge, keeping on a parallel course. They were troop transports, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure, just as he couldn’t say whether they were in pursuit, or heading somewhere else.

Cemakar’s group hadn’t got far before they were hit. He was surprised they hadn’t seen smoke, but then, with the way Ambaghai had stirred up the winds, and the way the snow was falling, he was more surprised that they could see anything at all. Kor’sarro’s voice snarled through the vox, barking orders. ‘Ambaghai – fill the air with lightning. See if you can disrupt their communications the way they’ve done to ours,’ he said. ‘The rest of you – do as you must. Laugh and slay. Today, we teach the enemy what it means to grab hold of the tiger’s tail.’

The White Scars roared in reply, waving weapons and firing their guns. Thursk ducked his head as the column of bikers ripped through a cloud of oily smoke. As they exited the smoke, he saw where the tau had been heading. A tiny knot of White Scars was firing at their approaching enemy from the lip of the ridge. Two of the larger tau battlesuits were menacing them, as several squads of fire warriors climbed the slope, pausing only to return the Space Marine’s fire sporadically.

The trap, when taken at a remove, was brilliant in its simplicity. Once the tanks had been rendered immobile, the White Scars were at the mercy of the faster-moving tau. And tenacity was no substitute for firepower. If the battlesuits didn’t get them, the tau battle tanks would. And if neither of those did the job, then the fire warriors would almost certainly wear the remaining Space Marines down.

Kor’sarro roared out a command and chopped the air with his hand. Ambaghai weaved around behind Thursk and, accompanied by two other riders, shot towards the enemy warriors climbing the slope. Thursk saw the Stormseer whip the end of his staff through the air, and it was as if an invisible scythe cut through the unprepared xenos. The trio buzzed across the line of fire warriors, disassembling the formerly precise formation into bloody wreckage. It was a stalling tactic, Thursk knew, and nothing more. Ambaghai might have been able to do more but he would have to stop, and if he didn’t kill them all, the tau would swarm him under. There were simply too many of them, and too few of the White Scars.

‘There she is,’ Kor’sarro snarled. Thursk saw that his attention had been drawn to a strange, white-armoured shape standing near the knot of survivors. It was a tau battlesuit, but like none Thursk had ever seen. As they neared, the slim battlesuit rose into the air and shot backwards.

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ Kor’sarro said, aiming his bike in pursuit. Following Kor’sarro, as Thursk shot past the closest of the towering battlesuits, he saw a familiar form lying before it in the snow. The battlesuit lifted its foot over Jebe’s sprawled form. Thursk recalled vividly what the result of that would be and he swung his bike around in a tight skid. He didn’t like the champion much, but he wasn’t going to allow the White Scar to be pulped. Even Jebe deserved a better death than that. As the machine toppled, the Dark Hunter threw himself from the seat and, with the impetus of the bike’s slide behind him, he interposed himself between the fallen champion and the battlesuit. His palms slammed against the bottom of the battlesuit’s foot, and the servos in his power armour whined in protest as he tried to stop the crushing descent.

The weight of it was incredible, more even than he’d imagined. He sank slowly to one knee, both arms bending back. ‘Up, Jebe, get up,’ he said. The White Scar groaned, and looked up blearily. ‘Up, you stupid fool,’ Thursk roared, kicking the White Scar in the side. The battlesuit redoubled its efforts and he felt a servo blow somewhere in his armour, and the hiss of a pierced cooling hose. Jebe scrabbled weakly at the snow. Thursk saw his fingers brush up against the eagle-headed pommel of his sword.

Jebe caught up the blade and rolled over, piercing the bottom of the suit’s foot and jamming the pommel against the ground. Thursk let go, grabbed him and rolled them both aside as the battlesuit jerked and flailed, trying to right itself.

‘You saved me,’ Jebe spat.

‘You’re welcome,’ Thursk said, pushing himself to his feet.

‘I was not thanking you!’

‘I apologise. The subtleties of Khorchin escape me,’ Thursk said, recovering his axe and his bolter from the fallen bike. He flipped the axe around and proffered the haft to Jebe. ‘Go get your sword, champion,’ he said, as he extended the bolter and fired off a burst at the enemy swarming around them. ‘I’ll cover you.’

Jebe made a face, then snorted, spat and ran a thumb along the edge of the axe. ‘I suppose this will have to do.’ He turned, a feral grin rippling across his burned and blistered features. He bounded towards the still off-balance battlesuit. Thursk turned and began to fire at the approaching fire warriors, intending to leave Jebe to his fun.

The battlesuit had torn itself free of the blade and it retreated several steps. Jebe pursued it with all the tenacity of a man for whom size differentials were merely a matter of opinion. He jumped, and used the battlesuit’s bent knee joint as a springboard to propel him up its chest. The shield drones hummed about him, and he swiped at them irritably. The drones were less of an obstacle than an annoyance, if you got in close. He lunged for the battlesuit’s square head. The battlesuit moved quickly, snatching him out of the air with its empty hand. Jebe cursed as the construct’s grip began to tighten. Rivets popped and plates buckled. He hefted Thursk’s axe and threw it directly into the battlesuit’s optic sensor. The power axe buried itself in the boxy head, and the battlesuit staggered, blinded. The burst cannon on its other arm roared as it fired wildly, and it destroyed one of the drones by accident.

Its hand spasmed and Jebe tumbled to the ground. Thursk raced towards him, palming a krak grenade from his belt. ‘Catch,’ he said, tossing it to the champion. Jebe caught it as he ducked beneath the whirring burst cannon. Thursk circled the battlesuit, firing at the other sensor nodes that stuck out from its great hulk. The operator was likely already trying to reroute the sensor feed and regain his view of the battlefield. If that happened, he didn’t put great odds on their survival. As he got behind the hulk, he pulled a second grenade from his belt, activated it and rolled it beneath the battlesuit’s damaged foot.

The battlesuit twitched as it stepped on the frag grenade, barely registering the explosion as the ground disintegrated beneath its foot. It reeled forward, sinking to one knee. The bolter clicked, empty, and Thursk dropped it and drew his knife as he leapt for its back. He caught hold of a shattered sensor node and swung up. ‘Draw its fire,’ he shouted, trying to hold on as the battlesuit began to struggle to its feet. The remaining shield drone buzzed towards him, and he caught it with his fist, knocking it aside.

Jebe didn’t argue. He’d reclaimed his sword, and with a slash, he opened a hole in the side of the burst cannon mount. As the battlesuit spun, firing, Jebe tossed the krak grenade into the hole, and brought his sword down on the spinning barrels of the cannon, hacking through them. The grenade exploded a moment later, and subsequent internal explosions ripped up the battlesuit’s arm. It reared back with a groan of abused metal.

Thursk had climbed to the top, and with his knife, pried open several of the hull-plates. He stuffed grenades into each of the openings, activating them. Then he grabbed hold of his axe and dropped from the battlesuit. ‘Move,’ he roared, scrambling away. Jebe followed suit as the battlesuit was consumed in fire.

They watched as it crumbled, shuddering in its death throes. They turned together as they heard the crunch of boots on snow. Fire warriors moved towards them, rifles extended. If they were disconcerted by the destruction of the battlesuit, they didn’t show it. ‘Brave,’ Thursk said, spinning his axe.

‘Good. Cowards make poor prey,’ Jebe said.

‘You’re welcome, by the way,’ Thursk said.

‘I still have not thanked you. I did not require your aid,’ Jebe said.

‘No, I’m sure you didn’t,’ Thursk said. He gestured with his axe. ‘After you, Chogorian,’ he said. Jebe grunted and raised his sword.

‘Stay close, Phobian. I’ll keep you safe.’

Then, with a roar, Jebe sprang towards the advancing tau. Thursk followed.

Kor’sarro brought the bike to a halt in a cloud of smoke and superheated snow. His bolt pistol was in his hand and he swivelled in his saddle, firing once, twice, three times, each shot dropping one of the advancing fire warriors. The rest of the group retreated with all due haste, falling back to regroup. Cemakar looked up at him. ‘Tanks broke down,’ he grunted.

‘So I see,’ Kor’sarro said. He holstered his pistol. ‘You seem to have things under control.’ Cemakar made a face. Kor’sarro’s eyes were drawn to the blood still seeping from the wound in Cemakar’s side and he shared a glance with one of the White Scars nearby – Tolui, he thought. It should have sealed over by now. Doubtless, if the old man simply sat down, it would have, but that wasn’t Old Shatterhand’s way. He wouldn’t rest until he was dead. And perhaps not even then, he mused. He was pleased to see that the old man had survived. He had feared that they would arrive in time only to avenge Cemakar and the others. Cemakar might still die, come to that. He pushed the thought aside. ‘It’s been almost twelve hours – the Khwarezmian should be nearby. Ambaghai’s lightning will have interfered with their jamming frequencies,’ Kor’sarro said, looking at Cemakar. ‘Hook him, old man. We’ve got the jaws pried open, but we still need someone to pull us out. We need Gharchai and his men, and we need them now.’

Cemakar hefted the vox and shoved it towards Tolui. ‘You heard him. Summon the Khwarezmian.’ He looked at Kor’sarro and said, ‘Thought you’d decided to sit this one out, boy.’

‘What, and leave all the fun to you? Perish the thought, old man,’ Kor’sarro said. He laughed and gunned his bike’s engine, scattering snow and sliding past the wreckage and on into battle. The enemy was disorganised, reeling in shock from the sudden appearance of a mobile force of eager warriors. He had seen it again and again since arriving on Agrellan – if the White Scars weakness was that they reacted too swiftly, then the tau were guilty of the opposite. They built strategies like spider’s webs, intricate and surprisingly strong, but infinitely vulnerable to a gust of wind or a careless motion.

There were many ways to wage war from the saddle. Wheel and Spoke was one, the way of the rabbit another. But the best way, the way that his chosen excelled at, was the way of old, the way of the storm. Every warrior was the eye of their own storm, requiring neither aid nor the command of a khan to isolate and destroy the enemy. That was the method they used now, each rider using what skills they possessed and what weapons they had to hand, to distract, harass and butcher the enemy.

Ambaghai had made himself over into a boiling storm of furious lightning. Where he rode, the storm followed, disrupting electronics and burning flesh, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. The Dark Hunter and Jebe fought back to back, both afoot, but neither at a disadvantage because of it. Both warriors slashed and spun, tearing through the enemy like dervishes. Kor’sarro whipped past them without slowing. They did not require his aid, and he had his own prey to chase.

Shadowsun was here somewhere. He could smell her scent, and see her hand at work. She was a hunter, like him, and she would not miss the kill. Not for anything. He just had to find her. As he tore through the battle, he saw a rider, whirling a bandolier of krak grenades over his head like a lariat, sweep past a hovering battle tank and hurl the grenades, hooking the main cannon. As he thundered on, the grenades exploded and the tank dipped as if in shock, its anti-gravity engines whining in protest as the force of the explosion caused its hull to scrape the ground. Out of control, it skidded through the battle, sending fire warriors scrambling to get out of its path as it crashed into the slope and was ripped apart by internal explosions.

Other riders wielded powerlances or fired bolters as they zipped through the lines of the fire warriors, piercing the alien phalanxes as they tried to form and make a stand. Kor’sarro saw a rider burst through a group of tau and ride his bike up into the rear bay of a Hammerhead, the bolters mounted on the front of his bike blazing away. The rider slewed the bike around and rode back the way he’d come before the fire warriors could even register what he’d done. The explosions that followed his departure attested to the grenades he’d left behind.

But the White Scars didn’t have it all their own way. There weren’t enough of them to do more than cause confusion. Speed was no substitute for raw numbers and here and there, Space Marines had become bogged down in the sheer number of troops that Shadowsun had brought. Alien rifles fired, a bike flipped end over end and its rider crashed down. He rolled to his feet, bolt pistol in hand, only to catch a burst from a fusion blaster directly in the chest. The White Scar was plucked from his feet and sent sailing backwards as his armour cracked and split open like the shell of a boiled crustacean. Smoke wreathed his falling shape as he crashed down. Kor’sarro arrowed towards the fallen Space Marine; he’d seen where the blast that had killed him had come from. Shadowsun was nearby. He caught sight of her distinctive armour, wreathed in the excess of Ambaghai’s lightning, its cloaking field crackling and bleeding away as the supreme commander of the enemy forces now besieging Agrellan and the Damocles Gulf as a whole stood exposed before him.

She stood before the wreckage of Cemakar’s Razorback, firing at the riders who sped past her. Kor’sarro had given orders that she was not to be engaged, save on his command, and his men were attempting to stay out of her way. Even from a distance, he could tell that she was growing frustrated. He smiled and leaned low in his saddle to whisper encouragement to his steed as the bike shot towards his prey.

CHAPTER SIX

Kor’sarro took the moment with a hunter’s daring. Engines growled in pleasure as he rode the bike up the burning hull of the wrecked Razorback, passed through the flames, and caught the wind. Wheels spinning, the bike shot towards the hovering form of Shadowsun. Kor’sarro tore Moonfang from its sheath as his proximity registered with the tau commander. Like a rabbit caught in the shadow of an eagle, Shadowsun turned and brought up one of her fusion blasters, but too slowly.

The bike’s front wheel smashed into her chest and head and they fell in a tangle, slamming down onto Rime Crag in an explosion of snow and with a snarl of metal on metal. The impact dislodged Kor’sarro from his saddle, but he was on his feet in a moment. Moonfang licked out, chopping through a shield drone and cutting it into two sparking halves. Shadowsun was up a moment later, batting the bike aside with a whirr of unseen pistons even as the fusion blaster on her other arm came up and fired.

Kor’sarro stepped aside. Heat from the blast washed over him, crisping the tips of his moustaches. He recovered quickly, snatching his bolt pistol from its holster. He snapped off a shot from the hip, and was rewarded by Shadowsun staggering. He fired again, but the second shield drone interfered. Shadowsun recovered. She cocked her head. ‘Khan Kor’sarro, I presume,’ she said in Gothic, her voice amplified by her armour’s vox-casters.

Kor’sarro restrained a growl of disgust. The language of Terra was not, by any stretch, his favourite tongue, but the Emperor had decreed that it was Imperator Lingua – the voice of humanity. To hear an alien debasing it so revolted him. ‘I am Kor’sarro Khan, Master of the Hunt and Sword of the Khan. And you are Shadowsun,’ he said.

‘My fame precedes me,’ she said. Though it was difficult to tell, given her accent and the distortion of the vox-caster, he thought that that had been a joke. He shook his head.

‘A hunter knows his prey,’ he said. He extended Moonfang and circled her with a duellist’s grace. Her armour was heavier than his, but not as battle-tested. She was hesitant, where a more confident warrior would be aggressive, as if she were as yet uncertain of her battlesuit’s limits. Or perhaps she was holding back for fear of killing him. The thought grated, but he shoved the insult aside. That was his advantage, not hers.

‘And a huntress knows hers,’ Shadowsun said.

‘I almost had you at Blackshale Ridge,’ Kor’sarro said.

‘Indeed. We were surprised. We are not used to being on the back foot.’ She had begun to circle him, even as he circled her, matching his movements, if not his grace. Her armour was scorched and scored, but it didn’t appear damaged. Nonetheless, his keen eyes picked out a number of possible weak points, where a thrust from Moonfang might pierce the armour and possibly reach the meat within the shell. ‘Do you understand my meaning?’

‘I take it well enough,’ he said. He lowered Moonfang slightly. She would not take it as an invitation to attack, he knew. Her armour was kitted out for distance and power, not personal duels. She was trying to keep him occupied while her warriors picked off his. That had been her plan all along. A slow whittling, a gradual blooding, to weaken, but not kill him, like a hunter prodding a wild auroch until the beast collapsed at last, its fury spent. They were still fighting, but with words now, rather than blades. They were feeling each other out, so that the final blow could be delivered as effectively as possible. ‘It is our way,’ he said. ‘But you know that now, no?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘You have been studying us. We have fought before, but only in isolated engagements. This was your chance to see how we waged war and you took it. You led us in, and took us apart to see how we functioned. You gave us too much room, and then too little, stretched us and squeezed us and baited us into ever more narrow burrows. You were clever.’

‘Not clever enough, clearly,’ she said. ‘You are here.’

He smiled, despite himself. ‘But that is what you expected, eh? That is why you are here, rather than back there. You thought I would lead the charge. So you came to capture me personally. Was that what your hunting eagles were for, to wear me out?’ She said nothing and he continued, ‘The kroot. They were fighting to disable, not kill. I’d wager there was more than one pack of them, just in case.’

A sound slithered from her. It took him a moment to realise that it was laughter. ‘I have fought your kind before. Few have proven themselves so quick,’ she said. ‘You fight and think fast. That is why you had to be chained. If you fight so differently, you must think differently. If you think differently, then you can be reasoned with.’ The bolt pistol in his hand twitched, and the shield drone reacted with predictable speed, responding to the microgesture. He wondered if her battlesuit was analysing him, gauging his heart rate and breathing, recording, cataloguing everything about him, for her masters to pore over once this campaign was done.

They wish to tame the storm, he thought. They wanted to chain and compel that which should not be chained, and force a false order over the natural. It was their way. As it was the way of the White Scars to defy such. You are the centre, he thought, eyeing her. You are the spoke, and your warriors the wheel. Where you go, the true war is fought. ‘Reasoned with,’ he said. He must know more. Every word, every gesture was its own tale. What war was he fighting? Was this for Agrellan or something greater?

‘You do not think like the others,’ Shadowsun said. ‘Your thoughts are more fluid. More like ours,’ she continued, switching to a crude dialect of Khorchin. ‘My folk grew strong on the plains, like yours. We broke cities then and we have broken worlds since, just as you have done.’ His lips peeled back from his teeth, but not in a smile. Not now. ‘Set your sword aside, and we will speak at length, over glasses of chinyua wine and a game of Go, Khan Kor’sarro. We will speak of Chogoris, and the ways of plains folk, and warriors. We will speak of the Greater Good.’

If he had been any other man, Kor’sarro knew that the temptation would have been overwhelming. There were too many layers of meaning in her words, implicit threats and promises, that would take days to decode. The hunter in him longed to follow all of the tracks and trails she was laying before him. But he was not simply a hunter – he was the Master of the Hunt, and he had his duty.

He sighed and looked up at the stars, fading into the dull iron sky of an Agrellan dawn. This world was poisoned, and worth nothing but the lives that would be spent in its defence, including those of him and his men, if that was the way of it. ‘I would like some wine,’ he said and his lips quirked in a smile, as he looked at her. ‘But we have already been playing, huntress, and the time has come to draw our game to an end.’

Kor’sarro slid forward, barely stirring the snow. The shield drone hummed between them as he raised his bolt pistol. He fired rapidly, but not at either the drone or its mistress. Instead, he fired at the ground. His shots tore steam from the slushy ground as each of the explosive bolts superheated the snow into a white fog which cascaded upwards, enveloping him and his enemy both. The shield drone hovered, blinded, and he took it first, catching it from below with Moonfang. Piercing the drone, he slung it towards Shadowsun, who fired instinctively, erasing her own drone from existence. He was on her a moment later, his sword chopping down through the barrel of one of her weapons, rendering it useless.

She flung the shattered weapon aside as she brought up its twin and fired. Her jetpack roared and she slid backwards, away from him, still firing. He pursued her, narrowly avoiding the blasts. The world narrowed to just him and her. He held Moonfang in both hands, arms cocked, ready for the killing thrust. If he could just reach her, even if she killed him, it would be over. She knew it as well as he did. It had been a calculated risk on her part, as it had been on his. Victory was never the sweeter than when it was balanced by death.

Cat-quick, Kor’sarro leapt. She fired, and he felt heat brush past him, scouring his shoulderplate of its white and red markings, and leaving only the grey of bare ceramite as he crashed on top of her, driving his sword down with all of his weight behind it. She twisted, desperate now, and the blade caressed her side, tearing through the white armour like paper. He grabbed for her helm, digging talon-like fingers into it, trying to destroy her optic sensors, to blind her for the kill.

A blade, a primitive-looking knife, flashed, suddenly appearing in her hand. It kissed his neck, drawing a thin weal of blood. They hit the ground in a tangle, and her feet caught him in the belly, propelling him away. He lost his grip on Moonfang and slid across the ground. She tossed aside her remaining blaster and tore her crushed and mangled helmet from her head. A topknot of hair, as crimson as a Chogorian sunset, unspooled and snapped out as a slate-blue face with large, dark eyes glared at him. He recognised the look in those eyes, alien as they were. ‘Maybe we are alike,’ he said, drawing his combat knife. ‘Come then, huntress. Come and take my scalp.’

With a cry, she lunged for him, knife in hand. They reeled back and forth through the snow, blocking and slashing. Her blade bit into his vambraces, driven deep into the ceramite by the powered exoskeleton of her armour. His own knife also gouged great scars in it, driven as much by his muscle as his own power armour. They whirled about one another in a deadly dance, and he laughed deep and loud and long for the pleasure of it.

They crashed together, blade to blade, and he leaned towards her, smiling widely. In her eyes he saw reflected the joy that he knew danced in his own. We are not so different, Shadowsun, and in other circumstances, I would dance with you again. You are a worthy challenge, he thought. ‘And you would tame us?’ he said. ‘For shame. There is no taming the storm and there is no chaining the hunters of the stars. There is only the hunt, and death. Duty, honour, empire, these are but shadows in this moment, in all moments,’ he said. They strained against one another, heads so close that he could smell her sweat, and see his face reflected in her eyes. ‘You know that, as well as I, huntress. You feel it as well, and that is why you are doomed to fail,’ he said, stabbing to the core of her with each word. There was something indefinable in her gaze – determination, perhaps, tinged with what might have been sadness. The joy had faded. She had lost herself, but only for a moment. He felt a surge of satisfaction that he had been able to give her that much, even if it had only been a single moment of freedom.

Their knives grated against one another. She longed to kill him, to cut his heart out with her blade and her hands. But that was not the way of it, not today. She shoved him back and withdrew, her armour carrying her speedily away from him. He stumbled momentarily off balance. She scooped up her fusion blaster and spun, levelling it at him before he could reach her. He felt a moment of sadness, both for her sake and his own. She was a cunning creature, locked in chains that she didn’t even see. She deserved a clean death, a warrior’s death, if nothing else. Instead, he would die here, and his men would die, and it would all be for nothing.

‘He’s here,’ Tolui said, ‘he’s coming.’ He looked up from the vox. ‘The Khwarezmian rides, my khan.’ The vox in his hands crackled, and Khorchin curses spattered the air in erratic fashion. That was Gharchai all right, Cemakar thought. No one else in the ordu had as wide or as sulphurous a vocabulary as the Khwarezmian.

Cemakar backhanded a fire warrior that got too close and stomped on the downed xenos’s chest. He fired his bolt pistol, emptying the clip. Shadowsun had brought more troops than he’d thought. The tau had unpleasantly accurate fire, and his armour was scorched and marked by the evidence of that accuracy, as well as by his position as Tolui’s breathing shield. ‘Well, it’s about time,’ he growled. He tossed aside the empty pistol and scooped up a chunk of still-smouldering wreckage to block the firepower coming his way.

They were in a standoff. There weren’t enough White Scars to break the enemy, but the enemy weren’t determined enough to push through. The tau were squeamish, for which he was thankful. They spared concern for their wounded, and refused to commit suicide. It made them harder to kill in bulk, but kept them from mounting an effective assault. ‘Contact the others. We need to regroup and hit them as one, so that the Khwarezmian can sweep them from the ridge. Where is the Stormseer?’ Lightning crackled, and tau screamed as something exploded. Cemakar shook his head. ‘Never mind, there he is. Leave him to it. But contact Jebe and that dark-armoured nitwit with the axe. Get them back here.’

Tolui bent to obey. Cemakar scanned the battlefield. It was as disorganised a mess as any warrior of the ordu could hope for, and he took a certain pride in the general air of confusion which lingered over things. This was how war should be waged, a riot of colour and noise, eventually subsumed in silence. Shots struck the chunk of wreckage he was using as a shield. Every vibration that shook the twisted metal in his hands shook a bit more blood from the wound in his side. He was dying. The fact did not frighten him. He had come close many times over his long life, and when he met it, it would be as a friend.

That said he didn’t intend to make it easy on whoever killed him. The fire warriors were getting closer, trying to pound him flat with the sheer volume of fire. He lunged forward and crashed into the group, treading them under or sending them flying. He used the chunk of wreckage like a club, swatting them from their feet. When it became too unwieldy, he tossed it aside and hefted a dazed tau over his head and sent him flying into his fellows with bone-shattering force. Pain tore through him, as one of the alien soldiers rammed a knife into his open wound. Cemakar caught his opponent’s arm and jerked the fire warrior forward, dropping his elbow on top of the smooth curve of the alien’s helmet. Metal buckled, and the tau dropped insensate. ‘Where is the khan?’ he shouted to Tolui, plucking the knife from his side. He upended the blade and sent it spinning into the barrel of a tau rifle. The weapon exploded as its owner tried to fire. ‘If he knows that Gharchai is on the way, maybe he won’t do anything stupid.’

‘I saw him head that way, in pursuit of the xenos witch,’ Tolui said. He cracked a tau in the head with the vox. ‘Go find him, old man, we’ll hold here.’

Cemakar hesitated and then nodded. Stiffly, one hand pressed to his side, he moved across the ridge. Bikes roared past, guns blazing. The tau were trying to regroup, but seemed confused, as if their commander was otherwise occupied. Cemakar grunted. He had a feeling that he knew why that might be. Something cold clutched at his hearts, as if a shadow had passed over him. Maybe Ambaghai wasn’t the only one the spirits spoke to. He began to run, despite the pain, despite the ache in his side and the red fog that nearly blinded him. Wherever Shadowsun was, that was where Kor’sarro would be.

He caught sight of the familiar flash of Moonfang in the light of the nearing dawn. Something in him tore and he coughed blood. He saw them strain against one another, his khan and the alien commander, saw them break apart, saw the weapon rising in her hand, and he knew what was coming next, and without a second thought, he leapt.

Kor’sarro tensed, ready to make his final lunge. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

Cemakar crashed into him as the fusion blaster roared. Kor’sarro scrambled to his feet. He looked down into the old man’s upturned face. ‘They’re… here,’ he wheezed, smoke rising from between his lips. ‘The Khwarezmian has come.’

Kor’sarro turned and saw shadows sweeping across Rime Crag, as the Stormbringer Squadron entered the fray. Land Speeders and Land Speeder Storms raced through the air, weapons firing as they weaved over and between the tau transports. The remaining battlesuit turned about and fired, plucking one of the Land Speeders from the air, but it was forced to hunker behind its shields as more swarmed it, circling it and firing at it from every angle. The battlesuit was fast, but the Land Speeders were faster.

A Land Speeder Typhoon turned sharply, its lethal payload erupting from the twin pods mounted on its upper hull. Missiles streaked towards the battlesuit, rocking it and consuming its shield-drones. It refused to fall or retreat however, and it raised its weapon, pursuing the Typhoon with a barrage of its own. More Land Speeders circled it, cutting tight turns and engaging in a dazzling display of aeronautical acrobatics such as only the White Scars could conceive of. Multi-meltas seared the air, and heavy bolters bellowed. The battlesuit reeled as smoke erupted from the craters that now pockmarked its frame.

With the battlesuit thus occupied, the rest of the squadron peeled off, homing in on the transponders carried by every White Scar biker. Missiles streaked from the Typhoons, corkscrewing into the open compartments of the tau transports as the fire warriors began to retreat. Land Speeders hunted the xenos, chewing up the ground around them with heavy bolter fire in an effort to herd them away from the surviving White Scars.

Other Land Speeders hurtled down the line of the ridge, assault cannons roaring a red greeting. Shadowsun turned, her smooth features wrinkling in consternation. She lifted her fusion blaster, and then lowered it with a shake of her head.

Kor’sarro still knelt beside Cemakar. Old Shatterhand was dying, red bubbles forming at the corners of his mouth as he tried to speak, to breathe. He’d been cut in two by the blast, and Kor’sarro shifted slightly, so that Cemakar couldn’t see his own legs lying some distance away. ‘T-told you so,’ the old man hissed. His fist tapped weakly against Kor’sarro’s leg. ‘Stupid,’ he gurgled.

‘Easy old man, the Khwarezmian is here. You’ll be fine. You’ve survived worse,’ Kor’sarro said, knowing it was a lie even as he said it. ‘You’ll survive this.’ He looked up. The sound of engines shook the ridge. Hasik and his bikers had made it through and come back. The khamar were making a fighting withdrawal. Their ambush had been ambushed, and they knew when they were beaten. They wouldn’t stay gone long, however. He knew that they would have a long, hard ride ahead of them, back to their own lines. The old man gripped his wrist, and Kor’sarro looked down.

‘My tanks are dead,’ Cemakar said, staring up at the lightening sky. ‘Now so am I.’ His gaze sharpened, just for a moment. ‘They’ll make me a Ghost Warrior, boy,’ he rasped, and there was real fear in his words. For the first time, in his final moments, Old Shatterhand was frightened. The thought of being interred within the armoured sarcophagus of a Dreadnought caused even the staunchest warrior of the ordu to quail. To be made one of the Ghost Warriors meant an eternity of sterile slaughter, never to feel the wind or taste the blood of the enemy. Bloody fingers dug into Kor’sarro’s arm. ‘Don’t let them.’ He coughed. His eyes were wide. Blood spattered into his beard. Then with a querulous sigh, his face went slack, and his hands flopped limply to the snow.

Kor’sarro hesitated. There was an Apothecary with Gharchai, he knew. Cemakar would be stabilised, kept hovering between the land of blood and the land of ghosts until such time as he could be encased in an adamantine bio-coffin and join the ranks of the living dead. He was too valuable to lose to such a shallow death. Old Shatterhand was a legend – a god-killer and a master of war. The seers would oversee his return and they would awaken him to fight anew.

Unless there was nothing left to awaken.

He looked up at Shadowsun, who was shouting orders to her troops. She met his eyes as he rose to his feet. ‘He was my commander, once,’ he said, softly. He knew she could hear him. ‘He was never my friend, for he had none. But he was my brother, and my teacher and he did not deserve this death. And he does not deserve what will happen next.’

They stared at one another as the battle swept on around them. She had faced Dreadnoughts before, he knew. Even as she likely knew, after all this time studying the warriors of the ordu, what such a fate meant to them. Then, just as he began to fear that he’d misjudged her, Shadowsun inclined her head slightly and he stepped back. Her fusion blaster vomited plasma and Cemakar’s body was enveloped in a pyrrhic shroud. Kor’sarro expelled a breath and looked at her. ‘Your days are numbered. Count them one by one, and cherish them. You have earned this one, but our dance is not yet finished, huntress. Wherever you go, wherever you wage war, I will pursue you, and when the appointed day dawns, your head will join the others on the White Road.’

Shadowsun held his gaze for a moment. ‘We could have been great friends, huntsman,’ she said, finally. Her armour wavered and a moment later, she was gone, lost to his sight. The sounds of bolter fire trickled off as the tau retreated, leaving Rime Crag to the battered remnants of the Third Company.

Kor’sarro looked down at the char-stain that marked Cemakar’s passing and nodded to himself. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I rather think we could have.’ He sheathed Moonfang and trudged up towards the summit of the ridge. The survivors had fallen back to join the new arrivals.

He could see the Khwarezmian among them, his armour wreathed in silks and furs, and his beaked helmet painted to resemble a wolf’s skull. Gharchai clasped forearms with him when Kor’sarro reached them a few moments later. ‘My khan, I’m glad to see that you haven’t killed them all. I was worried when we couldn’t find them on our sweep,’ the Khwarezmian said, one hand resting on the pommel of the heavy-blade tulwar sheathed on his hip. He cocked his head. ‘The old man?’ he asked.

Kor’sarro gestured to the sky. ‘His spirit rides with the storms. As do those of our brothers who enabled us to escape the trap we were led into. As all of ours may do, before this day is done.’ He slapped a hand against Gharchai’s arm. ‘But we’re not dead yet. Mount up, brothers. We must be quick. The enemy will regroup and seek to harry us,’ he said, as he looked around. ‘A new day is upon us, and we still have a war to wage.’ He paused. ‘Our hunt is over. We ride for Agrellan Prime.’

THE THRILL OF THE HUNT

ANTHONY REYNOLDS

He lowers the magnoculars. He has seen enough. The enemy are here; the Hunt will ride before the twin suns set.

His name is Ajai Khan. He was born in the saddle, on a world of wide skies and open plains. He has not truly been human for seventy-three years, but he still remembers.

He squints against the glare of the lower, yellow sun reflecting off the snow. He is not wearing his helmet – he never does when outriding. His face is the colour of tanned leather. His scalp is shaved on the sides, but he wears his hair long on top. It is charcoal-black and bound in a long tail that hangs down his back. Ritual scars mar his high cheeks. They are jagged, and resemble thunder bolts, mirroring the markings acid-etched upon the heavy white plates of his armour.

Ajai Khan stands astride a heavy bike, a big muscular, brutish thing, as he looks down upon the enemy from the edge of a forested bluff. The wind rippling the razor-leafed pines is bone-numbingly cold. It feels good against his skin.

The wind changes abruptly. It is what saves him.

A new scent reaches his nostrils, something exotic that he cannot instantly place, like an unknown, but not unpleasant, mix of spices. It is close. It is… alien.

The enemy are upon him.

His head snaps around and he sees one of them, close. It is coming at him up the lee of the bluff. It is slender, almost spindly, climbing on all fours like an insect, arms and legs splayed. Its armour is a dull grey-green and segmented, and its helm is strangely elongated, ending in jutting mandibles. Its lenses glitter, black and soulless.

He aims and fires. His bolt pistol bucks. There is a distinct double-cough as the bolt is launched from the barrel then ignites, propelling itself towards the target. In the same instant, the bike roars into life beneath him, like a beast angry at having been disturbed from slumber.

The xenos are quick, inhumanly so. The enemy scuttles to the side, avoiding his first shot. It detonates within the rock hidden beneath the snow. He sees more of them now, creeping and arachnid. The time for stealth is past – the xenos rise as one and sprint towards him, running lightly atop the thin crust of snow.

Ajai Khan brings his bike slewing around, kicking up a spray of white, and snaps off two more shots. Both miss their mark, but they at least slow the enemy. Marginally.

Holstering his pistol, he guns the bike. It launches forward with a throaty roar, like a steed given its head. He thumbs firing runes and twin bolters bark. He catches one of the xenos, the closest, with a glancing blow that tears off an arm. Blood sprays across the snow. Even their blood smells wrong. Stray bolts fell a pine, which crashes earthwards with a torturous groan, and kick up snow and ice.

They try to intercept him, slender chain-blades whirring and delicate pistols flashing. Flickers of light spear from their mandibles and biting pain cuts along his left side. He doesn’t have the time or space to draw his long-hafted glaive. He slews his bike into one of them, slamming into it with bone-shattering force. It is hurled away and smashes into a tree. When it falls, its limbs are bent unnaturally beneath it. Then Ajai Khan hunkers down low in the saddle and lays on more power. The bike accelerates willingly.

A chain-blade swings at him and he ducks to the side. It rips out a chunk of his fairing. More dart-like flashes strike at him, biting and stinging, but then he is away, hurtling through the forest at speed. The trees flash by him. He knows that he is hurt – he feels blood trickling inside his plate – but he doesn’t feel any pain. All he feels is the rush of wind against his face, and he smiles.

There are others in the trees, running on paths parallel to his own. It defies logic, but they are keeping pace with him, sprinting through the shadow of the bladed firs, ghosting him like pack-predators.

This is not how it is meant to be. The White Scars are the hunters. They are not meant to be the hunted.

He leads them on, never slowing, ducking under low-hanging branches and skidding around ice-encased boulders the size of Warhound Titans.

More of them have joined the hunt now. Dart-like jetbikes are accelerating through the trees behind him, closing fast. For a moment, he feels a pang of what might be jealousy, or longing. Once, the Chapter had ridden above the ground. Now, only a handful of jetbikes remain in the Imperium, and Ajai Khan will be unlikely to ever see one, let alone ride to war in the saddle of one of those revered steeds.

He pushes the errant thought aside and veers hard to the right. He hits a snow-covered ridge at speed, launching into the air. He stands in the saddle, keeping balance as the engines scream. He hits the ground hard and accelerates, pushing the bike to its limits. He is in open terrain now, relishing the speed. Ahead is a line of trees, but the enemy are fast; he is not going to make it. He slams on the brakes and brings the back wheel around sharply, spinning to face his pursuers. The time for running is done.

It is almost dark now, and the shadows are long. He unhooks his long-hafted glaive, taking the comforting weight in his hand.

The eldar descend on him, coming over the ridge in a wave. They spread wide to encircle him, thinking that this is the last desperate stand of a prey finally realising it can run no further.

They are wrong.

They are out in the open, halfway between him and the ridge, when they realise their folly. By then it is too late – they have come too far to turn back.

With a deafening roar, his brethren emerge from the tree-line behind him. It is a sight to behold – a full arrowhead of charging White Scars, leaning forward in the saddles of their bikes, glaive-points lowering as they come in for the kill.

The engine of Ajai Khan’s bike bellows in greeting and he accelerates sharply, lowering his own glaive. His brethren fall in around him, letting him take the point of the arrowhead.

This is the way that war was meant to be waged – at speed.

Ajai Khan laughs aloud, and his brothers laugh with him as they sweep in for the kill.

KOR’SARRO KHAN:
HUNTMASTER

GRAEME LYON

The air is foul, yet still I ride bare-headed. It is my way.

The plague came to Gehöft months ago, brought by once-loyal Space Marines now pledged to the Ruinous Powers. It spread across the quiet agri-world in days, turning crops to sludge and killing livestock… and people. The animals stayed dead. The people did not. They rose again as mindless zombies shambling alongside the corrupted armoured forms of the traitors, tearing apart any of the populace who had been spared the contagion’s embrace.

This world is beyond saving. I know this. I came anyway.

I have tracked my prey across half a segmentum to this world and I will not leave while the fiend still draws breath. This Great Hunt will end here. Paramyx, once the Chapter Master of the Sanctors of Terra, now the twisted Plaguelord of the Blighted Claw, will fall.

We have allies in this hunt, though I like them not. The Dark Angels hide themselves behind robes and masks, rarely showing their true faces. I slow Moondrakkan as I approach them and salute my opposite number.

‘What a pretty steed!’ I say, gentle mockery in my tone. If there is any from amongst the Lion’s sons that I respect, it is he who sits before me on a relic from a lost age, the mighty jetbike Corvex.

‘Khan,’ replies Sammael, his face stoic.

I smile, wondering what it would take to get the dour Dark Angel to do likewise.

‘Do you not feel isolated from the battle up there, my friend?’ I ask, though I feel a pang of envy. To ride a jetbike like the Great Khan did when we were Legion still… ‘You must decide, Master Sammael, whether you are a warrior, or a man who does not want to feel the dirt on his face!’

There is no greater joy in the hunt than to feel yourself at one with the world around you. Wind blowing through my hair and churned mud splattering my face and armour… That is when I feel truly alive. What makes the Dark Angels feel alive, I wonder?

‘What kind of man are you, Sammael?’ I ask.

The Dark Angel will not be drawn. ‘You have your targets, Lord Kor’sarro?’ he asks, still stony-faced.

‘We have,’ I say. ‘And there is no time to begin but the present. I shall see you at the victory feast if you have the stomach, Dark Angel!’

The Grand Master gives a terse nod. I turn Moondrakkan and, with my warriors spreading out behind me, begin the hunt.

A cloud of pestilence swathes the battlefield. It is too much for our allies from the Brindelweld Seventeenth Imperial Guard regiment. Even we Space Marines, with our enhanced physiologies, need our helms to breathe safely, lest we sicken. I feel enclosed, cut off from the primal forces of the hunt, the wind and the earth. But even though my senses are dulled by the metal and ceramite, I know my prey is near. I always know. It is my way.

My White Scars and I weave our bikes through the mayhem, seeing snatches of horror – shambling once-men tearing out the throats of brave Brindelweld Guardsmen; green-armoured Dark Angels pouring bolter fire into a monstrous, many-limbed engine of destruction; swarms of tiny plague-daemons clambering onto a battle tank, intent on getting inside to the vulnerable crew. I ignore them all. Were I able to save them, I would, but the hunt takes precedence. It must.

‘My Khan, we have him.’ It is Khemru, sharp-eyed even when helmed. Coordinates flash on my display and I bring Moondrakkan around, gunning the engines and–

They come as if from nowhere, vile constructs of rotting flesh and corroded metal, hovering above us. They look like giant, bloated flies, held aloft by buzzing engines in place of wings. Fleshy sacs sprout filth-encrusted weapons that open up on us. I jink to the left, bolters firing, but though the shells detonate in the flesh of one of the drones, it is to no effect.

I see Khemru knocked from the saddle, his bike slewing away as he hits the dirt, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. I will mourn him later.

‘Break up. Evade their fire,’ I order. I look around and see black-armoured shapes speeding towards us, Corvex at their head. They will aid us and together, Sammael and I will end Paramyx. We cannot save this world, but we can avenge it.

I turn back to the Emperor-forsaken creatures before me and loose my tulwar from its scabbard. Where bolt shells fail, the Chogorian steel of Moonfang usually succeeds. I speed forward and slice through the flesh-sac of one of the drones. Rotten and stinking viscera spills to the earth. I drive Moonfang up and hit something vital, killing the foul abomination. I do not exult, not yet, not until the killing is done. It is my way.

Around me, more White Scars fall. Marcha’s helm is ripped away and a cut across his forehead becomes infected in a heartbeat. I see his expression of confusion and revulsion as poison fills his veins, and I see the life leave him. Another soul to add to Paramyx’s tally. He will suffer greatly before the end.

The Dark Angels should be with us now, but they are not. I look around again even as I cut through the engine of a hovering blight-beast and send it crashing to the ground. Our allies are gone. Where, I do not know. Cold fury floods me, but I push it aside. Anger is not useful. Anger causes mistakes. I cannot see any of my squad now. I open the vox to them.

‘Brothers, to me!’

There is no response. The unnatural fog clears and for a moment, I see them – the shattered and burning remnants of half a dozen bikes and the broken corpses of my brothers. I am alone now, and I cannot win this fight. I cannot complete this hunt. With heavy heart, I turn and speed away, faster than the drones can follow. Mud splatters my helm, but do not feel it. I do not feel anything.

The battle is over. We White Scars were not the only Imperial forces for whom it went badly. The Imperial Guard are in full retreat, the Dark Angels are withdrawing and there are rumours that the world is to be denied to the foe with the final sanction – exterminatus. Paramyx, I know, will already be gone, moving to another world, spreading more disease, more death. My search for him will go on. A year from now, or a century, I will have him, and he will pay for every White Scar lost this day.

I approach the Dark Angels. My anger is gone, but I would know why they did not aid us.

‘Sammael!’ I shout up at the Grand Master astride his jetbike. The Thunderhawk gunship that will carry him from this world is already preparing to lift away, the ramp closing. ‘Whatever you abandoned us for, was it worth it?’

‘I know not yet,’ says the Dark Angel, his voice and face steady.

‘I asked what kind of man you were,’ I say to him, just loud enough for him to hear over the roar of the gunship’s engines. ‘And I will ask it again, Dark Angel.’

Sammael looks down at something strapped to Corvex’s saddle. A book, I think. I think, also, that he shows the first emotion I have seen from him.

‘I do not know that yet, either,’ he replies as the ramp closes and I lose sight of him. I wonder at that for a moment, then shake it off. Perhaps I will have the chance to fight alongside him on another world and take his measure. For now, I must leave this one while I still can. I must return to my waiting ship and continue the hunt for the Plaguelord.

It is my way.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Andy Hoare is the author of the Space Marine Battles novel The Hunt for Voldorius, as well as Commissar, a series of Rogue Trader novels, and a number of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 short stories. He spent many years working in the Games Workshop Design Studio and now writes background and rules for Forge World’s Imperial Armour and Horus Heresy books.

Robbie MacNiven is a Highlands-born History graduate from the University of Edinburgh. He has written the Warhammer Age of Sigmar novel Scourge of Fate and the Gotrek Gurnisson novella The Bone Desert, as well as the Warhammer 40,000 novels Blood of Iax, The Last Hunt, Carcharodons: Red Tithe, Carcharodons: Outer Dark and Legacy of Russ. His short stories include ‘Redblade’, ‘A Song for the Lost’ and ‘Blood and Iron’. His hobbies include re-enacting, football and obsessing over Warhammer 40,000.

Anthony Reynolds is the author of the Horus Heresy novella The Purge, audio drama Khârn: The Eightfold Path and short stories ‘Scions of the Storm’ and ‘Dark Heart’. In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, he has written the Space Marine Battles novel Khârn: Eater of Worlds, alongside the audio drama Chosen of Khorne, also featuring Khârn. He has also penned the Word Bearers trilogy and many short stories. Hailing from Australia, he is currently settled on the west coast of the United States.

Josh Reynolds’ extensive Black Library back catalogue includes the Horus Heresy Primarchs novel Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix, and three Horus Heresy audio dramas featuring the Blackshields. His Warhammer 40,000 work includes the Space Marine Conquests novel Apocalypse, Lukas the Trickster and the Fabius Bile novels. He has written many stories set in the Age of Sigmar, including the novels Shadespire: The Mirrored City, Soul Wars, Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows, the Hallowed Knights novels Plague Garden and Black Pyramid, and Nagash: The Undying King. He has written the Warhammer Horror novel Dark Harvest, and novella ‘The Beast in the Trenches’, featured in the portmanteau novel The Wicked and the Damned. He also penned the Necromunda novel Kal Jerico: Sinner’s Bounty. He lives and works in Sheffield.

Graeme Lyon is the author of the Age of Sigmar novella Code of the Skies and the audio drama Sons of Behemat, as well as the Space Marine Battles novella Armour of Faith. He has also written a host of Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer short stories including ‘The Carnac Campaign: Sky Hunter’, ‘Kor’sarro Khan: Huntmaster’, ‘Black Iron’, ‘The Eighth Victory’, ‘The Sacrifice’ and ‘Bride of Khaine’. He hails from East Kilbride in Scotland.

An extract from Avenging Son.

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

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

But that was yet to come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Messinius stared at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He closed his hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He opened a vox-channel to Gate Command.

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

‘On whose order?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<threat detected.>

‘They’re coming again,’ he said.

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

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

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

‘Stand ready.’

‘My lord?’ The voice became more insistent.

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

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

‘Fire,’ he said coldly.

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

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

Vitrian Messinius awoke groggily.

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

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

‘Shall I?’ Selwin gestured to the hypnomat.

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

‘The wall again?’ Selwin asked.

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

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

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

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

Selwin bowed. ‘Already done, my lord.’

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Hunt for Voldorius first published in 2010.
The Last Hunt first published in 2017.
Blood Oath first published in 2014.
Hunter’s Snare first published digitally in 2014.
‘The Thrill of the Hunt’ first published digitally in 2013.
‘Huntmaster’ first published digitally in 2013.
This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch,
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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Mark Holmes.

Masters of the Hunt: The White Scars Omnibus © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2022. Masters of the Hunt: The White Scars Omnibus, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-624-7

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.