Backlist

More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library

The Beast Arises

1: I AM SLAUGHTER

2: PREDATOR, PREY

3: THE EMPEROR EXPECTS

4: THE LAST WALL

5: THRONEWORLD

6: ECHOES OF THE LONG WAR

7: THE HUNT FOR VULKAN

8: THE BEAST MUST DIE

9: WATCHERS IN DEATH

10: THE LAST SON OF DORN

11: SHADOW OF ULLANOR

12: THE BEHEADING

Space Marine Battles

WAR OF THE FANG
A Space Marine Battles book, containing the novella The Hunt for Magnus and the novel Battle of the Fang

THE WORLD ENGINE
An Astral Knights novel

DAMNOS
An Ultramarines collection

DAMOCLES
Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Ultramarines novellas Blood Oath, Broken Sword, Black Leviathan and Hunter’s Snare

OVERFIEND
Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Salamanders novellas Stormseer, Shadow Captain and Forge Master

ARMAGEDDON
Contains the Black Templars novel Helsreach and novella Blood and Fire

Legends of the Dark Millennium

ASTRA MILITARUM
An Astra Militarum collection

ULTRAMARINES
An Ultramarines collection

FARSIGHT
A Tau Empire novella

SONS OF CORAX
A Raven Guard collection

SPACE WOLVES
A Space Wolves collection

Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

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

Epilogue

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

WARHAMMER 40,000

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

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

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

CHAPTER ONE

Varlock Keep shook with the thunder and fury of war. From the outer las barbicans to the central flak spires, it seemed the sheer presence of the greenskin horde would tear the ancient fortress apart. The hot air vibrated with the bellowing of countless alien throats, the hammering of iron-shod boots and the roar of heavy weaponry. Even sealed inside her blessed armour and linked to its Throne Mechanicum, Lady Rebek Solaria of House Varlock, Master of the Knight World of Cyprus Ultima, felt the orks’ animalistic ferocity like a physical force in the air around her. The auspex readouts weren’t able to compute the number of contacts in the immediate vicinity of the Westport Gate.

‘It won’t hold much longer,’ Kalyn, Solaria’s firstborn heir, said over the vox. ‘I’m moving to support you and father.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Solaria snapped, checking the position of her son’s Knight suit on the uplink display. He was on the walls, while she held position in the courtyard behind the looming gateway. ‘You’ll hold that bastion for as long as I tell you, understood?’

‘Do as your mother says,’ Audemar, Lord Solaris, cut in over the vox. ‘She has faced down worse foes than this.’

It was a lie and they both knew it, but it was enough to silence Kalyn. Solaria noted that the rune representing the boy’s Knight was holding position. She opened a private link to Audemar.

‘If we lose the Westport you must get Kalyn to the inner bastion. God-Emperor willing it will hold them long enough for reinforcements to arrive.’

‘I won’t leave you,’ Audemar replied, voice chopped and distorted by the sounds of combat. ‘If we fall, we fall together, our lances broken.’

Solaria said nothing. Ahead of her the Westport shuddered. The great adamantium doors, emblazoned with the writhing, reptilian crest of House Varlock, had withstood the depredations of heretics and xenos alike for six millennia. The keep had never fallen. But the keep had never known an assault like this before.

The walls ahead of her were well defended, manned by Guardsmen of the 43rd Kallistan Rifles and the serf-soldiers of her own House. They’d been holding out all day, counter-attacking whenever the greenskins gained a section of parapet, selling their lives with blood and sweat. Yet it was not enough. The orks had come from the dust-mists of early dawn, bellowing their guttural war cries as they pushed east from the overrun manufactorums of Black Valley. Now the sun was dipping towards the arid mountains and still they came, their numbers thicker than ever. Major Crail, commanding the four Kallistan companies on the western defences, was reporting over fifty per cent casualties, and low ammunition.

Three times the aliens had scaled the bastion walls, clambering roughshod up ladders and piles of their own dead. Three times the Guardsmen had driven them back with rifle butt and bayonet, while the Imperial Knights of the Most Ancient and Noble House Varlock had blasted apart attackers at the foot of the walls with Avenger gatling cannons and Ironstorm missile pods. Ork artillery out on the dust dunes had replied, scarring the honoured heraldry of the masters of Varlock Keep with shell and rocket. Solaria’s suit, the Drakaina, was still chiming with damage reports – the joints of its right knee were crippled, and she’d jettisoned the left pauldron after a direct hit had left it twisted and buckled. The Avenger gatling was on its last belt feed.

The gate ahead of her buckled.

‘We’re out of promethium,’ crackled Major Crail’s voice over the link. ‘They’ve rolled some sort of battering ram up to the gate. We’ve got nothing left to throw at them.’

‘I have the gate,’ Solaria said. ‘Can your men hold the walls?’

‘Hold them? No. But we can die on them.’

‘Then that will have to do, major. Your entire regiment will be afforded the title of Errant-Brothers to House Varlock this day.’

‘You honour me, lady,’ the Guardsman said. Anything else was lost in the thunder of a heavy bolter opening up on full auto. Crail and his command squad were holding the top of the gatehouse, shooting and hacking at every green beast trying to clamber up to them. Beneath their position, the gate shuddered once more. Solaria switched to Kalyn and Audemar’s vox channel.

‘Stay on the walls until your ammunition is gone, then fight your way back to the inner bastion,’ she ordered. ‘Make the xenos pay for every inch.’

‘Mother–’ Kalyn began, but she cut the link. There was nothing more to say. Nothing more to do, other than fight and die. She shifted her stance on the Throne Mechanicum. Her Knight responding accordingly, extending its legs into a braced position and digging its splayed feet into the cobbles of the gatehouse courtyard. She cycled through the weapons systems one more time before bringing the vox horn to her mouth to activate the Drakaina’s external hailer grille. The reserve platoon of Kallistan Guardsmen flanking her looked up at the towering war machine.

‘Soldier-servants of the God-Emperor,’ she said. The words echoed around the courtyard, her voice given a metallic edge by the vox feedback. ‘Xenos unnumbered are about to break through that gate. Their only desire is to rip each and every one of us limb from limb. I intend to tear them apart first. We will seal up the Westport with ork dead, and heap their filthy bodies higher than our bastion parapets. We will light a corpse-pyre that will be seen from orbit. And when the next wave comes, we’ll do it again. And again, for as long as one foul xenos draws breath upon our sacred soil. For the Emperor and for House Varlock, honour through fealty.’

Maybe they cheered. Maybe they didn’t. Whatever noise the Guardsmen made was lost. The crash of the Westport collapsing drowned them out. The crest of House Varlock was shattered as the adamantium plates came slamming inwards, wreathed in fire and smoke. Roaring their mindless fury, the orks followed.

‘Open fire,’ Solaria ordered.

The snap-crack of Kallistan lasrifles was lost as the Drakaina’s weapons cycled up. Solaria’s Avenger gatling buckled, the recoil suppressors built into the venerable Knight’s right arm barely compensating for the furious kickback of the great weapon. Solaria locked the targeting beam onto the centre of the gateway, her optics stripping away layers of smoke and grit to reveal her targets. Greenskins burst apart in showers of stinking green meat and black blood, splattering the proud, arching gatehouse with viscera. More aliens came, fighting through the pulverised remains of those ahead, driven into an insatiable frenzy by the extremes of combat. They in turn died, the few not tracked by the Drakaina’s targeting systems picked off by the las fusillade laid down by the Kallistan infantrymen.

Solaria’s armour was hungry, desperate to spill more xenos blood. The battle for Varlock Keep had stung its proud machine-spirit, its ancient soul dishonoured by the presence of an enemy upon its walls. Solaria could feel its anger bleeding into her own thoughts, channelled via the cortical plugs and dermal links that bound her to the Throne Mechanicum. Her heartbeat was at one with the pulse of the machinery encasing her, her eyes seeing through the visor slit of its great helm, overlaid with targeting reticules, tracking icons and ammo counters. She was the Drakaina, an ancient deity of annihilation, undefeated and invincible, bestriding the battlefields of lesser mortals to deal destruction in the name of all those nobles who had gone before.

A lesser pilot would have been overwhelmed by the bloody calling of the ancient Imperial Knight, so strong and independent was its spirit. Solaria, however, had borne this suit into battle since she had been old enough to fill its Throne Mechanicum. Her will was no less iron that its own, tempered by half a century of experience. Even as it sought to impose its desires on her she drove her own demands deep into the core of its machine consciousness. Conserve ammunition. Track left. Lock. Execute. Track right. Lock. Execute. Conserve. She cut the orks down not with savage abandon, but with determined, icy care. Maximum control, maximum damage, as Audemar liked to say.

The anger emanating through the Drakaina’s systems spiked, and for a moment Solaria thought it was attempting to wrest control from her. Then she realised it had detected something through the gatehouse smoke, a split second before it registered with her via the optical implants. A challenger. It was grinding into Varlock, pulping the slaughtered bodies of the greenskins that had sought to rush in before it. The clatter of treads and the rattle of engines was eclipsed by a groaning shriek as the engine ground against the reinforced flanks of the gatehouse. Whatever it was, it was too big to fit, but it was making room.

‘Hold,’ Solaria ordered over the hailer, breaking off the fire impulses to her own weaponry. There was a crash as part of the gatehouse caved. The two graven statues of House Varlock’s founders, standing either side of the Westport’s opening, collapsed in a shower of broken stone. Their vanquisher rolled over them, belching oily black smoke. It was the mechanised battering ram that had broken through the gate, only Solaria now realised that it was designed for much more than simple breaching.

The great mound of yellow-painted junk, tusks and armour scraped to a halt just inside the courtyard, engines idling. As the Drakaina auto-scanned the machine for weak points it juddered and shifted. The jagged plates running the length of its spine began to lever forward into a vertical position. A bucket-jawed sensor block that had sat at the ram’s rear rose into position above it, taking on the aspect of some leering, metallic death’s head. The jaws of the great skull-ram that had punched through the gate, previously at the tip of the machine’s reinforced prow, clacked open, revealing the barrel of a crude battle cannon. Multi-jointed mechanical limbs folded out from its flanks, tipped with two huge buzz saws. As the thing completed its transformation, its rusting vox horns let loose a mighty, animalistic bellow, shaking dust from the broken gatehouse and causing the infantry beneath Solaria to cringe and clamp their hands to their ears.

The Drakaina had no time to answer the challenge. With a crash the ork battle walker’s cannon fired. The shell hit the Imperial Knight’s right limb, tearing apart the gatling in a blaze of fire and shattered adamantium. The impact drove Solaria into her Throne and forced the Knight back a step, its foot grinding sparks across the cobbles. The ork machine bellowed again and started to lurch forward on its great tracks.

‘For Varlock and the Emperor!’ Solaria snarled, launching herself forward. Her Knight responded in kind. The time for control had passed. She let the hatred and anger emanating from her armour flood her thoughts, binding her more closely to its ancient spirit. Their home was desecrated. Their honour was being mocked. Their ancient lineage was in danger of extinction. The ones who had done this would die.

With a roar the great Reaper chainsword built into the Drakaina’s left arm activated. Solaria was barely aware of the fact that she’d triggered it. The Knight plunged forward, leading with its undamaged left leg, driving towards the ork machine’s yellow-plated heart. The greenskin engine responded in kind, both buzz saws spinning forward to meet the Drakaina.

Solaria swept her left arm up, teeth bared, the cables and nodes linking her to the Throne Mechanicum rattling. The Drakaina mirrored the movement flawlessly, the great chainsword swinging up to intercept the right-hand saw as it juddered towards the Knight’s helm. The throaty revs of the Reaper rose to a mighty roar as they sheared through the limb, filling the air with fat sparks and slivers of shredded metal. The saw fell, embedding itself in the courtyard’s cobbles with a crunch.

The other saw blade was still coming at her.

She took a step back, but the buckled joints of the Drakaina’s right leg couldn’t respond to her thought-impulses fast enough. The saw hit the right side of her cuirass, shrieking and juddering as the great teeth bit. Warning runes exploded into red around her, and she felt the metal encasing her buckle. The Drakaina’s pain thrilled through the Throne and into her body, making her twist and cry out. The ork’s machine head was mere feet from the Knight’s, its red optic clusters glaring over its serrated jaw plates. It bellowed its victory as its saw started to chew through the Knight’s inner mechanisms.

‘Crail,’ Solaria managed through gritted teeth. ‘If you’re still alive, get off the gatehouse.’ Then, with all of her strength, she pushed.

The Drakaina went off its undamaged left leg, driving itself into the ork machine. The thing’s remaining saw arm bent torturously as the pressure of the Knight drove it back, even as it carved its way to Solaria’s Throne. Data feeds split and cracked and fuel lines ruptured around her, filling the senses of the master of House Varlock with the stench of fyceline. Still she drove her suit onwards. Its pain throbbed through her, filling every nerve ending, but beneath it all there was no imperative to stop, no pleading to disengage. It understood what its mistress was doing. It approved. Honour through fealty – it would crush this abominable invader.

The ork machine began to buckle as the Knight slammed into it. Its frontal armour plating, designed to withstand the Imperial barrage as it ground up to the gates, held, but the rear supports snapped and bent as the forward armour was driven back into it. The prow cannon crumpled, and Solaria found herself grinning through the pain, imagining the hordes of greenskins trapped inside the heavy construct being crushed to death by their own armour plating. She clenched her left fist and punched it forward, the motion mimicked by the Drakaina as it plunged its Reaper into the machine’s collapsing heart. The difference in construction was now obvious. It could not withstand the instruments of mankind’s wrath. It could not withstand the Drakaina. Solaria gutted it, feeling the revving teeth of her Reaper ripping through metal and then meat, rending the rival machine’s guts. The buzz saw juddered to a stop as it lost power, and there was a detonation as the battle cannon shells blew out the walker’s back, ripping apart its metal spine and central shaft.

The walker’s bucket jaw opened, as though to bellow one last alien roar, but no sound came out. Instead it went backwards, its structural integrity gone, lifting up off its bloody tracks as the Imperial Knight bore it towards the gatehouse. It crashed into the right flank of the Westport, pulverising stone, bending metal like foil, shattering the entrance to Varlock Keep. The proud stonework tumbled down with it, a cascade of rubble that pounded and broke the machine’s remnants. Solaria lunged out to keep her balance, fighting the forward momentum that had smashed the alien walker. One of the Drakaina’s feet found purchase on a shattered column. The toes dug in and gripped. As the rest of the Westport collapsed in on itself the Drakaina stood tall, a limb missing, haemorrhaging fuel, yet triumphant once again.

Solaria resisted the urge to slump in her throne. The pain of her suit’s wounds had become a dull ache, pulsing through her circuitry. The Knight was badly wounded, but they had to keep going. The machine-spirit understood. She felt the suit shift itself, bracing, adopting its battle stance once more.

‘Guardsmen,’ she said over the external hailer. ‘Move up and secure the breach.’ Already a fresh wave of greenskins were scrambling over the rubble, roaring and firing impotently up at the towering engine of destruction that blocked their path. Solaria snarled and swept her left arm forward, gutting a clutch of the damnable beasts with a great swing of the Reaper. More filled their place.

It wasn’t over. It had barely begun.

Audemar, Lord Solaris, cursed as the rune panel to his right flashed from amber to red. Weapons dry. The thermal cannon had finally expended the last of its pyrum fuel, reducing a surge of orks to a haze of organics as they sought to scale the bastion he had defended all day.

He would defend it all night as well, if he had to.

He thought-activated his thunderstrike gauntlet, the air throbbing as a nimbus of blue lightning wreathed the mighty fist. Orks were already on the bastion, swarming around his splayed feet, hacking impotently at the blessed adamantium of his suit with crude axes and cleavers. There were no more Guardsmen to drive them off – the last of the platoon that had defended the bastion alongside Audemar had fallen almost half an hour earlier, and the Household serfs manning the multilaser positions either side of him had long been hacked to pieces by fists and cleavers, their weapons wrecked. He was alone.

The presence of the orks on his walls disgusted him. He lashed out with one foot, grinding apart a clutch of the vile xenos with a hideous crunch. A backhanded swing of his gauntlet obliterated a trio more as they mounted the parapet, their bellows lost amidst the thunderclap detonation of the fist’s fearsome energy discharge. A reverse swipe crushed another two.

For all his might, Audemar knew he was not invulnerable. His suit’s armour was riven with damage, the sea-green heraldry of House Varlock defaced with silver gouges and pockmarked with hard round impacts. His Knight’s pain bled into his own consciousness via the neural circuitry of his Throne Mechanicum, a dozen fresh scars and unnumbered cuts flaring through his mind. The pain, however, was as nothing to the battle-fury burning through the machine’s proud spirit. This was where he belonged, atop the ramparts of Varlock Keep, vanquishing the foe with every swipe of his fist. He would die here, as the sun set, and he would die doing what House Varlock had always done – purging the enemies of mankind.

A crash tore through his thoughts. He twisted in his Throne, the Knight half turning in time to see part of the Westport collapsing. Lady Solaria’s Knight, the Drakaina, had smashed a xenos walker back through the ancient stonework, crushing it beneath a deluge of rubble. Even as Audemar watched, more orks rushed the breach, undeterred by the Imperial Knight defending the crest of shattered masonry.

They would never stop. They delighted in the carnage, in the slaughter, in the adrenaline-pounding frenzy of combat. Their species was devoted to it, in its entirety. Audemar, his consort and their son would all fall beneath the green tide, their bodies crushed, their ancient battle suits torn apart and plundered. Their heraldry would be defiled, and the memories of six millennia of Varlock nobles erased. As Audemar crushed another greenskin in his suit’s gauntlet, he patched through to the keep’s priority vox channel.

He might die atop these walls, but he was damned if he would see his heir and his consort both fall with him.

‘This is the bridge of the Final Judgement,’ crackled a voice over the vox, cut up by atmospheric interference. ‘Ident code and clearance, over.’

Audemar gave the codes and call sign between gritted teeth, trying to focus even as he dashed more greenskins to bloody ruin. They had almost overrun the bastion, the few Kallistan Guardsmen still holding the parapets further along the walls fighting on with their combat knives and fists. Audemar knew he probably had moments before an ork with an explosive charge made it to his feet. When that happened, it was all over.

‘Patch me through to Inquisitor Holt,’ he ordered. An ork shell exploded overhead, and his suit shuddered as its broad shoulders were battered by a hail of shrapnel.

‘Sir, you don’t have clearance to–’

‘Just do it!’ The Knight pilot heard what sounded like a dispute on the other end of the line, before a new voice answered him.

‘This is Inquisitor Damien Holt. I am speaking with Lord Audemar Solaris of House Varlock, yes?’

‘Correct,’ Audemar said, wincing as a rocket clanged off his left pauldron and twisted harmlessly away into the heavens before detonating. ‘My lord inquisitor, Varlock Keep is on the brink of falling. We are overrun. My consort, Lady Solaria and Knight Warden of House Varlock, logged a request for reinforcements with your Expeditionary fleet over six standard hours ago.’

‘I am aware of this,’ Holt responded before Audemar could go on. ‘The Departmento Munitorum strategos attached to Expedition Command deemed that the deployment of forces sufficient to salvage Varlock Keep would interfere with operations elsewhere. I therefore countermanded the request.’

‘We’re going to die down here,’ Audemar said. ‘All of us. If the greenskins capture the Knights of my Household they will pervert their sacred bodies and turn them against you. If they gain access to the resources of Varlock Keep, the arms and ammunition, the blessed Knight suits themselves–’

‘I trust you will ensure that doesn’t happen, Lord Solaris,’ Holt said, his voice cold. ‘Take whatever steps you deem necessary.’

‘You have betrayed us,’ Audemar snarled. ‘Millennia of service to the Imperium and this is our reward? To be abandoned, to be slaughtered like cattle while you sit in orbit and watch?’

‘Service is its own–’ Holt began, but his words were cut off by another transmission. The priority message overlaid the vox channel, and a new voice, deep and strong, reached the embattled Knight.

‘Hold firm, House Varlock. The Angels of Death are inbound.’

In the dream he was falling.

Veteran Sergeant Sebastien Corvus, commander of First Squad, Third Company of the Blood Ravens Chapter, knew it wasn’t a dream. The Adeptus Astartes rarely dreamed. But that was the easiest word to describe the thoughts – part visions, part false memories – that had been imposing themselves on his consciousness since the company had set out for Cyprus Ultima.

Thinking back on the strange recollection, he saw himself standing on an arid plain, beneath a sky heavy with grey clouds. In the distance he could see a mountain, jagged and barren, its peak hollowed out to form a vast basin. Sunlight pierced the clouds overhead, illuminating a rain of steel and flesh. There were bodies falling from the heavens above the mountain, uncounted and endless. Xenos and human alike, they cascaded from the skies in a continual wave, striking the mountaintop, filling the pit with a downfall of broken meat. Only one thing united them – they were all warriors.

And, somehow, Corvus knew his body was among them.

The voice of Gabriel Angelos brought him back to the present.

‘One minute, brethren. In the fires of war, we have purpose.’

‘We have purpose,’ echoed the ten battle-brothers of First Squad, the words leaving Corvus’ lips automatically.

‘Upon the anvil of destruction, we strike,’ Gabriel continued.

‘We strike,’ intoned the Blood Ravens.

‘Knowledge is power.’

‘Guard it well,’ the squad finished. Corvus looked up from his restraining harness, at the figure of Angelos. He alone stood, disdaining the benches of the Thunderhawk carrier in favour of the mag-locks of his modified Tartaros-pattern Terminator armour. His head was bowed, features lost in the shadows cast by the red troop-bay lighting, the service studs on his brow gleaming. In both fists he clasped God-Splitter, his mighty daemon hammer. The mere sight of the legendary weapon put Corvus’ mind at ease. Whatever disturbing visions he was suffering, they would not interfere with his thoughts now that they had finally reached the combat zone. Like all his brethren, battle gave him purpose.

There was a crash like thunder, and the aircraft lurched. Corvus realised it had just fired its spinal battle cannon. A moment later and a familiar, thudding vibration confirmed that the Thunderhawk’s automated bolters had also opened up. They were going in hot, and the cracking noises from the hull suggested that not all the fire was outgoing.

He glanced over his squad, their faces inscrutable behind their active battle plate, before turning his attention to his own equipment. His bolter was mag-locked to his flank, fully blessed and anointed. His armour’s auto-senses were on standby, waiting to link with the weapon the moment he grasped it, the icons monitoring his vitae signs reading steady. He flexed one gauntlet on the restraint harness, satisfied with the connectivity.

‘The xenos leader is mine,’ Gabriel said, looking up. Corvus met his flinty grey eyes, and nodded. There was no time to say anything more. The pitch of the engines changed, jolting turbulence indicating a landing vector. The harnesses juddered back automatically and First Squad stood as one, unclamping their bolters and locking their mag-boots for the final moments of descent. Corvus mouthed one last prayer to his venerable weapon, his armour’s auto-senses binding with its targeting systems and ammo counter.

He was still falling.

The noise from outside was audible now over the decelerating engines – the unmistakable foundry-hammer of war, a thunderous accompaniment to the bellowing of an alien warhost that outnumbered them many hundreds to one. They were striking right into the heart of the invaders, straight and true, the Emperor’s righteous judgement made manifest. As Corvus felt the Thunderhawk make its jarring landing he knew he wouldn’t have it any other way.

On some distant, lonely mountaintop, his body slammed into the thousands already filling the corpse-crater.

The troop-bay ramps dropped. Corvus was the first out of the prow entrance, a battle oath on his lips. Before him a wall of xenos warriors presented itself, rushing forward amidst a haze of dust. Even sealed within his red-and-bone power armour, the fury of the assault threatened to overwhelm him. The Thunderhawk’s bolters were pounding death into the orks at point-blank range as the greenskins tried to mob them, reacting to the airborne interlopers the only way they knew how. The lowering of the prow hatch had crushed at least one greenskin and driven the others back, affording Corvus a split second to assess the enemy as he stepped out onto Cyprus Ultima.

He opened fire. The nearest greenskins went down, bursting apart beneath the hail of mass-reactive bolts. Even their hideously tough xenos physiology wasn’t able to withstand the sacred firepower of Corvus’ blessed weapon. The Blood Ravens spread out behind their sergeant, fanning around the Thunderhawk as they secured the landing zone. Corvus’ battle-brothers were implacable, driving the roaring xenos back with the Thunderhawk’s supporting firepower thundering above them.

‘Contact ahead,’ Corvus voxed over the inter-squad channel. The leader of the most immediate ork mob was nearby, identified by its brute bulk, looming over the heads of its minions a hundred yards ahead of the sergeant. As Corvus reloaded, covered by Brother Tranz, the ork chieftain bellowed and began to shoulder its way towards the Space Marines.

If there were two things greenskins couldn’t resist, it was a challenge to authority, and the prospect of a good fight. The Blood Ravens were going to give this beast both.

‘Cordon secured,’ Corvus said over the vox, opening fire once more on the orks between him and the chieftain. They were receiving return fire, crude slugs battering at their power armour and filling the dry, dusty air with sizzling metal. Three of the vitae runes on the sergeant’s visor uplink were already indicating minor injuries among his squad. Utterly surrounded and exposed, they couldn’t possibly maintain their small perimeter for more than a few minutes. This was going to have to be well timed.

The pitch of the Thunderhawk’s engines changed again as it lurched skywards, its sponson weaponry swivelling while it continued to unload into the orks crowding First Squad. The chieftain and its bodyguards had punched and kicked their way to the fore of the mob, roaring at their underlings in their bestial xenos tongue. The chieftain itself – a solid slab of scarred, dark green muscle, layered in plates of heavy yellow armour – had locked its beady, rage-filled eyes on Corvus. It roared a challenge as it came at him, a great mechanical claw extended to snap around his throat.

‘Falling back,’ Corvus voxed, giving ground as the ork came at him. He kept firing, punching holes in the greenskins following up on their leader’s charge, switching from one target to the next with experienced ease. The rest of the Blood Ravens cordon held firm, pouring fire into the horde as it rose towards them like some irrepressible green tide. Only Corvus retreated. And only the ork chief made it into the centre of the squad’s perimeter with him.

‘Strike,’ the sergeant said into the vox. The ork was upon him, roaring its fury, reaching for him with its wicked claw. Corvus realised he’d almost backed all the way to the opposite side of the circle. He had nowhere left to go.

Then the thunderbolt fell, and saved his life. It came down with an almighty crash of discharged energy, followed by the earth-shuddering force of its impact with the surface of Cyprus Ultima. Only Corvus’ auto-stabilisers kept him upright. The landing threw up a cloud of dust and clods of dry dirt, shot through with thick strings of gore – the ork chieftain had been completely annihilated, reduced to pulverised organic matter by the strike of a weapon as ancient as the Imperium itself.

As the dust and blood settled, Gabriel Angelos rose. He had leapt directly from the Thunderhawk’s hold. Servos in his Terminator armour whirred and grated as he turned to survey Corvus. The Chapter Master was splattered with the gore of the chieftain, and God-Splitter, the mighty daemon hammer, still crackled in both fists. Nothing could have survived the Blood Raven’s strike, not when it had been delivered from the Thunderhawk holding station forty feet above.

‘Brethren,’ Gabriel said into the vox, still looking at Corvus. ‘Now is your time. In the Emperor’s name, strike.’

The sky was filled with fire and adamantium as two more Thunderhawks swooped down on blazing contrails, bolters hammering, battle cannons blasting bloody furrows through the greenskins. The Assault Marines of Seventh and Eighth Squads barrelled from the open hatches of the gunships, their jump packs flaring to life, flamers and bolt pistols igniting. The orks below were torn to pieces.

Corvus reloaded again and re-formed the circle. The tide had turned. Gabriel’s pinpoint strike had crushed the leader of the ork assault on Varlock Keep, and suddenly the mobs were uncertain, torn between their desire to continue attacking the overrun bastions or turning back to face the new threat. Gabriel clearly had no intention of giving them the time to reorganise. He hefted God-Splitter once more and gestured with the mighty hammer past Corvus. The roaring of chainblades heralded the assaults of Seventh and Eighth Squads around them. Gabriel’s war cry, even unaugmented by his vox, carried easily over the sounds of slaughter.

‘Space Marines, attack!’

The bridge of the Final Judgement appeared truly ancient, though it was not. When Inquisitor Holt had taken command of the decommissioned capital ship, he had spent a small fortune having its command deck redesigned. Gone were the vessel’s dark rustwood panels and tiled mosaic floor, replaced with cold stone flagging and unadorned pillars that supported a vault lost in shadows. The chill space echoed with the clipped footsteps of deck officers, their whispers, and the soft whir and chime of cogitators and oculus stands. It was more like some ancient crypt than the nerve centre of a vast, star-faring voyager.

The changes had all been quite deliberate. Holt had refashioned the bridge so it resembled the interior of the Schola Progenium basilica he had grown up in. The orphaned son of an Imperial Commander from the Lynthera sub-sector, Holt’s earliest memories were of scrubbing between the cold, hard flagstones of the refectory hall with a tiny pick-brush, beneath the equally cold, hard eyes of Drill-Abbott Fulch.

Holt had grown to manhood in the Schola facilities on Telarch II, and there had discovered the unbending zeal and fervour that so characterised all Progena. His future, however, had not followed the traditional routes for the Imperium’s finest – the Militarum Tempestus or the Commissariat. Instead, the night before his graduation ceremony, he’d been awoken and dragged from his dorm bunk by one of the hall wardens. Minutes later, shivering in nothing but his night shift, he’d found himself standing before the man he would later think of as his adoptive father. That night he had joined the ranks of the God-Emperor’s Most Holy Ordos.

‘They are coming,’ said Henghast. Holt’s gaze turned from the viewscreens he’d been monitoring to his astropath. She was seated at her crystalline psy-desk, bony hands splayed across her tarot, the dark green folds of her astropathic robes hanging heavy around her withered frame.

‘What did you say?’ Holt demanded, pacing across the cogitator pit. ‘You should know better than to tax me with your riddles.’

‘You know well enough to whom I refer,’ Henghast said, a smile twisting her thin lips. Her hand clutched at one of her cards, inscribed with a lean, ghost-like figure reaching out towards a cluster of glowing orbs.

‘The star wanderers,’ she said. ‘The spiders in the web.’

‘How long?’ Holt asked, leaning across the psy-deck board, fists planted on its glassy surface.

‘Not long,’ Henghast said, letting the card drop. ‘They stand upon the threshold, and their fingers are already on the door.’

‘Then Acheron draws near,’ Holt said, turning back towards the viewscreens. They displayed the edges of the Cyprus system, a constantly cycling feed picking up the images redirected from augur stations and monitoring posts on the borders of real space. Currently they were detecting nothing untoward, but Holt knew that would soon change. That was why he was here, with the full might of the Imperium at his command – Knights, Astra Militarum, the Navy, even the god-warriors of the Adeptus Astartes. All would be needed for the coming trial.

‘My lord inquisitor,’ said a low, firm voice. Holt noted the presence of his chief Interrogator, Winlow, as the stocky operative stepped down into the bridge’s inner cogitator pit.

The Inquisitorial agent was the image of Holt in his younger days – as the inquisitor had moulded the bridge of his flagship, so he had moulded his foremost apprentice. Winlow wore the plain green robes of an Ordo Xenos field agent beneath a suit of ceramite-finished flakplate. Holt always bore his own battle armour in public, as his master had before him. For all its secretive nature, the Inquisition was both sword and shield to the rest of mankind. Holt had learned the value of looking the part, regardless of time or place.

Like his master, Winlow wore his blond hair cropped close. The only immediately obvious difference was the blue hydra crest tattooed over his left eye, a holdover from his childhood in the reef gangs of Voltaris. The young interrogator had requested the synth-skin grafts to have it removed countless times, but Holt had refused. A man’s origins should never be erased or forgotten, for with them it was possible to judge how high he had risen in life, or how far he had fallen. Such judgements were part of the Inquisition’s reason for being.

‘What is it?’ Holt demanded, not bothering to mask his irritation. He’d ordered the entire bridge not to disturb him or the scrying of his astropath. Only Winlow would be bold enough to override his instructions.

‘Word from the vox decks, sire,’ Winlow said, offering a short bow as he stepped down to Holt’s level. ‘Regarding the fighting on the surface.’

‘If it’s another mewling request from the Knight Warden, I already left instruction that it’s to be ignored,’ Holt said.

‘It isn’t from Lady Solaria, sire.’ Winlow said. ‘We’ve ascertained why Warden Audemar broke communications unexpectedly with us when you refused his last request.’

‘Explain.’

‘The augur staff are reporting that the Adeptus Astartes battle-barge Dauntless has moved into low orbit above Cyprus Ultima, and has disgorged a number of transports. Their trajectory will take them directly into the engagement ongoing at Varlock Keep.’

‘God-Emperor damn them,’ Holt said, and snapped a finger at one of the tele-savants manning the viewscreens. ‘Can we get visuals on the surface?’

‘Hacking the Knights’ encryption would take time, sir,’ one of the drones said, not meeting Holt’s gaze.

‘Then contact the augur array,’ Holt told Winlow. ‘I want maximum-resolution scans of the Varlock battlezone, immediately.’

As Winlow clambered from the pit Holt turned back to the viewscreens, which flickered with new images of the planet below.

‘It’s him,’ said Henghast, still smiling, her hands dancing delicately across her cards.

‘Of course it’s him,’ said Holt, his voice bitter. ‘Who else would so brazenly countermand one of my orders?’

The Expeditionary fleet was to waste none of its resources preserving the Imperial Knights of Cyprus Ultima from the ork looters that infested the planet, and yet here they were, committing the expedition’s finest warriors to doing just that. When Acheron appeared, they would need every single one of the Angels of Death. Defending Varlock was a waste.

The Final Judgement’s powerful scanners focused in on the Knight fortress, a dark blot on the surface of the arid world far below. Holt watched in silence as the images transmitted to the viewscreens before him resolved, piece by piece. A dark green sea surrounded the bastion walls of the keep, shot through with fire and smoke. In the midst of it, like a bloody rock cast adrift, the inquisitor could see the red and white heraldry of the Blood Ravens. They had struck right at the heart of the alien horde, carving out a cordon with blade, bolter and the support of their Thunderhawk gunships. As the resolution increased, Holt picked out the figure leading the wedge of warriors as they made for Varlock’s shattered gateway. Clad in great plates of Tactical Dreadnought armour and wielding a warhammer wreathed in energy, he was entirely unmistakable. Holt’s lip curled with disgust as he took in the sight of the hammer, and it required all of his hypno-induction training and reflex control not to lash out at the screen.

That weapon should be his.

‘The feed is good, sire,’ Winlow said as he rejoined his master in the cogitator pit. ‘Is it as we feared?’

‘Of course,’ Holt said. ‘I should have predicted that he would seek to cause difficulty at every opportunity. His disrespect for the authority of the ordo is flagrant, even by the standards of his meddling Chapter.’

Winlow didn’t reply, and Holt continued to watch as, yard by yard, the Blood Ravens fought their way to Varlock Keep. Around them the press of aliens appeared to be lessening. Presumably the Adeptus Astartes had eliminated the mob’s leader, a tactic that frequently proved useful in stymying ork offensives. Holt took a slow, silent breath, working at easing the tension evident in his rigid posture. It did no good to let others see him affected by the Space Marine’s insubordination. There were more important things to focus on – the imminent arrival of the daemon world of Acheron being just one of them.

‘Cut the feed,’ he ordered, turning his back on the viewscreen. ‘And prepare me an encrypted vox link with the starforts.’ The orks on Cyprus Ultima would be contained, prior to the arrival of the Expeditionary Fleet’s primary assets.

And by then, Inquisitor Holt would have worked out exactly what to do with Chapter Master Gabriel Angelos.

Dawn. Light was a haze, clouded by the dust that hung heavy around Varlock Keep. Whether it was the residue kicked up by the broken ork horde, or had blown down from the distant mountaintops, Sergeant Corvus couldn’t tell.

The Blood Ravens assembled around their Chapter Master. They made for so many looming, bloody spectres, their armour scarred and caked in blood and dust. The Assault Marines of Seventh and Eighth Squads had lost two battle-brothers apiece – Forvind, Kern, Luko and Isidaur. Only one Tactical Marine from First Squad had fallen – Matthias, cut in half by a vicious axe-blow from one of the ork chieftain’s bodyguards. As far as Corvus was concerned, the squad had been lucky. The strategic scans conducted as they’d plunged through the atmosphere had warned of a possibility of over fifty per cent casualties resulting from a direct intervention. As it stood no one was unharmed, but comparatively few had fallen.

Forvind, Kern, Luko, Isidaur and Matthias now lay among the million-strong mound of corpses, crushed and bloody, atop a distant, lonely mountaintop.

Gabriel said nothing of their losses. He’d been taciturn ever since ordering the intervention from the Dauntless in orbit. Perhaps the operation was calling up dark memories. It was well known the Chapter Master had little regard for the meddling of the ordo, and few men personified that meddling more than Inquisitor Holt, commander in chief of the entire Expeditionary Fleet.

The wind picked up, shifting the dust clouds with a soft sigh. All around the Space Marines, carnage reigned. They had fought through the night as the ork horde had disintegrated around them, a lonely bulwark of plasteel and ceramite, painted in xenos blood. The corpses of their attackers lay in thick clumps around them, intermingled with the waves gunned down by fire from Varlock’s walls. Those walls were hidden now by the dust haze. Corvus wondered how many of their defenders yet lived. If the Blood Ravens had arrived minutes later, they would have been too late to save the garrison.

‘Extraction is inbound,’ Gabriel said, his low tone barely carrying over the wind’s whisper. ‘We will return to orbit and rearm, before the next wave strikes.’

Corvus suppressed the urge to point out that the Inquisition was unlikely to overlook another intervention. Holt’s briefing dockets had been clear. The Expeditionary Fleet was in the Cyprus system for one reason and one reason only – to contain and, if possible, annihilate the daemon world of Acheron the moment it tore from the warp. The Imperial Knights of Cyprus Ultima were not their concern, even though they were beset by greenskins.

Of course, there was never a chance that the Blood Ravens were going to stand by while the enemies of the Emperor triumphed.

A low tremor, running through the gory dirt beneath Corvus’ boots, disturbed the veteran sergeant’s thoughts. Distant, thudding footfalls reached him, followed by the clank and clatter of great machine servos. He glanced at Gabriel, who nodded, his graven features streaked with dust and gore.

‘Blood Ravens,’ said Corvus. ‘Attention.’ The Space Marines came to immediately, the crash of ceramite echoing out across the scarred battlefield. Corvus’ auto-senses probed the dust clouds, stripping them back layer by layer to reveal a monstrous trio of mismatching shadows, broad-shouldered and bow-backed, approaching them from the direction of the keep. After a few moments, the green and blue drake heraldry of an Imperial Knight Household registered with his file scanner.

The three war machines emerged from the dust-mist like demigods of old, every footstep grinding slain orks into the dirt. Gabriel planted God-Splitter’s bloody head at his feet, its disruptor field deactivated. Corvus and his battle-brothers retained their rigid posture. As the Knights approached, Corvus noted the extent of their battle damage. Their banners were tattered, and their adamantium hides scarred silver or black by the strike of rocket, shell, flamer and countless small arms rounds. The central walker had lost its entire weaponised right limb, and walked with a pronounced limp, its knee servos grating.

The Knights came to a halt before the Space Marines, grinding their feet into the churned-up earth. A klaxon blared, and the centremost of the three lowered its remaining weapon-limb, a great chainsword. The other two did likewise, dipping their armoury in salute.

‘Declare yourself,’ blared a voice from the vox grille of the towering construction. It was female, though the metallic distortion of the vox gave it a machine edge. Gabriel left God-Splitter planted on its head and made the sign of the aquila across his battered breastplate.

‘My name is Gabriel Angelos, Chapter Master of the Blood Ravens. These are my battle-brothers.’

‘Hail and well met, Chapter Master Angelos. I am Lady Rebek Solaria, Knight Warden of House Varlock and Mistress of this keep. I owe that last title to the intervention of you and your brethren. Had you not struck when you did we would certainly have been overrun. We owe you a debt of honour.’

‘We owe all our debts to the Emperor,’ Gabriel said simply. ‘Fulfil yours by continuing in His blessed service.’

‘If only all went about their duties with such purity of purpose,’ Lady Solaria intoned. ‘You have come with the Expeditionary Fleet?’

‘I have,’ Gabriel confirmed. ‘At the request of Inquisitor Damien Holt.’

‘I presume that your intervention did not meet with the august inquisitor’s approval?’

‘Few things meet with Holt’s approval, Lady Solaria. He would conserve the expedition’s strength to deal with Acheron. For my own part, I would not stand idly by and watch xenos scavengers butchering the Emperor’s servants.’

‘So the rumours are true then? That the daemon world Acheron will soon re-emerge from the warp?’

‘Many believe it. Enough to assemble in this system to intercept and destroy it.’

‘House Varlock would walk with you, but not before we purge our realm of this xenos taint.’ A twitch of the Knight’s mighty foot crushed another greenskin corpse into the dirt.

‘The orks will be back,’ said Gabriel. ‘Our orbital scans show that this was but a fraction of their strength. Departmento Munitorum strategos have claimed they are gathered here seeking loot from all those coming to greet Acheron’s arrival. They are scavengers, feeding off our war efforts.’

‘For now,’ Solaria said. ‘You surely have more knowledge of the green menace than I, Chapter Master. If they can gather enough momentum and resources, Inquisitor Holt will suddenly find them to be far more than a mere annoyance.’

‘Which is why my brethren and I will continue to assist you as long as we are able. I am receiving reports from orbit that another warband is converging on us right now.’

CHAPTER TWO

The humies’ manufactorum district had been overrun by the lads just before the assault on Varlock Keep. A combined force of humie infantry and armour, battling alongside their big Knight walkers, had fallen in defence of the valley, hacked down amidst the assembly lines and back alleys, loco-rail yards and ore skips. While the humies’ front had remained secure in the face of repeated assaults, the collapse of the forces supporting them on both flanks had resulted in them being turned, surrounded and annihilated.

Bludkrug’s boys had been at the forefront of the final assault, pounding through haulage yards and around the smoking refinery wells to cut apart the desperate humans. Rokfist didn’t believe that – everyone knew it was his lads who’d been at the head of the green tide as they’d stormed the last, desperate human positions, hacked down the infantry, pulled the crews from their burning tanks and, most gloriously of all, blasted and chopped the legs out from under the big humie war walkers. Those two colossal machines were long gone now, looted in the space of an hour by a horde of Big Mek Wazzmakka’s grot tinkers. Most of the greenskins had moved on, the best pickings gone, drawn by the sounds of battle echoing down the valley from the great human fortress at its head.

Bludkrug and Rokfist had stayed behind. It was mutual distrust that kept them amidst the wreckage, rather than a belief that there was still anything worth pilfering among the butchered corpses and blasted wrecks that littered the smoking ruins. The two ork nobs were rivals – not only were their twin mobs of footsloggers renowned for always scrapping with each other, but the two answered to separate bosses. Rokfist was well known for his allegiance to Warlord Gitstompa, while Bludkrug enjoyed the patronage and shiny bits of Gitstompa’s subordinate, Gorgutz. When Rokfist had noticed Bludkrug still lingering in the valley bottom, he’d decided there had to be a good reason for the other greenskin’s tardiness.

‘What you got there?’ Rokfist snorted, swiping his way through a shattered manufactorum conveyor channel towards the other nob. Bludkrug rounded on him, bulging squighide sack slung over one shoulder. He quickly hid the acquired loot behind his back.

‘Nothing. Spoils o’ war.’

‘Spoils get shared with the whole warband,’ Rokfist lied.

‘Says who?’

‘Says da warboss!’

Bludkrug let out a throaty chuckle and half turned away from the other nob, yellow battle-plates grating.

‘Old Gitstompa’s rules don’t mean nothing. As long as he gets the shiniest stuff, the rest can go to da grots.’

‘That why you’re still down here among these dead’uns? Scraping about with da grots?’

‘I was about to ask you da same,’ Bludkrug growled, turning back. The two locked eyes, their bared tusks less than a yard apart.

A furious bellow broke the moment. The air vibrated, and a gutted manufactorum outhouse nearby collapsed in on itself in a cloud of dust and broken stonework. Both the orks looked to the sky.

‘Da signal,’ Rokfist said. ‘Another attack. This time da warboss will be leadin’ it.’

‘Da warboss will be watching while lads like us get chopped,’ Bludkrug scoffed. ‘All he cares about is looting.’

‘And what does your boss care about?’ Rokfist demanded, turning his attention back to the other nob. ‘Dat pale-skin Gorgutz. He’s a spent force. He lost to the humies too many times. No mob worth its scrap follows him any more.’

‘At least he wants a propa’ fight,’ Bludkrug snarled. ‘Not like that git Gitstompa. Once we’ve crumped these humies good, what then? Gitstompa’s afraid of a real scrap.’

‘I’ve about had enough of dat funny talk,’ Rokfist growled, getting up in Bludkrug’s face again. ‘You better start showing da boss propa’ respect.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or dis,’ Rokfist said, and swung. The blow caught Bludkrug on the side of the jaw, cracking a tusk and sending a wad of spittle flying. The nob barely registered the blow. He dropped his loot, and both greenskins went for their weapons.

The distant bellow split the air again, calling together the scattered greenskin warbands, but Rokfist and Bludkrug were in far too deep to notice. Bludkrug swung his cleaver straight for Rokfist’s skull, roaring, his tusks bared. Rokfist was able to twist enough so that the blow hit one of his scarred shoulder plates, the weapon cracking off it with enough force to cleave a man in two. Too late Bludkrug realised Rokfist had one of his long, serrated daggers in his fist, and was driving it up into his flank. He always was a sneaky git. Bludkrug grunted as some dull, distant part of his brain registered the stab wound, and drove himself inside the other nob’s guard. With a great crack, the two greenskins head-butted each other.

Bludkrug stumbled away, Rokfist’s dagger still embedded in his flank. He blinked and shook his head, blood drooling from his flared nostrils. That runty git wouldn’t –

Rokfist hit him full on, bearing him back into the wall of a gutted refinery silage bay. The masonry gave way beneath the two brawling greenskins, driving them both down into the mound of grit beyond. Bludkrug had lost the grip on his cleaver, so instead drove his fist into Rokfist’s belly as the other nob tried to gouge him with his tusks. Failing to make any impact on his rival’s scarred frame, Bludkrug instead reached up and ploughed one claw into Rokfist’s eye.

The nob bellowed, more in anger than pain, and reeled back off Bludkrug. As he went, one hand snatched around the handle of his dagger, dragging the jagged metal from Bludkrug’s flank. He grunted as the weapon pulled free, driving himself up out of the grit and smashing a fist into the other ork’s face before he could recover. The blow sent him slamming back out through the wall and into the ruined alleyway.

Bludkrug ducked out after him, one hand clutching at his wounded side, snarling with the need to smash and kill. The emotions ebbed – though only a little – when he saw what was waiting for him beyond the broken wall. Rokfist had fallen at the feet of a figure that stood head and shoulder above both of the warring nobs.

‘Get off, ya git,’ Rokfist barked, scrambling to his feet with one hand still clutching his bloody eye. Only when he rose did he realise who he’d fallen into. The nob’s bucket jaw went slack.

‘Who you calling a git?’ Gorgutz Head Hunter growled. The sound was like the beginning of a rockslide, cracking and shifting from deep within the warboss’ trunk-like chest. Rokfist took an unsteady pace backwards, banging into Bludkrug.

‘Isn’t you two meant to be nobs?’ Gorgutz went on, looming over the two cowering orks. ‘What you doin’ scrapping like grots then?’

Bludkrug recovered first, and it saved his life.

‘Rokfist here was discussing his dissatisfaktion with how you do things, boss,’ he said hastily, backing away from the other nob.

‘Dat’s… dat’s…’ Rokfist stammered, squinting up at Gorgutz with his remaining good eye, his small brain struggling to formulate a hasty lie.

‘You always liked Gitstompa, didn’t you?’ Gorgutz demanded. ‘He can get da lads together, but he’s got no plans. Only cares about his loot. Him and his weirdboy, Zapnoggin, and dat mek, Wazzmakka. Well, not for much longer. I’ve got no use for Gitstompa’s lads now.’

Rokfist tried to reply, but never got the chance. The huge mechanical claw that had long ago replaced Gorgutz’s right arm swept upwards with slow, irresistible force. There was a vicious crunch as Rokfist was scissored in two, an ork that could have taken the worst of a battle cannon shell cut in half like a runty human. The greenskin’s remains slumped to the ground, his blood splattering Bludkrug. The nob tried to make a run for it but, like a parent reaching out to snatch an errant child, Gorgutz snagged Bludkrug’s shoulder plate with his gory claw and hoisted him into the air, legs kicking.

‘Bludkrug, ya git,’ Gorgutz rumbled. ‘Stop muckin’ around. Where’s da shoota?’

‘Da shoota?’ Bludkrug stammered.

‘Da special shoota,’ Gorgutz snarled, shaking the nob for good measure.

‘I got it boss, I got it,’ Bludkrug said, stumbling away as Gorgutz released him. He fished into his squig sack and pulled out an especially large, shiny-looking kustom shoota. Gorgutz snatched the heavy weapon in one fist, holding it close to his one leering, unaugmented eye.

‘Looks good,’ he grunted. ‘But…’ He raised the weapon and pointed it at Bludkrug’s head. The ork was too terrified to move. Gorgutz squeezed the trigger…

Nothing happened. Gorgutz lowered the shoota, tusks bared in a savage grin.

‘It’s time,’ he said.

‘T-time, boss?’ Bludkrug managed.

‘Time to get a propa’ scrap going. Time for me to take charge. Find yer lads, bring ’em, and do exactly as I says.’

They were coming again. Corvus’ optics could detect a dark blur on the horizon, a black line crested by a thunderhead kicked up by thousands of boots and churned out by hundreds of scrap-engines. The sound of the approaching horde carried over the dust dunes, a rumble that set the broken stonework of Varlock Keep juddering. It was a primal thing, like the thumping of tribal drums, a war-beat that reached the deepest and most savage parts of a man’s psyche. It made Corvus’ second heart jolt and kick in, even though he knew first contact was still minutes away.

‘Only in war are we truly faithful. To the last, kill them all.’ The words of Brother Diomedes carried across the bloody parapets, amplified by the vocaliser built into the Chaplain’s grim skull helm. The words were familiar to a veteran like Corvus, but he knew it was not for his benefit that the Chaplain spoke. The few remaining human defenders of Varlock had mustered on the western bastions, dragging the corpses of their brothers from the firing steps and hefting their weapons for the next assault.

Corvus did not need to look around to appreciate the conflicting emotions playing across every dust-caked, hollow-eyed face. The fearful odds and shocking casualties suffered by the Kallistan Guardsmen and House Varlock’s serfs would surely have made this latest greenskin offensive the last. But the Blood Ravens were here. Corvus’ First Squad and the Assault Marines had taken up positions along the walls, spreading out to augment the remaining companies. Gabriel Angelos himself stood atop the mound of rubble that had once been the keep’s western gateway, in the shadow of Lady Solaria’s Knight walker. They’d made what repairs they could to the breach, mining its lower slope and piling up flakboard barricades at its crest. More reinforcements had arrived from orbit – the Second and Third Tactical Squads of Sergeants Nerov and Ulinor, fully half of the Third Company. Captain Balthazar, Chief Librarian Orion and the rest were still aboard the Dauntless, in high orbit.

Corvus and his brothers would have to be enough. Right now, their mighty forms lending strength to the exhausted mortals around them, they were. When the green tide struck, maybe they would not be.

The breeze picked up, blowing the stench of the ork horde towards them – stale sweat, fyceline, blood, fungal musk. Corvus set his armour to filter out the disgusting reek automatically. He did not need to smell them to hate them. The wind stirred the great pennants hanging from the Knight that shared the bastion he stood upon – the ragged totems flapped, their dragon crests seemingly lent agency by Cyprus Ultima’s hot, dusty breath. This was their home, Corvus thought. Their realm. These walls were steeped in the honour and sacrifice of their familial bloodline. Corvus had no doubt that the Chapter Master was right to assist them. Inquisitor Holt was the Imperium’s cold, calculating logic, the icy determination it needed to survive in a galaxy full of horrors. But House Varlock, much like the Blood Ravens, represented the Imperium’s courage, its valour, and a legacy of noble sacrifice that reached back through the ages. Without such virtues, men like Holt would find themselves with little worth fighting for.

The noise from the approaching greenskins swelled, a tribal roar threatening to drown out Chaplain Diomedes’ final exhortations. Corvus checked his bolter’s auto-sense link before ordering First Squad to sound off over the inter-squad vox frequency. Matthias’ absence still stung.

The xenos were about to enter the engagement zone. Matthias would be avenged.

Or Corvus would join him, in the mountaintop pit filled with slaughter.

Gitstompa’s scarred fist closed around Zapnoggin’s scrawny green throat. He squeezed, spittle drooling from his huge, bared tusks. Zapnoggin choked.

‘I ain’t gonna’ ask you again, git,’ the warlord growled.

Zapnoggin tried to say something, eyes bulging, hands scrabbling uselessly at Gitstompa’s vast forearm. A corona of green lightning surged into being around the aged weirdboy’s swollen cranium, sizzling and snapping. The surrounding nobs gasped, and Big Mek Wazzmakka physically tried to thrust himself from the circle.

‘He’s gonna’ blow,’ Wurldkrusha, Gitstompa’s foremost lieutenant, chuckled. A wheezing noise escaped old Zapnoggin’s locked jaw. Gitstompa leaned forward, bringing the struggling greenskin close to his face.

‘Wut?’

‘If he goes zap, we’re all for it,’ said a new voice. The heads of Gitstompa’s retinue turned, hands going to cleavers and slug-pistols. Gitstompa alone kept staring at Zapnoggin, but his eyes narrowed.

‘Where have you been, ya’ git?’ he demanded.

‘Gettin’ da lads ready,’ said Gorgutz as he shouldered his way forcefully into the midst of Gitstompa’s nobs. The greenskins kept their hands on their weapons, only giving up space reluctantly.

‘Your lads is never ready,’ Gitstompa scoffed, releasing Zapnoggin. The weirdboy tumbled to the dusty earth, gasping and shaking. His green energy snapped from existence, and Big Mek Wazzmakka audibly grunted with relief.

‘Stick ’em at da back, boss,’ Wurldkrusha said, squaring up to Gorgutz. ‘He don’t deserve da best pickings.’

‘And I suppose you do?’ Gorgutz countered, not backing down. ‘Get out of my way, Wurldkrusha. I gots something for da boss.’

‘Got wot?’ Gitstompa demanded, cuffing Wurldkrusha aside. Gorgutz stepped forward and presented the biggest, shiniest kustom shooter Gitstompa had ever seen. The warlord’s eyes widened.

‘Where’d you get dis, ’Ead ’Unter?’

‘Had it made, special-like,’ Gorgutz responded. ‘A big boss like you deserves da biggest shoota, right?’

‘Right,’ Gitstompa said, snatching the weapon.

‘Save da first shot for a boss humie,’ Gorgutz suggested. ‘It packs a big bang.’

‘Like dat zapp-kannon you mades me too?’ Gitstompa leered, looking up at the ridgeline where the greenskin artillery was arrayed. ‘Too big to even move, ya silly git.’

‘The bang’ll move it,’ Gorgutz said. ‘Wot better way to get a gun movin’ than by shootin’ it all da time?’

‘We’ll see,’ Gitstompa said, his momentary excitement eclipsed by his instinctive dislike for Gorgutz. ‘But enough time-wasting. We’ve wasted enough time waitin’ for Gorgutz’s gits to get here. It’s stomping time. Follow me.’ The warlord pointed his new toy at the battered walls of Varlock Keep. Gitstompa’s subordinates roared their frenzied approval, and the thunderous battle cry was taken up by the surrounding mobs and warbands. Soon they were lurching towards the human fortress, rickety bikes and trucks gunning their overburdened engines while the footsloggers pounded in their oil-streaked wake. Gitstompa led an avalanche of raw green battle-fury towards Varlock Keep.

Only Gorgutz remained still and silent. He’d guessed Gitstompa was punishing him for his lateness by leaving him behind. For once, that was exactly where he wanted to be. Gitstompa had assembled an impressive collective of tribes and clans, but his obsession with petty loot was an embarrassment to Mork-fearing lads everywhere. That had to change. Gorgutz had picked today to make that change, and as he stood on the ridge watching the air amidst the crags and gullies to the east flare and shimmer, he realised his job might have just got easier.

He’d seen that shimmering before. He knew exactly what was coming.

CHAPTER THREE

An age had passed since she had felt this, and yet the familiarity was undeniable. She wondered where that same familiarity became enjoyment for others. When necessity became indulgence. When blood was shed for gratification instead of any wider purpose. Those were the thoughts that haunted them all. Was their very existence a necessity, or an indulgence?

Farseer Macha banished the unwelcome question. There was a time for introspection, but it was not now. She gripped her singing spear – the psy-reactive crystal shaft humming in her hand – and focused her mind on her immediate surroundings. With a moment’s concentration she reined in her psychic consciousness, confining it to the sealed transport cell of the Wave Serpent. The white and green psychoplastic of the hull throbbed gently, the quiet, settled interior of the grav-tank belying the power of its serpent shield, the strength of its vectored engines or the coruscating webway energies it had just torn through. Around her the Guardians waited, their thoughts settled, anticipating the sound and fury that would descend upon them as soon as they disembarked.

Slaughter, that was what awaited them. She had seen it. Macha’s slender fingers tightened around her spear. The weapon’s humming grew in pitch. It was thirsty. She hadn’t wielded it in a long time.

Reports of first contact flitted in over the communication links. Aurelin’s Vyper squadron had drawn blood, spearing the ramshackle war machines leading the ork’s charge towards the mon-keigh fortress. Despite her best efforts to avoid contact, her mind detected the upsurge in raw, bestial aggression as the greenskin horde noticed their new adversaries. Macha’s war host was striking from the east, low and fast through the rock canyons and pillars and over the dust dunes, the burning sun gleaming from three phalanxes of sleek, darting grav-tanks. In her mind’s eye she saw the lead elements of the host strike, saw the ork flank turned to red ruin by shuriken and las, splattering the dry tundra with black blood and burning scrap.

She had seen it all already. It was decided, fashioned in inevitability. She knew the part dealt to her. And she intended to play it, to the very best of her abilities.

‘We are in position, honoured farseer,’ said the voice of the Wave Serpent’s pilot over the link. Macha nodded to the green-helmed Guardians who surrounded her. She said nothing, but her psychic presence caressed their souls – it was time.

The rear hatch of the Wave Serpent fell smoothly open. The lenses of Macha’s crested helmet adjusted for the fierce glare as she dropped lithely from the hatch, spear singing in her hand.

Around her, battle raged. The eldar assault had plunged into the flank of the ork horde like a lance, biting deep before breaking off. Another troop of Guardians – Armelck’s – and Surela’s Dire Avengers had already disembarked from their own transports and taken up positions among the ork engines wrecked by the fire of the Falcon and Fire Prison grav-tanks supporting the eldar transports. The air whickered and sang with the passage of shuriken as the nearest orks – milling about in confusion less than a hundred yards away – were lacerated to death.

‘We’ve got their attention,’ said Surela over the link as Macha’s Wave Serpent sped away, vectored engines vibrating.

‘Not fully,’ Macha replied while the Guardians spread out around her, their movements swift and sure. ‘Not yet.’

She began to run directly at the re-forming ork battle line, her green and white robes snapping around her. She could feel their confusion, thick and rank in the hot air. Ahead the walls of the mon-keigh fortress, already battered by repeated alien assaults, blossomed with fire as they opened up on the greenskins to their front. They would doubtless accept the help of Macha and her kin, then turn on her when the opportunity presented itself – it was ever the way with the filthy mon-keigh. She had no interest in them or their ignorant hatred, not this time.

The orks saw her coming. Those with firearms began to shoot, sending fat, crude slugs slashing past her. Their inaccurate fire lasted only a few seconds before it was silenced by the Guardians advancing on either side of her, their volleys of shuriken as accurate on the move as they would have been delivered from a fixed position. Orks fell, their few vulnerable points – eyes, throats and joints – shredded.

They had to kill as many of these beasts as possible, before they realised what was truly happening.

Macha threw her spear. It left her fingers with a terrible wail, splitting the fire-streaked air. Her mind bound and channelled the reactive shaft, the psychic link driving it straight and true into the nearest ork. It slammed the greenskin into those behind, spitting three of them together with a hideous crunch.

Then Macha was in among them. With a flick of her hand the spear shuddered and tore itself from the alien bodies, spraying blood. Actions that would have crippled lesser psykers came as easily to her as an idle thought. She clenched her fingers, and the spear flew back through the air to her hand, the crystal-studded haft thumping into her palm just as she twisted into a low spin. The singing black tip of the weapon sliced the legs out from under the greenskins rushing her, their bulky bodies collapsing, crude weapons falling from their fists as they scrabbled in the bloody dirt.

She lunged deeper into the horde. Her mind was a blur, every twist, parry and stab predicted. She saw everything a heartbeat before it happened, her agile body racing to keep up with reality as it unfolded in blood-splattered fractals all around her. The Guardians kept close, maintaining a withering point-blank hail of shuriken that wailed and shrieked as it scythed apart the orks attempting to mob her. She stayed on her toes, refusing to protract any single combat, crushing the minds of those orks she couldn’t immediately cut down with focused points of psychic energy.

A small part of her, hidden away, hoped Kyre was watching it all.

The mob of greenskins around her fell away, driven back into the rest of the horde by the speed and ferocity of the eldar assault. She finally paused, fighting for breath, the honoured robes that represented her status as farseer heavy with filthy alien blood. She could see the leader of the horde ahead, a huge greenskin ensconced at its churning heart. It was still half hidden by its hulking retinue, clearly trying to work out what was happening as the eldar and mon-keigh firepower tore its minions apart. She would need to lure it into a more exposed position if Ronahn was to strike the killing blow.

‘Now you’ve got their attention,’ said Surela over the link. The combined strike force of Guardians and Dire Avengers was reloading, finishing off the wounded greenskins still struggling amidst the carpet of corpses left by Macha’s assault.

‘Give ground if you have to,’ the farseer replied. ‘We have expended the element of surprise.’

The orks were massing again, their movements now more coordinated, building up to a charge. She reached out with her mind, finding Aurelin’s exhilarating thoughts as his Vyper squadron strafed the greenskins from above.

Come, she commanded psychically. Moments later the distinctive whine of a Vyper’s crys-turbos filled the air. Aurelin’s green and white craft streaked from the pale sky, sending dust swirling around Macha and tugging at her bloody robes as it dropped to her level.

‘Honoured farseer?’ Aurelin asked over the link. His slender face was visible through the reinforced wraithglass of the Vyper’s cockpit, underlit by control runes.

Take me north, Macha said, slipping the words directly into the pilot’s mind. And make sure the beasts see.

She stepped up onto the Vyper’s left vector fin, grasping the rear gunner’s targeting harness for support. The sleek flier rose once more above the battlefield, the whining of its turbos drowning out all else. Macha raised her singing spear as they climbed, directly facing the mass of greenskins bellowing at her. She fed energy into the weapon, the bloody tip igniting with ethereal green light. The seer stones adorning her robes lit up as well, creating a nimbus of power that glowed through the dust kicked up by the battle.

She could feel the greenskin warlord’s attention lock on her, the rawness of the brute violence that consumed its thoughts straining at her psychic barriers. She pointed the spear in its direction – a challenge even the dullest creature could comprehend. Even over the battle’s thunder, she heard the beast roar.

Go, she urged Aurelin, and the Vyper sped off. She grasped her handhold fiercely, robes snapping in the wind, the shuriken cannon beside her whickering as Aurelin’s brother gunner continued to strafe the greenskins below. They roared and fired impotently up at her, the crack of near misses a brutal counterpoint to her spear’s battle-song.

The orks were not the only ones watching. The seer shard hung around her neck felt like a lodestone, bearing as it did the attention of authority. She could sense Farseer Ancasta through the psychic connection, observing her every move, judging her actions and their contribution to the wider plan. Behind her consciousness was that of Kyre, the brash young autarch, chosen by the Court of the Young King to represent them. For him the presence of the Biel-tan expedition on Cyprus Ultima was not grim necessity or strategic plot – it was an event of near-religious magnitude, all part of the ancient prophecy that had brought the young warrior to the forefront of the expedition’s leadership.

Macha let the Vyper carry her on, round the ork’s flank, splitting their attack in half. She did not require the gift of foresight to know that a time was fast approaching when her path and Kyre’s would diverge. When that happened the safety and security of the craftworld was paramount. Until then, however, everything was going as planned.

‘What da zog is going on,’ bellowed Gitstompa, cuffing Grumdrop, one of his nobs, roughly about the head. Nobody answered, so he hit the witless git again.

‘Zapnoggin!’ the warlord barked, pointing his new shooter at the sleek craft tearing into the right flank of his boys. ‘Where did these pale gits come from?’

‘Dunno’ boss,’ the weirdboy said plaintively, clearly doing his level best to keep out of arm’s reach.

‘Dat one wants a fight,’ said Wurldkrusha, his piggy eyes following the slender warrior with the spear as she mounted one of her flying darts. Gitstompa glowered, rounding on his subordinate.

‘If she wanted a propa’ scrap she wouldn’t be running away, would she?’

‘No boss,’ Wurldkrusha conceded hastily, not daring to meet Gitstompa’s furious gaze.

The warlord turned back towards the humie fortress. It was half veiled with dust, the heavy weapons batteries mounting its walls sending stabs of light through the swirling clouds. The mobs in the right and rear of the horde had turned towards the mysterious new attackers, while those leading the assault on the fort had faltered when they’d suddenly found themselves alone. Now they were scrambling back, clambering over their own dead and the heaps cut down in the previous day’s carnage. Gitstompa bared his tusks. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Not at all.

‘Follow the flying thing!’ he barked, pointing back at the warrior that had dared challenge him. He could sense the uncertainty in his retinue, and he’d been in enough scraps to know that uncertainty became defiance, and defiance led to challenges. The sooner he crumped something big, the better.

‘Boss, our guns ain’t firing,’ interjected Big Mek Wazzmakka before the warlord could set off. It took a second for Gitstompa to work out what the rusting, metal-augmented greenskin was talking about. The artillery that lined the ridge at the orks’ backs – Wazzmakka’s prized big guns – were silent, despite the fact that the swift-striking attackers on the right were almost completely exposed to them. Gitstompa’s angry snarl turned into a look of pure malice. The ridge was also where he’d left Gorgutz and his mobs of grot-lovers.

‘Get up there and find out what’s goin’ on,’ Gitstompa ordered, shoving his shoota against Wazzmakka’s metal torso. ‘I want every bit o’ dakka you got lighting ’em up. Got it?’

‘Yeah, boss,’ Wazzmakka said. ‘I got it.’

Gabriel Angelos watched from the rubble of the Westport gate as the ork assault turned back on itself.

It was difficult to discern anything. The fire and smoke of pitched battle was compounded by the Cyprus dust, swirling and churning like some great swarm of vengeful insects about the combatants. It was obvious enough that something was assaulting the greenskins from the canyons to the east, but what remained unclear.

Gabriel already had his suspicions.

‘Lady Solaria,’ he said into the vox. ‘What do your machine optics see?’ There was a grating noise as the huge Knight shifted its stance behind Angelos.

‘They aren’t Imperial,’ said the Knight Warden, her voice a metallic rasp. ‘Or… human. They’re fast, and I’m not sure if the haze cloaking them is just the dust, or some sort of shrouding technology.’

‘Or both,’ Gabriel surmised, hefting God-Splitter. ‘I am taking a detachment beyond the walls.’

‘Is that wise, Chapter Master? Surely better to let them cull one another.’

‘If our new allies are who I think they are, allowing the situation to play out as they desire won’t end well for us,’ Gabriel said. ‘We already suspected the greenskins are the least of our worries here.’

‘That is true.’

He changed channels, keying in the Third Company’s command frequency. ‘Brother Sergeants Nerov and Corvus, bring your Tactical Squads. The rest will remain here on standby until further orders. Chaplain Diomedes has command.’

As Varlock’s gun emplacements fell silent Angelos led the Blood Ravens forward. At first, moving down from the wall and beyond the western bastions, the Space Marines were rendered almost blind. The dust storm had grown worse, wreathing everything in a grey twilight that scratched and scraped at the Blood Ravens’ proud heraldry. Even with their auto-senses stripping away the worst of the haze, visibility was reduced to just a few hundred yards.

The Tactical Squads picked their way forward through the wreckage of the previous assaults, past razorwire coils and spine pits thick with ork dead. The dust may have shrouded what lay ahead, but it couldn’t obscure the sound. The air vibrated with the fury of numberless alien warriors, and the hammering of their guns and war machines. Over it all there were new, less readily identifiable sounds – eerie shrieks and wails, and a strange ululating humming that pitched and dipped. The noises came and went, a strange and ethereal overture to the barbaric undertones of the orks.

Gabriel ignited God-Splitter as the number of greenskin dead underfoot increased. Actinic energies wreathed the holy weapon, its terrific power straining to be unleashed. He had wielded the great warhammer against monsters, aliens and heretics for many years. With every blow, he sought to honour the man who had given him the weapon, Inquisitor Mordecai Toth. The Ordo Malleus agent had gifted the sacred hammer to him an age before, when Angelos had still been captain of the Blood Ravens’ Third Company. Together they had fought and exposed a daemonic presence on the world of Tartarus. Angelos still recalled those dark, bloody days, and the sacrifices they had forced him to make. The difficulties of command had dredged up memories of an even darker past, of his decision to order the destruction of his own homeworld of Cyrene, raining atomic fire on the once-vibrant planet. For all the Chaotic corruption that had taken root on its surface, the decision had left him cold. Yet he had been forced to do it again, destroying the world of Rahe’s Paradise when it had been overrun by Necron tomb monsters.

And here he was once again, assisting the Inquisition as it prepared to annihilate yet another world. Gabriel chided himself – Acheron was no true planet. It was a thing of the warp, and he had had no compunction pledging his Chapter’s services when Holt had sent out a call for assistance.

According to the scrying of Holt’s astropath, the daemon world was drawing near. That was why the Imperium was here, and the greenskins. And worse.

‘Contact,’ said Sergeant Nerov. Angelos saw them a moment later. Orks. They’d reached what had once been the leading edge of the assault, before the new attackers had struck into the horde’s flank and drawn them away. Now the bloodied mobs that had been driven back by Varlock’s guns were milling in confusion, unsure whether to join the other warbands against the new arrivals or resume their push towards the keep.

Gabriel intended to make the decision for them.

‘Into them,’ he voxed.

The Blood Ravens burst from the dust like death incarnate, bolters roaring. The nearest greenskins, many of them runty scavengers, were cut down before they realised what was happening. The Tactical Marines of First and Third Squads moved in a combat wedge either side of Gabriel, projecting a curtain of bolter fire that cut deep into the nearest mobs.

It didn’t take long for the orks to respond. Shapes loomed from the dust ahead, clanking and heavy, their machine-movements jerky.

‘Walkers,’ Sergeant Corvus voxed.

‘Hold,’ Angelos ordered. ‘Maintain fire.’

The Blood Ravens came to a halt, turning their weapons on the spread of clanking war-cans as they advanced through the dust. There were six of them, each the size of an Adeptus Astartes Dreadnought. Their trunk-like torsos bristled with buzz saws and clacking pincer-limbs, oily smoke belching from the engine blocks welded crudely to their backs. Bolt rounds struck and sparked from their yellow armour plates, doing little to slow their advance as they stomped through the corpses of their smaller kin.

‘Focus fire,’ Angelos commanded, bionic servos clacking as his grip tightened on God-Splitter’s adamantium haft. A streak of coruscating blue plasma from brother Golus struck one of the walkers, igniting its front plates with a blast that seemed to herald the birth of a new star. The crude war machine toppled backwards, wreathed in blazing blue fire. A streaking krak missile from brother Telak struck another of the machines, drilling through its leering metal death’s head before detonating. The walker stayed upright, but the explosion left it a gutted, burning pillar of scrap.

The remaining four came on.

‘Infantry suppression,’ Gabriel said, knowing that they were about to be overrun. The greenskins had rallied in the shadows of their walkers, moving up while the Space Marines were focused on the heavily armoured machines. Their bellowed war cries were building as they closed for the assault, cleavers and axes out, inaccurate fire from their crude sidearms battering the air around the Space Marines. The two squads switched their firepower back to them in response to Gabriel’s orders, mowing down the walkers’ support in a storm of mass-reactive bolts.

‘Third Squad, maintain fire support,’ Angelos said, his tone clipped. ‘First Squad, grenades. On me.’

He went forward, slugs cracking from his armour, a roar building in his throat. Corvus and his battle-brothers followed, unclamping krak grenades and combat knives while the firepower of Third Squad continued to keep the ork infantry at bay. Angelos struck the first walker at full tilt, God-Splitter raised. The machine tried to hold him with its pincer limbs, one set of blades cutting deep into the ceramite and adamantium of his right side. It sought flesh, but found only more metal – the Chapter Master had long ago lost many of his organics to bionic enhancement and synth-skin. The crux terminatus emblazoned on his armour’s left pauldron flared with refractor energy as it turned aside the war machine’s other blow, leaving its guard open.

God-Splitter struck, inscribing a crackling nimbus of blue light through the gloom. The impact annihilated the upper front plating of the walker’s torso, sheets of yellow-painted scrap crumpling like foil beneath the anointed weapon’s warhead. The hammer pulverised the greenskin pilot within the machine, striking with such force that the ork’s remains were slammed out of the back of the walker in a welter of shattered metal and pulped meat. The machine’s remains ignited in a petrochem-fuelled blaze as God-Splitter carried onwards, its power and momentum unstoppable, shattering the broken wreck and slamming into the earth beneath. A shockwave rippled outwards from the point of impact, jarring the corpses littering the battlefield, and a peal of thunder slammed through the dust-choked air.

Gabriel pulled the hammer from the blazing wreckage. Around him, First Squad had also engaged. Sergeant Corvus and brothers Pullo and Horst had combined to blast the legs out from under one of the walkers with krak grenades. As the machine tumbled, saw-limbs flailing, Corvus mounted its hull and ploughed his revving chainsword through the pilot’s visor slit. Sparks flew, followed by dark alien blood, and the machine’s limbs juddered to a halt.

The remaining two alien engines fought back. One managed to grasp hold of brother Nelisar as he hacked into it with his chainsword, slicing through his right arm with a snap of its shear-claws. As the Space Marine struggled it drove another saw-limb into his throat, the spinning blade shrieking as it bit through ceramite and then flesh. Still Nelisar fought, even as one of the smaller greenskin runts scampered up his pauldron to grapple with his helmet.

Nearby brother Soloman ignited the final walker with a gout of his flamer’s promethium, covering the alien machine in liquid fire. It stumbled onwards, seemingly unperturbed, two mechanical claws snagging the Blood Raven before he could switch fuel canisters. Soloman dropped his weapon as the walker plunged its claws into his chest, breaking his breastplate and splitting his fused ribcage. There was a grating of old joints as the machine lifted him, impaled, up off the ground. Soloman’s blood sizzled and hissed as it pattered down onto the walker’s still-burning hull. The Blood Raven managed one last vox message, before yanking out the pin of a krak grenade.

‘For the Emperor.’

The detonation blew the top off the ork machine and ignited Soloman’s remaining promethium canisters, obliterating both the Space Marine and his killer in a wall of roaring flame.

Gabriel lunged towards the last walker as it dropped Nelisar’s crudely decapitated corpse, God-Splitter raised in challenge. The relic weapon never struck – something vast and swift as lightning slammed from the dust storm, impaling the walker as it stomped round to face Gabriel. For a second it remained there – a great, curving sword, longer than Gabriel was tall. Then, with a low hum, it slid free. The walker exploded.

Gabriel felt burning shards of metal strike and scar his Terminator armour, but the impacts barely registered. His eyes were on the thing that had dealt the blow to the ork machine. It was still half obscured by the dust that wreathed its towering, slender frame, but its form was unmistakable. Even as he watched it strode past him with a grace that belied its size, moving deeper into the ork horde. Its blade sang a haunting song as it cleaved apart more greenskins, crushing their corpses beneath its feet.

Gabriel let it go, jaw set. His suspicions had been correct. The eldar had arrived.

The orks were closing in. Their firepower was starting to tell, the sheer weight of ordnance meaning some shots found their mark. The sleek white and green psychoplastics of Aurelin’s Vyper were pitted and scarred, and his piloting screen cracked. Macha herself had been grazed twice, on her left arm and temple. Even given her natural grace and balance, it was all she could do to keep a grip on the flier as it darted and wove in ever more desperate patterns, Aurelin’s target lock a constant, warning shriek.

This is far enough, Macha willed, easing the words into the pilot’s mind. They’d reached the northern edge of the eldar strike, near the foot of the dust dune that constituted the rear of the ork lines.

‘The beasts have artillery on that ridge,’ Aurelin warned over the link. ‘If they open fire they’ll tear us apart.’

Macha knew the Vyper pilot was right – among the greenskin mobs in reserve on the dune she could make out the squat forms of batteries of heavy guns, the weak light penetrating the dust storm glinting from their rusting barrels. She reached out, her consciousness grasping at the twisting skeins of reality as they sought to slip away from her. In her thoughts she saw the Vyper clipped by a shell, spinning to the ground amidst a plume of smoke. She saw fire blossom, the greenskins descending in a bellowing, stinking tide. Aurelin lay dead in his broken cockpit. She was dragged from the wreckage, dazed, bloodied. Beaten and killed. Cut apart and put up on display.

But none of that would happen. She could see clearly the crystalline weaves that represented that reality breaking from the main thread, coiling away into oblivion, unfulfilled. The greenskin artillery was silent, and would remain so for now. She had no time to ponder why. What mattered was the present.

Trust me, she willed. Aurelin put his Vyper into descent.

Below, Exarch Lilen’s Howling Banshees were holding the extreme left of the eldar line. Their proud white armour was tarnished with blood and grit, and their blades were dripping. They’d begun giving ground under the covering fire of their Wave Serpent and a Falcon grav-tank, going hand to hand whenever the greenskins pressed too close. As she slipped from the Vyper’s flank and dropped down among them, Macha noted the absence of three sisters. She touched lightly upon the thoughts of the others, noting the names of their fallen – Lyana, Auriel, Santha. Their spirit stones were lost, crushed.

‘Fight on, sisters,’ she said, raising her singing spear. Overhead the Falcon’s shrieking scatter laser and shuriken catapults were ripping the nearest orks apart, the gunner and the spirit stones that inhabited his tank combining their abilities to create an arc of death through which nothing could advance. They were exposed, however. The ork tide was swelling around them, the full fury of the horde now directed at the eldar strike force. The element of surprise was gone. They had moments more before they were overwhelmed.

‘For Biel-tan,’ she said, lashing out with a blast of psychic energy that threw the closest orks from their feet. The greenskin leader was coming for her – she could sense its frenzied presence drawing nearer, even if she could no longer make it out amidst the dust and the bodies. She glanced west, towards where the rocky pillars and gorges that formed the canyon they had struck from were just visible through the storm. When the warlord struck, they would have to be fast, or they’d be overrun.

Her mind reached out, seeking Ronahn’s. He was there, perched like a watchful bird of prey atop a rocky outcrop, visor lowered against the dust, the wind snapping at his cameleoline cloak. He was sited, ready. Fate’s weaves were all converging on the scope of his rifle.

Macha snarled, and lunged her spear into the nearest greenskin. It was almost time.

Gorgutz watched the slaughter below without expression. Around him, the boys fretted. They were desperate to get stuck in. The pale, pointy-eared gits were digging deep into the right flank of Gitstompa’s horde, ripping apart the disorganised mobs. The dust hid most of the action, but judging by the swelling roar of the orks, Gitstompa himself was on his way to sort things out.

Which fitted into Gorgutz’s plan perfectly.

A shape materialised from the storm directly ahead, slogging up the shifting slope towards Gorgutz. The warboss sneered, tusks clacking off the metal spikes of his jaw plate. It was the cog-git, Wazzmakka. Right on schedule.

‘Oi, ’Ead ’Unter,’ Wazzmakka barked as he approached, mechanics grating. ‘Why’s these lobbas not lobbin’?’

Gorgutz cast his gaze over the batteries of artillery arrayed along the crest either side of him. His mobs had already overpowered and killed the ork overseers, and now the grot crews were cowering beneath the wheels of their big guns, terrified of their new masters.

‘I thought you was the one in charge of the dakka,’ Gorgutz said as Wazzmakka reached him. ‘You tell me.’

Before the ork mekboy could respond a swell of eerie shrieks drew their attention back to the foot of the dune. More of the pointy-ears were attacking Gitstompa’s flank, directly below Gorgutz’s position. The tall, slender warrior-women, clad in white armour and red-crested helms, struck into the orks with long blades, their haunting screams momentarily driving the greenskins back.

‘Gitstompa wants dakka laid down,’ Wazzmakka said, beady eyes returning to the artillery. Gorgutz watched realisation dawn on the remaining flesh of the mekboy’s face as he noticed the butchered remains of his overseers lying in the dust.

‘He’ll get it,’ the warboss said, laying his power claw on Wazzmakka’s shoulder. ‘All of it. Want to go give him the good news?’ Wazzmakka hesitated.

‘Think I better oversee the bombardment,’ the mekboy said, trying to back away from Gorgutz. The warboss’ claw remained firmly clamped around his shoulder. Gorgutz grinned viciously.

‘Good choice, Wazzmakka. I’m sure you’ll get it spot on.’

The fighting at the foot of the dune had intensified. Another pointy-ear had joined the shrieking ones, bolstering their ranks as the orks’ numbers began to tell. She had a shiny spear, and was cutting down one footslogger after another with its wailing tip. Gorgutz released Wazzmakka and gestured to Bludkrug and his other mob leaders.

‘Get the grots up,’ he ordered. ‘And get lobbin’.’

Gitstompa almost had his claws around the pointy-ear’s scrawny white neck when the shells started to fall. The first ones whistled from the dust-choked sky without warning, detonating around the warlord with an ear-splitting crash. The sudden impacts staggered the big ork, splattering him with dirt and guts as the string of explosions tore up the mobs to his left and right.

‘What da zog!’ Gitstompa bellowed over the bombardment as more shells burst, ripping apart Grumdrop and another of his nobs. He lashed out, snatching Zapnoggin as the weirdboy tried to make a run for it.

‘It’s Gorgutz, boss,’ the wiry old greenskin choked, clawing at Gitstompa’s arm. ‘I seen it in da wyrd! H-he’s betrayed us.’

‘I’ll break dat git’s head open!’ Gitstompa roared. Another shell burst nearby, reducing a rickety truck to whickering slivers of scrap metal. The treacherous boss had even turned his gift to Gitstompa, the huge zapp-kannon, against him. Gitstompa dropped Zapnoggin and grabbed Wurldkrusha by his shoulder plates.

‘Get up dat hill and stop the dakka. Don’t kill ’Ead ’Unter if you can help it. He’s mine.’

‘Gotcha boss,’ Wurldkrusha snarled, baring his tusks. Alone among Gitstompa’s retinue, the big nob seemed pleased that Gorgutz had finally shown his hand. There would never be a better opportunity to crump the uppity git.

Gitstompa shoved more orks out of his path, bellowing furiously. The barrage from the dune was cutting the heart from his horde, scattering mobs and blasting apart their war wagons. The pointy-ears were still attacking, their whistling shuriken flaying and eviscerating those greenskins not pinned directly beneath the barrage. Gitstompa saw the pointy-ear boss over the heads of his smaller boys, marshalling her kin. Her spear was raised, gleaming like a beacon amidst the swirling dust. She was challenging him. And Gitstompa knew exactly how to deal with challenges.

Not bothering to wait for his nobs, the ork warlord forced his way through the mass of footsloggers, beady red eyes fixed on the pointy-ear. She saw him coming, stepping out from among her white-armoured kindred to meet his charge. Gitstompa crushed the last orks beneath his iron-shod boots, a roar of pure rage ripping from his barrel chest. He swung up his shiny, new kustom shoota, racking its slide.

He would tear this scrawny pale-skin in half, and then he would cut off ’Ead ’Unter’s head and stick it on his own boss pole.

All this he would do, if only the shoota would shoot. His finger clenched around the trigger, over and over. Nothing happened.

It had worked. Macha had lured the ork warlord out of the centre of its horde and away from its bodyguards. It charged over the corpses that littered the space around the Howling Banshees, its roar like a physical force, scattering its minions before it. The firearm it was carrying looked heavier than Macha. It would have cut her down. But it didn’t fire. As usual, the alien’s crude technology had failed it.

The greenskin dropped its weapon and dragged a chainaxe free from across its back. It charged with a roar, the huge weapon revving.

Now, the farseer willed. Far away, Ronahn, Pathfinder and Outcast, fixed his eye through his long-rifle’s pan-spectral sights, eased out half a breath, squeezed, and released the other half of the breath. The weapon’s wraithbone stock butted gently against his shoulder, and the ork warlord, just yards from Macha, went down. The long-rifle’s needle round, suspended in the beam fired from the weapon’s laser projection crystals, slipped through the ork’s right eye and buried itself deep in its brain, half a second before the las beam burst the greenskin’s thick skull apart.

The huge ork went down with a crash, its savage momentum driving it on through the dirt. Macha sidestepped, robes snapping, and swung down with her singing spear as the ork passed. The blade punched through the greenskin’s back, arresting its forward movement and pinning it to the ground. It spasmed once and was still, the rotor of its great axe giving out with a shudder. Dark blood began to spread beneath the headless, impaled corpse.

Even at such a distance, and surrounded by the discord of the greenskins’ bestial psychic presence, Macha felt the flare of Ronahn’s satisfaction.

The greenskin’s death snapped into reality around the farseer, the threads coalescing into a knot that could not be broken or unbound. It was done. She slid her spear free, its song for once stilled, its razor-tipped thirst sated.

‘Objective achieved,’ she said into the link, addressing the entire strike force. ‘Disengage and withdraw.’

The trio of Wraithknights deployed to break up the ork pursuit would cover their retreat to the webway portal secreted amidst the rocky bluffs and canyons to the west. After that, the next stage of the plan stood ready to be implemented. The strands of future fates lay waiting to be grasped, ready to be turned into reality. Macha only had to seize them.

As swiftly as they had arrived, the eldar were gone.

The seeing chamber was silent and dark, the only illumination the flickering blue light cast by the rune sticks and vision stones clustered at its heart. The sleek wraithbone buttresses and crystalline floor shimmered in the half-light, the distant heartbeat of the craftworld throbbing gently through the elegant structures. Farseer Ancasta could feel the spirit-sentience of Biel-tan all around her, singing through the delicate wraithbone structures of the chamber. The souls of a million dead eldar, passed on into the Unlife of the circuit, were calling with soft, insistent voices. Some were plaintive, some angry, some sought reassurance, yet all bore a deep sense of sorrow. It was the ache of an empire fallen and a race doomed to extinction, a burden that didn’t end with death, but bore heavily upon the shoulders of all eldar, on this side of the infinity circuit or the next. Ancasta had known it all her long life. It didn’t grow easier with age. If anything, she knew she had become ever more melancholic as the centuries passed.

That was not an emotion shared by Kyre. The autarch was seated across the vision stones from Ancasta, his posture mimicking her own – legs crossed, back straight, head bowed as he surveyed the runes. They floated a foot above the glassy floor, rotating slowly. Ancasta watched Kyre as his eyes flickered from one shard to the next, his haughty features undercut by their blue glow. The farseer’s scrutiny went unnoticed – Kyre was lost in the visions emanating from the stones, surrounded by the blood and fury of battle. He was engrossed, entirely unaware of his surroundings, blind to Ancasta and her doubts.

He had risen far and fast, this young firebrand. The Path of Command was rarely trod to completion by one such as he – arrogant, rash, some would say fanatical. He had followed the Path of the Warrior with a step that was as hasty as it was self-assured. Of all the myriad ways of life and death, Ancasta had never known an eldar to possess such burning belief in his own abilities.

It was all tied to the prophecy, she knew. It haunted every one of them, the words spoken by a long-forgotten tongue in a pattern none now knew. The wraithbone bore a hundred thousand such things – tales, legends, parables, myths. This one, though, had risen to the forefront of the craftworld’s collective spirit consciousness, imposing itself upon the minds of Biel-tan’s seer council. Ancasta herself had seen visions bound to the prophecy – a great mountain, wreathed in dust, its hollow peak being filled by an endless stream of corpses that plummeted from the grey heavens. The sight – strange and grim – had been one of the tenuous steps that had led to the deployment of an expeditionary force through the webway to the world the mon-keigh called Cyprus Ultima. Even now Farseer Macha – for a long time Ancasta’s rival on the seer council – led a war host in the first of what would surely be many strikes against foes seeking the subject of the prophecy – the Spear of Khaine.

Kyre watched Macha now, through the vision stone hanging from her neck. Its twin was suspended in the air before the seated autarch, projecting visions of the fighting on Cyprus into the minds of any who beheld it. Ancasta had watched the war host sweep from the webway and into the flank of the bestial orks attacking the mon-keigh’s fastness, cutting into them with the precision of a scalpel. Both savage races had to be culled before the arrival of Acheron. Before the prophecy came to fruition.

As the battle had raged on Ancasta had pulled herself from her observances, shackling her consciousness once more to the seeing chamber. She wished to observe Kyre, to understand him. The prophecy gave him strength. It was upon his own interpretation that his purposefulness was built. Without it, Ancasta wondered what he would become. A madman? A butcher? Or would he finally find maturity, self-control, the realisation that there was more to the path he trod than the fate of one relic, no matter how vital it was to the craftworld’s survival? If there was one thing that the Path of the Seer had taught Ancasta, it was that the future was never certain. A single decision created a ripple of potential outcomes, every breath, blink and muscle movement offering near-countless fresh possibilities. The strength to channel those possibilities and choose the correct ones from the mirage of potential was a skill even the most ancient farseers could never truly claim to understand. As Ancasta liked to say, existence itself was an imprecise art.

‘She has achieved the first objective,’ Kyre said. Ancasta started. She’d been so lost in her analysis of the autarch that she’d failed to notice him slip from his own visions. He watched her from across the stones, their light casting his young, pale features into sharp relief.

‘The warlord is slain,’ Ancasta surmised, already knowing that the statement was true.

‘His horde will disintegrate, for the time being,’ Kyre said. ‘Until a new leader arises. It is always the same with these primitive beasts.’

‘That will not take long to pass. I have seen the fury and ambition of one of their subordinates. He will seize power as soon as he is able. We have fought him before.’

‘Yes. It seemed as though they turned on one another even before Macha struck the killing blow.’

‘Then it has already begun. We have less time than the council predicted. We must move swiftly.’

‘So allow me to strike. The orks are crippled, now let me end the filthy mon-keigh while they still seek confirmation of our presence.’

‘Not without my presence. When we strike at the mon-keigh fleet, we do it together. We require your command once the Wandering World arrives. And that will be soon. My visions on the matter have been clear enough.’

‘You will take Macha as well?’ Kyre asked. Ancasta didn’t need her powers of precognition to read the derision in the autarch’s voice. She refused to rise to it.

‘No. She has played her part, for now. If what I have seen is true, she will serve Biel-tan again soon enough.’

‘And what is it that you’ve seen, venerable farseer?’ Kyre demanded. Ancasta grimaced, letting him see the expression. It did no good to question a farseer on her prophecies. The young autarch seemed unabashed, waiting for Ancasta to reply.

‘Death,’ she said eventually.

‘Death is already a certainty when you tread the Path of War. I don’t think that–’

‘No Kyre, you do not understand,’ Ancasta interrupted, ignoring the spike of anger she sensed from the autarch. ‘It is more than the shock of loss we feel with every conflict. It is more than the eternal ache of our race’s slow extinction. It is something more primal, more destructive. I have seen a mountain, and it is filled with the slaughtered. Even in a galaxy rife with eternal war, a darkness is coming that is deeper than anything I have encountered before.’

‘It is the prophecy. It is the Spear of Khaine, calling to us. It yearns to return to the craftworld.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Ancasta warily. ‘Perhaps not. The source of these visions remains shrouded. It could just as easily be the vile influence of the Wandering World, bleeding over into reality now that its physical presence draws near.’

‘Did Macha suggest that?’

‘It is the opinion of certain members of the seer council.’

‘Those “certain members” do nothing but hinder us, venerable farseer. Macha and her supporters do not understand the prophecy. They do not venerate it.’

‘Should it be venerated?’ Ancasta asked, fixing Kyre with a questioning look.

The autarch scowled and rose, the sudden movement threatening to scatter the vision stones.

‘You know as well as I that we must reach the spear before anyone else. And you know that to do that we must be fully prepared for the Wandering World’s arrival.’

‘And that means the destruction of the mon-keigh,’ Ancasta finished, rising too. ‘Do not fear, Kyre. We are still in agreement. The next part of the plan shall proceed. We shall strike together. With all haste.’

The orks were gone. As Angelos and the Tactical Marines of First and Third Squads had fought their way deeper into the horde, resistance had crumbled. Within the hour, shielded though they were by the storm, it became obvious the bulk of the greenskins were withdrawing over the dunes and up the manufactorum rift of Black Valley. Angelos had called the rest of the half-company out onto the plain to mop up stragglers and establish a cordon beyond the outer bastions. Lady Solaria and her Knights had joined them.

‘The greenskins have retreated,’ Angelos said. ‘But we have made contact with an even more perfidious xenos. Eldar.’

The Drakaina shifted fractionally above Angelos. Its dark lenses seemed to glare down at him from its great helm.

‘The eldar have not been reported on Cyprus Ultima for over three thousand years,’ Solaria replied over the vox.

‘They bide their time well,’ Angelos said, gesturing at the corpses beneath their feet. ‘But you may rest assured, they will always return. The wounds on these greenskins speak of their work, and I saw their intervention with my own eyes. Their strike against the flank of the ork horde was decisive. Given the rapid deterioration of the warband, I suspect they have slain the greenskin commander and then withdrawn. It is typical of their tactics.’

‘So why would they assist us?’

‘They aren’t. The rout of the greenskins will have achieved some esoteric goal of their own. You may rest assured, they only ever serve their own purposes.’

‘Then Varlock Keep is still in danger.’

‘Until we can ascertain where they came from and what they’re planning, yes. I recommend a joint excursion to investigate the canyons. That was where they struck from. The rock formations may conceal one of their portals.’

‘We shall walk with you, Chapter Master. If the filthy aliens have taken root on my world, we shall tear them up, and burn them.’

‘Agreed, Lady Solaria. I fear this day’s bloodshed is not yet done.’ He opened a new channel on the vox net.

‘First and Second Squads, status report.’

‘Second Squad ready, Chapter Master,’ said Sergeant Torith over the link.

‘First Squad ready, Chapter Master,’ said Sergeant Corvus after a moment more. Angelos sensed the hesitation.

‘Casualty report, First Squad,’ Angelos prompted.

‘Forty per cent, Chapter Master,’ Corvus replied. ‘But we remain combat effective. What are your orders?’

‘Search and destroy,’ Angelos said. ‘I will brief you in person. Close on my position.’

Sergeant Corvus paused, scanning his flanks. They felt exposed. The two Tactical Squads – First and Second – were moving south, into the canyons, defiles and rocky crevasses that led away from Black Valley and the keep. The storm had refused to abate, a buffeting, angry wind whistling and shrieking about the rock formations, slashed by jagged pillars of stone.

Visibility was even worse than it had been on the plain. Corvus’ auto-senses were pinging with false alarms, tracking shapes along the rocky slopes either side of them that weren’t really there. He could sense his squad’s tension, their desire to engage. It didn’t help that they were almost down to half strength. Soloman and Nelisar had been taken back to the keep, their gene-seed harvested, their armour and weaponry waiting to be removed to the Blood Ravens fleet. Brother Vallo had also fallen moments before the greenskin retreat, skull split by a crude battle axe.

More corpses for the mountain.

‘Possible contacts,’ voxed brother Horst from his vanguard position.

‘Confirm?’ Corvus asked, simultaneously sending out a blink-click directive over the visor display that immediately halted the squad.

‘Stand by,’ Horst replied.

‘Watch your markers,’ Corvus said to the other Tactical Marines, bringing his bolter up to cover the jagged rocks to his right. The squad didn’t need such directives, but it was all part of the rhythm of combat, the long-ingrained flow of commands that kept their battle edge well honed.

The storm finally seemed to be dying down. Corvus could make out ragged patches of pale sky above the rocks surrounding him. The wind’s shrieking had dropped to a dull, dry moan. He checked the location markers of Second Squad and Chapter Master Angelos, moving together through a shallow canyon half a kilometre to their east. The three Knights that had accompanied the Blood Ravens into the canyon were still in reserve, following the Adeptus Astartes at a slower pace, their gargantuan frames hidden by the dust. Alone amidst the rocks they’d have been badly exposed, especially against a foe as devious as the eldar. It was up to the Angels of Death to identify a target and clear a path for them. But thus far there had been no sign of where the eldar attack had originated from within the maze of rock pillars, stony bluffs and defiles.

‘Contact confirmed,’ said Horst. ‘Super-heavy walker, tactical designate “Wraithknight”.’

‘Hold position,’ Corvus said. ‘I’m joining you.’

The sergeant rose and moved in a low crouch to the front of the squad’s position. Horst had taken up post behind a broken spur of weathered rock, overlooking a small valley that ran across the east-west direction of the wider canyon. Corvus joined him without a word, scanning the valley bottom as the dust fell away.

The three walkers below typified the disturbing elegance of the xenos eldar. They were far removed from the machines of humanity, and in every way the opposite of the crude greenskins. Where orkish super-heavy constructs were blocky, leering conglomerations of armoured scrap, the eldar somehow achieved grace with a machine that stood more than ten times Corvus’ height. The three stationed in the valley below the sergeant moved as lithely as their smaller kin, their smooth, visorless white helms swinging back and forth as they scanned their surroundings. Corvus remembered how one had interceded in their battle against the smaller ork walkers earlier, effortlessly impaling one of the armoured greenskin cans with its long, shuddering sword. He keyed the vox.

‘Chapter Master, we have made contact. Three super-heavy walkers, arrayed in the valley to your north west. They appear unaware of our presence.’

‘Understood. I am patching through to the Knight Warden. Stand by.’

Corvus switched back to the inter-squad channel. ‘Close on my formation and prepare to engage. Conflagration pattern. I shall lead.’

As confirmation runes winked across his visor, Chapter Master Angelos cut back in over the vox.

‘Knight support is inbound, and I am also on my way. Second Squad will hold its current position. Maintain overwatch and await reinforcements.’

‘Understood–’

Horst’s corpse slammed into the heaped bodies on the mountain, broken, headless.

‘Incoming fire,’ Corvus said without thinking. Even as the words left his lips, there was a vicious crack. Horst’s head burst, his ceramite helm blown apart by a pinpoint strike to the left visor lens. Corvus dropped behind the rocks as his brother’s body slumped.

‘Sniper contact,’ he voxed, removing his bolter’s safety. ‘Visuals?’

Negative runes flickered back over his visor. He scanned the rocky slope to his right, auto-senses probing urgently for Horst’s killer. There were no returns. He was completely exposed.

His enhanced senses detected something passing by his head a split second before his thoughts registered the snap-crack of a las bolt. It grazed the left side of his helmet, throwing his head to one side and cracking the visor plate. The heads-up display flickered and died.

‘Squad, rise and engage,’ he ordered, thankful the vox was still functioning. Even as he issued the order he was standing, moving towards the rocky slope in a zig-zag pattern. He unclamped his broken helm as he went, dragging it free and locking it to his mag-belt. With the auto-senses damaged he trusted his own eyesight more.

‘I have a visual,’ voxed brother Pullo. ‘Sixty yards up and a hundred to the right of your current advance trajectory, brother-sergeant.’

‘Suppress,’ Corvus ordered, not bothering to look at the location picked out by Pullo. The squad would pin the xenos, but there were bound to be more. He had to locate them before–

Another shot cracked off a boulder just to his right, shards of stone pattering from his power armour. The narrow, dusty space resounded with the thunderclap echoes of bolter fire as First Squad answered the sniper fire, lacerating the slope with mass-reactive rounds. Another shot struck Corvus’ right pauldron, punching through to the under-plates and half spinning him around.

He was so much meat on the mountaintop.

He chided himself for thinking they would be able to approach the Wraithknights undetected. Their response had to be swift. Counter-attack, that was the first rule of resisting an ambush. Against eldar snipers, speed and ferocity were even more important. Remain exposed for a few moments more and what was left of the squad would be decimated.

You can all lie buried together on the mountain.

‘Into them, brothers!’ Corvus barked, pressing further up the slope. Another shot snapped past his bare head, lacerating his cheek. This time he’d caught the muzzle flare. It had come forty yards to his left, further up the slope, from a ledge of rock topped by what seemed, at first glance, to be just another dusty, wind-scoured boulder.

Corvus charged, firing his bolter from the hip. The rock stirred, the alien sniper throwing back the cameleoline cape that had disguised it so well. It wore a tall, pointed green helm, the rest of its armour concealed by robes that blended perfectly with the dusty surroundings. As the air about it filled with bursting rounds, it turned, long-rifle in hand, and began to bound further up the slope.

It didn’t get far. A round from Corvus’ bolter caught it in the calf, sending it sprawling in a spray of blood. Rather than attempt to rise it rolled onto its back, bringing its sniper rifle up. Corvus kicked the weapon aside, sending it clattering across the rocks. Even as the rifle left its grip, the sniper was thrusting up onto its knees with its remaining good leg, a long, slender dagger punching for the flexible electro-strip where Corvus’ thigh plates met his groin.

More corpses for the mountain.

Corvus turned the blade aside with his bolter’s stock, going for his chainsword with his other hand. The eldar stabbed again, snatching onto his mag-belt. The Blood Raven slammed the chainsword down into its head, the rotor still inactive. The alien slumped, helmet split, dagger falling from its grasp. Corvus let it fall.

Another body slams home.

The sergeant had no time to savour his victory. He felt the rocks beneath shift, and thought-activated his auto-stabilisers. For a second he feared the Space Marine assault had triggered a landslide. Then he realised it was much, much worse.

A deep, vibrating hum filled the air. Corvus had already heard it earlier that day. It was the noise made by the xenos Wraithknight’s sword. The ground beneath the Blood Raven trembled with another footfall, and a shadow fell across him as he turned.

Alerted by its snipers, one of the Wraithknights had stridden up from the valley bottom. It swept its great glaive towards the sky, the Cyprus sun eclipsed behind its tall, slender form. In that moment, Corvus knew he was going to die.

Then the air shuddered, and fire blossomed across the Wraithknight’s white-plated torso. The Blood Raven turned in time to see an Imperial Knight shoulder its way through a pillar of rock, broken stone crashing and cascading from its battered armour. It fired again, shells bursting harmlessly against the eldar engine above Corvus. The xenos machine changed its stance with a dancer’s grace, sweeping its sword round to meet its challenger.

Corvus remained rooted to the spot.

And on a distant mountaintop, the corpses piled a little higher.

The dust had lifted, leaving the rocks and crags of the defile exposed. The dry stones reverberated with the crash of gunfire and thunderous footfalls. Audemar had engaged to save the Space Marines. That much was true, though the machine-spirit of his ancient Knight suit, hungry for honour and vengeance, needed no encouragement. At last, it had found a foe worthy of House Varlock.

‘Consort, wait,’ said Solaria over the vox. ‘I’m not in position yet.’

She had been the furthest from the point of contact when Chapter Master Angelos had voxed them. She was still half a kilometre away, closing fast. But not fast enough.

‘Negative,’ Audemar said. ‘I’m engaging. Otherwise we condemn the Space Marines to death. Kalyn?’

‘I am with you, father,’ his son replied.

‘For House Varlock,’ Audemar intoned. ‘Fealty and honour.’

The Wraithknight met them. The Space Marines beneath their feet were retreating, firing as they went in an effort to keep the elusive snipers among the rocks pinned. Only one of the Angels of Death wasn’t moving. He seemed paralysed, enraptured, staring up at the eldar construct towering above him. Audemar snarled and willed his suit on, crushing and grinding rocks beneath him, servos whirring as he pushed them to the limit. Fire from Kalyn’s battle cannon blossomed across the Wraithknight’s white torso, barely scarring its strange alien armour.

Behind the xenos machine, in the valley below, its two kin-walkers weren’t moving to support it. In fact they had turned their backs on the combat and were striding to the far side of the defile. Audemar’s optics picked up a shimmer in the dusty air beyond them, something akin to a heat haze. For a moment the machine-senses of the Knight thought they detected shapes beyond, figures that seemed to fade in and out of reality as the haze expanded and contracted. By the time the Knight’s optics had established a lock they were gone. Audemar thought-activated the vox via his cranial links.

‘We’ve located at least one of the xenos portals. They appear to be retreating, but it’s possible they will bring up reinforcements.’

‘Acknowledged,’ came the voice of Gabriel Angelos. ‘I am still inbound.’

‘Audemar, wait,’ Solaria said, her voice strained.

‘No time,’ he grunted. The first Wraithknight loomed over him, standing head and shoulders above even his mighty suit. His gauntlet was crackling with power, swinging, driving for the gleaming stone embedded in the breastplate of the towering alien.

Then the Wraithknight struck. Audemar was still in mid-swing, teeth bared, fist slamming forward, when the alien machine lashed out. The air screamed as its great glaive sliced sideways with blinding speed, scything beneath Audemar’s fist before it could connect with the torso. The blade cut through adamantium, plasteel and ceramite as though it wasn’t even there, hacking through the Knight’s armour and slicing into Audemar’s Throne Mechanicum. He didn’t even have time to cry out before the sword cut him in half, and his Knight with him. Fire immolated his remains as the sheared halves of the ancient suit collapsed, shaking the rocks and starting a landslide at the far end of the valley.

Just over a hundred yards away, her view hidden by a boulder-strewn ridgeline, Lady Solaria saw her Consort Warden’s vitae runes blink out across her display panels. She let out a shout of denial.

A moment later, her son’s followed.

‘Father!’

Kalyn saw Audemar fall, saw his suit cut in half. The eldar machine moved with a speed and grace that defied its size, as lithe as any of its smaller kin. It had simply been toying with Kalyn’s father.

But in doing so, it had let the heir of House Varlock close the distance.

Kalyn knew he was dead. He knew he couldn’t match the alien’s speed, or the deadly edge of its glaive. None of that mattered. In that moment, all he wanted was to kill the xenos filth that had cut down his father with such contempt. The spirit of his Knight urged him on, driven into a frenzy by the evisceration of its brother.

Kalyn lunged. It was not a considered blow, not a strike intended to open the eldar’s guard or force it to give ground. Kalyn committed to it entirely. He threw himself forward, screaming, the cables and links binding him to his Throne Mechanicum snapping taut. The Wraithknight turned, but its speed meant nothing against a blow made with no thought for survival.

Kalyn’s Knight struck his father’s killer at full tilt, both foot plates leaving the ground. His Reaper chainsword went before him, striking the eldar in the centre of its breastplate. The full force of his plunging Knight was behind the revving teeth of the weapon. It struck the gleaming gemstone at the walker’s heart. For a second, the alien material resisted. For a second, it endured. Then it shattered into a thousand crystalline shards, bursting around the Reaper’s roaring teeth. The huge chainsword carried on, rending through the Wraithknight’s breastplate in a hail of sparks and shorn psychoplastics even as the rest of Kalyn’s suit crashed into the eldar machine. The Reaper tore out its back, surrounded by a corona of flames and eldritch purple light. The Wraithknight crumpled, run through and crushed by Kalyn’s fury.

Together, they fell.

He landed.

The impact broke his spine. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it was over. Around him the bodies heaped, human and xenos, united in a warrior’s death. Still more slammed down either side of him. More. There would always be more. He realised that now. The thought did not trouble him. This was where he belonged, amidst the slaughtered, upon the anvil of death.

Sergeant Corvus didn’t move. Above him the two towering machine-warriors fell. His genhanced senses slowed the entire moment down, breaking it apart so that he could react. But he didn’t. He simply appreciated the sight in full. The great, wicked teeth of the Reaper chainsword tearing sluggishly through the slender back of the eldar walker, shards of alien metal spinning away in a hundred different directions. Fire flaring, full of wrath, shot through by the ethereal spirit discharge of the machine’s shattered ghost pilot. The legs of the Wraithknight buckling beneath it, its long, smooth helm bending back, its spine shattering, its frontal armour splitting. The Imperial Knight crashing into it with enough force to deafen even the Space Marine momentarily, the Knight actually leaving the ground as it leapt into the foe that had bisected its brother just seconds earlier.

Corvus saw it all, and marvelled at the beauty of it. It was the glory of destruction, the splendour of death. It was the sole reason for his existence. That much was clear to him now. He raised his chainsword in salute, as the first ruined shards of the eldar walker came crashing down around him, their slow impacts driving up a fresh storm of dust and dirt. Here was death. Here was glory. Witnessing the spectacular destruction of one champion by another. Honouring a victor who was utterly committed to the death of his enemy. Who had killed himself in the process of attaining vengeance.

It should have happened to Corvus years ago. He closed his eyes, and smiled.

The two Knights came crashing down. The wreckage engulfing him.

On a distant mountaintop, another broken corpse slammed into Corvus. Another followed, and then another, and another. In moments he was gone, buried, lost forever.

One more sacrifice among the unnumbered, unremembered dead.

The lads were hurting. Gorgutz understood that. The ork psyche wasn’t made to cope with defeat. Some claimed an ork couldn’t even be defeated in the first place. If they didn’t die they’d come back, more determined than ever.

Gorgutz knew that was true, in a sense. As he looked out over the mobs, sullenly collecting themselves amidst the burned-out manufactorums and hab ruins of Black Valley, he recalled previous scraps. Lorn V. Kronus. Kaurava II. Each time, he’d been forced to abandon a fledging waaagh! Yet he had survived. More than that. For an ork, strength and prestige weren’t found in victory. They came simply from fighting. And Gorgutz had fought. He’d slaughtered the fish ’eads, he’d butchered humans, pointy-ears and the scrap-skeletons on Kronus, and he’d left Kaurava II a burning, ravaged wasteland. His mob had grown, shrunk and grown again, but always his ambition had remained the same – fight, fight and fight some more. It was what greenskins did best. It was what the likes of Gitstompa had forgotten, in his flashy urge to acquire loot. That was why Gitstompa was dead and Gorgutz lived. That was why true orks could never be defeated.

‘’Ere he comes, boss,’ Zapnoggin whimpered, cowering in Gorgutz’s shadow.

The ork ignored him, gaze not leaving the mobs grunting and scraping amidst the detritus below. He was standing atop the twisted remains of what had once been a haulage crane, responsible for dragging smelted plates off the roller belts of a refinery chapel. The position offered a vantage point over the mobs that had gathered around his banner after the battle before the keep. It also allowed him to spot the arrival of the last greenskin standing between him and mastery of the entire warband.

He flexed his power claw. Gorgutz wasn’t on Cyprus Ultima for loot. He was on Cyprus Ultima because the greatest battle he’d ever known was coming, one to eclipse all others. Zapnoggin kept gibbering about it, and even without the weirdboy’s madcap prophecies, it was obvious for all to see. The humies were here in numbers, even the old red-and-white beakies. The pointy-ears had arrived too. That could only mean there was something on its way worth fighting for. And fighting was why Gorgutz had joined Gitstompa’s mob in the first place. Fighting was why he’d let Gitstompa die, and turned his own lobbas on him. Gitstompa wasn’t one for fighting. But Gorgutz was.

So was Wurldkrusha. The big nob shouldered his way through the orks at the base of the crane’s access gantry. He gestured up at Gorgutz with his axe.

‘’Ead ’Unter!’ the nob bellowed. The sound shook the metal beneath Gorgutz’s iron-shod boots.

‘Thought you got me good, did ya?’ Wurldkrusha went on, gesticulating furiously up at the warboss. ‘Well ya didn’t, backstabbin’ git! Come down here and fight me propa’!’

The nob’s challenge echoed away into silence. The mobs surrounding the crane were still, watching Gorgutz. Waiting to see if he answered the challenge. Gauging whether he really was the biggest, the strongest, and the most brutal.

Gorgutz didn’t answer Wurldkrusha. Instead, he snorted derisively, and stepped off the edge of the broken crane. Orks flung themselves out of the way and a grot found itself pulverised as the warboss hammered into the dirt twenty feet below, the immense impact shattering rockcrete and throwing up a cloud of dust. Gorgutz rose slowly, his heavy armour grating, the skulls on his trophy rack clattering.

For a moment, even Wurldkrusha just stared. It was Gorgutz’s savage, leering grin that tipped him over the edge. He charged, his axe raised, poised to split the rival warboss’ head apart. The mastery of every ork on Cyprus was a single blow away.

But the blow never fell. Gorgutz lunged into Wurldkrusha’s strike, snatching the ork’s wrist with his free hand. Wurldkrusha stopped in his tracks, straining and shaking with effort, his tusks gritted as he attempted to force his axe down into Gorgutz’s head.

Though the slabs of green muscle across his arm bulged, the effort never showed on Gorgutz’s face. Slowly, he reached across with his great power claw. Slowly, he clamped it around Wurldkrusha’s axe arm, letting him see, letting the surrounding orks watch.

Wurldkrusha redoubled his efforts, putting both hands into trying to force the axe down. It shuddered, but stayed locked above the two combatants. Gorgutz sneered. Then, without activating his claw’s disruptor field, he snapped the great blades shut.

Wurldkrusha howled, and kept on howling. The amputation wasn’t a fast one. The claw blades cut through thick, straining muscle and scar tissue, then finally toughened bone. Black blood pumped across their wicked surfaces. Eventually there was a gristly snapping noise, and Wurldkrusha’s arm came off. The axe went with it, still clamped in the warboss’ fist. 

Gorgutz let go of the severed limb and placed his hand on his rival’s horned helmet, forcing the bellowing ork down onto his knees. Then he brought his own knee up. There was a crunch as scarred armour plates connected with the meat of Wurldkrusha’s blunt face. The ork’s howls were abruptly silenced as he slumped in the dirt, tusks splintered and nose shattered. 

‘Gitstompa’s a dead ’un, Wurldkrusha,’ Gorgutz told the semi-conscious ork. ‘I’m da big boss now. Don’t make me crump ya.’

Wurldkrusha grunted something incoherent, but didn’t attempt to get up.

‘Now ain’t the time for lads to be killin’ each other,’ Gorgutz said, speaking loud enough for the assembled orks to hear. ‘Now’s the time to show all these other gits why orks are da best. No more little scrappin’, no more lootin’. I came here for a real fight, and I ain’t found it yet. Dis–’ He kicked Wurldkrusha’s prone form. ‘Dis ain’t a fight.’

The surrounding greenskins watched on. The new warlord spread his arms wide, Wurldkrusha’s blood running from his claw.

‘Now, does anyone else want some?’

None did. Gorgutz nodded.

‘ Thought so. Let’s get to work.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Gabriel Angelos bowed his head. Around him the last of the dust had settled, the wind reduced to a low, mournful moan. The craggy defile they had hunted the eldar through was quiet now, a dry, dead place.

‘Your consort’s sacrifice will live on,’ he said. 

‘He died well,’ Lady Solaria replied. Even distorted by her suit’s machine feedback, the words came out flat and lifeless. ‘It was what he would have wanted. What the House deserved.’ 

‘And your son,’ Angelos added. There was a moment’s silence before Solaria spoke once more. 

‘Kalyn lives. The chirurgeons say he is stable, but he shall never walk again. In a Knight suit, or out of it.’

‘He avenged his father.’

‘And I will avenge him. Audemar would have been content with his own sacrifice, but he would not have wished our son to suffer. If he cannot walk with the Knights of House Varlock, he cannot inherit my title. He cannot rule or administer this realm.’ 

For a moment, Gabriel pondered the mysteries of family. It was a bond no Blood Raven had ever truly understood. Often, their brotherhood within the Chapter was described as that of a family. Was the phrase itself – brother – not a familial one? Yet brothers were one thing. Fathers, mothers, sons – Gabriel had not left mankind so far behind that he did not understand that those were different things entirely. The emotions associated with them were alien to him, though.

‘If it’s vengeance you seek, you will find it in abundance,’ he said slowly, looking up at the battle-scarred Knight towering over him. ‘This was just the beginning. The eldar always return, and the greenskins are far from beaten.’

‘I will not rest until they have all been purged from my realm,’ Solaria replied. Her Knight stood over the fallen remains of her son and Consort, while House serfs hastened to salvage what they could from the two wrecks. The bodies – or in Audemar’s case, his remains – had both been uncoupled from their Throne Mechanicums and borne back to Varlock. The suits, however, were just as precious as their pilots. They would not be claimed by the sand and the wind of the dusty canyon. Tracked conveyor transports were ferrying salvage parts back to the keep.

Broken machines and broken flesh, both returning home. Gabriel had already paid tribute to their sacrifice. They’d fallen saving First Squad. Thanks to their intervention only two Blood Ravens had been lost – brother Horst and, regrettably, brother-sergeant Corvus. There had been little of the latter to recover – he had been crushed when Kalyn had brought down the Wraithknight. The other two eldar walkers, and their snipers, had retreated, vanishing into their portal. House Varlock serfs were demolishing the far end of the valley with melta charges, hoping it would do enough to damage the invisible entrance to the eldar’s mysterious realm.

‘I still owe you a debt of honour, Gabriel Angelos,’ Lady Solaria said, her Knight’s stance shifting with a grating of servos as she cast her gaze across the valley. ‘Without your arrival Varlock Keep would already have fallen.’

‘Consider it paid now, Lady Solaria. Your House has given its future for my battle-brothers.’

‘We shall see if that is enough,’ Solaria said. The click of an incoming transmission in Gabriel’s ear interrupted him before he could answer.

‘Speak,’ he said into the private command channel.

‘Chapter Master, this is the Dauntless. Captain Balthazar is requesting deployment orders.’

‘Understood,’ Angelos replied. ‘Inform him I will brief him personally aboard the Dauntless. A full strategic overview, within the hour. Deploy a Thunderhawk to my coordinates.’

‘Affirmative, Chapter Master. The Red Talon has just finished refuelling and re-arming. I am passing your coordinates on to its pilot now.’

Gabriel hoped he would have fresh intelligence by the time he briefed Balthazar. The remains of First Squad had taken a prisoner, one of the eldar snipers who’d been found, helmet split and unconscious, on the craggy slope above. Even now Chief Librarian Orion was taking the captive to the security of one of the starforts in orbit, the Helios, to conduct an interrogation.

‘You depart, Chapter Master?’ Solaria asked.

‘Momentarily,’ Gabriel replied, cutting the link. ‘I will leave the squads already deployed to the keep in position. As I said, the xenos will be back. We must be ready, regardless of where and when they strike.’

‘Let them come. Eldar, orks, they will all meet the same end.’

‘I pray so, Lady Solaria,’ Angelos said, watching the pale sky for the Red Talon’s contrails. ‘I pray so.’

Inquisitor Holt stood before the crystalflex of the Final Judgement’s primary vision port, his cowl raised, hands clasped behind his back. Before him lay Cyprus Ultima, filling the view, an orb of blues and greens, yellows and whites, dashed with atmospheric swirls. It was as majestic a sight as any in the great Imperium, a human-held realm from which mighty warriors had sallied forth to slay the heretic and the alien for thousands of years. It was a bastion, a cornerstone of the sub-sector, its Knightly keeps and citadels a projection of mankind’s power.

But Holt was not looking at Cyprus Ultima. He was looking at the objects between the planet and the Final Judgement’s crystalflex. Small though they were compared with the planet’s bulk, they dwarfed the other ships and satellites occupying high orbit, sending lesser vessels scattering before them like ponderous leviathans disturbing shoals in oceanic depths. Holt took in their vast, crenulated bulkheads, docking spines, yawning gun ports and blazing plasma drives. He noted the bristling forests of augur arrays and sensory probes, the winking lights of transmission beacons, and the glitter of starlight from a thousand arching, stained-glassaic viewing ports. He drank in the sight of the trio of Ramillies-class starforts, and he rejoiced. Here, truly, was the definition of mankind’s iron will. Here was the God-Emperor’s might made manifest. The weapons systems of even one such battle station were enough to ravage a planet and leave a fleet of capital ships as nothing but listing, burned-out wrecks. Yet here were three, slipping ponderously into high anchor above Cyprus Ultima. Nor were they even the end of his expedition’s might – three more were still pulling themselves into position, an hour out from orbit. When all six had been deployed, they would be more than sufficient to mount a blockade on a planetary scale.

To mount a blockade of Acheron.

‘My lord,’ said Winlow, disturbing the inquisitor’s thoughts.

‘Speak,’ he ordered, not turning away from the port.

‘We have received a communiqué from Chapter Master Angelos. He has confirmed the presence of eldar xenotypes on Cyprus Ultima. He suspects they are using a series of canyons and rock formations to the west of Varlock Keep as a staging post. How long they’ve been operating from there remains unclear.’

‘Did Angelos not see fit to discuss this with me via vox?’

‘The communiqué states he is returning to his fleet to brief the rest of his company. Captain Agrelin of the Helios also reports their Chief Librarian is currently questioning a xenos prisoner on board his vessel.’

Holt said nothing. He watched one of the Blood Ravens ships, sleek and lithe next to the ponderous bulk of the nearest starfort. Its plasma engines flared, powering it into low orbit, no doubt to receive the presence of the Blood Ravens Chapter Master.

‘The eldar will seek to confound our plans, that much is certain,’ Holt said to Winlow, finally deigning to turn and address him directly. ‘They will be fully aware of the spear. That makes them a far greater threat than the greenskins.’

‘Perhaps we should deploy assets to the canyons west of Varlock?’

‘That will do no good. Those won’t be the only portals they are operating out of. They may have already sealed them anyway. If they intend to attack the keep it only benefits us, we have little use for House Varlock. The expedition’s assets are far more valuable.’ As he spoke he turned his gaze back to the Ramillies starforts. One now almost filled the Final Judgement’s viewing port, a solid wall of gargoyle-studded battlements and weapon decks.

‘We must be on our guard,’ he continued. ‘They could strike from anywhere, and at any time.’

Captain Agrelin’s eyes swept over the oculus stands, matching their flickering data displays with the information streaming into his cortex via the links and plugs of his command throne. The Helios was almost in place. The mesh decking beneath his throne’s dais shuddered as the vast plasma drives powered them into the orbital space identified on the strategic readouts as their holding position. Beneath him the bridge staff of the mighty Ramillies starfort were all locked to their stations or hurrying back and forth with message chits, the vast, domed Centrum Dominus echoing with hushed conversations, the rattle and clatter of cogitators and the clicking of polished boots off hard-scrubbed decking plates.

Agrelin scanned the sigils surrounding his own on the displays – the Mars-pattern Navy cruiser, the Godhammer, and a trio of Sword-class escorts were the only vessels in proximity. The Godhammer, like all the other Navy ships they’d passed, had fired off a macrocannon salute, and was now moving to give the Helios room befitting such a battle station. The only other capital ship that lay close by was the Adeptus Astartes battle-barge, the Dauntless, currently passing by equidistant between the Helios and the neighbouring starfort, the Imperial Glory. Agrelin watched the raven-and-blood-drop marker representing the ship on the oculus stands charting a course into low orbit. According to reports being disseminated among the expedition’s command elements, half a company of Adeptus Astartes had already been deployed to the surface of the planet below. Agrelin wondered what Inquisitor Holt had to say about that. The leader of the expedition had already specified on multiple occasions that no assets whatsoever were to be ‘wasted’ on assisting the Knight Household of Cyprus Ultima with the greenskins that had recently invaded. The motley ork flotilla that had delivered them to the surface had withdrawn to the system’s edges, seemingly unwilling to engage the vastly superior Imperial fleet. Holt had refused to either corner them, or commit to a land campaign prior to Acheron’s arrival. Apparently the Space Marines had different ideas.

Such matters did not concern Agrelin. The performance and wellbeing of the Helios were all that mattered. If the approaching daemon world was to be annihilated once it exited the warp, Holt and the rest of the expedition’s high command would need every single macrocannon battery and lance array belonging to the six starforts. Privately, beneath his icy exterior, Agrelin was looking forward to testing his battle station’s formidable capabilities. In four decades of command aboard the Ramillies starfort, he hadn’t assisted directly in the annihilation of an entire world, much less one infested by the filth of the Archenemy. He couldn’t imagine a more righteous enactment of the God-Emperor’s will.

The thought made him stir in his unyielding adamantium throne. He keyed the vox with a thought, activating the larynx feed sutured directly into his flesh.

‘Time to orbital positioning completion?’ he barked. The question was amplified over the brass wire hailers set into the gaping jaws of the skulls that constituted his throne’s armrests. Petty officers scurried to attend their stations and assess the readouts. Predictably, First Lieutenant Jorrem was first to come back with an answer.

‘Seventeen minutes and seven seconds, captain,’ he called from his cogitator division. Agrelin grunted, the sound delivered as an ugly vox growl. The damned boy wanted his job.

‘Maintain present course,’ he said. ‘I want to be on-station and locked down before the Imperial Glory or the Charon. Is that understood?’

A chorus of aye sirs rang out across the bridge, and the bustling intensified. Agrelin allowed the faintest of smiles to tug at the scarred corner of his synth-skin lips.

The expression did not last long. A lone security alarm started to chime on one of the augur benches.

‘What is that?’ Agrelin demanded. A rating scurried over to investigate, snapping at the hardwired station operators in an angry undertone.

‘Well?’ Agrelin barked.

‘Augur terminus nine-five has just reported signs of damaged atmospheric integrity. It may indicate a hull breach, but the impact is minor.’

Agrelin assessed the information in a heartbeat. It was almost certainly a collision with a piece of atmospheric debris or unidentified satellite. Regardless, he hadn’t risen to his post by being anything other than thorough. Protocol on such a matter was clear. 

‘I want a full augur scan of the immediate vicinity,’ he ordered, his words booming out over the bridge. ‘If anything has crept into boarding range, I want to know about it. Have the compromised area of terminus nine-five sealed and draft in security and damage control units. Who has command of that section?’

‘Sub-Lieutenant Forn, sir,’ said Second Lieutenant Crast, beating Jorrem to the punch. 

‘Tell him I want a thorough situation report in five,’ Agrelin ordered. ‘And–’

He faltered as he felt something wet running down his lip. He wiped his nose, and the liver-spotted back of his hand came back bloody. Even as he stared another red droplet hit the heavily embroidered cuff of his uniform.

‘Captain?’ Jorrem said. Agrelin looked up to see the first lieutenant standing at the foot of the dais. His nose was also bleeding.

In a moment of stunned disbelief, Agrelin realised every single person on the bridge was suffering the same affliction.

‘Hostile movement on the bridge,’ came the voice of security chief Serquand, but the words seemed distant and sluggish. Agrelin struggled to focus. His thoughts felt mired, dragged down by some strange, sudden lethargy. He was vaguely aware of Jorrem shouting something, of a sudden headache, of intrusion alarms blaring across the bridge. He gripped the arms of his throne tightly, struggling to grind words from his thoughts. Something was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

There was a crack, like splitting thunder. The stale, dead air seemed to shimmer, as though a sudden heat haze had flared into being at its centre. Agrelin managed to twist in his throne, links stretching at his old, slack flesh. The blast doors. The Navy armsmen guarding them were dead, scattered around the open bulkhead. Something was moving past them, a shimmer of green energy. It darted with a speed almost too great to follow, sweeping onto the bridge and arcing like lightning from one section of controls and displays to another. Agrelin watched in paralysed horror as the bridge staff seemed to disintegrate at the energy’s passing. Limbs came away, throats were cut, torsos opened. Blood and screams painted the starfort’s command deck.

Suddenly, the aching sluggishness that seemed to have afflicted Agrelin was gone. He gasped, bony fingers probing his throne’s armrest for the station-wide alert.

‘Seal the blast doors!’ he barked at the same time. Nobody was listening. Everything around him had descended into chaos. His crew were being massacred, though by what had only just become apparent – the lightning had resolved itself into tall, slender shapes, clad in green and white robes and strange-looking gems. They moved with inhuman speed and grace, slicing apart scrambling, desperate bridge staff with slender swords and spears. They’d already cut down the rating security team, and were making short work of the deck officers, bench operatives and ship analysts. Even the servitors were cut apart, fuel mixing with blood as their shorn mechanical parts snapped and sparked.

Agrelin’s old hands finally reached the station-wide alert rune. Even as they did so he found himself frozen, unable to move. He strained, jaw locked, a snarl of frustration building in his throat, but his body simply would not obey. It was like the sleep paralysis he’d used to experience through long warp voyages – his mind still functioned, but it was as if it had been trapped in a stone effigy, entirely unable to respond to his will.

As he struggled to mouth a prayer to the Emperor, sweat slicking his rigid frame, the last of his crew died.

Ancasta let go of the psychic quickening that had impelled her seer council. All was suddenly still and quiet on the bridge, the sound of blood dripping onto the deck audible over the whir of cogitators as they powered down. Only one of the mon-keigh still lived, seated in his grim throne atop the domed chamber’s central dais.

Sanlith was pinning him in place, the Warlock paralysing the aging mon-keigh’s body with a sheath of psychic force. Ancasta sent a thought to Bonesinger Alethor, instructing him to begin his work. Then she mounted the dais steps, her ancient witchblade dripping, the white hem of her robes trailing blood.

The mon-keigh looked at her as she stood before it, its eyes permitted to roam. Ancasta stared into them for a moment, noting the usual base instincts she’d come to expect from such a species – there was little to be found there beyond hatred and fear. As ever, their thought processes were simplistic in the extreme. Ancasta found no pleasure in culling them. She never had. Now, though, was not the time for mercy.

She reached out. She could feel the thing’s shuddering desire to get away from her, battling with every fibre to break free from the witchcraft that had left it snared and helpless. Tendons stood out on its neck above the high, starched uniform collar, and sweat beaded its wrinkled, cable-studded brow. Ancasta touched two slender fingers lightly upon its forehead.

Emotions filled her mind. Horror, rage, shock. She brushed past them, seeking out what lay below. Her own consciousness darted through the mon-keigh’s memories, finding the cornerstones that held its mind together.

She saw it sitting for the first time on this very throne, felt its pain – twinned with pride – as the data links and cables were grafted into its flesh by chanting, red-robed machine creatures.

She swam deeper. She saw it aboard another vessel, a capital ship of some sort, gripping the railings around a strategic holochart as it coordinated a successful fleet action. Elation warred with icy determination in its heart. It had won the greatest victory of its career.

Deeper. She saw it standing amongst its peers before an applauding audience, in a dark, echoing marble chamber. It was younger, its flesh no longer wizened, its uniform simpler and unadorned. Youthful, heady joy filled its thoughts. It had passed selection.

Deeper. A cell lit by a single wavering lumen candle. Now the mon-keigh was little more than a child, clad in a plain, coarse shift, huddled up in the cot-bunk where it slept. It was crying, trying to muffle the sobs with one hand. It was desperate not to wake the rest of the schola.

Deeper. This far in, Ancasta had to focus in order to hold onto her own consciousness. She had gone so far the creature itself didn’t truly recall these memories. Here they were though, secreted deep within its mind, forgotten but never lost.

The mon-keigh was younger, almost new-born. Only impressions occupied its senses – warmth, comfort, love. A grandmother’s indulgent smile. The encouragement of a father’s voice. The safety of a mother’s arms. She had found the core, the root of its being. The reason it continued to live and breathe, even if it had forgotten.

One by one, Ancasta crushed the memories, snuffing them out like the candle in the mon-keigh’s orphanage cell. It was over in barely a second. All that remained was the final memory, that core of hope and comfort that had lain, long forgotten, within the mon-keigh’s heart.

With a thought Ancasta ended it forever, wiping its existence from the weaving threads of reality. The mon-keigh slumped in its throne, dead. Ancasta removed her fingers, the mind war finished. For a moment she looked down at the vacant-eyed corpse. For a moment she wondered whether it had ever wondered what dark and bloody paths it would walk when it had still been nothing but a child.

‘I have gained control of part of their systems,’ Bonesinger Alethor said, drawing her attention from the mon-keigh’s body. She turned, surveying the bloody bridge. Her own ship, the Hand of Isha, had brought them close enough to board the crude mon-keigh starfort, holofields fully arrayed and cloaked in the most potent of psychic veils. The wraithgate stone she bore would allow them to depart unchallenged once their mission had been concluded. Kyre bore its twin, somewhere many decks below. He had inserted with a separate strike force, moving to free the ranger taken by the mon-keigh on the world below. All that remained was to set in motion the thread of events Ancasta had already spun together.

She could hear hammering on the far side of the chamber’s sealed blast doors as more mon-keigh sought entry. Alethor had locked them out. A part of her chided herself for becoming distracted by the insignificant memories of the station commander, even if only for a moment. They were running out of time. Fate was tightening around her throat like a noose, impervious to her efforts to loosen its grip. And if she did not succeed here, it was not only her own future threads that would be cut. The entire craftworld would be imperilled.

‘We must be swift,’ she said. ‘The mon-keigh are already mobilising to stop us. Use what weaponry you have been able to override, and target-lock the primary facilities on the planet below. They will appear in the mon-keigh’s targeting matrices as Varlock Keep.’

The Red Talon had just left the rattling discord of upper atmospheric turbulence when Gabriel’s vox link clicked in his ear. The Chapter Master was being accompanied by the remnants of First Squad, strapped into the Thunderhawk gunship’s restraining harnesses as it returned them to the Blood Ravens fleet. The transmission code told him the message was coming from the Third Company’s battle-barge. He opened the link.

‘Report.’

‘Chapter Master, this is the Dauntless. We are receiving a priority distress signal from the Ramillies-class starfort Helios, in sector two-three-eight. They are claiming that an unknown hostile force has stormed the bridge and compromised a number of the station’s weapons systems. Our own augurs confirm that several lance batteries along its coreward weapons spine are powering up and acquiring target locks independently of the rest of the fort’s armaments.’

Most other commanders would have wasted precious seconds questioning how an enemy could simply materialise on board the most heavily defended part of a fully armed and operational Imperial defence platform. But Gabriel didn’t need to ask. There was only one foe he had ever encountered that could possibly deploy such subterfuge.

‘The bridge is located in the fort’s central basilica control spire, correct?’ he asked. After a moment’s pause the Dauntless’ vox seneschal replied.

‘Yes, Chapter Master, according to the basic schematic readout logged in the Dauntless’ data banks.’

‘Inform Captain Balthazar I am boarding the Helios immediately. He is to deploy the rest of the demi-company from the Dauntless in support. We cannot afford to let the xenos take control of so powerful a weapon.’

‘Understood, Chapter Master.’

‘After that, contact whoever commands the Helios and is still in a position of authority. Order them to lower the shields around the bridge spire. Make it clear that I am inbound, and this is not a request.’

‘Of course, Chapter Master.’

Gabriel switched to the Red Talon’s cockpit intercom.

‘Pilot, you have a bearing for the Helios?’

‘Yes, Chapter Master.’

‘Set a new course. Take us there with all possible speed.’

Jonah Orion suppressed a curse as he turned towards the interrogation chamber’s access hatch. He didn’t need the wailing of the alarm systems or the blinking of its intrusion logs to tell him something alien and deadly had invaded the starfort. Even with his psychic wards raised and his fist clamped around his force staff, the presence of a cadre of powerful xenos psykers made what little organic skin he still possessed crawl. And the witches were not alone.

‘I told you they would come,’ called the eldar over the discord of the alarms. The xenos was still bound to the probing rack, limbs splayed, white flesh streaked red where the Chief Librarian’s cherub-familiar had slashed it with its short dagger. Orion turned back to the captive, his expression grim.

‘You are out of time, mon-keigh,’ the eldar taunted, its unsettling black eyes locking with those of the Blood Raven.

‘Not quite,’ Orion replied, standing over his prisoner. ‘Not yet.’

He raised one gauntlet, a mind impulse unclamping the vambrace and loosening the ceramite digits. There was an ominous thud as the heavy gauntlet thumped into the deck. A heartbeat later and Orion’s bare hand was clamped around the captured alien’s throat.

Skin to skin, the power of the warp was always more potent when flesh and blood met.

+This is your last chance,+ Orion willed, driving the threat into the alien’s mind. Like all of its haughty kind, it had proven resistant to every method of interrogation the Blood Ravens Librarian had tried thus far, be it physical, mental or psychic. Orion had one last card to play, before the thing’s kindred reached them both.

+Tell me what your leaders desire in this system,+ he demanded. +Or I will shatter your spirit stone.+

For an eldar there was no greater threat, and Orion knew it. Xenologists had hypothesised for thousands of years on the exact nature of the stone shards all craftworld eldar carried, but it was well known that they held a vital, sacred importance to their owners. Orion accompanied his words with a fresh surge of psychic power, forcing his consciousness deep into the alien’s mind. It tried to resist, but Orion’s threat had opened up a sliver of fear, one that the Librarian grasped and tore at. The alien’s mental barriers crumbled, and Jonah Orion saw everything.

While, behind him, the interrogation chamber’s access hatch took the first of a series of brutal, shuddering impacts.

Gabriel and First Squad deployed into the shuttle holding bay from the Red Talon in a tight combat spread. The Navy armsmen who met them cringed back, averting their shotguns on the hasty orders of their lieutenant.

‘Where is your primary detention centre?’ Gabriel demanded before the pale-faced man could even begin his introductions.

‘Three levels up, lord,’ the armsman said, not meeting the hulking Blood Raven’s gaze.

‘Show me.’

Gabriel let the stammering Navy man brief him as he led his battle-brothers up through a grav lift and along a series of dark, cramped access shafts. Somehow, xenos raiders had slipped alongside the Helios and boarded her, penetrating the outer hull at multiple points. Communications were choppy at best, non-existent at worst, and all contact had been lost with the starfort’s Centrum Dominus. The armsman was just explaining that it appeared the infiltrators were overriding the fort’s weapons systems when a flicker of light opened up his throat. He thumped back into Gabriel, arterial blood splattering the Chapter Master’s red and gold armour.

‘Contacts,’ Gabriel snarled as more hissing shuriken darted past, some cracking into his baroque battle plate. Ahead the blast door to the Helios’ primary detention centre lay open. The lighting in the corridor beyond had failed, only wan emergency lumens picking out the tall, slender figures in form-hugging green and white armour.

Gabriel lowered his head and charged, a roar rising in his throat. Behind him bolters boomed in the tight confines of the access shaft, First Squad snatching shots past their Chapter Master. One of the eldar was hit, left leg torn away in a great gout of blood. The others went back, hugging the half-dark of the shaft’s walls, shuriken still flicking and hissing from their sidearms.

Gabriel slowed as he realised the xenos weren’t going to allow themselves to be caught. The shaft ahead split, forming a T-junction emblazoned with sigils that pointed left towards the detention core, and right towards more access lifts. The eldar were going right.

‘Brother Orion should still be in the core,’ Gabriel voxed. Before he could go any further, one of the xenos reversed its retreat. This one wore armour that was more elaborate than those around it, its green helm mounted by a great crest and its shoulders hung with a cloak embroidered with a thick weave of thorns. In one hand it carried a long, slender blade, which it whipped up in challenge.

‘Brethren, secure the core,’ Gabriel ordered. ‘I will deal with this xenos.’

As First Squad went left, Gabriel matched the eldar’s gesture with God-Splitter. Lethal energy crackled over the mighty weapon’s head and played across the Blood Raven’s gauntlets as he stepped towards the xenos. To his surprise, the alien spoke, its oddly accented Low Gothic dripping with scorn.

‘I am Autarch Kyre, of Biel-tan. Prepare to meet your carrion god, mon-keigh.’

The eldar lunged, the motion fast and fluid even by the standards of its deadly race. The blow would have plunged through Gabriel’s breastplate had the snapping refractor field of his crux terminatus not robbed the strike of its potency. The Blood Raven swung God-Splitter up in response, but the autarch had already recovered, darting back out of Gabriel’s reach.

Snarling an oath to the Emperor, Gabriel went after him.

The corridor secured by First Squad was empty, until they reached the main interrogation chamber. Its plasteel door had been ripped open, broken by eldar weaponry. Beyond, xenos corpses filled the doorway, their armour melted to their flesh by the warp lightning that had cooked them alive. Orion stood at the centre of the chamber, his blue power armour studded with dozens of shuriken barbs, the remaining flesh of his face lacerated and bloody. He was panting, his backpack’s braziers extinguished, wisps of smoke rising from his force staff and psychic hood.

The prisoner, bound to the probing rack next to him, was also dead, reduced to little more than a burned, blackened husk.

‘Brethren,’ Orion said as the Tactical Marines entered the chamber, bolters trained on the eldar dead. ‘Where is the Chapter Master?’

‘Behind us,’ came the reply. ‘Holding off more xenos.’

‘Then come,’ Orion said, striding over the eldar corpses and out of the chamber. ‘Before it’s too late.’

Even in the shaft’s confined space, the eldar named Kyre had the edge. The plasteel walls either side of Gabriel were buckled and dented from God-Splitter’s repeated swings. Not one of the great daemon hammer’s blows had found its mark. The autarch was always one step ahead, always a few inches beyond the weapon’s destructive field. The xenos was toying with him, its arrogance reigning supreme.

None of its own blows had been able to pierce the Chapter Master’s Terminator armour. Regardless, Gabriel was struggling to maintain his focus. It wanted him to become frustrated, wanted him to overextend and leave himself exposed to one of its clinical, lightning-fast strikes. He couldn’t allow his concentration to lapse, even for a second.

He did not have time for such games.

Another stroke of God-Splitter parted only air before slamming a great dent into the decking plates underfoot, causing the entire infrastructure around them to moan and shudder. Gabriel shifted as much of his weight onto his back foot as his heavy armour would allow, prepared for the riposte even as his weapon pounded the deck.

It never came. The eldar’s attention had shifted, fixed now over Gabriel’s shoulder. From behind him, he heard a familiar voice ring out.

‘I know you, xenos!’

The air ignited, static lightning earthing and snapping along the length of the shaft’s walls, ceiling and deck. The eldar took a pace backwards.

‘Death is coming for you, Autarch Kyre,’ said Jonah Orion, reaching Gabriel’s side. Between them, the two Space Marines filled the corridor.

‘You will not stop us,’ Kyre said, still going back. Gabriel noticed the air behind the alien shimmering, the irises of one of their portal gateways opening up.

Orion had seen it too. A thunderclap battered against Gabriel’s hearing as the Chief Librarian unleashed the fury of the ancients. By the time the lightning struck, though, it was too late. The corridor was empty.

‘Well met, brother,’ Gabriel said, turning to his old comrade. ‘I feared you slain by these damned infiltrators.’

‘It will take more than a handful of xenos assassins to end me,’ Orion said, fixing Gabriel with his sole remaining eye. ‘I have seen it. I know why they are here.’

‘Why?’

‘We must reach the Centrum Dominus first,’ Orion replied. ‘They are rigging the Ramillies to fire on Varlock Keep.’

‘They’re turning our own weapons against us?’ Gabriel demanded.

‘I would expect nothing less from these devious xenos.’

‘It is a long way from here to the command bridge, and they’ve overridden many of the locking systems and failsafes.’

‘There is another way,’ Orion said. ‘How close is the Red Talon?’

Sub-Lieutenant Vetlow rounded on the armsman, teeth bared with fury.

‘Where are those lascutters!’ he shouted, spittle flecking the man’s black visor plate.

‘Coming, sir,’ the armsman replied.

‘How long, warp damn it?’

‘If the central shaft grav lifts are still responding, ten minutes.’

Words failed Vetlow. He turned and kicked the bridge’s blast doors. It did nothing other than hurt his foot, but at least the pain brought back a sliver of clarity. If breaching equipment didn’t arrive soon he might as well draw his autopistol and save the fort’s commissar the trouble of a summary execution.

Cadet commissar, he corrected himself. Presumably Commissar Jall had been on the bridge when whatever had covertly boarded the Helios had slaughtered everyone within the Centrum Dominus. Whoever or whatever they were, they’d also managed to hack a section of the starfort’s cogitator network so thoroughly that they’d sealed the blast doors to the bridge. Going by the frantic vox chatter from those junior officers still alive elsewhere in the Ramillies, a number of weapon systems along the coreward battery spine were also malfunctioning and acquiring target locks on the planet below. The override systems had all failed. Vetlow had never heard of anything like it before. It was a nightmare, playing out before his very eyes, and right now there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

He’d been on duty in the nearest terminus to the bridge when the vox had suddenly filled with screams and panicked alarms. By the time he’d marshalled a squad of armsmen and reached the Centrum Dominus it had already been sealed off. The rune code pads were unresponsive. There were no more vox transmissions coming from inside. A priority signal had been sent to the rest of the fleet, but there was no way any of the nearest vessels would be able to launch support shuttles any time soon. Whatever the intruders were targeting with the Helios’ weaponry on the planet below, it was about to be vaporised. Vetlow slammed the butt of his autopistol vainly against the aquila-stamped adamantium blast plates, crying out in pure frustration.

The vox grille above the doors crackled, and an urgent voice burst through the static.

‘We have a gunship approaching the bridge spire at high velocity! All hands, brace for impact!’

CHAPTER FIVE

It had taken precious moments to convince the officer commanding the Helios’ void generator to lower the shields around the bridge. Eventually Captain Balthazar himself had taken the vox and informed him that either the shield be lowered, or the Dauntless would open fire on the section of the Helios’ batteries that were target-locking Imperial assets on the surface of Cyprus Ultima. At the last moment, beset by the panic that had infused the fort’s surviving command staff, the officer obeyed.

Approximately fifteen seconds after the void shield flickered from existence, the Red Talon struck the stained crystalflex dome that constituted the top of the Helios’ Centrum Dominus. The Thunderhawk shuddered around Gabriel as it crashed nose-first into the bridge, bringing down a great cascade of twisted, buckled buttresses and a million shards of glittering, razor-edged crystalflex. Even mag-locked to the deck and with his armour’s servos fully braced, the impact jarred Gabriel, shuddering through flesh, bone and augmetics. Witnessed on the troop bay’s viewscreen a split second before the external vid-feeds cut out, the Chapter Master saw row after row of cogitators, oculus stands, augur arrays and enginarium terminals annihilated as the Space Marine heavy flier crashed through the centre of the chamber, surrounded by a halo of fire and smoke.

The atmospheric breach tore at the debris and broken materials flung up by the impact. Fresh alarm bells wailed across the chamber, competing with the shriek of escaping air. Heavy blast shields began to lock over the shattered remains of the ceiling, sealing off the breach while the bridge’s atmosphere stabilised.

The Red Talon ground to a ponderous halt, crushing the steps of the central dais and smashing the command throne. The Thunderhawk’s prow was buckled and its armoured flanks were scarred silver. One wing had gone, shorn off in a burning vox pit. Debris and splintered crystalflex rained down as the flier settled, metal groaning ponderously. For a second, as the final blast plates levered into place overhead, nothing moved.

‘Brethren, attack,’ Gabriel said over the vox. The Thunderhawk’s side hatches opened, and Orion and the remains of First Squad stormed the bridge.

The eldar were ready for them. Gabriel had known they would be. He’d given Orion and the Tactical Marines a single objective – reach the blast doors and manually unlock them. He would see to the captured gunnery stations himself.

As soon as he hit the bridge’s buckled deck, Gabriel saw that his worst fears were correct. Doubtless forewarned either by Kyre or their own prescient witchcraft, the eldar who had seized the Centrum Dominus had avoided the destruction wreaked by the Red Talon’s unconventional entry. There were only a dozen of them, but they were clad in the robes, stones and strange runic charms that denoted the xenos race’s psyker caste. As the Blood Ravens disembarked, a trio moved to head off the Tactical Marines making for the blast doors. All but one of the remainder turned to intercept Angelos.

They were fast. Psychic trickery wreathed them, allowing them to move with a speed that seemed to blur the edges of reality. Bolters boomed in response to their assault, echoing around the ruined bridge as First Squad fired on the move. None of their shots found their mark. Gabriel lost sight of his brethren as the first witch to come at him lunged with its long, elegant blade.

God-Splitter was too slow. The sword caught Gabriel on the breastplate. The vibrating xenos metal would have run him through had his crux terminatus not flared, the refractor energies absorbing the force of the impact and causing the razor-tip of the blade to crack off his breastplate.

The Blood Raven swung his daemon hammer up in riposte, its mighty head crackling. It never came close to hitting. The Warlock was no longer where it had been a split second before, sliding off with unnatural grace to the Space Marine’s right. Another of its kin was coming at him from the front, its blade darting beneath his guard. Again, the ancient refractor field of the Chapter Master’s Terminator battle plate saved his life, turning away the strike. Gabriel tried to lunge into the alien’s guard and get a hand on its robes, but it too seemed to slip like water from his grasp.

In a few combat-fuelled heartbeats, Gabriel realised he was surrounded. Like Kyre, these xenos were simply too fast. There was a split-second pause, just long enough for the Chapter Master to take a single breath. Then they struck.

Blows rained down, faster than the eye could follow. He felt a sword crack off his right pauldron, another off his left greave, a third clanging against a thigh plate. His refractor field snapped and sparked, almost overwhelmed by the relentless assault. He roared and swung, but God-Splitter pulverised nothing, the alien forms surrounding him dancing and darting with a grace he could never hope to match.

Finally, one of the xenos weapons drew blood. A spear plunged through the back of the Blood Raven’s left greave, biting flesh and jarring bone. Angelos went down onto one knee with a grunt, the eldar weapon sliding free as the refractor field finally flickered from existence, overloaded. The Blood Raven’s stimms overcame the pain, numbing the injury even as he felt blood trickling down into his boots. He stayed down.

There was another fraction of a pause as the xenos converged for the kill. It was the briefest moment’s opportunity. Gabriel used it. Bellowing with effort, he swung God-Splitter up off the deck. A Warlock had been lunging for his exposed head, blade a silver blur, but in doing so it had finally allowed itself to get too close. The eldar’s foresight had failed. God-Splitter struck a split second before its own blow, the boom of discharging energies echoing around the Centrum Dominus. The xenos simply disintegrated, its robes burned away, its body blasted to gobbets of pulverised meat. Gabriel threw his whole strength into the swing, turning it into a rising, three hundred and sixty-degree arc that smashed aside and shattered half a dozen other blades as they thrust at him.

The eldar dropped back, resuming the circle around him as the remains of their fellow seer splattered the buckled deck. Gabriel stood with legs braced, God-Splitter grasped in both fists. With a crack, his refractor field reignited. He smiled grimly.

Movement beyond the circle caught the Chapter Master’s attention. Another alien was at work at the Helios’ gunnery bay. Tokens of strange, smooth material, crafted into runic shapes and inlaid with glittering stones, had been inserted into the firing ports and data nodes of the primary cogitators, doubtless overriding the starfort’s targeting systems. The eldar’s long fingers were working the rune banks that controlled a wing of the fort’s formidable lance batteries, the coreward spine. It only took a glance for Gabriel to recognise the area on the planet below that was being target-locked by the fort’s systems. Varlock Keep.

+Gabriel of the Hidden Heart.+ The words slipped directly into his thoughts, the tone haughty and cold. He grimaced.

‘Face me, witch,’ he snarled. A figure parted the coven of seers surrounding the Chapter Master. Her armour and robes were more heavily embroidered than those of the aliens around her, and her helm was embossed with a complex runic sigil. Gabriel recognised the markings of a farseer. She wielded a sword that moaned and hummed with keen psychic potency, its wicked tip calling for blood. The red lenses of the eldar’s tall helmet held Gabriel’s eyes.

+You should not have interfered,+ the farseer said, working the words into the Blood Raven’s head. +As ever, your presence is only exacerbating the danger to us all.+

‘Get out of my mind, xenos scum,’ Gabriel spat, advancing towards the farseer. Around him the Warlocks raised their blades in unison. The air snapped and vibrated with restrained psychic power.

+I cannot allow anyone to claim the spear, Gabriel Angelos,+ the farseer willed. +Not even you.+

She raised her hand, her first and third fingers outstretched and pointed at him. The Blood Raven bit back an oath as sudden pain burst within his skull. His advance faltered.

She was in his mind. He could feel her. Her thoughts were at war with his own, an alien invasion that sought to overcome and crush his consciousness, the very essence of his existence. She was dredging up the darkness of his memories and seeking to smother the light. 

He saw Cyrene. His home world. The home world of his Chapter. He saw it burn. He saw nuclear fire engulf it, singeing away the forests, the oceans, devouring all life. Leaving nothing but barren rock and ash, all at his command.

He went forward another step. The wound in the back of his calf had already clotted, but it still throbbed. He gritted his teeth, trying to focus, trying to block the eldar witch from his thoughts.

He saw Isador Akeos, his old friend and battle-brother. He saw the Librarian on his knees, helpless, defeated, pleading for his life. He saw how he had changed, how the taint had corrupted his pale flesh, sparking a warp-fuelled madness in his eyes. He saw the bolt round that executed him, shattering his skull. Delivered by his own bolt pistol.

Another step. His whole body was tense and shaking.

He saw another world annihilated, Rahe’s Paradise, rent apart by cyclonic torpedoes. Destruction on a vast scale, dealt once again by his hand.

He realised his nose was bleeding. He took another faltering step, focusing through the pain that seemed to be splitting his skull in half.

His auto-senses chimed, warning of seizure and spiking vitae signs.

He saw Azariah Kyras, his former Chapter Master, a brother he had once looked up to, warped beyond all recognition by the horror of Chaos. He saw the battle to banish the foul daemon that the once-noble Blood Raven had become, along with all the brothers that had fallen in that desperate struggle on Cyrene’s blasted surface. Ursus Triton, Primus Melion, Zenith Raed. So many more. All of them lost.

He was going to die. He couldn’t go on. His advance halted. The farseer drew closer, her own body rigid and shaking, fingers like claws.

He saw a mountain. Its crown was jagged, its peak a hollow bowl, full of freshly slaughtered meat. More meat fell from the sky – warriors, human and xenos alike, all of them slain in battle. They crashed into the pit in the mountain in their thousands, filling it, choking it with their butchered remains, flooding it with sundered battle plate, ripped flesh and broken bones. As he stared, a terrible realisation dawned on him. The mountain itself was not a thing of dirt and stone. It too was formed from flesh. The bodies plummeting from the heavens had created a mound that reached towards the sky. There were gullies and crests and ridgelines, all of heaped corpses. Countless millions. Only now was the final great peak forming at its centre, as the bowl was filled level and then began to rise, one slain champion at a time.

There was a shriek. A scream of raw horror, torn from an alien throat. The nightmare vision disintegrated. Suddenly, Gabriel’s thoughts were clear. The pain of the farseer’s mind war was gone, dissolving amidst the Space Marine’s stimm boosts. The farseer had fallen to her knees. She’d seen the mountain too. The sacrificial corpse heap of a galaxy consumed by eternal war. Its unfettered psychic backlash had torn through her.

Around her, the other eldar seers seemed stunned, rooted to the spot. Gabriel turned as a low rumble echoed through the wrecked chamber, followed by shouts and the thudding of combat boots. Orion and First Squad had succeeded. They’d managed to get the bridge blast doors unlocked. Navy armsmen in black flakplate and dark blue fatigues were flooding the damaged chamber, autorifles and shotguns raised.

Now was their chance, before the xenos recovered.

‘Open fire!’ Gabriel ordered. The crack of discharges and the whip-snap of hard rounds filled the Centrum Dominus.

As her kindred were cut down, the farseer struggled to rise. Gabriel strode the last few yards towards her. The blood running from his nose had clotted. He raised God-Splitter, his expression grim. But before the xenos could defend herself a bolt round struck her, punching through her green-plated armour with a crack and detonating brutally out of her back. She slumped like a discarded puppet, sword clattering to the deck beside her, its wailing silenced.

Behind her the eldar who’d been overriding the Helios’ gunnery banks also fell, riddled with multiple shotgun blasts. The machinery of the gunnery station was broken apart at point-blank range, the alien devices inserted into the cogitators shattered.

Orion and First Squad gathered around Gabriel as he stepped over the farseer. She still lived, barely. A single hand found his left greave, pale flesh resting lightly on scarred, unyielding red ceramite.

‘You must stop them, Hidden Heart,’ the witch breathed, the words no longer delivered telepathically.

‘This is the end for you, xenos.’

‘You do not understand, Gabriel Angelos. Tyrants will try to claim it. They must be stopped, all of them, or the price will be high.’

‘Your false words will find no purchase with me,’ Gabriel said, raising God-Splitter. ‘I have had my fill of lies down the centuries from your kind. No more.’

‘They seek the spear,’ the farseer went on, choking. ‘Your inquisitor is one of them. Stop him. Stop all of them. They do not understand.’

The mythical Spear of Khaine. Of course that was what the eldar sought. But Inquisitor Holt?

Gabriel prepared to bring God-Splitter down. In the same instant, though, his auto-senses pinged. The farseer’s vital signs were gone. She was dead.

Worse, the target-lock on Varlock Keep was still in effect.

‘The machinery in this sector is too damaged to override it now,’ Orion said as he surveyed the broken, sparking gunnery bay. ‘We are too late.’

‘To stop the firing sequence manually, yes,’ Gabriel replied. ‘But there is another way. Lieutenant–’

The Navy officer who had led his armsmen onto the bridge came hastily to attention.

‘Lord?’

‘It is only the coreward spine’s weapons batteries that are target-locked on Cyprus Ultima, correct?’

‘Yes, lord. All other systems remain on standby.’

‘Lower the shields protecting the coreward spine immediately, and have all defensive weapons with an angle open fire on it.’

For a moment the Naval officer hesitated, his abject terror warring with his deeply ingrained sense of duty.

‘The xenos must already have overrun the coreward spine if the batteries there aren’t being shut off manually,’ Gabriel said. ‘If we do not act now, thousands of loyal Imperial citizens and dozens of priceless war machines on the planet below will be lost.’

‘Understood, sir,’ the lieutenant said, finally making his choice.

‘Can it be done?’ Orion asked Gabriel as the armsmen manned the bridge’s remaining stations.

‘Emperor willing,’ Gabriel responded. ‘There’s more than one way to disable a weapons battery.’

The Helios turned on itself. The in-close weapons defence systems, designed to respond rapidly to boarding craft and small fliers, swivelled in their gargoyle-maw turrets and opened fire on the coreward spine that lay between them. Tracers of fire and beams of las battered at the unshielded section of the Helios, shattering bulkheads and buckling weapon muzzles. The weaponry brought to bear was small compared with the great macrocannons and lances studding the spine, but the range was point blank, and the fire focused. Warning runes and emergency lights winked across the remaining stands of the main gunnery station on board the bridge as they flagged up damaged weapons batteries and failing power nodes. After a few more minutes, the merciless barrage had caused the remaining weapons systems to lose the lock they had acquired on Cyprus Ultima.

Success came at a price. Gabriel watched through the functioning viewscreens as great chunks of the Ramillies fell away, blasted into the void and dragged down by Cyprus Ultima’s gravity. They would pound the surface below, a shower of debris blasted from the Helios’ flank. There was nothing that could be done about that. Rather wreckage than a concentrated orbital bombardment. The Blood Raven turned towards the Naval officers gathering on the remains of the bridge.

‘Get me a shuttle. Now.’

The Helios made Cyprus Ultima burn. As the vast starfort attempted to drag itself from the planet’s orbit and deeper into the protective phalanx of Holt’s fleet, the remains of its battered coreward weapons spine tore away and spiralled down into the planet’s gravity well.

Those below experienced a rain of burning metal. Most of the debris struck north of Varlock Keep, pounding Black Valley’s broken remains. Gorgutz was in the ruined bowls of a manufactorum complex when the scrapfall began. Zapnoggin, Wazzmakka and the remains of Gitstompa’s nob retinue were with him. Only Wurldkrusha was missing, still hurting from his public humiliation. The new warlord was raking through debris with his deactivated power claw when a runty boy from Bludkrug’s mob managed to wend his way through the press of glowering nobs.

‘Boss! Boss! Come quick! It’s raining scrap!’

‘Huh?’ Gorgutz demanded, abandoning his fruitless search. The warband had lost too much material in attacks on the humie fortress up the valley. They needed more loot before Gorgutz could be fully confident of his new leadership over the mobs.

‘The humies got in a fight in space,’ the panting ork boy managed. ‘And now free loot is crashing everywhere! Grogitt and a bunch of his ladz have already been squished by it!’

As though to underscore the overexcited greenskin’s words, the ruins around Gorgutz shuddered, a nearby tremor sending cascades of dust from the vaulted, gloomy rafters of the half-gutted manufactorum.

‘This is perfect,’ Gorgutz said, gesturing at his retinue to get outside. ‘Just the chance I’ve been waiting for!’

The mob emerged into the grey half-light. It was immediately apparent that the boy’s message was true – the overcast heavens were streaked with haphazard, fiery contrails. In the distance Gorgutz could hear the bellows and roars of excited greenskins, already brawling over the first of the heavenborn loot. The immediate vicinity, however, was shrouded in dust and silence. Something had impacted into the valley side a few hundred yards up from the manufactorum, something big. Gorgutz loped to the edge of the crater, his underlings clustering around him.

It took the warlord a moment to work out what he was peering at through the dust. When he realised, a fresh grin split his blunt features.

‘Wazzmakka,’ he grunted. ‘Tell me you can do something wiv dis?’

‘Oh yeah, boss,’ the Big Mek said, grinning in turn. ‘I sure can.’

Holt ordered the bridge of the Final Judgement to be cleared. It was not a command that could have been performed on any capital ship other than one in the personal possession of a member of the ordo. The sight of vital vox, augur and enginarium stations idling and unoccupied, and servitors sitting dead-eyed and lifeless, clearly served a greater purpose. Holt could have requisitioned anywhere for a private audience – the ship’s basilica, his own quarters, the cargo berths, service corridors. Instead he had deliberately chosen to leave his ship vulnerable. It was a statement. The Final Judgement lay at the heart of the entire Expeditionary Fleet. After the ambush aboard the Helios, the inquisitor wanted to make it clear that infiltration did not concern him.

Such displays didn’t matter to Gabriel Angelos. They mattered, presumably, to Holt’s underlings, to the gaggle of Astra Militarum generals and Imperial Navy captains that made up the bulk of the expedition’s combat assets. Gabriel, however, didn’t care about the intricacies of Holt’s command as he strode onto the Final Judgement’s stone-clad bridge. He only cared about the web of lies the inquisitor had been spinning.

‘Chapter Master,’ Holt said as Gabriel stopped before the bridge throne. The inquisitor made no move to stand or show any form of deference. Either side of him stood his sour-faced apprentice, Winlow, and a green-robed astropath, a strange, slender smile playing across her face as she stared blindly past the Space Marine. For a moment, no one spoke.

‘The Helios has been crippled,’ Holt said eventually, breaking the cold silence with an even colder voice. ‘It is being withdrawn while it undergoes repairs to its weapons system and Centrum Dominus. If Acheron materialises on schedule, it will play no part in the blockade. That is almost solely due to your actions, Angelos.’

‘The blockade,’ Gabriel said, echoing the inquisitor. ‘And what manner of blockade do you intend that to be, Holt? One that keeps us at arm’s length while you secure the Spear of Khaine for your own purposes?’

Holt had been in the ordo far too long ever to be truly caught off guard, but the same couldn’t be said of his subordinates. Gabriel didn’t need his genhancements to notice Winlow shift uncomfortably, or the smile widen fractionally on the astropath’s lined face. Holt clasped his hands before him, the expression beneath his cowl even harder than before.

‘Did you converse with the xenos witch before you killed her?’ he demanded.

When Gabriel didn’t answer he shook his head.

‘The eldar live and breathe falsehood and trickery. I would have thought you knew that by now, Angelos. You’ve fought against them enough times. And alongside them.’

‘So you swear your plan is to quarantine Acheron?’ Gabriel said, ignoring the inquisitor’s closing barb. ‘When it arrives, the Expeditionary Fleet will blockade it until it has returned to oblivion?’

‘Yes,’ Holt said.

Gabriel cut him off before he could go on.

‘And you swear you’ll take nothing from its surface? That you only seek to stop others from reaching it?’

Holt was silent. Gabriel glared at him for a moment, then turned.

‘There has been a breach of trust, inquisitor,’ he said as he walked towards the bridge’s blast doors.

‘There has,’ Holt said. He turned to Winlow. ‘Close the doors.’

Gabriel halted as the great sheets of adamantium rumbled shut, sealing him aboard the Final Judgement’s bridge. He turned back towards Holt, slowly, his great suit of armour whirring. The inquisitor had risen from his throne.

‘I believed you would be a valuable ally, Chapter Master,’ he said. ‘I thought, of all the forces at my disposal, you would most fully understand the dangers posed by a world fallen to Chaos. I believed that you would complement my own strident efforts to ensure Acheron doesn’t spell the doom of any other planet in the sub-sector. But I see now that my opinion of you was misplaced.’

‘And I was wrong to put my faith in a member of the ordo,’ Gabriel replied.

‘Would you have said that about Lord Inquisitor Toth?’

The question didn’t surprise Gabriel. More than once during the conversation, Holt’s eyes had been drawn to God-Splitter, locked across the Chapter Master’s back. Gabriel had sensed the inquisitor’s attachment to his old master’s weapon the moment he’d met him. What he’d first thought was reverence now appeared far darker – it was an obsession.

‘Toth never deliberately misled me,’ Gabriel replied. ‘He knew we had enemies enough without turning on each other.’

‘Perhaps he merely wanted you to believe that,’ Holt retorted. ‘You didn’t know him like I did, Angelos. No one did.’

Although his voice remained icy, Gabriel noted that the inquisitor’s knuckles had gone white where his hands gripped the arms of his throne.

‘I am ordering you to withdraw your fleet to the edge of the system,’ Holt went on. ‘After the unauthorised combat drop on Cyprus Ultima, and now the crippling of the Helios, I cannot countenance having you play a front-line part in the coming events, at least not until I have discussed matters with the rest of the expedition’s high command.’

‘The Inquisition does not issue orders to the Adeptus Astartes,’ Angelos said.

‘Let us not become locked in wrangling, Blood Raven. You have three options, and I already know which of those you will choose. Firstly, you could obey my directives, and all will be well. Acheron will be quarantined, and return to the warp in time without menacing the Imperium. Secondly, you could completely withdraw your support for the expedition and leave the system. Such an act of petulance would have dire long-term consequences for your Chapter, that much I can assure you. Thirdly, you could ignore my commands and proceed as you see fit. Of all your choices, that one will hurt you the most.’

Gabriel was silent. Holt allowed himself a tight smile, the expression lending his gaze a vicious gleam.

‘You will never abandon a fight, Angelos, that much is obvious. You will not leave the system. But nor are you a fool. You won’t throw your Chapter into action against my directions and, more importantly, without any hope of support from the rest of the expedition. At this stage, the risk is too great.’

‘I have underestimated you, inquisitor,’ Gabriel said eventually. ‘But if you expect the Adeptus Astartes to sit idle while you scheme with your subordinates then you are a fool. I demand that I be allowed to remain with the Expeditionary Fleet, with a small retinue. Otherwise I will depart. The Emperor’s wars never cease, and there are a dozen conflicts in the wider sector that desperately require our aid right now.’

Holt was silent for a moment, then turned to his astropath. The blind seer somehow sensed the sudden attention. She nodded, once, the smile still on her lips. It was the first time Gabriel had ever seen Holt display a real need for another’s opinion.

‘This is acceptable,’ Holt said after another pause. ‘Your ship, the Dauntless, and a single squad can remain at your immediate disposal. Everything else is to withdraw.’

‘As you wish.’

‘The art of diplomacy is not something a Chapter Master can afford to overlook,’ Holt went on. ‘Not all problems can be resolved with God-Splitter.’

‘You would be surprised,’ Gabriel said, turning away. ‘Now, open the blast doors, before I decide to test your theory against them.’

After the Blood Raven had departed, Henghast leant in to Holt.

‘He’s lying,’ she whispered, still smiling. ‘He has no intention of ceasing his interferences.’

‘I know,’ Holt replied, turning away from her to pace towards the bridge’s viewing port. ‘A Space Marine would never agree to such a request as easily as he did unless he planned to subvert it. Especially when that Space Marine is Gabriel Angelos.’

‘He will still seek to reach the spear before us, even with his forces reduced. You guaranteed that the moment you allowed him to remain with the fleet. Even if he were alone, still he would fight.’

‘Of course,’ said Holt, gazing once more beyond the crystalflex. His eyes were no longer on the great fleet anchored around him, nor even on the upper curve of Cyprus Ultima, its ice fields dappled with swirls of cloud cover. He looked beyond it, past the planet’s edge, to the star-studded darkness that stretched away for infinity.

He didn’t need Henghast’s blessed tarot to tell him that it was drawing near. He turned back to the astropath.

‘But fighting is exactly what we need Angelos for.’

CHAPTER SIX

The infinity circuit wept. Macha felt it in her soul. They all did, the entirety of Biel-tan’s seer council, gathered in the oldest of the craftworld’s spirit chambers. The ache pervaded everything, a sense of sorrow that hung heavy across the world ship. There were no songs to sing, no joy to be had while Biel-tan mourned for the passing of Farseer Ancasta.

Her spirit stone, recovered by the few seers to have escaped the mon-keigh starfort, had been laid to rest, her soul permitted to join the Realm of the Dead. The other souls inhabiting the fabric of the infinity circuit welcomed her with heavy regret, for they all understood the vital part she had played in guiding those still living through fate’s deadly web. The feeling of loss, the aching sense of absence, left them hollow and drained.

Farseer Lorelis, one of the seer council’s most venerable speakers, had taken to the centre of the wraithbone amphitheatre. He seemed even wearier than usual, the soft hum of his gravitic throne almost drowning out his tired words. The lower parts of the farseer’s legs had recently begun to transform into psy-reactive crystal, the start of the long, painful processes that afflicted all farseers. He had been forced to use the throne ever since, its engine stones glittering in the pale wraithlight that danced through the chamber.

‘Ancasta’s sacrifice must be honoured,’ the farseer intoned, his voice strained. ‘But even more importantly, the return of Acheron remains a dire threat to the craftworld. The runes could not be clearer on this matter. Every casting returns the same portents of destruction and defeat.’

The gathered seers murmured, a lilting cadence that echoed around the shadowed, glittering chamber. Though none acknowledged it, all were intensely aware of the presence of a figure that sat in the deepest shadows of the spirit chamber’s highest tier. Clad in dark gunmetal armour and with a great, black crest flowing from her helm, the figure of the legendary Phoenix Lord, Jain Zar, was unmistakable. She had arrived unannounced at the start of the meeting, and had not spoken since taking her seat beyond the edge of the circle of seers.

‘The strike force moving against Acheron needs a new leader,’ Lorelis continued. ‘Would that we had time to allow honoured Ancasta to settle, and find her place within the infinity circuit. But fate has stolen such luxury away from us. We must decide now who will be entrusted to take up her mantle and preserve the craftworld’s future.’

‘What of Farseer Macha?’ asked Warlock Ianlen. ‘She is the only one among us to have taken to the field with the strike force. She knows intimately of the threat posed by both the mon-keigh and the orks.’

‘Yet she is the youngest of us all,’ interjected Farseer Kevyre. ‘Ancasta was one of the most learned seers among us, yet still she faltered. Is it wise to entrust her legacy to one with such little experience in interpreting fate’s weaves?’

‘Farseer Macha,’ Lorelis said, gesturing up at her with his rune stick. ‘What are your own thoughts on this matter?’

Before she could respond a presence intruded upon her thoughts. The rest of the seer council felt it as well – they turned in unison towards the slender, arching doorway that led into the chamber. A figure strode through, dragging psychic echoes of power and arrogance with him.

‘And what of the prophecy?’ he called. It was Autarch Kyre. The young warrior was resplendent in his full battle armour, the crystalline structures of the chamber and the eerie wraithlights of the infinity circuit gleaming from the smooth green and white psychoplastics. He strode into the centre of the amphitheatre, taking the place of Lorelis, seemingly oblivious either to the distaste emanating from the seer council, or the silent judgement of the Phoenix Lord half concealed by the shadows above.

‘This is not the Court of the Young King,’ Lorelis said, not veiling his anger at the interruption. ‘Your presence here is unsanctioned, honoured autarch.’

‘I call upon the council to recognise the ancient prophecy concerning Acheron and the Spear of Khaine,’ Kyre said, ignoring Lorelis and turning in a slow circle so that he addressed the entire assembly. ‘I call upon the council to devote its efforts solely to the retrieval of that sacred relic from the clutches of our immortal enemies.’

‘We have already discussed this at length,’ Farseer Kevyre said, his voice edged with exasperation. ‘We do not even know if the spear is real, let alone whether it still exists.’

‘It was your forbears who spoke the prophecy concerning it,’ said Kyre. ‘Not mine. It was good enough for Ancasta to lay her life down for.’

‘Honoured Ancasta saw the greater pattern in her actions,’ Farseer Gathriel said. ‘Something you have consistently failed to do, autarch.’

‘I would accept that criticism,’ Kyre said, facing Gathriel, ‘if I were speaking here today alone. But I am not.’ He held up his hand, palm unclasped. In it – the wraithlight winking from its smooth, rich purple surface – was a spirit stone.

‘Hear now, the prophecy borne out,’ Kyre intoned.

War shall be waged upon the Wandering World for the War God’s spear, said a voice. Macha started along with the rest of the council, though not because the words had come from inside her own head. It was because she recognised the voice.

Honoured Farseer Taldeer.

Celestial power will unite the wayfarers. Together they shall achieve righteous victory.

The dead farseer’s words echoed around inside Macha’s head, the voice strained with a manic edge. It sent an icy shudder up her spine. This wasn’t right. Seeking the council of the departed was never undertaken lightly. Kyre had clearly not performed all the binding rights necessary to draw the farseer’s soul safely from the infinity circuit’s depths – she sounded lost and disoriented. Macha dared not think about how the autarch had come by the stone in the first place.

‘Honoured Farseer Taldeer brings us grave tidings,’ Kyre said, still holding the stone aloft. ‘We all recall the strength and wisdom she provided when she stood among the ranks of the living. Now she gives it again freely from beyond.’

‘This is irregular,’ Farseer Lorelis said, his gravitic throne humming.

‘This is the intervention we have been waiting for,’ Kyre corrected. ‘The sign this very council has been seeking in its divinations and scrying. The departed are reaching out to us.’

The spear runs red with the blood of the vanquished, said Taldeer’s voice once more, sweeping through the minds of the seer council like an icy wind. Tyrants will seek it. Doom will be its herald, extinction its keeper. Vengeance.

‘If Ancasta were still among us, her course of action would be clear,’ Kyre went on. ‘We must continue to destabilise the mon-keigh and greenskin filth, and when the moment presents itself, seize the spear from Acheron’s surface. If others are allowed to claim it, Biel-tan’s future becomes all the more uncertain. Consult your runes, and see the truth in what I say.’

Silence reigned in the wake of the autarch’s words. Macha struggled to calm her thoughts, quelling the distress that she knew her fellow seers would be sensing. Taldeer had been a member of the council since Macha herself had first set foot upon the Path of the Seer. She had fallen during the craftworld’s campaign on Lorn V, terribly wounded and then captured by the mon-keigh. They’d tortured her before eventually granting her the release of death. Her vanquisher had kept her spirit stone as a trophy, until her brother had been able to retrieve it and return it to Biel-tan. She should be resting amidst her departed kindred in the infinity circuit, not brandished in the fist of a young fool like Kyre.

And yet, her words had supported the prophecy he so loved to tout. Macha recalled the terrible things done to Taldeer by the mon-keigh, and her last word shuddered through Macha’s thoughts once again.

Vengeance.

‘The council must adjourn to debate this development,’ Lorelis was saying.

‘The council must make its choice,’ Kyre said, brandishing the stone once more. ‘The pace of events is accelerating. The Wandering World will soon be upon us. We have no time for prevarication.’

‘What exactly is it you’re suggesting, Autarch Kyre?’ Farseer Gathriel asked. ‘What are you so determined for this council to approve?’

‘Give me direct command of the strike force,’ Kyre said. ‘I have trodden the Path of War to its completion. I have mastered the craft of battle. Ancasta considered me her natural successor. I will seize the spear before the filthy aliens are even able to breach the Wandering World’s outer prison.’

Taldeer’s telepathic moan shuddered through the minds of the council. They paused, waiting for more words, but none came.

‘If she was so confident in you, Taldeer never expressed her belief in your abilities before this council,’ Macha said, speaking for the first time. The attention of the entire chamber shifted to her.

Kyre smiled. It was not a reassuring expression.

‘We watched you, venerable farseer,’ he said. ‘As you cut down the ork warlord. It was a fine strike. I could not have done better myself. Yet honoured Ancasta did not see fit to include you when she took control of the mon-keigh starfortress. Why do you think that was?’

‘Her reasons were her own,’ Lorelis said before Macha could respond. ‘What matters right now is that the strike force requires new leadership. Autarch Kyre, you have proposed yourself for the role. Warlock Ianlen has put forward Farseer Macha. The council shall decide.’

‘That is assuming I accept my nomination,’ Macha said.

Lorelis paused. Macha could feel all eyes in the chamber fixed upon her, including the silent judgement of Jain Zar.

‘Your refusal goes against the skeins of probability, venerable farseer,’ Lorelis said slowly.

‘As does Autarch Kyre’s intervention here,’ Macha replied, rising from her seat among the wraithbone tiers. ‘The autarch is correct in some regards. His Path is the Path of War. He is the natural commander of the strike force.’

‘We need firm leadership,’ Warlock Thendurel said. ‘Whoever leads, the strike force must not be squandered because of our indecision here.’

‘Then let it be settled,’ Kyre said. ‘I will ensure the prophecy is heeded. I will retrieve the Spear of Khaine, for the craftworld.’

‘But you will not do it without directives from this council,’ Lorelis said firmly. ‘We shall choose a member to act as your second, and to report back to us on all your undertakings, great and small.’

Kyre said nothing. He surely knew he had pushed the leverage Taldeer’s spirit stone had granted him to its limit. He could not refuse the oversight of the seer council and hope still to lead Biel-tan’s strike against the Wandering World.

‘I still stand by Farseer Macha,’ Warlock Ianlen said. ‘Let her be our eyes and ears.’

‘Venerable Farseer Macha,’ Lorelis said, his gravitic throne rising so the crippled old seer could face her. ‘Do you accept this position?’

Macha looked down at Kyre. The young autarch was gazing up at her intently, his sharp, slender features lit by Taldeer’s precious stone. It had to be retrieved. She didn’t need to probe far into the future’s web, however, to know that the autarch would claim it had been requisitioned for pressing purposes. The council would have difficulty forcing him to relinquish it, given that it seemed to support the prophecy that had seen the war hosts assembled in the first place. And if Kyre took it with him in the hunt for the spear, the stone’s destruction became a dangerous possibility. Macha knew she could not allow those threads to play out.

‘I accept,’ she said, offering Lorelis a short bow. ‘If it is the will of the council.’

‘Do any object?’ Lorelis asked, throne swinging smoothly round to survey the rest of the shimmering amphitheatre. None did.

‘I rejoice at the venerable farseer’s appointment,’ Kyre said, doing little to hide his disdain. ‘Indeed, I believe I already know how she may best serve the craftworld. The mon-keigh that slew honoured Ancasta has confounded us before.’

A psychic murmur passed through the council. Macha sensed Taldeer’s restless spirit flare once more, though she said nothing.

‘The one known as Gabriel Angelos,’ Kyre said, looking at Macha intently. ‘You have fought him before, have you not?’

‘I have,’ she replied. ‘First on the world known to the mon-keigh as Tartarus, and then on Rahe’s Paradise, when their meddling broke Lsanthranil’s Shield.’

‘And not only fought,’ Kyre went on. ‘But, on both occasions, you parleyed with him.’

‘I did what the runes advised,’ Macha responded, refusing to rise to Kyre’s words. ‘The threat we faced on both occasions was mutual, and far greater than the mon-keigh’s blind efforts. This very council has exonerated my actions.’

‘You know the weave of the fates better than I,’ Kyre said, casting his gaze across the assembled seers. ‘Yet it is strange to me, Macha, that the council has overlooked your dealings with Angelos, knowing that it ultimately led to the death of honoured Ancasta. And, in a way, honoured Taldeer as well.’

The spirit stone moaned softly again, and Macha suppressed a shudder.

‘Macha did what any of us would have done,’ Lorelis said. ‘Or what any of us should have done. We are not the only ones to have spared the mon-keigh known as Angelos. Our Harlequin kindred know of him as Gabriel of the Hidden Heart. There are few mon-keigh whose existence are linked by so many of fate’s threads to our own.’

‘Then you consider Ancasta’s death, and the deaths of so many others, at the hands of this brute savage to be justified?’ Kyre demanded, daring to raise his voice in the Spirit Chamber.

‘Of course not,’ Lorelis replied, his tone still level. ‘Nothing is that simple, Kyre, and well you know it.’

‘Then I propose we make it simple,’ Kyre said, once more raising Taldeer’s stone. ‘Venerable Farseer Macha, as my first order as leader of the strike force, I command you to seek out and stop the Blood Ravens. They cannot be allowed to interfere with our plans any longer. My Pathfinder will contact you soon with details of his current whereabouts.’

The seer council said nothing. Macha held Kyre’s gaze, unwavering, but inside she shook. She could hear Taldeer’s disembodied voice, whispering in her ear, the chill of the infinity circuit sliding across her shoulders and pricking at her skin. It said only one word, and it said it with the clearest, iciest determination.

Vengeance.

The commanders of Third Company assembled on the bridge of the Dauntless – Captain Balthazar, Jonah Orion and the newly promoted Sergeant Nerov, who had risen to take Corvus’ place as the company’s First Sergeant. Only Chaplain Diomedes was absent, redeployed with elements of the Third still on Cyprus Ultima to the Helios in order to bolster its bloodied garrison.

There was a crash of gauntlets on breastplates as Gabriel joined the assembled Blood Ravens. The Chapter Master was still fully armed and armoured, his ancient, modified Tactical Dreadnought armour dwarfing even his fellow Adeptus Astartes. He paused briefly as he entered the bridge, and gave a nod.

‘As you were.’

The bridge serfs hastened back to their work stations and the clatter of rune boards and cogitators, and the chatter of vox messages filled the incense-heavy air. Gabriel passed between blinking augur banks and navigational arrays to reach the leaders of his Third Company. They had returned to their most comfortable stance, at parade rest, arrayed around the bridge’s primary briefing holochart.

‘What news from the inquisitor, Chapter Master?’ Balthazar asked.

Gabriel activated the chart with a swipe of his gauntlet’s encryptor, and shook his head.

‘It’s as I feared. He never intended merely to quarantine Acheron. He desires the eldar relic.’

‘It is always the same with the Inquisition,’ Orion said.

‘Holt has delivered an ultimatum,’ Gabriel went on. ‘He demands we withdraw to the system’s edge until further notice. He does not trust us not to wreak further havoc upon his plans.’

‘If he thinks he can command the Adeptus Astartes on a whim, he is a fool,’ said Balthazar.

‘I told him as much,’ Gabriel said. He held his gauntlet above the holochart, and a three-dimensional display of the system burst into green, static-washed life. A gesture from the Chapter Master highlighted the sigils representing the Expeditionary Fleet, clustered around Cyprus Ultima’s projection.

‘But the situation is complex. Without the main fleet’s support, we will have to face each of these menaces alone – the greenskins, the eldar and possibly worse.’

Another gesture highlighted the dark rune representing the projected arrival zone of Acheron, dangerously close to Cyprus Ultima.

‘Once the daemon world makes its appearance, Holt will withdraw all the expedition’s assets from Cyprus Ultima and begin his blockade. I suspect he’ll only hold long enough to retrieve the spear before departing. If we are still engaging the xenos on the surface of Cyprus we will find ourselves without any ships other than the Litany of Fury, the Dauntless and whatever vessels belong to Lady Solaria’s noble House. Given the size of the ork fleet currently standing off the system’s spinward edge, and the propensity of the eldar to strike from anywhere at will, we may find ourselves at best cut off, and at worst annihilated.’

‘Holt needs us,’ Balthazar said. ‘He would not have petitioned the Chapter for aid otherwise. He cannot consign us without support indefinitely.’

‘He has shown us his hand,’ Orion said, gazing down at the holochart, its glow throwing his scarred face into deep contrast. ‘If it was a choice between us and the spear, it is clear enough which he would choose.’

The assembled Blood Ravens were silent. Gabriel could sense their misgivings.

‘Balthazar, you shall command the Litany while it holds station on the system’s trailward edge,’ he said. ‘I intend to retain as much of the company’s integrity as possible, even if I cannot be present with it.’

‘Of course, Chapter Master,’ Balthazar said. His voice was subdued, but he met Gabriel’s gaze.

The Chapter Master nodded. ‘I understand this pains you, brother,’ he said. ‘Holt dishonours us. It was not the outcome I expected when I pledged the Chapter to supporting this venture. Regardless, it remains a vital undertaking. Now not only must we contain Acheron’s threat, but I must ensure no one reaches this eldar relic. Such weapons are only ever used for evil ends, regardless of who wields them.’

‘I understand my duty, Chapter Master,’ Balthazar said. ‘I am not some glory-hunting neophyte. When Acheron comes, Third Company will be ready and waiting, whatever your orders may be.’

‘I have no doubt, brother,’ Gabriel said. He reached out to highlight a section of the holo projection. ‘Assume a holding position in this sector. I will have new orders soon.’

‘Where will you be?’ Balthazar asked.

‘For the time being I will take Zaphiel and the First Company veterans down to Varlock Keep. Lady Solaria has already agreed to grant the use of her promethium stocks to refuel our Thunderhawks. That will allow me to use the Knight fortress as a base of operations from which to strike. She is the only ally we have right now. But regardless, you must be ready to move the fleet at a moment’s notice. Acheron could penetrate real space at any time. Holt will make his move immediately, and I suspect the xenos won’t be far behind.’

‘Of course,’ Balthazar said. ‘The Blood Ravens stand ready, as ever.’

‘Then let us begin,’ Gabriel said. ‘Knowledge is power.’

‘Guard it well,’ the other Ravens answered. Gabriel gestured, and the hololithic display deactivated. The Cyprus system flickered, and died.

The winds were rising again, bringing dust up from the south. Macha had drawn her seer’s robes tightly around her, the wind snapping at their edges. The optics of her tall helm cut through the thickening haze, picking out the battle-scarred walls of Varlock Keep and the mon-keigh passing over the plain before it. They were clearing the ork dead, heaping the brutish corpses and their scrap war machines in great piles. The torching was beginning as night drew closer, gouts of blazing promethium adding black smoke to the already-choked air.

‘Start with them,’ Macha said. Beside her, Ronahn nodded. The Ranger Pathfinder’s cowl was drawn up and his visor lowered against the dust.

‘You understand the nature of your mission?’ he asked, not looking at her.

‘I already know Kyre has devised this as an errand to remove me from this war,’ Macha responded.

‘Not an inaccurate assessment,’ Ronahn admitted. ‘Kyre wants you to hunt the Blood Ravens and Gabriel Angelos, and follow his fleet from this space. It is lucky for you that Angelos himself has chosen to remain on Cyprus Ultima. Now is your opportunity to strike at him. Now is your chance to kill him, venerable farseer.’

‘And Kyre doesn’t know this?’

‘Follow your orders, Macha. If you use this as an opportunity to resist Kyre’s plans… That is your choice.’

Macha was silent. Ronahn was not the only one to have hinted at opposition to Kyre’s demands. Before she had passed through the webway to Cyprus Ultima, Jain Zar had demanded an audience with her. Macha was in no position to refuse the Storm of Silence. In hushed tones, the dread Phoenix Lord had told her that she doubted the nature of Kyre’s mission to seize Acheron’s relic, a relic that had been watched over for aeons by the Phoenix Lords. The prophecy was not as simple as it first appeared. Macha had sworn to Jain Zar that she would do what she could to resist Kyre’s plots. It seemed that Ronahn would assist her as well.

‘When Angelos confronts me, you aren’t to intervene,’ she said to him.

‘Biel-tan has already lost too many seers,’ the taciturn Ranger replied. ‘I won’t let your craftworld lose another.’

‘The runes have been clear on this matter,’ Macha said. ‘All threads converge here, at this point. We try and plot our way through the weave, but sometimes the tide of reality must carry us along. I must face Gabriel of the Hidden Heart.’

‘And he must die,’ Ronahn said. ‘I will intervene if need be.’

‘It will not be needed,’ Macha said, still gazing out across the mon-keigh’s damaged fortress. ‘Angelos and I have survived our encounters with one another too often. That ends today, one way or another. The craftworld demands vengeance.’

‘The craftworld,’ Ronahn echoed. ‘Or Taldeer?’

‘Both,’ Macha said simply. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The farseer could sense the rest of Ronahn’s rangers taking up position among the rocks edging the ridgeline that overlooked Varlock plain. The slopes were still thick with orkish dead. The brutes had withdrawn deep into the ruinous industrial valley nearby, licking their wounds. Their psychic discord was like a distant, rumbling thunderhead in Macha’s mind, far off for now, but building once more in strength and fury. When it broke it would be far worse than before. She could sense one of the beasts drawing the others to it, providing a totem of brute strength for the wounded horde to rally around. It was a presence she had felt before. Just as with Angelos, she knew there would be a reckoning with the beast before she returned to Biel-tan.

‘You did not tell me Kyre had seized Taldeer’s spirit stone,’ she said, pushing the thought to the back of her mind. The orks were irrelevant, for the time being. She was here with a single purpose.

‘I did not know long before you did, venerable farseer,’ Ronahn replied.

Macha glanced at the hooded Ranger, gently touching on his thoughts. ‘You hide your anger well, Outcast,’ she said.

‘I would not presume to violate the sanctity of the Spirit Chambers,’ Ronahn replied. ‘Especially not when the council was sitting.’

‘A shame Kyre does not share your respect.’

‘I would not presume to speak ill of Autarch Kyre either.’

‘Then I will,’ Macha said. ‘His arrogance may prove as dangerous for Biel-tan as the prophecy he so blindly follows. He understands nothing of the weaves of fate. He only perceives a single path – his warrior’s path – and thinks by following it to completion that he will find victory. But fate has no completion. It is not a broad highway leading to a glittering city. It is a hundred narrow, winding paths, furrowing through an eternal forest of thorns and shadows.’

‘Is it true what is being said?’ Ronahn asked. ‘Does Taldeer speak in support of the prophecy?’

‘She speaks in support of something,’ Macha said, returning her gaze to the distant mon-keigh picking their way through the ork carcasses littered before their walls. For a moment she thought she heard the word vengeance being whispered into her ear. Her grip on her singing spear tightened fractionally.

‘But I know not what,’ she finished. ‘Taldeer did not pass well. With all respect, it is not inconceivable that her words now… lack clarity.’

‘My kindred are in position,’ Ronahn said. Macha allowed him to ignore her last words. Taldeer’s death was still something that pained the ranger deeply. She could feel the sorrow emanating from him, even as he busied himself with the task Macha had set him.

‘You may begin,’ she said, her helmet’s link patching the message along to the rangers spread across the ridgeline.

For a moment, nothing but the dust stirred. The sun was setting, framing the dark, jagged towers and bastions of the mon-keigh stronghold and painting the dust plains a deep red. Like blood, Macha thought. The strange heraldic pennants streaming from the far-off walls were like dashes of flowing, liquid colour. Soon, they would be gone, and the keep would be nothing but ruins. It began here.

There was a crack, and one of the distant serfs fell.

‘Contacts!’

The vox message sent a rush of combat stimms through Gabriel’s body. He had arrived back on Cyprus Ultima with Zaphiel and his Terminators only minutes earlier. He was to meet Lady Solaria in the high hall of Varlock to discuss Holt’s ruling and his next steps. Such considerations melted away as he opened the vox channel.

‘This is Chapter Master Gabriel Angelos of the Blood Ravens. Report.’

‘We’re taking fire out on the plain,’ came back the panicked voice of one of House Solaria’s serf bondsmen. ‘We can’t see them!’

‘Sergeant Zaphiel?’ Gabriel queried, switching frequencies.

‘Scanning,’ the Terminator veteran replied tersely. ‘We suspect snipers in the dunes. The dust is rendering visibility poor.’

‘Casualties?’

‘Four so far. The serfs clearing the greenskin dead have gone to ground.’

‘Greenskins don’t snipe,’ Gabriel said. ‘It must be the eldar.’

‘There are traces of weapons fire from the edge of the Black Valley manufactorum district, but we’re getting no vital returns.’

‘Then their very absence confirms it. I want a combat squad at the remains of the Westport gate immediately.’

‘Affirmative, Chapter Master.’

Two minutes later, Gabriel was leading five Terminators – Vetriel, Namos, Darius, Rogrim and Demetrius, out beyond the rubble of the Westport. They spread onto the open plain before the walls, moving low and fast.

‘Use the corpses,’ Gabriel voxed. The serfs of House Varlock had spent the previous long Cyprus day collecting the thousands of greenskin bodies and wrecks left behind by the previous assault. The mounds stood twenty feet high in places, stinking masses dripping with congealing black blood and swarming with duneflies. The mounds broke up the line of sight to the distant ridge.

Gabriel activated the vox amplifier built into his armour’s gorget.

‘Back to the walls!’ he barked, his voice booming out across the plain. ‘Move, now!’

The serfs nearest to the advancing combat squad started to comply, rising from the dirt and scrambling back towards Varlock. Those closer to the ridge stayed down, desperately pressing themselves to the ground. Even as he advanced Gabriel saw more struck.

‘Visuals?’ he demanded. The replies were all negative. Their attackers were too well concealed, doubtless operating from just below the ridgeline. The range was long but the snipers were adept at their craft.

That didn’t surprise Gabriel. What surprised him was that his squad hadn’t taken any casualties yet. Even as the range closed the alien marksmen continued to focus on the cowering serfs, seemingly content to ignore the Blood Ravens converging on their concealed positions.

‘They’re trying to draw us out,’ he said. ‘Hold while I assess.’

The Terminators took cover amidst the nearest bodies and burned-out vehicles, the serfs cowering away from the giant red-plated transhumans. Gabriel refused to do likewise, but slowed his run to a walk, the refractor field projected by his heavy armour crackling and snapping in the air around him.

It was a trap. It had to be. The snipers were luring the Blood Ravens out beyond the walls. But they hadn’t struck while the Space Marines were still out in the open. The reasoning behind the tactic became apparent moments later. Gabriel keyed the vox as his eyes locked on to the first hostile target he’d seen all day.

‘Squad, make ready.’

There was a skimmer approaching from the dune ridge, a sleek, angular one-man craft of gleaming green and white. The figure atop it was bent low over the steering block, cloak snapping in the wind. Gabriel’s enhanced eyesight picked out the strangely woven green and white fabrics, the tall helm, the runic charms and stones. He also saw the long spear slung across the figure’s back. Even amidst the dust, he recognised her.

Farseer Macha.

‘Hold your fire,’ he ordered the combat squad. ‘She’s mine.’

The eldar grav bike slewed to a stop, its engines emitting a low throb, dust kicking up beneath it. Without killing the gravitic motor the tall alien leapt down to the ground, her cloak swirling about her. In an instant the spear was in her hand. Gabriel unclamped God-Splitter from his back, energies wreathing the sacred weapon.

The snipers on the ridge had ceased fire. Gabriel keyed in the Terminators.

‘Get the serfs back inside the walls,’ he ordered, his gaze not leaving Macha.

‘But Chapter Master–’ Brother Namos began. Gabriel cut him off.

‘That is an order, brother. I will see you at the Westport.’

The veterans started to usher the terrified serfs back to the walls. The distant eldar long-rifles remained silent. Gabriel inclined his head to Macha, whose expression remained inscrutable behind her white helm.

‘We meet again, farseer,’ he said.

‘Gabriel of the Hidden Heart,’ the eldar responded. ‘That our paths should cross once more does not surprise me. The nature of this meeting need not have been as it is. Fate, however, has decreed it.’

‘You have not come to parley, then,’ Gabriel surmised, hefting God-Splitter.

‘No,’ said Macha. ‘I have come to kill you.’

‘On the orders of the one called Kyre?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell him this. The Spear of Khaine reeks of darkness and deceit. No one, including him, shall have it so long as I live.’

Macha didn’t reply. She threw her spear. Gabriel braced himself, daemon hammer raised, but the eldar’s weapon fell short. It buried itself in the trampled dirt just a few yards from the Blood Raven, quivering, a strange, low moan resonating from it. Before Gabriel could react, the moan built to a sudden, violent scream. Energy exploded from the weapon in a crackling white corona, slamming into Angelos. His armour’s refractor field overloaded with a crack and he went down onto his knees, teeth gritted against the pain surging through his genhanced body.

Macha advanced towards the fallen Space Marine, extending her arm to grasp her spear. Around her a roaring sound was building, filling the air with mounting fury. The noise only just registered when Gabriel suddenly rose.

He’d overcome the agony of the alien’s psychic blast, and his armour’s auto-senses were back online. He’d stayed down to lure her close. Now, with a furious bellow, he swung God-Splitter.

There were few creatures in the galaxy that could match the reflexes of a Space Marine, let alone withstand a direct strike from an ancient daemon hammer like God-Splitter. Macha, however, was one of them. As Gabriel swung she was moving, sliding below the mighty blow. It still caught her on the crest of her helm. There was a titanic crash as the discharge from the hammer sent the eldar hurtling backwards, her own psychic energy field shattering into a thousand shards of white light that sizzled away into nothingness. She slammed into the dirt over a dozen paces from Gabriel, rolling with the impact and rising in a single movement. Gabriel hefted his hammer into a defensive stance once more.

‘If you want me dead, you’ll have to try harder than that,’ he said over the roar rising around him.

Macha said nothing. A crack had split her helm down its left side, cracking the lens. She reached up to disengage it and shook out her long red hair. Her piercing blue gaze met Gabriel’s, and she extended a hand, fingers splayed.

The spear still at his feet shuddered. The farseer made a clenching motion. With a disembodied cry, the arcane weapon ripped itself from the ground and darted back through the air towards the farseer’s hand. She caught it deftly, spinning into a combat crouch.

‘I’ve only just started, Hidden Heart.’

Gabriel took a step towards her, his expression grim. He got no further. The voice of brother Demetrius crackled in his ear.

‘Chapter Master, above you!’

What Gabriel had taken for the roar of the rising dust storm was something else entirely. As he looked up the sound grew even louder, the air around him vibrating. His eyes picked out a shape through the dust, a black dot wreathed in flames, growing larger with every rapid double heartbeat.

It was a meteorite. And it was plunging directly towards them.

Gabriel turned and began to run, vaguely aware that Macha was doing likewise. The world around him was all wind-whipped fury, the dust eddying crazily, the screaming of the descending debris eclipsing the warnings crackling in his ear. With a bellow of frustrated effort, he flung himself forward, servos protesting as they were forced into a titanic, adrenaline-fuelled leap.

He was still in mid-air when the meteor struck.

Aboard the Final Judgement, Henghast started to scream. She threw herself from her metal bench, overturning and shattering her crystalline psy-desk and scattering her tarot cards across the bridge. She tripped as she went, sprawling in her green robes.

‘Get her up,’ Holt ordered Winlow, his hand moving to the engraved butt of his holstered plasma pistol. The interrogator grasped the wailing astropath with some difficulty, her thrashing almost dragging him down with her. Eventually he was able to haul the blind seer to her feet, her screams still tearing across the shocked bridge. She was bleeding from her mouth, nose, ears, even the hollow sockets of her eyes.

‘Have her locked down and sedated,’ Holt ordered, motioning at the black-masked psy-handlers that had moved to surround her. As they closed in with shock rods and magnicles more alarms erupted across the bridge, rebounding around the stone pillars and metal gantries.

‘What now?’ Holt demanded, rounding on the ship’s augur chief. The man had gone pale as he reviewed the data that was suddenly flooding the oculus stands before him.

‘Sir,’ he said. ‘It’s here.’

Kyre did not need to have walked the Path of the Seer to sense the psychic backlash as it surged through the minds of his kindred on Cyprus Ultima. He shuddered with a mixture of disgust and excitement, hand grasping the hilt of his diresword. The great, bloody entity that had just entered the system sang to him. It charged his body with determination and the need to act. The desire to take fate with both hands and bend it to his will.

The prophecy was playing out. It had to be fulfilled.

He rose from where he’d been seated, cross-legged at the centre of the seeing chamber. Around him the floating vision stones fell to the wraithbone floor, their clatter disturbing the deep silence. He had been watching Macha face down the mon-keigh leader, convinced that she would refuse the challenge he had set for her. Then, just when it seemed as though she’d be forced to kill the disgusting creature, the psychic backlash had hit Kyre like a bow wave. He didn’t need any reports from in-system to know what it presaged.

The seer council must have felt it even more acutely. Even now the old fools would be trying to conceive of some alternative to his plan, consulting their runes and probing the tangled paths of potential futures. They would find nothing, Kyre already knew that. They did not understand. The prophecy was all. As far as the potentials of tomorrow were concerned, it was the only thing that mattered, for the craftworld, perhaps even for the entire eldar race. He touched one hand to Taldeer’s spirit stone, hanging around his neck. She would continue to guide him, of that he was certain.

He opened a link to Surela, Exarch of the Dire Avengers.

‘What is your will, honoured autarch?’ she asked.

‘Prepare the war host,’ Kyre said. ‘And begin the webway rituals. The time to strike is finally upon us.’

Gabriel found his feet, armour grating as he hauled himself up. God-Splitter was still in his hands, although its energy field had died. The Chapter Master shook his head and spat out grit. The air was full of dust, and it wasn’t only due to the eternal winds of Cyprus Ultima – an object had ploughed into the dirt mere feet from where he’d landed, almost completely burying itself and kicking up a cloud of debris that was still pattering down around the Blood Raven.

What Gabriel had mistaken for a meteorite he now realised was something different altogether. The section of the object that remained above ground was cubic in shape, and completely smooth. Orbital entry had barely damaged it – the black surface looked scorched in places, but was otherwise whole. It appeared to have suffered no structural loss during its plummet through Cyprus Ultima’s atmosphere.

Macha was standing on the other side of the buried cube. Her eyes, however, weren’t on the mysterious object, or Gabriel. She was looking up into the heavens. He followed her gaze.

It seemed as though the sky was falling. A thousand contrails lit up the evening twilight, painting the starry, velvet blue with streaks of flickering fire. More cubes, Gabriel realised, slamming into the surface of Cyprus Ultima, the air shaking with the fury of their destructive, massed descent.

Yet it was not the blazing hail that held his attention. A far larger object than any of the strange blocks dominated the darkening sky. It dwarfed both of Cyprus Ultima’s twin moons, filling almost a third of the firmament with its jagged bulk. It was a planet, though unlike anything Gabriel had encountered in all his centuries of service. Its core was a dark orb that looked to be many times the size of Cyprus Ultima, its surface streaked with strange, whirling patterns and eerie, winking lights. It was difficult to discern however, cloaked as it was behind a maze of vast, logic-defying structures. Huge black blocks hung about it as though they were part of its gravity well, though each part was itself almost the equal of the central planet in size. Gabriel realised that the structures, arrayed in a multi-layered tesseract tangle that almost completely encased the central planet, were constructed from the same mysterious black substance as the smaller cubes that were hammering Cyprus Ultima. The unnatural meteorites were simply inconsequential pieces of debris, cast off by the infinitely larger superstructure as it ripped back into reality.

God-Splitter sparked and reignited in Gabriel’s fist as its power returned. He continued to watch the strange planet, jaw set, the grip on his hammer’s haft strong. The wait was finally over.

Acheron had arrived.

Even as the thought registered, pain surged through the Blood Raven’s mind, like a migraine of monstrous proportions. He flinched before the stimms kicked in, shuddering as a noise like a slow, feral growl reverberated inside his skull. The planet was calling, a challenge to the material universe, a pronouncement of the hunger it felt now that it had finally returned.

Gabriel knew he would not be the only one to have felt the daemon world’s arrival. His thoughts were confirmed when he heard Macha cry out. He looked across the smoking cube that had buried itself between them. The farseer was gripping her head with one hand, her pale, haughty features twisted with a mixture of pain and fear. She seemed to sense the Space Marine’s attention and, after a moment, managed to compose herself. Though her hand lowered, it still shook.

‘Another time, Gabriel Angelos,’ she said over the rising roar of more falling meteors.

Before the Chapter Master could respond the air behind the farseer shimmered. Gabriel recognised the opening irises of a webway portal, rippling into being around the eldar’s idling grav bike. Macha drew her robes about her and, with one final, lingering look at the Space Marine, stepped through.

The portal blinked from existence, and Macha was gone.

The first Gorgutz knew of the trouble was when a bolt of green lightning struck Grimgit square in his broad, green forehead. The nob’s skull detonated in spectacular fashion, thick shards of yellow skull fragments and the few grey globules that had passed for Grimgit’s brains splattering the warlord’s retinue.

‘Oh zog,’ wailed Wazzmakka as Zapnoggin began to shriek. Another bolt of incandescent green energy earthed itself into a nearby lad from Zorzag’s mob. This time the ork exploded completely, coating everything nearby with globules of green viscera.

Zapnoggin was contorting, his aged, wiry frame ravaged by otherworldly pain. Even as the nearest orks scrambled to get away from him more lightning blazed from his distended cranium, this time leaping between three fleeing greenskins in a chain of bloody explosions. The weirdboy was gibbering insanely as he capered about, his eyes bulging and his jaw slack and drooling.

The roar of dakka eclipsed Zapnoggin’s insanity as Wazzmakka opened up. The Big Mek’s innate terror of the weirdboy had finally spilled over into outright hostility as he let rip with his big shoota. Unfortunately, his panic combined with the chaos surrounding Zapnoggin meant that he managed to hit just about everything other than the weirdboy. Orks went down, limbs and torsos blown apart by the hail of heavy slugs.

Gorgutz waded through the lads scrambling in the opposite direction, flinging bodies aside. The warlord’s angry bellow sent the greenskins directly ahead scrambling back on themselves, running back towards Zapnoggin in blind panic.

The weirdboy didn’t notice Gorgutz’s frenzied approach, lost in his gibbering trance. Gorgutz slammed his power claw into his head, the weapon’s lethal disruptor field deactivated. There was a hideous crunch and the weirdboy’s shrieks came to an abrupt end as he crumpled.

Wazzmakka had managed to get enough of a grip on his heavy weapon to stop the stream of hard rounds lacerating the air around Gorgutz. The warlord rounded on him as soon as Zapnoggin hit the dirt, tusks bared in fury. There was dark blood oozing from a wound in his right bicep. Wazzmakka backpedalled furiously, his clanking body struggling to match the speed his brain required of it, but Gorgutz caught him easily. The warlord clamped his claw around the greasy bundles of chords that now passed for the big mek’s throat, and hauled him into the air.

‘Do dat again,’ he growled, ‘and I’ll put a hole like dat in ’ere.’ He tapped the fleshy half of Wazzmakka’s skull with his free hand. The Big Mek’s mechanical legs were kicking the air ineffectually, hands grasped around Gorgutz’s claw as his features turned from green to deep, choked purple.

Gorgutz held him for a while longer, gave him a shake, then dropped him. The Big Mek fell onto his behind, gasping for air.

‘How can we get a propa’ scrap goin’ if you choppas run at da first sign of trouble?’ Gorgutz demanded, rounding on the rest of the assembled mobs. Most stared sheepishly at their boots. A lone grot, half concealed behind the leg of one of the mob bosses, pointed into the air.

‘Boss–’ he started to say.

‘None of you pale-skins would ’ave lasted a day in da old waaaghs!’ Gorgutz continued, ignoring the simpering creature. ‘You’s all da softest green I’ve ever seen. You–’

‘Boss!’ the gretchin shrieked, gesticulating wildly.

‘Shut it!’ Gorgutz bellowed, lunging for the hook-nosed creature. His blow never connected. An explosion tore through the assembled greenskins, sending bodies flying and creating an even greater uproar than Zapnoggin’s loss of control.

Gorgutz turned, tusks bared, energy crackling across his claw. But instead of some fresh challenge, the warlord was faced only with the burning wreckage of one of Wazzmakka’s war wagons. The crude tank had been all but annihilated by a large, black cube. Even as Gorgutz watched, the petrochem-rich flames that burned and melted the twisted wreckage refused to touch the strange object, the fire cringing away from its smooth, unblemished surface.

‘What da zog,’ Gorgutz began to say, then realised where the object had come from. He looked up.

The twilight sky was aflame, lanced through by thousands of blazing contrails. The warlord stared in shock for a moment, jaw agape. Even more incredible than the rain of strange black blocks was the planet that now filled Cyprus Ultima’s heavens. A world within a world, caged by a gleaming black labyrinth of unimaginable proportions. The central orb trapped inside seemed to glow with dark power, only just flaring to life now that the material plain had been breached.

‘It’s here,’ Gorgutz said, eyes locked on the new planet. On Acheron. Even as he uttered the words the last rays of light blinked from existence, dipping not below Cyprus Ultima’s distant mountains, but obscured by the black tesseract that caged the alien world.

Acheron had come, and it had brought the night.

‘What are you gits standin’ about for?’ Gorgutz bellowed, rounding on the nearest greenskins. ‘Get ya gubbins and get ready. It’s time we got off dis dustbowl.’

As the ork horde descended into a frenzy, Gorgutz hauled Wazzmakka back to his feet.

‘Get da ships,’ he growled. ‘And get me up der. Now.’

More of the strange black blocks were pounding into the ruined valley all around Gorgutz, smashing burned-out manufactorums and hab blocks and crushing scattering greenskins. Gorgutz didn’t care. The thing every other git in the system wanted had just turned up. And Gorgutz was going to get to it first.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Expeditionary Fleet was moving into position. Like minnows approaching a bloodwhale, the dozens of ships under Inquisitor Holt’s command closed in on Acheron, surrounding the rogue world with two overlapping rings of void shields and Emperor-blessed adamantium. It would take the better part of a day to blockade the strange planet fully, but the operation was proceeding to schedule. The Ramillies starfort Warpath had already dropped stasis-anchor off the planet’s dark side, providing a keystone around which the rest of the fleet could lock itself. Two more of the weapons platforms, the Macaroth and the Holy Sigil, were approaching the planet’s northern and southern hemispheres, weapons batteries run out and primed. The augurs of the entire Imperial fleet were probing the planet, seeking any sign of an immediate threat amidst either the great, black labyrinth cage or the inner world of ice, volcanic rock and strange, eerie lights.

Thus far, the scans had come back with nothing. Acheron seemed entirely dead, a prize ripe to be plucked. And Holt was currently the only one in a position to do the picking.

‘Your squad is prepared?’ the inquisitor asked from his command throne, features hidden by the shadows of his cowl.

‘Affirmative,’ replied Jason Novorex. The dim lighting of the Final Judgement’s bridge played across the gleaming, oiled black surfaces of the Shadow Haunter’s power armour, and reflected back from the highly polished, intricate silverwork adorning his left pauldron.

‘My logisticians are triangulating an optimal landing zone near to the Vault and its obelisks,’ Holt continued. ‘Once it has been fully computed I will have it uploaded to your tactical feeds. You should proceed with all haste. We are not the only ones seeking the spear. Secure the vault and gain access to the temple below.’

‘I understand,’ Novorex replied. The Shadow Haunter’s helm was mag-locked to his belt, his pallid features rendered almost white in the flickering half-light. What illumination there was made the kill team leader’s fangs gleam as he spoke. ‘The Deathwatch stands ready. We will not fail you, or our Oath of Moment.’

Holt dismissed the sinister Adeptus Astartes with a wave of his hand. Moments later a priority transmission from Commodore de Grasse came through over the vox banks.

‘Accept the transmission,’ Holt ordered, rising and pacing onto the bridge’s holo-transition plate. The empty marker across from him flickered and came online, projecting a ghostly, life-sized representation of the Imperial Navy officer.

‘My lord,’ de Grasse said, bowing. His form flickered, awash with static. His words issued from the brass-rimmed vox speakers set into the holo-plate’s base.

‘Commodore,’ Holt said brusquely. ‘What news?’

‘Lord, long-range scans from our piquet vessels are reporting that the ork flotilla holding anchor along the system’s spinward edge is now under way. All course-plotting algorithms indicate they are making for Cyprus Ultima at speed, and with the entirety of their fleet.’

‘That is no longer our concern,’ Holt told the Commodore’s static shadow. ‘The defence of Cyprus Ultima ceased being a priority as soon as Acheron materialised. The Imperial forces there must defend themselves now.’

‘House Varlock and Lady Solaria–’ de Grasse began, but Holt cut him off.

‘Varlock Keep has stood for thousands of years without our assistance, commodore. I’m certain it will stand for thousands more. We have more pressing concerns.’

‘Against the entire greenskin fleet–’

‘That’s enough,’ Holt snapped. ‘I’m sure I do not need to remind you of your duty, Marcelus de Grasse, or the authority I wield as a member of His Most Holy Ordos. You will devote yourself solely to the placement of the blockade, or I will find someone else who can. Is that clear?’

‘Of course, my lord,’ de Grasse said, bowing so hastily that the holo feed lost him for a moment. He reappeared prostrate before the inquisitor. Holt cut the link unceremoniously and strode across the bridge to the augur banks.

‘Where is Gabriel Angelos?’ he demanded.

‘Our last overview showed his signature still emanating from Varlock Keep, my lord,’ the Augur Chief responded. ‘Though it appears the Dauntless is preparing a heading that will collide with the greenskin fleet.’

‘He must know one ship cannot hope to triumph alone.’

‘I cannot say, lord.’

Holt watched the sigils denoting the Blood Ravens creeping across the oculus stands, his eyes narrowing. The primary Space Marine force was still on the system’s edge, obeying his directives. Surely Angelos would not be fool enough to meet the greenskin fleet head-on with only one vessel and a single squad?

He was still pondering such a suicidal course of action when the augur chief spoke again.

‘Lord, it appears the ork fleet is changing course.’

The Fist of Mork was a monstrosity. Gorgutz’s flagship typified the greenskin race; a vast conglomeration of looted junk, bloated with slabs of armour plating and bristling with guns of every calibre and size. In its service the Fist had earned a reputation for being nigh on indestructible. In all of Gorgutz’s many scraps, it had always come out intact – scarred, battered, but whole. No other ship in the armada that fell upon Cyprus Ultima had served the interests of the Head Hunter for so long.

Gorgutz only gave the footsloggers a few hours to embark. They were ferried into high orbit, up to the fleet’s ships, by crude tugboats and commandeered human cargo haulers. Eventually, frantic with anticipation, the warlord gave the order to abandon those still on the surface. Numbers didn’t concern Gorgutz. If there was a scrap, there would always be more boys.

And there was definitely going to be a scrap.

The flotilla left Cyprus Ultima, turning its ponderous bulk towards the looming presence of Acheron. The daemon world filled the flickering, grainy holocharts aboard the greenskin bridges, laden with angry red malice. The Fist led the charge towards the strange planet, customised plasma engines blazing with the power needed to drive such a conglomeration of scrap and dakka at such high speeds through the void. Following close in the flagship’s debris-littered wake was the second largest vessel in the fleet – the Wurldkrusha. It was no surprise that Gorgutz’s reluctant subordinate had named his ship after himself, just as it was no surprise that the one-armed boss was now attempting to outpace Gorgutz’s headlong charge towards Acheron. Not only Acheron either, but also the rings of adamantium that now encased its strange black shell.

The Charon lay directly in the oncoming fleet’s path. Like the other Ramillies forts, it was a cornerstone of the Imperial fleet’s tightening blockade. As a weapons platform it had both the arms and armoury to engage an entire enemy fleet alone. But its captain, Leoni Ravald, had expected the threat to come from within, from the alien world and its black-plated prison, not from behind the blockade arc.

‘Reroute power to the trailing weapons batteries,’ she snapped at the gunnery bridge staff. ‘And scramble all interceptors. Every squadron. I want them void-borne within the next five minutes.’

Around her the Centrum Dominus was the epitome of controlled chaos. The vox pits were blaring with chatter as the Charon alerted the rest of the fleet and tried to provide the nearest ships with new headings. The enginarium was reporting power shortages as it routed energy from the vast primary drives to the lance batteries and plasma torpedo bays. Gunnery was struggling to acquire target locks and triangulate ranges, stoking the spirits of the cogitators even as, far below, overseers lashed the hundreds of chain gangs responsible for the loading of the great macrocannon batteries that studded the Charon’s bastion-flanks.

Amidst it all Ravald stood alone on the edge of her command platform, as unmoving and watchful as the stone gargoyles that decorated the buttresses supporting the domed crystalflex ceiling. Sweat was trickling down the tight collar of her heavily laced captain’s uniform, and her knuckles were white on the brass railings that edged the platform, but beyond that she displayed no signs of discomfort. Her eyes calmly scanned the readings on the oculus stands and augur arrays below, noting the progress of the various target locks.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought. Holt had assured the entire fleet that the greenskins were only interested in looting Cyprus Ultima. The threat was expected to come from the daemon world itself. Regardless, Ravald had served in the Imperial Navy for well over a century. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was that any unexpected difficulty could be overcome with a steady head and firm actions.

‘Captain,’ said Second Lieutenant Vitch, hastening up the command platform’s spiral stairs and throwing a smart salute. ‘Archangel, Hawk and Scythe Squadrons are all away. Only Shadow Squadron has yet to clear the launch bays. Something about a problem with the fuel lines. Flight Marshal Talith assures me they’ll still be void-borne in time for the enemy’s vanguard approach.’

‘My compliments to the Flight Marshal,’ Ravald said, already turning her attention to the next runner, Fourth Lieutenant Andrea.

‘Captain, word from the Spirit of Ignatus. She is taking our recommended heading and assuming a holding position off our spinward batteries. The Faithhammer is also adopting a new firing arc that will help support our close-range defensive silos. We’re still awaiting word from the rest of the fleet.’

‘Try and raise Inquisitor Holt again,’ Ravald said, her eyes turning back to the thick cluster of sigils representing the oncoming ork fleet on the oculus displays. ‘And inform him that unless ships are scrambled to our current sector, there’s going to be a breakthrough.’

Holt gestured at the speakers chiming in the vox pit beneath his command throne, struggling to keep a grimace off his face.

‘Shut those down,’ he ordered.

‘But sir, they’re incoming transmission signals from the fleet,’ protested a white-uniformed vox officer, turning in his swivel chair.

‘I know what they are,’ Holt snarled. ‘Now shut them off. I only want to be notified about signals concerning Acheron.’

‘My lord inquisitor,’ said Captain de Vey, pausing at the bottom of Holt’s dais and bowing hastily.

‘What is it?’ Holt snapped.

‘Lord, Captain Ravald of the Ramillies fortress Charon reports the entirety of the greenskin fleet is now bearing down upon her platform. The leading vessels are approaching at ramming speed. She is coordinating vessels from the blockade to provide support.’

‘Unacceptable,’ Holt said to the Naval liaison officer. ‘Even if the full greenskin fleet is headed this way, Acheron remains the primary objective. We have no idea what that planet harbours. Our very purpose here is to keep it contained, and redirecting vessels from the blockade undermines that purpose.’

‘But my lord, if the greenskins are able to break through to the planet’s outer plates–’ de Vey went on, not daring to meet the inquisitor’s eye.

‘The orks are not attempting to break through!’ Holt raged, smacking a palm into the side of his throne. ‘Every strategos analysis has shown they’re only present in the system to loot Cyprus Ultima. They have no interest in Acheron!’

‘The last warlord had no interest in Acheron,’ Winlow said quietly.

Holt twisted in his throne, glaring.

‘What did you say?’

‘Our strategy was based on the profiling of the last greenskin warlord,’ Winlow elaborated. ‘But we know he was killed by the xenos eldar at some point during the recent engagement for Varlock Keep. Whatever new beast has assumed control of the horde, it may well view Acheron as a prize rather than a distraction from the loot on Cyprus Ultima.’

One of the vox officers shouted up from the communications pit before Holt could find a retort.

‘My lord, the Charon’s trailing batteries have engaged.’

Captain Ravald hadn’t moved from her post. She stood at the edge of her command platform, overlooking the bridge, polished boots planted on the decking plates, back straight, hands clasped behind her back. She was the still, silent epicentre of the storm of activity that had swallowed the Charon’s Centrum Dominus, the calm around which the rest of the bridge staff, crew and officers focused their activities.

The entire greenskin fleet was bearing down on them, a wall of contact sigils blinking urgently across the oculus stands. Ravald had already calculated the odds, and reached a clear conclusion. She knew the capabilities of her battle station. She knew that, mighty though it was, what firepower the Charon could bring to bear on the greenskins wouldn’t be sufficient to stop them. Silently, she cursed herself for not anticipating the threat from without. She cursed Inquisitor Holt too, for obsessing over Acheron.

The ships of the surrounding fleet, represented by green aquila runes across the displays, were a picture of disorder, some heeding Ravald’s requests for support, most obeying Holt’s hopeless directives and trying to maintain the blockade cordon. Without their assistance the Charon would be hammered, rammed, boarded and overrun. Ravald’s only hope now was that she would be able to take enough of the xenos scum with her. She’d already issued a directive to Archmagos Gruu to overload the primary plasma reactor drive if contact was lost with the bridge. She would not see her battle station taken and defiled by such crude and bestial adversaries.

‘Captain,’ called Third Lieutenant Pello from the gunnery hub. ‘Trailing batteries three through eight are fully primed and loaded, and the vanguard elements of the enemy fleet are now in range. Bombardier Thuriston is requesting permission to engage.’

Ravald drew a breath, and took in the bridge in its entirety one last time. It had been an honour to command it for so long. There was nowhere she would rather be in her last moments. For a second, the ghost of a smile tugged at her scarred, wizened features. Then she looked down at Pello.

‘Priority message to Bombardier Thuriston. Open fire.’

The first salvo hit the Fist of Mork hard. The void-borne conglomerate leviathan’s shields shuddered as the hail of macrocannon shells pounded it, flaring green around the ship’s snub-nosed prow. It came on, the shields of the lesser vessels following it flaring in sympathy as more of the starfort’s firepower was brought to bear.

Gorgutz rounded on his ship’s kaptain, Lugga, and knocked his crumpled squighide tricorn from his head. He gestured at the grainy, flickering holochart display.

‘Order to every ship,’ he grunted. ‘Keep to da course I set dem, and all ahead full. Rammin’ speed.’

‘Gotcha, boss,’ Lugga said, abandoning his fallen hat as a midshipgrot scampered off with it. He turned towards the primary communications array and bellowed a string of orders at the gretchin manning the rusty headphones and bent mic horns, then stomped up the buckling metal staircase to the helm controls. Pausing only to wipe gobbets of grease from the primary panel, he slammed a scarred green fist down onto the big red button dominating the display.

All throughout the fleet, thick metal bulkheads shuddered and groaned as their kaptains smashed their engines into overdrive. Klaxons wailed and tens of thousands of bestial throats roared as the armada surged forward as one, blazing in the wake of the Fist’s headlong charge.

And the great guns pounded.

The Fist swept onwards, angling directly towards the Charon. Realising the massive flagship intended to ram and board the battle station, Wurldkrusha had ordered his own ship to follow, changing the course set by Gorgutz for the rest of the fleet. There was no way he was going to let the Head Hunter seize such a mighty prize for himself. 

The Charon’s batteries blazed. A triple salvo of lance strikes overloaded the Fist’s prow shields, detonating them with a spectacular flash of energy. Seconds later, fire blossomed across the ship’s jagged hull, curiously languid and silent in the vacuum of the void. Another barrage of macrocannon shells struck home, pounding the thick armour plates that constituted the Fist’s fore. 

The barrage intensified as more of the starfort’s batteries came online and were brought to bear. A shell the size of a hab block finally found its mark, punching through an already-buckled plate to detonate a dozen metres into the Fist’s prow. The explosion ripped away more of the scrap bulkheads around it, exposing a portion of the ship’s guts to the void. Gunnery command on the Charon’s Centrum Dominus directed new targeting coordinates for the weakened spot, widening the breach with successive salvoes.

As the barrage continued so did the Fist. The space around it was soon clogged with slowly spinning wreckage, chunks of the mighty vessel blown away and blasted apart by the relentless hammering of the Charon’s trailing guns. Debris was not the only thing hanging around the charging vessel like a cloud – from hangar bays and silo hatches, ramshackle greenskin voidcraft of all shapes and sizes shot, forming up in raggedy formations ahead of their mothership. The Charon responded in kind, Fury Interceptors scrambling from their bays to engage the ork bombers as they bore down on the Ramillies. The narrowing space between the two great vessels was soon riven with twinkling bolts of las and slow, juddering tracers as a hundred individual dogfights broke out between the clashing voidcraft.

Ravald observed it all in silence. The xenos flagship was closing, but the damage it was sustaining was critical. Even as she watched over the magnified view feeds, she saw a great section of its prow come away, blasted off by another well-placed macrocannon impact. The ship seemed to shudder, wounded, flames licking its flanks and blazing through its guts.

It was not what Ravald had expected. The greenskins should have overwhelmed them. They should have smashed the Charon all along its trailing edge, pulverising its void shields with the sheer weight of their firepower and then hammering the great battle station with boarding torpedoes. There was no way the Ramillies could have directed sufficient firepower onto the fleet to stop every ship, and as soon as the survivors from the first wave had rammed the weapons batteries and stormed them, more could have closed in for the kill. Ravald had envisioned her dying moments with power sword in hand, dragged down from her command platform and hacked apart by brutal cleavers as the Centrum Dominus was overrun.

But the ork armada was not attacking the Charon. Only two, the great flagship and another smaller vessel that seemed to be trying to overtake it, were actually coming at the starfort head-on. The vectors and course triangulation calculated by the Charon’s chartists and plotting cogitators indicated that the majority of the ork fleet was going to pass the Ramillies by.

For a single, shameful moment, as she realised what was happening, Ravald felt relief. The emotion was immediately smothered by a mixture of shock and anger. The orks weren’t trying to smash and seize the Charon. They were simply trying to get past. They were going for Acheron.

‘Mister Pello,’ she called to the gunner officer. ‘Can we spare batteries to target the enemy vessels about to pass through our coreward and rimward arcs?’

‘One moment, captain,’ Pello responded, passing the question on to the data feeds. Ravald watched the sigils representing the individual ork vessels splitting across the oculus displays, parting either side of the great bastion that was the Charon like a wave crashing around a rock. Pello signalled up to her.

‘Negative, captain, rerouting energy from the lance batteries on the trailing edge may give the oncoming enemy vessel time to adjust its shields, and if it were able to get them back up we may not be able to prevent a collision and boarding action.’

‘Understood, Mister Pello,’ Ravald said. ‘Maintain your current target locks.’

As she watched the flagship come apart she cursed xenos cunning. The sacrifice of one vessel had allowed the others to run the blockade before it could be completed. The orks had fed one ship to the Imperium’s guns, in exchange for the survival of the rest of their fleet.

Two ships, she corrected herself. The smaller vessel that had been racing to engage ahead of its flagship was attempting to break contact, seemingly only just becoming aware that the two had been left stranded by the rest of the fleet. As Ravald watched, both ships began to disintegrate, pounded to oblivion by the rippling broadsides of the Ramillies. Their internal decks started to combust, ammunition stocks cooking off, reactors overloading, plasma drives detonating, a succession of explosions rippling through the ork ships, bursting apart their hulls and shattering their core structures.

‘Burn them,’ Ravald muttered as the two ships came apart, voice low enough so that only she could hear. ‘Burn them all.’

Gorgutz had been right. Wurldkrusha had fallen right into the trap.

The warlord had known getting past the humie defences around the strange, black-plated world would be easier if he fed them some bait. As the biggest ship in the flotilla, the Fist of Mork had been the perfect candidate. Humie bosses always travelled on board the biggest ships and, in fairness, the Fist of Mork had been Gorgutz’s own vessel since he had first seized the title of warlord.

Except Gorgutz was not on board the Fist as it came apart beneath the guns of the starfort. Since departing Cyprus Ultima he’d been on the bridge of Kaptain Lugga’s ship the Green Git, the third largest vessel in the flotilla.

Wurldkrusha, of course, had no idea that the Head Hunter was absent from his flagship. When he’d seen the Fist forging ahead to engage the starfort, he’d assumed it would be as part of a wider assault by the fleet. And now that he understood the truth, it was too late. Gorgutz watched the destruction of the foolish warboss on the Git’s cracked primary viewscreen, tusks bared with approval. If Wurldkrusha hadn’t been so desperate to keep up with him, he’d have survived. He should have submitted properly when he had the chance. Now he was dead and his ship – its remains dwarfed by those of the Fist – was a listing, burning wreck, blown to chunks of spinning wreckage even as the remnants of the two vessels impacted harmlessly into the humie starfort’s raised shields. A burst of white light momentarily shorted out the feed as the Fist’s plasma drives detonated, silent in the void’s depths. Gorgutz turned away.

According to the holochart stands the rest of the armada had almost made it past the starfort. To the Green Git’s starboard, the vast bulk of the humie void fortress was sliding past, left stranded and impotent by the unexpected course of the ork fleet. Weapons fire occasionally flared from its cliff-like flanks, but not enough to trouble the passing armada. Most of the ships had already made it through the blockade, the scattered and disorganised humie vessels nearby in no position to stop them. Gorgutz turned his gaze to the primary prow viewscreen. The grainy cast was now completely dominated by one thing – Acheron, and its black-plated superstructure.

Gorgutz waved Lugga over to the communications grots, activating his power claw as he did so. 

‘Message to all da ships. Get landin’.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

No one aboard the Final Judgement’s bridge dared speak, except Henghast.

‘They’ve broken through,’ the astropath murmured in Holt’s ear. ‘The beast has reached the outer surface.’

The inquisitor said nothing. He had already issued orders to Novorex and his kill team to deploy to Acheron immediately. They would be provided with the most likely location of the spear in due course. For now, speed was everything.

‘There’s more,’ Henghast murmured, her vile breath hot in Holt’s ear. ‘The Angel is on his way. This time he will not be denied.’

‘My lord,’ said the bridge’s Augur Chief, breaking the icy stillness. ‘We’re detecting a ship designate moving in the wake of the ork fleet. It’s about to pass the Charon’s rimward flank.’

‘The Dauntless,’ Holt said, his words neither statement nor question. After a moment the Augur Chief nodded, pale-faced.

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Communications, open a link with the Dauntless,’ Holt ordered.

‘Lord, they won’t accept the connection,’ a vox officer said after a moment’s work at his tuning station.

‘Will a message still log with their systems?’

‘If we run it under your priority code, lord.’

‘Do it,’ Holt said, picking up the vox horn wired into the flank of his command throne. The communications officer nodded to him, one hand on his headset.

‘Angelos,’ Holt said into the speaker, eyes fixed on the bloodied raven sigil representing the Dauntless on the oculus stand. ‘Halt your current course, or I will have the fleet open fire on you.’

There was no response. The Dauntless continued its progress across the display, following in the wake of the ork flotilla that had already pounded into Acheron’s outer layer.

‘Directive to all Naval vessels in sector three-three,’ Holt said, gesturing to the communications pit. ‘Adeptus Astartes battle-barge designate Dauntless is now considered a hostile threat. Acquire target locks.’

For a second, nobody moved.

‘Don’t make me repeat myself,’ the inquisitor snarled, hand on the butt of his plasma pistol. The vox staff began to transmit.

‘You are an arrogant and dangerous man, Inquisitor Holt,’ crackled a voice over the throne vox set.

‘Transmission picked up from the Dauntless, lord,’ reported one of the vox officers.

‘I know,’ Holt responded, once more lifting the speaker to his lips. ‘That got your attention, Chapter Master?’

‘Ordering Imperial vessels to fire on one another is nothing short of heresy, inquisitor.’

‘I decide what is and is not heresy, Angelos. And right now your actions are borderline. I told you to stay on Cyprus Ultima.’

‘You told my company to withdraw to the system’s edge, and you told me I could have only a single squad and ship at my disposal. You said nothing about remaining on Cyprus.’

‘You cannot hope to stop the greenskins with the forces at your disposal. Landing on the outer superstructure would be futile at best, and suicide at worst.’

‘But of more use than enacting a blockade that has already been breached. I am leading. Others may follow, if they wish. We do the Emperor’s work.’

Holt felt Henghast’s gaunt fingers on his shoulder. He cut the vox feed.

‘What is it?’

‘He will not stop for you unless you offer him something in return,’ the astropath said. ‘Threats merely make him more determined.’

‘We’ll see how determined he is when every capital ship in that orbital sector opens fire on him,’ Holt snarled.

‘Is that really a course of action you wish to follow through with?’

‘If he discovers the location of the spear and reaches it first, he will deny it to all others. Including us. He may even destroy it.’

‘But now that the greenskins have reached Acheron, do we have the resources to seize the spear before them without Angelos?’

‘Lord, the Spirit of Ignatus and the First Lamentation are both reporting successful target locks on the Dauntless,’ a vox officer called up from the communications pit. ‘They await your permission to open fire.’

‘We have you locked, Angelos,’ Holt said into the speaker. ‘Stop your course now, unless you wish to condemn your ship and its entire crew to an immediate and ignoble end.’

‘Open fire, inquisitor,’ Gabriel replied, his tone unyielding. ‘My conscience is clear.’

Holt glanced at Henghast. Then he made a cutting motion to the communications pit, shaking his head.

‘We do not have time for this,’ he said to Gabriel. ‘The xenos have caught us off guard.’

‘They have caught you off guard,’ Angelos corrected. ‘I am seeking to remedy your failure. I suggest you stop interfering.’

‘The sooner we can come to a proper understanding, the sooner we can serve the interests of the Imperium, together,’ Holt went on, teeth clenched. ‘I suggest we meet once again.’

‘The interests of the Imperium, or your interests, inquisitor? If you wish to speak with me you can do it like this, or you can board the Dauntless. I have more important things to do than engage in your petty politicking.’

‘I am ordering the Expeditionary Fleet to stand down,’ Holt said, nodding towards the vox officers as he spoke. ‘If you will wait, I will join you on your bridge.’

‘If this is an attempt to delay me…’

‘Delay only serves our enemies. We must resolve our differences, and if we are to succeed together I have information I must share with you. In person.’

‘You have half an hour, inquisitor. After that I am making planetfall.’

Gabriel cut the link. Holt addressed the communications pit.

‘Have all ships break their target locks with the Dauntless and return to their designated stations. We must maintain the integrity of the blockade.’

‘He will not trust you any longer,’ Henghast said.

‘I do not need him to trust me. I just need him to cooperate for a little while. Novorex will soon have the spear’s location. His kill team will retrieve it before anyone, xenos or otherwise, can lay claim to it. That is why we are here, Henghast. That is why I must try and talk Gabriel round, or at least delay him.’

He snapped his fingers, bringing Winlow to the foot of his dais.

‘Prepare the fastest shuttle,’ he ordered. ‘The triwing or the black hornet, I don’t care. It is time I brought this Blood Raven to heel once and for all.’

Inquisitor Holt was not the only being capable of intimidation. Zaphiel’s Terminators had assembled on the bridge to greet the Ordo Xenos operative – five silent giants in blood-and-bone plate, their towering frames forming a corridor of ceramite through which Holt was forced to tread to reach their Chapter Master. For his own part, he came with only his apprentice, Winlow, for company. He approached Gabriel, seated on the command throne of the Dauntless, without once looking at the other assembled transhumans. The Chapter Master was still fully armoured, a colossus atop his throne, clad in layers of adamantium and plasteel. Holt met his gaze unflinchingly, features set in an unreadable mask.

If Gabriel had hoped for even the vaguest show of humility, he was to be disappointed.

‘I should be on board the Final Judgement, overseeing the blockade,’ the inquisitor said as he arrived at the foot of the Dauntless’ command platform. ‘So I shall make this brief.’

‘As you wish,’ Angelos said, clearly in no mood for the inquisitor’s barbed comments. ‘Tell me the truth about the spear.’

For a moment it seemed as though the inquisitor would still attempt to deny its existence. Then his expression hardened.

‘There is a prophecy,’ he said. ‘An ancient one, of xenos origin.’

‘The eldar?’ Gabriel interrupted.

‘Yes,’ Holt confirmed. ‘An eldar prophecy that speaks of one of their greatest relic weapons, the Spear of Khaine. It is said the spear will determine the fate of countless worlds. It was lost by the xenos aeons ago, during a battle on Acheron when the planet was still young. None among their treacherous race believed they would ever see its return, until now.’

‘The farseer my brethren slew on board the starfort spoke of it,’ Gabriel said. ‘She mentioned it not as a threat, but as a warning. “Tyrants will seek to claim it.”’

‘They do,’ Holt said. ‘The eldar, and now the greenskin warlord.’

‘You are counted among them, Holt,’ Gabriel went on. ‘The xenos feared your tyranny as much as she did the greenskins, or even her own race. Nothing here is as simple as it first appears.’

‘I have already said, you are a fool to believe the lies of the eldar,’ Holt said. ‘They merely seek to turn us against one another. Given your actions so far, they need hardly try.’

‘You call the eldar liars, yet you place stock in one of their prophecy-riddles?’ Gabriel replied, not bothering to disguise the scorn in his voice. ‘They are designed to confound and entrap. Regardless of what you think you will achieve by seizing this weapon, the reality will be nothing but death and defeat. You can fall into their snare if you wish, inquisitor, but I cannot allow you to jeopardise the gathered might of the Imperium.’

‘You jeopardise the Imperium by refusing to assist me, let alone actively seeking to obstruct my efforts,’ Holt snapped. ‘I shudder to think what uses the brute greenskins would put such a weapon to, let alone the eldar themselves if they are able to reclaim it. Entire systems will suffer.’

‘None shall claim it,’ Gabriel said. ‘Neither you, nor any xenos, not while I draw breath. I have seen enough desolation wreaked by arcane artefacts. I will not see another unleashed on the galaxy. I will destroy this so-called Spear of Khaine, and if I cannot, I will ensure it remains locked on this accursed world forever.’

‘If you deploy your company, even a squad, to the surface, I will not hesitate to treat you as traitoris extremis,’ Holt retorted. ‘I have shown you too much lenience already.’

‘You will do what you must, inquisitor,’ Gabriel said, his tone heavy. ‘As will I.’

‘You are still underestimating me, Angelos,’ Holt went on. ‘You still do not grasp the importance of this expedition. The Imperium must have the Spear of Khaine. Not just to destroy it, but to utilise its power. If even a fraction of the prophecy is true then it is worth a hundred armies and a dozen fleets. Refusing to put such potency to use in the God-Emperor’s name is in itself heresy. And I will see your fleet burned and your Chapter declared Excommunicate Traitoris if your actions mean I am unable to retrieve the spear.’

‘Such a decision could not stand, not even before your fellow inquisitors,’ Gabriel said.

‘Maybe with any brotherhood other than yours, Blood Raven. But given the recent history of your Chapter, it would come as no great shock among the ordos to learn that you have again been found wanting.’

Before almost any other Chapter Master, such a damning statement would not have gone unanswered. It would have drawn thunderous fury at best, and a fatal blow at worst. But not from Gabriel Angelos. The Blood Raven merely sat, saying nothing, seemingly as unmovable as a ceramite mountain.

‘You know,’ Holt went on, ‘that Acheron has fused with the starfort designate Helios?’

Gabriel’s expression hardened.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The Helios was out of position thanks to the damage you caused to its systems. When Acheron tore from the warp the Ramillies was caught in its orbit and dragged into the outer plates.’

‘Chaplain Diomedes was on board that starfort with a detachment of my brethren. If the Helios is on Acheron they must be recovered, dead or alive.’

‘None shall land on Acheron, even to administer last rites,’ Holt said.

‘You will not stop me from claiming the spear,’ Gabriel said. ‘Even if I must go alone, I will.’

Holt looked as though he was about to go on, but stopped himself. With a click of heels he turned and, followed by Winlow, swept from the bridge.

‘What are your orders, Chapter Master?’ Sergeant Zaphiel asked once the inquisitor had departed. Gabriel finally rose, the servos in his hulking suit of Terminator armour whirring.

‘The best course is clear,’ he said, pacing down from the command platform with slow, heavy steps. ‘We cannot continue to press the inquisitor. He is not a man to suffer any rivalry. At the same time, he cannot enact his threats to the full if we do not give him sufficient justification. He has threatened us should we deploy to Acheron. We will not. I shall go there alone.’

‘Chapter Master–’ Zaphiel began, but Gabriel stilled him with a gauntlet on his pauldron.

‘Contact Captain Balthazar and inform him of the situation. Tell him to maintain his readiness, but to make no move unless I specifically order it. We must hurry. In the race for this artefact, I fear we are currently trailing behind.’

‘The relic is to be destroyed?’ Zaphiel asked.

‘Destroyed, or denied to all others.’

‘Chapter Master, we have completed orbital scans,’ called a serf attendant from his station at the augur banks. ‘The cogitators are triangulating an optimal teleportation zone for you right now.’

‘Very well,’ Gabriel said, and nodded to the Terminators. The Space Marines came to attention as one, the crack of ceramite echoing around the vaulted bridge. 

‘Brother-sergeant, you have command,’ he said to Zaphiel. ‘Until we meet again.’ 

‘Can you truly do all this alone, Chapter Master?’

‘I won’t be alone,’ Angelos said, making for the bridge blast doors. ‘At least, not for long. Not every loyal subject of the Imperium in this system dances to Holt’s tune. Not yet, anyway.’

The orbital sweeps carried out by the Dauntless’ powerful augur clusters had detected weapons fire on the surface of the black, cubic superstructure that encased Acheron’s core. The surface itself was akin to a planet in its own right – what appeared from orbit to be a featureless obsidian wall of interconnected cubes, as unblemished as the debris that had pounded Cyprus Ultima, was in fact a terrosphere of tundra and thin, black soil.

Gabriel materialised upon a rocky outcrop, teleportation energies snapping around him. He had appeared amidst his enemies many times in the same manner, and on every past occasion his arrival – lent extra force by his Terminator armour – had sent shockwaves slamming through the earth and pounded up a cloud of dirt and dust. This time, however, there was nothing. His armour’s thick servo-bundles whined and crackled, but there was no indication that his sudden appearance had been felt by the superstructure itself. The dark soil barely shifted, and there was not a shudder to be felt in the strange, black stone beneath.

The bodies didn’t stir either. There were dozens, carpeted across the earth surrounding his teleportation point. Greenskins, their thick, tough corpses mangled and shredded. The Blood Raven had seen such work numerous times before. Like the orks, the eldar had also beaten him to Acheron. Holt’s blockade had been worse than useless.

He glanced up. The Dauntless was visible as a point of light in the dark sky, one among the constellation of a dozen new morning stars that had appeared around the unnatural world. The Expeditionary Fleet was in position. Gabriel wondered how Holt would play his next hand. A massed invasion of the planet’s outer cage surface? It seemed unlikely, given that there was no indication yet of any threat from the actual world itself. A covert strike insertion was a far more sensible option. The inquisitor doubtless already had operatives with boots on the superstructure.

Gabriel began reading the ground around him. Unsurprisingly, the orks seemed to have been ambushed, but not annihilated. A part of their number had broken free – there were clumsy boot markings and the thick, spiked treads of their ramshackle vehicles heading east. The Dauntless had calculated the optimal landing zone for him a dozen kilometres to the south of the initial ork impact site. Their fleet had all but rammed itself into the outer surface, the few that hadn’t ‘landed’ at top speed scattering across Acheron’s orbit in an effort to avoid the blockade. Plumes of smoke were still rising into the sky from the massed crash site, the outer surface now a massed graveyard of twisted scrap-hulks. No matter how many had perished, though, Gabriel knew more than enough xenos would have survived to be disgorged onto the black plates. Such a crash landing was just the usual greenskin method of planetary descent.

There was another reason for the location of their landing – the Helios. The unfortunate starfort had been caught by Acheron’s outer shell as it had ripped abruptly into real space. The damage was total – what remained of the vast structure had fused with the dark landscape before Gabriel. Only the twisted cathedrum-spires of weapon spines still jutted above the surface, like the lances of gods, discarded upon a bleak, barren battlefield.

‘I have made planetfall,’ Gabriel said into his link. The response from the Dauntless was choppy, cut up by strange atmospherics. Acheron seemed to have curious effects on everything – the early morning light appeared afraid to touch the grim landscape around him, the illumination coming through pale and dim, as though viewed through a haze. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and his auto-senses read the atmosphere as thin, almost dangerously so. While not enough to trouble a Space Marine or hardy beasts like the orks, the weak atmosphere of Acheron’s outer layer would not have been sufficient for unaugmented humans to breathe in unaided.

He began to move north, towards the closest section of the Helios’ remains. He didn’t get far before he encountered resistance. There were greenskins clustered around the starfort’s ruins, scrapping for loot, hauling off debris of all shapes and sizes. The first ones to come at Gabriel were swept aside by God-Splitter. The Blood Raven barely broke his stride.

The thunderous crash of the daemon hammer attracted more of the aliens. Gabriel pressed on towards the Helios’ remains. Hard rounds cracked from his armour, its refractor field shimmering. Axes and chainblades rained down, none of them a match for the Chapter Master’s battle plate. Inevitably, however, his progress slowed. Inevitably, the weight of his attackers increased, their roars and bellowing filling Acheron’s thin air.

He was going to be overrun. He had come here alone, and he would die alone, ripped to pieces by an endless flood of beasts. Gabriel gritted his teeth and fought on, ever advancing, the Helios’ broken spires looming above him. He had no choice. He couldn’t abandon Diomedes, but nor could he risk Holt firing on the Chapter.

Acheron would add him to its slaughter pit.

He had fought his way to within a few dozen paces of one of the Helios’ weapon spines. The great shaft of gargoyle-etched adamantium towered above him, scarred and broken from atmospheric entry, its vast macrocannons beaten and silent. Greenskins were pouring from access hatches before him, pounding the fused, glass-like earth around the broken spire with their iron-shod boots. Gabriel smashed aside one after another, his twin hearts pounding, an oath of purging on his lips. These xenos would not be the end of him. He had slaughtered their kind for centuries. Not one of them was worthy to take the life of one of the Emperor’s sons.

But they would. They were behind him now, in front, surrounding him, striking from all sides with a strength that would have torn apart a normal human. Gabriel’s swings became ever more desperate, his refractor field flickering and shorting as it sought to turn aside the countless blows. He could not take another step.

And then, abruptly, he was no longer alone. There was a familiar splitting sound, the noise of displaced air and flaring teleportation energies. It was followed immediately by the hammer-and-anvil pounding of storm bolters. The orks around Gabriel disintegrated, even their tough bodies no match for the hail of explosive rounds that decimated their tightly packed formation. Gabriel lashed out with fresh vigour, driving the remaining greenskins back into the unyielding firepower of his brethren. The First Company had arrived.

‘I deployed alone for a reason, brothers,’ he said sternly over the vox. The five Terminators that had materialised between Gabriel and the Helios ceased fire as the last of the orks fell. Sergeant Zaphiel stood at the fore of their teleportation strike formation, smoke rising from his storm bolter’s barrels, the thick plates of his power fist not yet activated.

‘And we follow your brave example, Chapter Master,’ the Terminator veteran replied. ‘We wish to honour Diomedes. Besides, the Codex forbids a Chapter Master from travelling without a retinue.’

‘On me then, brethren,’ Gabriel commanded, swiping blood from his hammer’s haft.

‘More xenos,’ Zaphiel voxed as the First Company veterans closed around their Chapter Master. He was right. Greenskins were still scrambling from the twisted service hatches and broken outer corridors of the Helios’ remains. These ones were runtier though, and seemed more eager to avoid the Blood Ravens than actually engage them. Gabriel realised why a moment later.

A figure barrelled from a half-open grav-lift hatch, the wan Acheron sunlight gleaming from his mortuary-black armour, the halo-like corona surrounding his mace picking out the features of his leering death mask.

‘None can withstand our faith!’ Chaplain Diomedes bellowed, his helm’s vox amplifying the battle cry to a thunderous roar. The nearest aliens cringed and shrieked as the Terminators turned their storm bolters on them, mowing the xenos down. Diomedes strode through the carnage like a true angel of death. His armour was battered and bloodied, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. Gabriel felt an upsurge of relief, twinned with righteous hope. Truly, the Emperor watched over the old Chaplain.

‘Brother Gabriel,’ Diomedes boomed. ‘You have come to purge xenos with me?’

‘Nay Diomedes. Mistakenly, I came to issue your last rites. Obviously you need none.’

‘The Emperor preserved me,’ Diomedes said, deactivating his crozius arcanum. ‘I have already issued our fallen brethren the proper honours. The fate of the starfort’s crew was grim to witness. They have been fused with the wreckage, and those that survived were butchered by the greenskins.’

‘The orks are collecting scrap from the Helios,’ Zaphiel said. While the greenskins in the immediate vicinity were all dead, more could be seen in the distance, some watching the Blood Ravens warily while others continued to cart off parts from the Helios’ rapidly disintegrating remains.

‘They aren’t collecting it for nothing,’ Gabriel said. ‘They’re building something…’

‘Most have gone east,’ Diomedes said. ‘The tracks of their vehicles and haulers all head in that direction.’

‘Orbital scans detected monolithic structures amidst the foothills east of our current location,’ Zaphiel said. ‘Some sort of vault structure. That must be their objective.’

‘Then we know our course,’ Gabriel said. ‘Well met, Diomedes. Are you prepared?’

‘Always, Gabriel,’ the grizzled Chaplain intoned. ‘The Emperor guides my blade.’

They pressed east, following the tracks of the greenskins. The concentration of activity on this section of the superstructure could be no coincidence. The Dauntless’ augurs had detected obelisk structures less than a dozen kilometres to the east, a rare blemish on the otherwise featureless landscape that encased the inner core. As they trudged up into the foothills Gabriel again found himself wondering how such a strange orbital prism of unidentified materials could be formed, and who had done it. It was astral engineering on a mammoth scale, a type of terraforming far beyond humanity’s current capabilities. The very means by which the cage seemed to hang around the core world defied the pronouncements of the Third Company’s Techmarine, Imlekk, when he had reviewed the orbital scans transmitted from the Dauntless. He was at a loss to explain it. Gabriel wondered how much more Holt knew. How much was he still concealing, not just from the Blood Ravens, but from the commanders of his Expeditionary Fleet as well?

They had not travelled far before they came across another littering of greenskin corpses. The orks had corralled their wagons, the scrap-machines now burned-out and wrecked. Gabriel paused on the edge of the kill zone, suddenly on edge. The wounds dealt to the greenskins were not the same as the ones he had noted from the previous skirmish. They were more precise – headshots, gory detonations. The mark of well-placed bolter fire.

For a moment, Gabriel did nothing. The Terminators and Diomedes halted behind him, scanning their surroundings. Without speaking, Gabriel slowly unclamped God-Splitter and activated it. The crack of the daemon hammer’s energy field echoed back from the surrounding rocks.

‘Three dozen feet to my right, and eighteen up,’ he said, not looking at the location he had specified. ‘Stand up now, or I will throw this hammer. I’m sure I do not need to describe the effect that would have on you.’

Nothing stirred. Gabriel transfixed the stony flank of the crevasse with a glare.

‘I won’t warn you again.’

After a moment more of silence, there was movement. A figure rose from where he’d been concealed amidst the rocks. It was a Space Marine, his armour painted black, except for his two pauldrons. One bore the bold yellow heraldry of the Imperial Fists, while the other was covered by a plate of intricate silverwork bearing the stylised I of the Inquisition.

‘I suspected Holt would have operatives here already,’ Gabriel said. ‘But I did not know he had the services of the Deathwatch at his disposal.’

‘Wherever the xenos is found, there we are too,’ said a sibilant voice behind Gabriel. The Chapter Master and his retinue rounded, weapons raised. He’d been aware of the Imperial Fist, and of the three other Deathwatch kill team Marines concealed around him, but he had not detected the fifth member, the one who now stood before them.

‘Welcome to Acheron, Chapter Master Gabriel Angelos,’ said the Deathwatch Marine. His right Chapter pauldron was grey and inscribed with a skull, its lower half hidden behind folded raven’s wings. A Shadow Haunter.

‘It was not the welcome I expected,’ Gabriel admitted.

‘You are here with only your Chaplain and retinue?’

‘It is the only option your master left me.’

‘Inquisitor Holt is not our master,’ the Shadow Haunter said. ‘We serve the Deathwatch.’

‘Which serves the Inquisition.’

‘Which serves the Imperium,’ the Shadow Haunter corrected.

‘You seem to take a dim view of your Oaths of Moment.’

‘We should not be stopping here,’ the Shadow Haunter said, obviously unwilling to discuss his allegiance to Holt. ‘Our objective lies further east.’

‘As does mine,’ Gabriel said. ‘The vault. It holds some sort of key to the core below? Perhaps even the spear itself?’

‘Our briefings are classified.’

‘You cannot give the spear to Holt. Good never comes from such artefacts.’

‘Our orders are clear,’ the Shadow Haunter said. He hesitated before continuing. ‘But we will not stop you from accompanying us. There are enemies enough on this accursed world as it is.’

‘Then let us press on,’ Gabriel said. ‘At this rate we will be the last to arrive.’

Kyre’s sword cut the last ork’s head from its broad shoulders, sending dark, stinking blood splattering across Acheron’s fallow outer-earth. As the greenskin slumped the autarch whipped his blade through the air, more blood pattering from the razor edge of the stone-inscribed diresword.

Around him the whicker and pulse of shuriken weaponry died, replaced by the wet thud of killing blows as his retinue put down the last wounded greenskins. There were few creatures in the galaxy as difficult to kill, but the eldar did so with a swift and merciless efficiency. This was no more than a cull.

But it was a cull that was taking time. He had arrived with the strike force on Acheron’s outer cage world after the greenskins had crash-landed upon its surface, using the webway to circumvent the mon-keigh’s ridiculous void blockade. The humans represented little threat, for the time being, but the greenskins were making up for that – though Kyre would never admit it, he had underestimated them. It seemed as though they were as eager to claim Acheron’s prize as he was.

‘There are more beasts approaching from the south,’ Surela, the Dire Avenger Exarch, reported. ‘A larger warband than this one.’

Kyre grimaced. The main ork horde had swarmed from their scrapped transports and were making their way east, their passage a dirty cloud of fumes, spores and kicked-up dirt on the low horizon. Various bands had broken free and were roving around the main column, typically the more mechanised elements on their crude buggies and warbikes. Kyre’s strike force had emerged from concealed webway portals at six different locations close to their objective, each one racing to secure the prize for the autarch. Kyre’s own group, however, had been sucked into running battles with the greenskins, both sides clawing at each other even as they sought to outpace their opponents.

‘Return to the Serpents,’ Kyre ordered, sheathing his sword. ‘Tear them apart from the grav-tanks. We can’t afford to disembark.’

‘The orks are engaging,’ Surela responded. ‘We have friendly contacts striking at their flanks right now. They have Biel-tan sigils.’

‘One of the other strike forces has diverted?’ Kyre asked sharply. If any of the six had deviated, he would have their commander dismissed from the expedition.

‘No, the rest are all still en route,’ Surela said. ‘It seems these new forces have utilised their own webway path. They must include at least one seer.’

‘I knew she would disobey me,’ Kyre said, striding up the ramp and into the holding cell of his personal Wave Serpent. ‘Converge on the greenskins with all possible speed. I want to end this before it begins.’

CHAPTER NINE

Macha broke the mind of the last ork as the Wave Serpents fell through the Acheron gloom upon her position. The greenskin had been attempting to escape atop a ramshackle, red-painted bike, revving away from the eldar that had materialised all around it. Macha caused its thick skull to burst with the slightest application of psychic pressure, the ork’s bike careening out of control and slamming into one of the smooth, black stone columns rising from Acheron’s strange surface.

Even as twisted, burning metal fell around her, the green and white grav-tanks of the new arrivals were slewing to a halt, their turrets tracking the dark tundra all around for any sign of more greenskins. Macha didn’t deign to look at them, wiping vile alien blood from her humming spear. She didn’t look up even as another Wave Serpent came to an idling stop before her, its gravitic engines vibrating the air. She could already sense Kyre’s arrogant, boisterous thoughts, even before he stepped down from the transport.

The autarch was fully clad in his war plate, face hidden behind the gilded mask of his arching, green helm. A green cloak, heavily embroidered with intricate white thorns, snapped at his heels. He pointed at Macha, the sheer force of his anger like a bow wave breaking against her mind.

‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded, standing over the farseer. ‘I ordered you away from the Wandering World.’

Macha stood her ground, planting her spear in the ground beside her. It moaned, its thirst unsated by the foul ork blood.

‘You told me to kill Gabriel of the Hidden Heart,’ she said. ‘And that is what I am attempting to do.’

‘Then why, by Isha’s Tears, are you here?’

‘Because Gabriel Angelos is here.’ She gestured at Ronahn. The Pathfinder, camo-cape drawn tight, was picking his way through the ork dead alongside his fellow Rangers, finishing the wounded.

‘Ronahn tracked him this far. He departed from Cyprus Ultima in pursuit of the greenskins. Even now he is making his way east, avoiding roving ork parties. I took the nearest webway path I could. It so happened that I caught these on their way to intercept you–’ A nod encompassed the littering of greenskin corpses and wrecks that had been left by Macha’s improvised ambush.

‘Does Angelos know about the spear?’ Kyre demanded.

‘Yes. Ancasta saw to that.’

‘Then why is he still alive?’

‘I had him. The arrival of Acheron interrupted the killing blow.’

‘I am not asking you to slay him in personal combat,’ Kyre snarled. ‘I just want him dead. You are shaming the council with your failure.’

‘With respect, the council’s opinions are none of your concern, honoured autarch.’

‘You’ll inform me the next time you intend to alter your plans,’ Kyre replied. ‘You are costing me valuable time.’

‘As the council wishes,’ Macha said, still refusing to be cowed.

‘As I wish,’ Kyre snapped. ‘You serve me.’

‘By the council’s decree. I serve Biel-tan, as do we all, honoured autarch.’

‘Ensure the mon-keigh is dead by the next dawn,’ Kyre said, turning back towards his Wave Serpent. ‘And offer voice to Khaine that I have the spear before then.’

After Kyre and his warhost had departed, Ronahn met Macha privately. They had taken shelter in an outcrop of dark boulders, their curiously smooth surfaces gleaming in Acheron’s wan sunlight. The rest of Ronahn’s kin were concealed around the outcrop, probing the surrounding gloom with their scopes. The area was crawling with greenskins making their way eastwards, the majority of them seemingly oblivious to the presence of the eldar.

‘Angelos passed this way,’ Ronahn said. ‘His tracks are easy to read. It seems he is accompanied by a retinue of his kindred.’

‘But that’s not why we have stopped the hunt, is it?’ Macha asked. ‘You are troubled, Ronahn. You have been ever since joining the strike force. Speak freely.’

The farseer sensed the Pathfinder’s hesitation. She allowed her thoughts to touch upon his briefly, a moment’s reassurance amidst the doubts and fears the Outcast was harbouring.

‘It is Taldeer,’ he said eventually, his voice low.

‘I will reclaim her stone from Kyre,’ Macha said. ‘I understand your pain–’

‘No,’ Ronahn said. ‘It’s not just that he has pulled her from the infinity circuit. There is more to it than that. It is difficult for me to say it but... her thoughts are not truly her own any more. I fear the pain of her dying moments at the hands of the mon-keigh have warped her essence. She is no longer whole. No longer… sane.’

Macha understood how difficult it was for Ronahn to admit as much. He was Taldeer’s brother. Their souls were linked, as close a kindred as could be. When he too passed over they would be bonded in the infinity circuit, their souls as one for the rest of eternity. To claim Taldeer had changed in any way from the respected farseer she had been before her death was tantamount to blasphemy.

‘Her soul-song is a chill one,’ Macha allowed. ‘And the prophecy...’

‘Her judgement is overwhelmed with pain and grief,’ Ronahn said, his voice growing more firm as he found conviction in his words. ‘She seeks vengeance. Maybe she has latched onto this ancient prophecy and grown to believe it. Or maybe she is simply using it as a vehicle to wreak vengeance on the living, especially the mon-keigh. I do not know. But I know that I do not trust the path she is leading us down.’

‘I sense the same thing,’ Macha admitted. ‘The entire council does. Kyre’s war-lust has infected every part of this undertaking. It has the potential to lead us all to ruination.’

‘I hope there is yet some fragment of my sister’s soul that can be recovered,’ Ronahn went on. ‘If her sanity can be restored, even for a short time, her guidance could lead us from this snare.’

‘I will recover her spirit stone,’ Macha promised. ‘Whether she can help us or not, she is suffering from Kyre’s presence, and he derives his authority from her support. Remove one from the other, and both may find themselves whole again.’

‘If Kyre claims the spear none of this will matter,’ said Ronahn. ‘Then he won’t even need Taldeer. If he has the spear, he will use it as a vehicle for further destruction. Biel-tan will be drawn into an ever-greater cycle of conflicts. It is what his bloody soul secretly desires.’

‘Then we must slow him,’ Macha said. ‘If I can get to the spear first, I will put it beyond his reach. One way or the other.’

‘Would the council condone such an action?’

‘I will stand by it regardless. I believe once I do, the majority of the council will support me. Kyre will find himself outmanoeuvred and alone.’

‘I can draw enough greenskins into Kyre’s current path to slow him,’ Ronahn said. ‘If I cannot distract enough, I will ensure their warlord knows how valuable the prize we hunt is. That should motivate him to attack Kyre directly.’

‘And amidst it all I will seek to reach the spear first,’ Macha agreed. ‘Then we shall retrieve your sister’s spirit stone.’

‘Thank you, venerable farseer,’ Ronahn said. ‘Together we may be able to put a stop to her madness. Before it claims us all.’

They had started to build the mountain.

It had begun with a single body, just one corpse. A greenskin, gutted by heavy calibre autocannon fire. Fitting, that the first foundation was a beast that existed solely to fight, a creature from a race engineered for eternal, unending carnage. More had soon followed, warriors one and all.

Now the mountain nearly stood complete. Now the slaughter was reaching its climax. The great pit at the heart of the conglomeration of corpse-hills was filling, a dense peak of bloody flesh and shattered bones, broken armour and notched weapons forming, body by body. It reached towards the dark, brooding clouds, towering above the barren plain below, a sacrificial edifice fit for a god.

And a god stirred. Far below, sheathed in ice, its gargantuan, unknowable form bound for millennia in its vast obsidian cage. The faintest trickle of conscious thought returned, and with it the hunger, the ever-present, always-insatiable lust. Blood. It needed more blood.

Almost imperceptible, the very first hairline crack appeared in its tomb of ice.

The main horde was moving east. It flattened the thin, fallow tundra in its path, clouds of black dust mixing with even blacker fumes as a cavalcade of ramshackle vehicles great and small, a thousand strong, ground, clanked and revved across Acheron’s outer surface. Gorgutz led it from the front, perched atop the forecastle of his hulking, looted battlewagon, Git-Grinda. The clattering conglomeration of war-scrap was all bristling guns, skull trophies and jagged, oil-streaked armour plating. The huge engine grille at its prow was surmounted by a bleached carnosaur skull, while the smokestack exhausts at the rear churned out a cloud of fumes and smoke so dense it shrouded the entirety of the rest of the column. Behind Gorgutz on the forecastle was the new traktor cannon, fashioned from the wreck of the humie starfort, collected on both Cyprus Ultima and Acheron. Wazzmakka himself was at the steering block, tusks bared in a rictus of concentrated excitement as he battled to keep the monstrous machine going at top speed.

Gorgutz clutched the side of the forecastle, squinting as he attempted to pierce the smog that hung like a portent of doom around the mechanised horde. Their destination lay ahead, a day’s travel away. When the void flotilla had ploughed through the human defences, Gorgutz had ordered it to crash-land as close to the nearest identifiable structure on the planet’s outer surface. What looked like a vast set of obelisks in a shallow basin of hard rock had seemed like the biggest, most obvious target. The fleet had hammered into the foothills surrounding the basin and disgorged everything that had survived impact. Now the Head Hunter’s horde was closing in. Gorgutz would loot whatever he found at the mysterious site, and use the great pillars and vault as a rallying point to assemble the warband fully.

They were not alone. Outriders and smaller columns surrounding his own had gone missing. There had been sounds of dakka, audible even over the howling of Git-Grinda’s beastly engine. The thought of combat had filled the warlord with even more elation than usual. It was a risk, bringing the lads here. If they didn’t find a good scrap on the surface, the warband would turn on him. But Gorgutz’s instincts were right. Everyone was here for the weird planet. Everyone wanted a piece of it, for whatever reason. And that meant everyone was willing to scrap for it. Just as Gorgutz had hoped. He’d have more heads soon enough.

Even as he entertained the thought, Zapnoggin’s head exploded. The weirdboy had been among the nob entourage attending their warlord atop the fortified tower that was Git-Grinda’s prow. Entirely without warning, the scrawny greenskin’s distended cranium popped, showering the surrounding orks with a smattering of grey-green globules.

For a moment, the retinue simply stared at Zapnoggin’s headless corpse as it slumped against one of the nobs. Then Gorgutz slammed his power claw into Git-Grinda’s primary drive hatch.

‘Wazzmakka!’ he roared. ‘What did ya do to Zapnoggin?’

‘Nuffin’ boss!’ the Big Mek called back, peering up through the hatch even as the battlewagon careened over another jagged set of block-boulders. ‘What’s become of ’im?’

Before Gorgutz could respond another head burst. This time it was one of the nobs, Grokk. The others lurched back as he crumpled, bulky plate armour crashing to the deck.

‘We’re under attack!’ Gorgutz bellowed, activating his power claw for emphasis. ‘Get on da shootas ya gitz!’

‘Where is they, boss?’ another nob, Dorf, asked moments before a large chunk of his face was also blown away. The big greenskin bellowed with what remained of his jaw, lurching blindly over the side of the forecastle. There was a gristly crunch as he disappeared with a squirt of black blood into one of the battlewagon’s muddy track belts.

‘Boss!’ Wazzmakka was shouting up through the hatch, gripping the drive wheel as he fought to keep the lumbering machine on course. ‘Boss!’

‘What is it?’

‘Dead ahead!’

Gorgutz snatched the forecastle’s edge again as he peered through the smog, not noticing as his active power claw scissored right through the buckled railing. He saw a single figure, tall and slender, the dust tugging at his camo-cape. He was standing fifty yards ahead of Git-Grinda, directly in its path, dwarfed by the avalanche of rusting metal grinding towards him. In one hand, gripped by the stock, the figure raised a long rifle in mocking salute.

‘Stop,’ Gorgutz bellowed, smacking his claw against the drive hatch, denting the metal. ‘Stop now, zog ya!’

The battlewagon ground to a pained halt, tracks clattering, engine squealing. The truck directly behind didn’t stop in time and crashed directly into Git-Grinda’s rear, detonating in a blaze of crumpled metal and burning rubber. Gorgutz didn’t notice – even as the rest of the column began to pile up – too busy negotiating his armoured bulk down the plethora of ladders that led from the forecastle down the jagged cliff-face that was Git-Grinda’s flank. When he finally thumped down into Acheron’s dark soil, his nobs struggling to follow, the single shooter was still where he’d first been. Now he’d slung his rifle across his back.

Gorgutz bared his tusks as he bore down on the lone pointy-ear, power claw crackling with brutal energies. The warlord knew what was coming next. It was a trap. It always was with these pale-skins. He didn’t care. If they fought, they would die.

But the eldar didn’t fight. He merely stood, silent and aloof, face unreadable. Gorgutz towered over him, a mountain of iron-hard green muscles and thick armour plates. He snorted with derision and slammed his scarred fist into the pointy-ear’s midriff.

There was a crack and a grunt, and the pointy-ear went down onto his knees in the dirt. Gorgutz snatched him by his cape, hauling him back up.

‘You iz one stupid pointy-ear,’ the warlord rumbled. Still the eldar didn’t resist, hanging limp in his grasp. Behind him, the ork entourage had caught up.

‘Want us to gut ’im, boss?’ one of the nobs, Dakken, grunted. Gorgutz shook his head.

‘He’s an emissary,’ the warlord said slowly, glaring at the slender creature in his grasp.

‘A wot boss?’

‘Don’t matter,’ Gorgutz said, shoving the pointy-ear into Dakken’s arms. ‘Keep ’im alive but don’t let ’im get away. We’re stoppin’ ’ere.’

The warlord gazed up at the sky, the system’s star shining weakly through the haze kicked up by the horde. Everything on the superstructure’s surface seemed weak and deathly. Even Gorgutz had noticed it. The air was thin, the soil shallow, the light itself watery. Nothing but puffy fungal blooms and the odd skeletal plant or tree grew among the strange, black rocks. The rain was cold and stinging, coming and going in sudden, vindictive showers. This was no world, Gorgutz knew. This was life clinging onto the edge of something artificial, like rust on the flat of an axe head. Life had not been sown here, it had clawed its way into existence and now merely clung on, thin and weak. Such a place would have left most sentient creatures feeling hollow and distressed. To an ork it meant nothing, but Gorgutz was still aware of it all the same.

‘Circle da wagons,’ the warlord ordered. ‘Before it’s dark. And keep da choppas handy.’

As the nobs waded back among the column, bellowing orders, Gorgutz turned his gaze eastwards. Git-Grinda had rolled to a halt on the edge of a plateau. Below them the rugged, black foothills began their descent, the rocky depression that lay at their heart stretching out before the warlord. The obelisks at its centre were just visible through the failing light, looming, black sentinels that would have made lesser creatures cringe. They were truly vast. What lay at their heart? Despite the misgivings that had settled upon Gorgutz since the strange appearance of the pointy-ear, the warlord grinned.

No matter what awaited them, war had well and truly come to Acheron.

CHAPTER TEN

The alien savage had broken his rib. Ronahn ignored the pain and focused on his surroundings. He’d been bound to a jagged iron pole, seemingly torn from one of the greenskins’ vehicles and plunged into Acheron’s bleak soil. Around him, in the space of the last few hours, a sprawling encampment had sprung up. The orks’ great fleet of mismatching vehicles had been drawn into a circle, creating a perimeter across the ashen plateau. Within it, drums of petrochem had been set alight, creating great pyres around which greenskin warbands brawled, drank and cavorted. Dozens of the mottled, ball-like beasts the aliens used as fodder were impaled, squealing, on great stakes and roasted over the primitive fires, the air full of their alien reek and the weird popping noises as their leathery bulk burst in the heat. Greenskins wolfed down great gobbets, swilling it with stinking fungal beer. The bigger ones argued and wrestled in the dirt, occasionally sending blasts of fire into the darkness with their unwieldy firearms, ripping the night air with thudding reports. The smaller runt-creatures that acted as their slaves capered about on errands, serviced the idle war engines or cavorted out of the reach of their brutish masters. Mighty hide drums pounded out a continual, maddening rhythm, adding a primal beat to the bedlam that was the greenskin encampment.

Ronahn blocked it all out, finding his inner peace and focusing his mental energies on what was to come. He was staked at the very heart of the camp, in the shadow of the huge slab of weapons, tracks and armour plates that constituted the greenskin leader’s war engine. The nearest orks were both the largest and the most subdued, picking at their savage feast as they eyed Ronahn evilly. They were awaiting the presence of their master. Only the beast’s orders were keeping the Pathfinder alive.

He found his gaze drawn beyond the edge of the encampment, down beyond the edge of the foothills. Out there he knew the great Pillars of Shame and the Vault loomed, their smooth, black surfaces defying all attempts to rationalise their construction. Such a thing was not Ronahn’s concern. In the surrounding hills his keen eyes could detect more lights, flickering in the dark and adding a ruddy tinge to the low clouds.

There were more ork camps out there, many more. None would be as large as the leader’s horde, but each in itself was likely equivalent to the entirety of Biel-tan’s warhost on Acheron. The hills were swarming with savages. And just like Kyre’s divided strike force, they were approaching the vault from all sides. They had it surrounded. If Macha was to reach the Spear of Khaine first, speed was their only hope.

The greenskins closest to Ronahn ceased their dark grunting and looked up. A moment later the hulking form of the ork warlord emerged from the belly of his great transport, snarling and snorting in his guttural language. The beasts hurried to clear a space around Ronahn.

The greenskin leader towered over him. The eldar suppressed a shudder, stomaching the concoction of fear and disgust. Now, more than ever, he had to act with calm deliberation. He knew what was required of him. That was all that mattered.

The full stench of the huge beast and his surrounding entourage hit Ronahn. He forced his expression to remain blank.

‘Warlord,’ he said.

The orks surrounding the leader grunted and snuffled, clearly dismayed at having heard a word in their own language uttered by the tall, pale interloper. Ronahn had learned the aliens’ crude tongue centuries earlier. As much as it disgusted him, there were no creatures more numerous – or more belligerent – than the savage ork. A rudimentary grasp of the bestial thing that passed for their language was beneficial for one who had trod the path of the Outcast for so long. It was impossible for any creature other than an ork to utter words accurately in their tongue, but Ronahn tried as best he could, speaking from his chest and twisting the words with the half-snarl, half-grunt that came naturally to the beasts.

Alone among his retinue, the leader appeared unmoved by his prisoner’s utterance.

‘Gorgutz,’ Ronahn intoned. ‘Head Hunter.’

‘So,’ Gorgutz replied. ‘I knew it. The pointy-ears sent some mad zoggin’ git to beg.’

‘No begging, Head Hunter,’ Ronahn said. ‘Just news.’

‘Wot news? I got no time for your stinkin’ lies.’

‘You do not know why we are here.’

‘I know why I’m ’ere,’ Gorgutz growled. ‘Smashin’ ’eads. I’ve a mind to start with yours.’

‘We are here for an ancient weapon,’ Ronahn said, ignoring the greenskin’s threats and keeping it simple. ‘A powerful spear. It is much desired by some of us.’

‘Some,’ Gorgutz grunted, looming closer to Ronahn.

The Ranger could see the pinprick of interest in the beast’s single, piggy red eye.

‘Some,’ Ronahn confirmed. The ork grunted.

‘I gets it. You got yourself a boss fight. Some rival pale git. Dat’s da problem wiv all you sneakin’, backstabbin’ grot types. When da ladz scrap, we do it face to face. No muckin’ about.’

Ronahn knew better than to interrupt the greenskin. It looked down at him silently for a long moment, and the Pathfinder was subjected to the unsettling intelligence that undeniably lurked in the beast’s savage, animalistic core.

‘So where’s dis spear?’ it eventually demanded.

‘Below,’ Ronahn replied.

‘And how iz we supposed to get all da way down dere?’ Gorgutz said. ‘Planet in a planet, wot sorta’ sense is dat?’

‘The vault and the pillars you are making for will provide you with access,’ Ronahn said, his throat raw and aching from the difficulties of grinding out the alien’s barbaric speech. ‘They are a portal to the inner core.’

‘Would be easier to tell if you’re lyin’ if you hadn’t popped my weirdboy,’ the warlord growled.

‘He was good target practice,’ Ronahn replied.

Gorgutz made a grumbling, hacking noise from deep within his chest. After a moment Ronahn realised he was laughing.

‘I got you, pointy-ear,’ the huge greenskin said. ‘Better dan you think. You reckons we’re all stupid. Think you can... manipulate us.’ The warlord grunted and, without warning, backhanded the Ranger. Stars burst before Ronahn’s eyes and his head snapped to the side, his nose burst.

‘We ain’t stupid,’ Gorgutz snarled, snatching the eldar by his long, white hair and dragging his head back round so that their faces were inches apart. ‘I knows your kind. I’ve killed your kind. Lies, tricks an’ traps, that’s all you got. You want me down at them stones, that means you got something planned. But know this–’ he shook Ronahn, and the eldar was unable to stifle a moan as pain flared in his broken side.

‘Orks is never beat,’ Gorgutz went on. ‘I’ll take my boys down there, and we’ll crump whatever trap you’ve got set for us. I’ll walk right into it and kill every pointy-ear I sees. You can jump us, and we’ll still come out on top. We were made for fightin’, and we were made for winnin’. Got dat?’

He released Ronahn, who slumped against his bonds.

‘Soon as der’s a bit of light in da sky, we move,’ Gorgutz said to his retinue, pointing at one in particular. ‘Only da fastest lads up front with me. Dakken, you stay behind with yer mob and watch da camp. And dis pointy-ear. I want him alive when I sees him next. And no bits missing either.’

‘But boss–’ Dakken began.

Before he could utter his complaint the warlord seized him, his great mechanical claw clamping around the ork’s throat. Dakken grunted and snorted with fear as Gorgutz hauled him close and grasped one of his tusks in his other fist. Then, with one mighty, violent wrench, the warlord ripped the big tooth straight from the other ork’s jaw. Dakken bellowed with pain before he choked on his own blood. Gorgutz let him go, tucking the thick incisor away in one leather pocket.

‘Any other questions?’ he demanded.

The rest of his retinue shook their heads vigorously.

‘Good,’ Gorgutz growled. ‘Now we know what all these gits is here for, we can make a propa’ fight of it. Get da lads ready.’

Speed, the eldar’s natural ally, was sacrificed for stealth. In the darkness of the Acheron night Kyre’s strike force, approaching the vault from six different points, slunk like the black void panther from the legend of Uganeth. Their transports ran on silent, grav-engines muffled, guiding runes and cockpit lights extinguished, slipping over black rocks and through small, dark valley bottoms like a parade of phantoms. Whenever the jetbike-mounted outriders came across another greenskin encampment, the eldar would go round, slipping past the raucous mobs without being detected.

It was not how Kyre liked to operate. It lacked the rush and the thunder of a Biel-tan warhost striking from nowhere to bring annihilation to the enemies of the craftworld. It was tantamount to cowardice. But it was necessary. If they continued to engage every greenskin war party in their way it would take days to reach the Vault, and the core beneath. And Kyre did not have days. He needed the spear before the fates he had so carefully woven in his favour – with Taldeer’s assistance – snapped and came undone.

And the snapping point was even closer than he had feared.

His own host was approaching the final descent towards the Vault when word came back from the outriders. The vast greenskin encampment occupying the plateau to the south had suddenly lurched into action. The aliens were mounting up, their lead bikes already roaring down from the hills and into the basin housing the vault and the pillars. Dawn had only just touched its first pale, bleak light against the horizon. Something had alerted the beasts.

‘We go now,’ Kyre ordered from the cell of his Wave Serpent, patching the message crystals through to the leader of every section of the strike force. ‘Stealth has failed us. Strike like the Cosmic Serpent, my kindred.’

Grav-tank engines throbbed into life, and the cold dawn air was rent by the shriek of jetbikes and Vypers as they tore off at the heads of the eldar columns. Kyre drew his diresword partway from its scabbard, checking its edge. The spirit stone hanging around his gorget murmured, Taldeer’s icy words slipping into his mind.

She has led the beasts here. Macha.

‘She will pay,’ Kyre promised out loud.

‘Honoured autarch?’ the Exarch of his Dire Avenger bodyguard asked.

‘It doesn’t matter, Surela,’ Kyre said before once more opening the channel to the rest of the strike force.

‘Outriders, as soon as you are able to, engage.’

It started as it so often did. Death came seemingly from nowhere, darting from the dawn gloom to tear the fuselage from a speeding ork buggy. The ill-made vehicle careened to one side, struck an outcrop of black stone, flipped and exploded. Another wheeled transport speeding in its wake struck the wreckage and pitched over onto its back, engine still revving, crushing the bellowing orks clinging to its back.

The eldar struck. They did so with the fatal speed and grace that was the hallmark of their ancient race. The greenskins barely seemed to notice. They tore down from the foothills in a blaze of dust and burning rubber, each bike, wagon and buggy racing to be the first to reach the huge obelisks rising up out of the half-dark before them.

The eldar struck from the flanks, then the rear and the front, the separate hosts hitting the disparate ork mobs from all sides. The speed of their transports made a mockery of even the fastest ork vehicles, diving over and around as they lacerated them with shuriken and las blasts. The lighter armour on the greenskins’ smaller bikes and buggies offered no protection from the lacerating hail. Within minutes of engaging, the bare, flat expanse around the pillars was littered with trails of twisted, burning scrap. Yet still the orks roared onwards.

The heart of the main horde, gathered around their warlord’s hulking battlewagon, was impervious to the eldar hit-and-run assaults. The war machines clustered around the land-behemoth were larger and more heavily armoured than the lighter vehicles taking the lead. They were more heavily armed too. A wall of hard rounds, inaccurate but constant, poured from the weaponry that bristled all over the scrap tanks, as well as from the crude firearms wielded by those mounted on them.

The weight of firepower started to tell as the eldar attacks grew bolder. A jetbike rider took a round through the helmet, his mount shooting into the flank of a looted ork tank. The machine slewed round as fire engulfed it, its track shattered, left immobile as the horde stormed on. A Vyper was struck by a coruscating bolt of green energy fired from an arcane weapon mounted on the warlord’s own battlewagon, the front of the elegant flier atomised even as it pulled up out of a successful shooting run on a burning ork buggy. The Vyper’s remains plummeted back downwards, their pilots killed in the ensuing explosion. A Falcon grav-tank took a direct battle-cannon shell as it slewed round to rend apart a mob of greenskins piling from their wrecked transport with heavy shuriken. The tank’s defensive shields split with an ear-bursting crack, no match for the high-velocity round as it tore into the smooth, curving psychoplastics of the hull just to the left of the frontal cockpit. The grav-tank detonated.

Things became even bloodier as the two sides locked, their cohesion breaking down as the running battle spread out across the flats. As the grav-rotors of a Wave Serpent carrying Lithorn’s Guardians were damaged by a scudding ork rocket, the transport pitched to one side and half-ploughed into Acheron’s dark soil. Lithorn and her kindred disembarked and set up a perimeter while the pilots consulted their spirit stones and attempted to get the Serpent back in the air.

Spotting the stranded eldar, mobs of greenskins were soon converging on them from all sides. An initial charge was shredded by the disciplined targeting of Lithorn and her Guardians, but the weight of return fire soon forced them to go to ground, and left the white and green hull of the Serpent scarred silver in a thousand places. The transport’s starcannon added its firepower to the infantry protecting it, the blipping noise of the electromagnetic pulses that guided its brilliant bursts of plasma joining the snicker and hiss of shuriken. It was not enough. The greenskins were closing in, heedless of their own casualties.

‘Honoured autarch, Lithorn and her kindred have been stranded,’ Surela reported to Kyre aboard their own transport.

‘That’s not our concern,’ Kyre responded tersely.

‘Honoured autarch, should we not–’

‘No,’ Kyre snapped. ‘There is no time. Hold course for the vault. The same goes for every part of the strike force. We must reach the core before these beasts.’

It was Lilen and her Aspect Warriors that saved Lithorn. The Howling Banshee Exarch disobeyed Kyre’s order, her Wave Serpent turning back on itself to drop in beside the Guardians’ downed transport. As the Howling Banshees leapt to the ground, the air shrilling with their sonic shrieks, the last of Lithorn’s warriors rose and backed towards the Serpent, dragging fallen kindred and firing the catapults one-handed at the oncoming green horde. A great mass had built up around the stranded eldar, their inaccurate fire flooding the dawn with thousands of shards of flying metal.

‘We can’t take them all!’ Lilen called to Lithorn as her Guardians began to clamber aboard. ‘Take the spirit stones and commit the bodies to Isha’s embrace!’

Lithorn nodded, face unreadable behind her scarred green helm, and began issuing orders to her Guardians. The bodies were abandoned, their precious spirit stones removed. It was all happening too slowly. As they saw the eldar retreating into the transport, the greenskins let up a great roar and charged.

‘Sisters, hold them back,’ Lilen ordered, her twin curving mirrorswords igniting. Her screaming joined that of her kin as the Howling Banshees leapt recklessly into the oncoming avalanche of green muscle and steel, their red crests flowing. The psychosonic amplifiers built into their tall, bone-coloured helms crippled even the tough nervous systems of the lead greenskins, causing them to stumble and drop weapons, clutch at their skulls and bellow with pain. They were easy prey for the singing blades of the Aspect Warriors.

Lilen scythed the head from one green brute and ducked beneath the clumsy swing of another, the blades of its chainaxe clipping the top of her crest. She plunged one mirrorsword into the stomach of another and twisted it around him, turning its own weight into a weapon as she used the ork to block a burst of shots from another attacker. She rolled out from underneath the riddled body and cut the legs from the shooter, then used her crouched stance to spring upwards, the motion impaling another ork through the chest with both of her blades.

‘Back,’ she ordered and she dragged her weapons free with a tight spin, the movement sending two more heads tumbling.

The Guardians had filled the Wave Serpent. The Banshees began to withdraw towards it, blades still reaping green flesh, shuriken pistols spitting razor death into bellowing faces and scrap-clothed chests. Still the orks came on, heedless of their own eviscerated dead, roaring their savage, beastly hate. Lilen realised that the sheer weight of bodies pressing down on her Aspect Warriors was going to make fully disengaging impossible. Even as the thought registered, a sense of calm detachment settled over her.

‘Continue back,’ Lilen ordered over her helmet’s link. ‘I will hold them off.’

A lesser band of warriors would have spent precious moments contesting such an order. At best, they would have hesitated. But Lilen’s kin were not like other warriors the galaxy over. They walked their Aspect Path. They all understood sacrifice. They had fought side by side for centuries. They were bonded, a sisterhood that operated with the one mind and one will, the daughters of Morai-Heg. They continued to withdraw, killing as they went. Lilen stood her ground.

This would be a fitting end. Her furious shrieks tore across the battlefield, her own litany of mourning, an obituary written in alien blood. They flocked to her like the dumb beasts they were, fodder for her mirrorswords, their vile blood coating her bone plate and matting her red crest.

She would never join the infinity circuit. She knew that. Her spirit stone would be lost, likely smashed. She would spend the rest of eternity being tormented by She Who Thirsts. It was the greatest sacrifice. It was a fate terrible beyond words. But it was the right thing to do. Her sisters would avenge her, of that she had no doubt. And there was gratification in inevitability. She killed with greater skill and fervour than she ever had before. A beheading, a thrust to the heart, a gut-spilling evisceration, they followed one another with a fluid and deadly grace. Even with roaring beasts pressing around her on all sides she danced and wove, ducking swings and side-stepping lunges, a twist of her lithe body turning a fatal strike of axe or cleaver into a glancing blow that scored off her form-hugging psychoplastics.

Eventually it had to end. Eventually her battle-screams began to falter, her throat raw, her body burning with exhaustion. A big greenskin lugging a heavy calibre shoota opened fire a second before one of her blades slid through its right eye. A spray of hard rounds cut down the three orks directly behind her, but also blew a fist-sized hole through her abdomen. She faltered, strength failing her. It was all it took.

Another slammed a cudgel into her faceplate. It held against the first blow, and the second, but the third split it and drove shards into her face. A second greenskin snatched one of her arms, wrenching it from its socket before tearing it off entirely in a welter of blood. A gretchin ducked round the legs of its masters to plough a short spear into her right side. The fourth and fifth blows of the cudgel pulverised her nose, broke her jaw, crushed one eye socket. The sixth split her skull. A hard round, fired blindly at close quarters, blew away most of her left calf. Her remains fell, dead, beneath the savage press. It stormed on without ceremony, desperate to reach the overloaded Wave Serpent as it dragged itself into the air, its shuriken cannons blazing. Lilen’s body was trampled into the churned-up earth, the spirit stone shattered by iron-shod boots, the shriek of her departing soul lost amidst the frenzy of the greenskins.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Macha felt Lilen’s death. She was watching the running battle unfold from a rocky outcrop on the edge of the foothills to the south of the vault. She was alone – Ronahn’s Rangers had deployed to the fight, while the Pathfinder himself had been taken by the greenskins, as per their plans. Macha could sense him, still living but wounded, in what remained of the main orkish camp to the north west.

The wind picked up, dragging her cloak out and snatching at her robes, making the rune charms rattle. She clutched her singing spear tighter, seeking focus.

It was difficult. She felt the soul shriek of every eldar lost below. Their deaths, she knew, were partly hers to bear. By allowing Ronahn to inform the greenskin warlord of the importance of the pillars, she had ensured they focused everything they had on them. That, predictably, had sparked Kyre to engage them with the entire strength of the strike force. Both sides had descended en masse into the flat bowl of land that lay around the black obelisks, striking from multiple directions. They collided, interwove and engaged one another even as they raced to get there first. The mammoth running battle had left the stony flats littered with corpses and burning wrecks, and cut through with careering vehicles and flashes of firepower. It was carnage, and it reached up to Macha as a terrible cacophany of explosions, roars and the clashing of blades. Her kindred were dying. The knowledge that it served a greater cause was cold comfort. For a race on the brink of extinction, every last sacrifice was a bitter blow.

She allowed her consciousness to wander, touching once again on Ronahn. The final part of their plan was about to come into play. The Hidden Heart was approaching. If Macha had read the runes correctly, his intervention would cause the board to rearrange. He would bring swift and sudden annihilation, and Macha would be afforded the opportunity to make a decisive intervention.

Movement caught her attention, out of place due to the fact that it came from above. She glanced up in time to see a speeding, black shape – like a rapidly inscribed line of scrawl – darting from the grey heavens. It impacted into the battle zone near the obelisks, pounding a fire prism to pieces with the force of its collision. Macha let her consciousness quest out, seeking the source of the strange projectile. Even as she did so she sensed another, dragged down from the heavens. They were meteorites and pieces of orbital scrap, hammering into the battlefield. The greenskins were bringing a new weapon to bear, some sort of tractor beam that was dragging small pieces of debris from orbit and using them to pound Macha’s kin. They’d cobbled the insane weapon together from the debris of the mon-keigh starfort, and lashed it to the back of the ork warlord’s lumbering transport.

The balance was delicate, and the stakes high. Macha returned to her body with a shudder, and realised she was gripping her spear so tightly her hand was aching. She unclenched it, seeing even as she did the vision that had haunted her since the seer council had first sat to debate the Acheron intervention.

A mountain of corpses, a warrior heap that was as inevitable as it was ever-growing. And the rain of bodies falling from the sky had become a deluge.

Thrusting the nightmare aside, she turned and made for her jetbike.

The Shadow Haunter’s name was Novorex. With the Deathwatch he was the leader of an Aquila kill team, a bonded brotherhood of alien hunters, the armoured fist of the Ordo Xenos. With his brethren in his own Chapter, however, he was Night Captain Novorex of the Fourth Company, and a warrior not far removed from Gabriel in terms of combat experience.

‘All are equal within the Watch,’ Novorex said. ‘It is an honour to command an Aquila team.’

‘I cannot recall the last time I was approached without being aware of it,’ Gabriel admitted. ‘You do your Chapter credit.’

The Shadow Haunter said nothing. Since Gabriel and his retinue had joined the kill team they’d been making their way east with as much speed as stealth permitted. The dawn foothills were crawling with greenskins, the noise from their encampments drifting through the air. The auspex had also detected movement that most definitely did not belong to the orks – twice the kill team had dropped back, taking to the hillsides while the soft hum of grav-engines passed invisibly through the darkness still clinging to the valley bottom below.

Then, as dawn became more than a slender line on the horizon, the hills around had exploded with raucous activity. A great mass of greenskins two valleys north of their position – the largest of all the warbands on the kill team’s scopes – had suddenly started pouring east, down onto the expanse of flat earth that lay at the heart of the rugged uplands.

‘They’re moving with purpose,’ Gabriel said. ‘Something’s alerted them.’

‘Something, or someone,’ Novorex agreed.

‘You aren’t going to contact Inquisitor Holt?’

‘He has given us complete discretion,’ the Shadow Haunter said. ‘We are to retrieve the xenos relic known as the Spear of Khaine. How we go about that is up to me.’

Gabriel said nothing. He hadn’t spoken of his own objectives to the Deathwatch commander, but his mere presence made them obvious enough. Thus far, Novorex hadn’t challenged him on his presence, but nor was there any suggestion that he was going to put his Chamber Militant operatives at Gabriel’s disposal, Chapter Master or not.

‘Wherever they’re going, we need to find out where and why,’ Gabriel said.

‘Agreed,’ Novorex replied.

The wan light of the Acheron dawn had begun to pick out details across the kill team’s void-black armour, giving it a faint sheen, the silverwork of their left pauldrons gleaming.

They moved up to the plateau that had until recently been the site of the main ork encampment. The campsite was littered with wreckage, discarded detritus and burning fyceline drums left scattered by the horde as it had moved off east. Only a single band of greenskins remained, grumbling and scrapping with one another.

‘A hundred and eighteen hostiles,’ Durren, a Brazen Claw, reported after the auspex chimed with its scan results. ‘One of them is an eldar. Alive, wounded.’

‘I see him,’ Diomedes said. The Chaplain had spotted the figure tied to a stake set in the middle of the idle mob.

‘Ranger designate,’ Novorex said. ‘One of their scouts. I’m amazed the greenskins were able to take him alive.’

‘Or that they’ve not yet finished him,’ Zaphiel added.

‘He may have provided them with information,’ Novorex said. ‘And knowing these xenos, it will be part of a wider plan.’

‘Could you retrieve him?’ Gabriel asked. ‘Alive.’

‘Our orders are to reach the spear.’

‘And do you know exactly where the spear is?’

‘No. Analysis has pointed towards the importance of the rock formations further east.’

‘Then taking that Ranger alive may be to all our advantages,’ Gabriel said. ‘Trust me, brother, I wish to find the spear as much as you do.’

Instead of responding, Novorex clicked a series of orders to the rest of the kill team over their private vox channel. They began to disperse, one moving left, another right, while Novorex and the two others began to descend directly into the valley, their servos deadened, moving low among the oblong spears of black rock.

‘How can we be of assistance?’ Gabriel said, beginning to move after Novorex. The Shadow Haunter stilled him with an open palm gesture.

‘With all respect, Chapter Master, allow my brethren to undertake their vows. We are Deathwatch.’

Gabriel didn’t argue. He left God-Splitter mag-locked and, along with Diomedes and the Terminators, took up position just below the ridgeline’s crest, their bulky form becoming one with the blocky boulders around him. Even with his transhuman eyesight it was difficult to follow Novorex and his two brothers as they picked their way down towards the valley floor, and the two moving left and right – the Brazen Claw and a Salamander – had vanished entirely.

As he attempted to pick them out his eyes were drawn up by the flicker of starlight. Though dawn was turning Acheron’s atmosphere a drab, deep grey, the void’s constellations continued to glimmer through the clouds, an overarching vault that framed the hills around Gabriel. He reminded himself that not every part of the firmament was some distant, alien star. A band arched across the centre of the heavens, a circle of stars that reached from one horizon to another, brighter than all the rest. Gabriel knew that they were the ships of Holt’s blockade – the escorts, capital vessels, troop transports and the mighty Ramillies weapons platforms.

Just how far would the inquisitor go, Gabriel wondered? It was easy enough to always imagine the worst when it came to the ordos – genocidal purges, whole planets burned, the guilty and the innocent consumed together. But Gabriel had encountered the Inquisition too many times down the centuries to fall into the natural assumptions. There were countless cold, merciless killers within the ranks of the ordos, but there were also men who strove to tread the hard, narrow path of the truly righteous. The very weapon he wielded, God-Splitter, was proof of that. Mordecai Toth hadn’t been a truly good man in any sense of the word, but he had sought to preserve life wherever and whenever he had the luxury of doing so. Gabriel knew that, contrary to his own example or that of his brothers, protecting humanity as a whole did not always necessarily mean giving personal humanity up. If that were always so, then what would the purpose have been in defending mankind at all?

His thoughts were disturbed by the unmistakable, thudding discharge of a heavy bolter. Ritterman, the Imperial Fist seconded to Aquila Kill Team Novorex, had opened fire. The thick-set son of Dorn was braced atop one of the flat cube-stones on the lower slopes of the ridgeline, his heavy weapon couched, pumping a stream of .998 calibre rounds into the surprised mob. The nearest orks went down instantly, even their tough bodies no match for the explosive firepower that slammed into them from the dawn gloom.

The mob rose as one, bellowing and snatching for their crude weaponry. Ritterman shifted his arc of fire with silent, calm efficiency, angling it low so a stray bolt wouldn’t strike the eldar prisoner at the mob’s heart. Ankles and knees burst apart in showers of gristle, and alien beasts toppled, bellowing more in fury than in pain.

Gabriel could sense the mob’s mood. It came with the long experience of fighting greenskins. There was the initial, brief moment of shock that Ritterman had capitalised on to reap a kill tally, followed by what felt like the deep, desperate inhalation before a man plunged beneath an ocean’s waves. Such a moment lasted barely a second before the great roar shattered it. It was the phenomenon known colloquially among Imperial strategos as the waaagh!, a wall of bestial, alien noise so powerful that it resonated across the psychic as well as the physical plains. Even uttered by just a few dozen greenskins, it was a chilling noise, an echo from mankind’s own primeval past; an earthy sound that thundered like a tribal drumbeat or the rapid tattoo of a heart in the midst of a life-or-death struggle. Gabriel had heard it roared from tens of thousands of savage throats before. It was a sound he knew he would never forget.

But the mob at the bottom of the valley didn’t roar. They didn’t get a chance. As they drew breath, more firing broke out from the opposite valley side. The Brazen Claw, Durren, had engaged.

The fresh attack split the greenskins. Instead of rushing Ritterman half of the mob stormed in the opposite direction, towards where Durren was firing short, precise bursts onto the closing xenos. They’d timed the attack perfectly. Gabriel supposed he should have expected nothing less from the elite alien hunters.

As the nearer half of the mob closed on Ritterman, Novorex and the final member of the kill team, a Death Spectre named Atarius, played their hand. They’d been concealed among the rocks either side of the exposed Imperial Fist, but as the greenskins bunched together in their rush, they rose up and opened fire. The addition of the two bolters and the precision of their fire, fitted as they were with multi-spectral augur lenses, decimated the rush. Even for Adeptus Astartes, their precision was commendable – the vast majority of the aliens were felled with headshots, their thick skulls no defence against mass-reactive bolts.

On the opposite side of the valley a similar scenario was playing out. The Salamander had lain concealed while the firing of Durren had dragged part of the mob in their direction. As they pounded up the last few yards of hard, rocky earth, the Space Marine rose and ignited his flamer. The roaring of the aliens was consumed by the thump-whoosh of the sanctified weapon as a spear of burning liquid promethium engulfed them. Still they tried to charge onwards, their small minds bent only towards destruction, their tough bodies almost immune to pain. Their flesh could not withstand the flames though – it sloughed off, the muscles beneath cooking, the bones snapping, lungs melting from the inside as the greenskins inhaled blazing fumes. Their howls died, smothered and choked, while Durren continued to pound their flame-wreathed forms with bolter fire. The stench reached up to Angelos. No matter the bloodthirsty rhetoric of the Imperium, the raw, gut-churning stink of burning xenos still sent a shudder of revulsion across the Chapter Master’s shoulders.

A single ork managed to reach the kill team, stumbling into Ritterman as the Imperial Fist’s bolt feed finally ran dry. He parried the swing of its cleaver with the heavy weapon’s stock, as Novorex and Atarius rushed to help. They arrived at the same time from opposite sides, Novorex plunging his combat knife into the greenskin’s thick neck while Atarius punched his own blade into its side. The thing grunted and tried to fight back, overwhelmed by the strength of the three Space Marines. Eventually its struggles grew weaker and it slumped. The two Deathwatch brothers dragged their blades free.

‘An impressive display,’ Gabriel said as the Blood Ravens descended the valley side to join them among the ork dead.

‘Purging the xenos is the very reason for our existence as a brotherhood,’ Novorex said, wiping ork blood from his knife and mag-locking it while Ritterman reloaded his heavy weapon. The voice of Durren crackled over the link.

‘The Ranger is gone.’

The Brazen Claw was correct. The stake at the heart of the now-deserted encampment stood bare and lonely, its bonds broken. The eldar had clearly used the skirmish as cover to make his escape. Durren and the Salamander, charged with securing the prisoner, had arrived too late.

‘The auspex,’ Novorex said.

‘I have it,’ Durren responded after a moment. ‘Moving east, along the valley floor. It’s wounded.’

‘Converge,’ Novorex ordered. ‘Dominus pattern.’

‘It’s headed towards the black pillars,’ Gabriel said as they moved off, covering the corpse-littered ground at a heavy half-run.

‘The same direction as the main xenos warband,’ Novorex confirmed. He needed to say no more. Every xenos on Acheron was making for the stone obelisks and the vault identified by the fleet. Whatever their significance was, it had to have something to do with the Spear of Khaine. Gabriel quickened his pace, the servos in his heavy armour whirring. He had to beat them.

War had come to Acheron. It lay before the Adeptus Astartes in all its terrible panoply, spread across the flats around the great black pillars and the vault between them. For a moment, cresting the last ridgeline before the foothill’s descent, the Space Marines were silent. They watched, analysing the spectacle, calculating troop movements, seeking purpose and intent amidst the chaos.

They found precious little. Their auto-senses stripped back the thick clouds of dust, smoke plumes and weapons discharge to show a sprawling series of running battles between the orks and the eldar. It seemed as though both sides had poured from the foothills towards the pillars, and collided on the way. Neither was allowing the other to disengage sufficiently to actually permit a final approach to the forebidding obelisks. The furthest elements from both sides – individual ork outriders, madly gunning their engines, and a trio of eldar jetbikers – had locked in a darting, jinking combat a few hundred yards out from the westernmost pillar. Amidst it all, some sort of insane greenskin technology appeared to be pulling orbital debris from the heavens themselves, pounding the battlefield with showers of meteorites and blazing wreckage. The carnage was absolute.

‘There is no cover down there,’ Gabriel said. The day had dawned in full, and the clouds above the bowl had parted to emit a rare stream of light that wasn’t dulled by Acheron’s bitter atmosphere. ‘We will be exposed as soon as we enter the combat zone.’

‘The confusion could still provide us the opportunity to advance unchallenged,’ Novorex replied, but the Shadow Haunter sounded doubtful.

‘Progress would be slow,’ Gabriel pointed out. ‘The lead elements from both sides would reach the vault long before us. And we have lost the Ranger’s trace. We do not even know what we are advancing towards.’

‘I will advise Inquisitor Holt of our situation.’

‘I must contact my fleet. Regardless of Holt’s directives, we need them now.’

He turned away from Novorex, keying in the long-range transmission and waiting for the uplink to establish a connection.

‘Dauntless, this is Gabriel Angelos,’ he said. ‘Come in, over.’

A flicker of words came back over the hard static crackling in his ear, the phantom of a transmission. He tried again, willing the vox to establish a proper connection.

‘Dauntless, this is Gabriel Angelos. The time has come. Captain Balthazar is to bring the fleet to Acheron with all possible haste. I repeat–’

A voice broke suddenly through the static. Gabriel recognised it immediately.

‘I warned you, Angelos. This is not your place to interfere.’

‘Holt, we require reinforcements.’

‘You’re on the surface, with my kill team?’

‘Alongside your Chamber Militant,’ Gabriel confirmed. ‘The situation is out of control.’

‘I’m aware,’ the inquisitor said, his voice terse. ‘We’re scanning it from orbit.’

‘Send reinforcements. This is the vital juncture. If we strike now we can catch the xenos while they are fully engaged with one another. Then at least this dispute will only be between you and I, and we need not fear the triumph of the alien.’

‘I have already set events in motion,’ Holt responded. ‘You are slowing my kill team down, Angelos. They will not allow you to take the spear before them. It belongs to me.’

‘It is a weapon of the enemy,’ Gabriel said. ‘We have no idea of the destruction it might wreak, on friend and foe alike.’

‘This discussion achieves nothing,’ Holt said. ‘I am aware of the current engagement at the vault. We are acting. Stand by.’

The inquisitor broke the link.

‘He did not specify the nature of the reinforcements?’ Novorex asked.

‘No,’ Gabriel said, gazing once more into the bowl of carnage spread out before him. ‘We must go. We cannot wait for him to act.’

‘I will not sully my Oath of Moment by directly contravening the inquisitor’s orders.’

‘I know. But you will not stop me. Zaphiel, Diomedes–’ he turned to his battle-brothers.

‘Let us cleanse and purge,’ Diomedes said, voice rising. ‘The xenos will not escape judgement this day!’

‘For the Emperor, and the Chapter,’ Gabriel agreed. Together, the Blood Ravens began to descend.

Wazzmakka called it ‘Beauty’, and it truly was beautiful. The traktor cannon fashioned from the starfort’s wreckage had almost turned the tide of the battle around the vault. Even Gorgutz hadn’t been able to hold back a bellow of excitement as he’d watched meteors and space-scrap pound the battlefield, dragged down almost indiscriminately by the throbbing weapon’s grav coils.

‘We needs more power, boss,’ Wazzmakka called up from the drive hatch. ‘Can’t get a good fix on all da rocks while we’s rollin’.’

‘Get da cannon off then,’ Gorgutz bellowed over the roar of Git-Grinda’s engine block. ‘I want bigga rocks!’

‘But boss–’ Wazzmakka began, but Gorgutz pounded his claw into the drive section’s dented roof.

‘Bigga rocks, ya git!’

The battlewagon slowed as the grot crew uncoupled Beauty from the lumbering transport.

‘Get it locked on da vault,’ Gorgutz ordered, waving from the forecastle. ‘I want dat black block opened wide up! Da spear could be inside!’

‘Boss, we got beakies comin’ from behind,’ one of his nobs warned. Gorgutz grunted, peering back through the haze. His crude bionic optic picked up bulky, red-armoured figures pushing into the edge of the combat zone, firing indiscriminately into greenskins and pointy-ears alike.

‘No time to wait den,’ he said. ‘Wazzmakka, get goin’!’

Captain Ravald had noticed the rune representing Inquisitor Holt’s flagship on the starfort’s vox banks light up a minute earlier. Second Lieutenant Vitch was on his way up from the communication pits, a yellow message chit in one hand. Ravald took his salute, and then the paper.

‘Message from Inquisitor Holt, sir,’ Vitch said, concern running through his voice.

‘Coordinates?’ Ravald said, frowning as she scanned the chit.

‘For the nova cannon,’ Vitch said. ‘A target lock, on the planetary superstructure directly below us.’

‘That is…’ she trailed off, reading the figures for the third time. It wasn’t impossible, but it was improbable. A nova cannon strike against a planetside asset at such close range – relatively – would be both inaccurate and highly destructive.

‘The order was issued with maximum priority clearance,’ Vitch said as Ravald continued to hesitate. ‘It also requests an accompanying macrocannon bombardment. Three salvoes recommended.’

‘What’s down there?’ Ravald demanded, turning her attention to the Centrum Dominus viewscreen banks.

‘The augurs are reading a full-scale engagement between two disparate xenos forces,’ Vitch said. ‘The coordinates themselves pinpoint an unidentified megastructure on the outer layer’s surface.’

‘Are there any Imperial assets nearby?’

‘The... information provided doesn’t say, sir.’

‘Then find out, warp damn it.’

Vitch hurried away. Ravald watched the viewscreens as they picked over the target zone, vid amplification picking out a dense bank of smoke and dust that typically indicated a pitched battle or full planetside offensive.

Sometimes, Ravald thanked the God-Emperor that she was a void commander, and not some groundpounder.

Vitch returned, a second readout in hand.

‘The inquisitor says there are no assets in the target zone, sir.’

‘Wide as it is,’ Ravald responded. ‘He does realise such a shot would have a very low degree of accuracy?’

‘He merely urged haste, sir.’

‘And he does realise it will take time to align the nova cannon, awaken and supplicate its targeting matrices, and load and prime a nova shell?’

‘I can only assume so,’ Vitch said hesitantly.

Ravald looked back at the viewscreens, grimacing. Let alone the logistical difficulties, no one had been able to identify the substance making up the tesseract superstructure around Acheron’s core. Emperor only knew how it would react to something like a direct nova strike.

‘The inquisitor is demanding confirmation, sir,’ Vitch said, glancing back at the main comms pit.

‘Tell him I am preparing his firing solution,’ Ravald said after a moment more. ‘And pass the coordinates on to gunnery. Maximum priority.’

‘Yes sir.’

The second lieutenant hurried off to enact her orders, setting in motion a chain of activity across the bridge. Ravald knew what was happening many decks below, as vox calls rang out and chain-gang overseers loosened their whips. Lone Hammer, the great weapon that made the Ramillies among the most potent assets in the fleet, would be swinging into position, its two-hundred-metre-long barrel swathed with void-sealed purity tabards and faith pennants. The plasma engine block, one of the four that would provide the counter-thrust that helped vent the nova cannon’s discharge, would likewise be shifting along its axis to lock in place against the cannon’s rear. The loading bay would be thick with incense and fumes from the haulage tractors as a dozen teams of a hundred deckhands dragged on the gargantuan chains that swung one of the mighty nova shells, fifty metres in diameter, into the yawning breach hole. The shrieking of gunnery priests and the canting techno-arcana of the Adeptus Mechanicus weapons ritualists would be lost amidst the mighty, bestial grating of the vast shell sliding home.

When the firing chain was finally hauled down and the shell unleashed, the long barrel’s gravimetric coils would accelerate it to a near relativistic velocity. A fraction of a second after leaving the barrel – and having already travelled tens of thousands of kilometres – the warhead would arm, and its wrathful machine-spirit would take control, hopefully guided by the pleas of the gunnery masters and the tech priests. As a weapon it was notoriously inaccurate, but above Acheron’s superstructure it had the advantage of being, in terms of void combat norms, at point-blank range. It would likely not even have a chance to arm properly. Its destructive potential, however, would still be vast.

Although Ravald, in her many years as commander of the Charon, had seen the total annihilation wreaked by the Hammer numerous times, firing it was still something only undertaken with a good deal of awe and grim finality. When word finally reached gunnery that the great weapon was fully loaded and locked on, she simply nodded, once. First Lieutenant Jorrem turned from the captain and signalled down at the gunner station, his voice ringing out across the Centrum Dominus.

‘Fire!’

Gabriel had pressed ahead. Diomedes and the Terminators were battling their way through mobs of greenskins, who themselves were locked in running clashes with eldar infantry that would dismount from their swooping grav-tanks, decimate a section of the horde, then withdraw. It was complete carnage, and the Blood Ravens were making the most of it. The obelisks loomed ahead, and beyond them the black pyramid of the vault.

‘Chapter Master, we cannot support you,’ Zaphiel voxed. ‘You are pushing beyond our range.’

‘We cannot pause,’ Gabriel responded tersely, God-Splitter pounding a big greenskin mob leader apart. The shockwave sent its minions flying back, the air around Gabriel suffused with energy.

‘The greenskins have some sort of war machine ahead,’ Diomedes added over the link, his voice thick with faith-fuelled hatred. ‘The device dragging down the orbital debris.’

The Chaplain was correct. What looked like a scrap-made heavy grav-coil cannon was being set up between the Blood Ravens and the obelisks. Now, however, its barrel had been lowered to point directly at the vault’s smooth, black surfaces. Green energy snapped and crackled around the strange weapon as it powered up.

‘They’re going to try to haul open the vault,’ Gabriel said, breaking into a run. ‘We can’t let them reach the spear beyond!’

‘Chapter Master!’ Zaphiel shouted. ‘Wait! We have incoming ordnance!’

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kyre was close. He slashed his diresword across the last greenskin’s torso with such ferocity that the moaning blade cut the alien clean in half, blood splattering the autarch’s white psychoplastics. He pushed on over the twitching remains, barely aware of Surela’s Dire Avengers as they covered him with a hail of whickering shuriken. The Pillars of Shame and the vault leading to the core lay just a few hundred yards away, towering above the melee that now swirled around its feet, rendering a silent judgement.

The way to the spear was within his grasp.

He broke into a lithe sprint, cloak snapping, teeth bared behind his helm’s ornate faceplate. An ear-splitting shriek was building around him. Nothing would stop him now. Nothing would–

The world exploded. White light, still blinding even after it was filtered by his helmet’s lenses, burst across Kyre’s vision. Something snatched at him, picking him up and flinging him back through the air. He felt his reactive armour shuddering with a hundred impacts. He pounded into the dirt, the wind driven from his lungs, bouncing and sliding to a halt amidst the corpses thrown up by the blast.

Sound and fury rolled over him. A wall of earth and debris slammed him back as he struggled to rise, half burying him in shattered black stone and unidentifiable body parts. His ears rang from the thunderclap detonation, followed by a soul-shuddering crash that could only be the very fabric of the superstructure coming apart around him. For a moment, the eldar’s consciousness swam, a dazed dream-state that rendered everything dull and muffled. Kyre could see the sky, riven with swirling, eddying clouds of dust. Pieces of earth were still raining down, blazing chunks of Acheron’s supposedly indestructible black tesseract that thumped and pattered into the churned-up dirt around him. His ears were ringing, and his body ached from the fall.

A shadow fell over him, blocking the steady rain of debris. He blinked, his helmet optics refocusing. The figure stood for a moment, looking at him. Then it reached down. A hand closed around the stone hanging about his gorget – Taldeer’s spirit stone. With a twist, it snapped the precious shard free.

‘Macha,’ Kyre snarled. He attempted to rise, but an unseen force pressed him back, pinning him in place. The air was heavy with psychic presence.

‘This doesn’t belong to you,’ Macha said, holding Taldeer’s stone.

‘The prophecy–’ Kyre began, but the farseer had already turned away.

Kyre shrieked with impotent rage as he fought against her psychic will, but it was in vain. By the time he broke free and dragged himself to his feet, she had vanished into the shroud of dust and smoke that hung over the battlefield.

‘Surela!’ Kyre barked, looking about. The communications links were down. The blast had reduced visibility to just a few dozen yards. All he could see was dust, churned-up earth and burning body parts. For a second, lost amidst the apocalyptic waste, he thought he was the only one still alive.

Then more figures started to emerge from the pall. Kyre recognised the tall crests of his Dire Avengers. Surela was among them, limping from a thigh wound, her blue and yellow armour plastered with dirt.

‘Macha is here,’ Kyre snarled. ‘She has Taldeer’s spirit stone.’

‘I haven’t seen her,’ Surela admitted.

‘She did this,’ Kyre said.

‘The mon-keigh fleet–’ Surela began, but Kyre cut her off.

‘She will have orchestrated it,’ he spat. ‘She has turned against her own kindred. She is a traitor.’

Kyre’s rising anger faltered as the wind picked up, stripping away the worst of the dust. The Pillars of Shame – or what remained of them – were revealed.

Those nearest to Kyre had been shattered, their tips now jagged and broken, great splintered shards of black rock littered around their bases. Whatever the mon-keigh had launched from orbit, it had impacted into the foothills just east of the pillars. The blast had completely levelled the undulating ridges and valleys there, collapsing the tesseract’s superstructure. The gaping chasm had consumed the eastern part of the pillars and the portal pyramid of the vault itself. Kyre approached the crumbling edge of the hole blasted through Acheron’s outer surface. A greenskin stumbled into his path through the dust, blinded by blood from a gash in its brow. The autarch cut it down with a snarl, not breaking his stride. His Dire Avengers closed around him, hurrying to keep up.

At the edge of the broken crust, Kyre found himself staring down into Acheron’s core. It lay kilometres below, a dark expanse of jagged rock, snowfields and black-scabbed volcanic flows. The spear had to be close – the alignment of the tesseract’s portals matched the corresponding points of importance on the core within it. Even as he pondered the next step, movement caught his eye – a darting shape, descending towards the core’s surface. He picked out the green prow and white thorn patterning of a lone jetbike. Macha.

She was ahead of him, and she had Taldeer’s spirit stone.

‘Where is the Wave Serpent?’ Kyre demanded, rounding on Surela.

‘I don’t know, honoured exarch. The blast may have destroyed it.’

‘Then find me another! Or a jetbike, anything! And as soon as communications have been re-established order the strike force to descend to the inner core with all speed. Victory is slipping from our grasp!’

Surela didn’t get a chance to reply. The rest of the orbital bombardment had begun to hammer down.

Gorgutz had to carve his way out of Git-Grinda with his power claw. The hulking battlewagon had been flung onto its side by the force of the explosion to the east, crushing a nearby buggy and flinging its occupants about the interior. Gorgutz had been down at the speaker banks, bellowing orders to the rest of the horde and abusing the grots, when the blast wave had hit.

The warlord pulled himself to his feet, deactivating his smoking power claw and wiping away the jellied green paste of the gretchin that had broken his fall. Whatever had caused the explosion, it had brought a lull in the scrapping. Smoke and dust obscured much of the battlefield, dirt and debris still raining from the sky. It wasn’t enough, however, to hide the gaping, kilometres-wide crack blown in the superstructure’s surface. Beyond the crumbling chasm Gorgutz could make out the dark bulk of Acheron’s core. He grinned and turned.

Big Mek Wazzmakka was crawling out of the glowing, twisted hole carved in Git-Grinda’s flank by Gorgutz’s claw. The warlord snatched him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him onto his feet, bionic parts clanking.

‘Get da skyboyz,’ Gorgutz growled. ‘And da stormboyz, and da’ ’kopters. Get every git that can fly, and get ’em ’ere right now.’

Zaphiel, Diomedes and Kill Team Novorex had witnessed the impact of the nova cannon shell into the foothills east of the pillars. They were able to take cover in a rocky defile before the wall of debris struck, the shockwave pounding over the natural fissure with a deafening roar. When it finally settled, they emerged into a premature twilight. The detonation had brought a strange, deathly calm. The thunderous sound of the battle around the vault was gone, the chaos obscured, the only movement the slow shower of dirt, the only sound the soft patter of it falling to the ground.

Gabriel was gone. The collapse of the superstructure had dragged down both the ork’s tractor weapon, and the Chapter Master. Acheron had claimed him whole.

Holt was unrepentant. Diomedes raged at the inquisitor, even as more explosions shook the superstructure beneath his feet. Lesser shells – probably a macrocannon bombardment – were pounding down from orbit, leaving contrail ladders climbing down from the heavens. The fiery glow of explosions lit the dark smog that shrouded the smashed remains of the pillars.

‘The outer prism has been breached,’ Durren said, consulting his auspex. ‘Scans show the break in the structural integrity on the eastern side of the objective. The planetary core has been exposed.’

‘I will descend,’ Diomedes said. ‘The Chapter Master is down there. He came for me, and I will go for him.’

‘Our orders from Inquisitor Holt remain the same,’ Novorex said. ‘But he has specifically forbidden us from operating alongside you.’

‘Holt is a traitor, and I would not wish to operate to his directives. The Emperor guides me.’

‘We will not leave you,’ Novorex said, shaking his head. ‘The path we take is the same. The inquisitor’s orders, in that regard, are illogical.’

‘You would disobey a member of the ordos?’

‘The Deathwatch are not blindly beholden to the Ordo Xenos,’ Novorex said. ‘Our oaths are ones of mutual assistance, not servitude.’

‘Then you will cease to follow Holt’s directives?’ Diomedes asked.

‘I said that we will continue with you,’ Novorex said. ‘Emperor willing, once we have retrieved the spear our course of action will be clearer. There will be no… misunderstandings.’

‘I pray so,’ Diomedes said. ‘Holt has shown that he has no regard for the lives of any of us, even though we are fellow-servants of the Throne. That alone should be enough to prove him unfit to utilise a xenos relic like the Spear of Khaine.’

‘I might disobey an inquisitor,’ Novorex said. ‘But I will not sit in judgement on one.’

‘We are not enough,’ Zaphiel cut in. ‘He has an entire Expeditionary Fleet in orbit. Why does he hold back?’

‘The visions of his witch,’ Novorex said. ‘He relies on her tarot readings. He is a superstitious man, and she has foreseen disaster. He will not play his cards at least until the location of the spear has been pinpointed. My brothers and I are expendable. You, Blood Ravens, are a downright hindrance.’

‘Then let us hinder him a little longer,’ Diomedes said. ‘We should make towards the breach in the crust as soon as the bombardment lifts, before the xenos are able to organise themselves.’

‘I have already sent out coordinates to my kill team’s Corvus Blackstar, it is inbound from the fleet as we speak. It seems the time for stealth has passed.’

Diomedes nodded. ‘Emperor willing, we aren’t too late already.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The warriors of Biel-tan descended to the core of Acheron aboard grav-tanks and jetbikes. They were the Bahzhakhain, the Swordwind, the Tempest of Blades. They were bloodied but unbowed. As the mon-keigh fleet pounded the greenskins on the cage world, the eldar slipped away into the core.

As ever, it was Kyre that led them. He was the first to set foot on the frigid surface of the core, leaping down from the jetbike he’d requisitioned from an outrider. Acheron’s heart spread out around him, a gloomy world of snow and jagged black rock, riven with ancient, sinister ruins and streams of bubbling lava. Everything was shrouded in semi-darkness, for overhead the great expanse of the cage still loomed, otherworldly, monstrous, bleeding life and warmth from the system’s star and leaving the planet’s bitter heart shrouded in a cold, perpetual twilight.

Kyre had alighted on a jagged spur of rock overlooking a long, frozen lake. The wan sunlight glittered from the smooth expanse, highlighting the whirls of whites and blues beneath. The ice was studded with outcrops of rock similar to the one Kyre was standing on, many of them surmounted by grey monoliths or statues that bore the handiwork of the eldar.

Kyre’s ancestors had come to this place, had likely stood where he was standing. They had claimed it for Kaela Mensha Khaine, had blessed the cursed rock with effigies and battlements in his honour. Kyre would bring glory to their spirits and invigorate the infinity circuit like never before. He would retrieve the spear that had been the centrepiece of their devotions, and usher in a new era of triumphant conquest, not just for Biel-tan, but for the eldar race as a whole.

His eyes were drawn to the distant centre of the lake, shrouded in Acheron’s pervasive gloom, and the icy mist that clung to the lake’s frozen surface. There, its elegant pillars and colonnades faintly visible, stood the Temple of Khaine. The prize must surely lie within. Kyre glanced back, at the remains of his strike force, assembling at the foot of the rock he had mounted.

‘We must hasten, kindred,’ he commanded. ‘Now, more than ever. Victory and defeat stand poised upon the knife edge.’

And Macha was still ahead of him. Kyre vaulted atop the jetbike, and struck the ignition rune.

‘He is coming,’ Ronahn said. Macha didn’t reply. She could sense Kyre’s approach. Ronahn had just sent a communication alerting the autarch to their location. It would only be moments before he reached them, standing in the shadows of one of the graven statues that littered the frozen lake surrounding the Temple of Khaine. It was a desperate gamble, Macha knew. She was sure Kyre could not be reasoned with, not any more. They had to try though, one last time. Before it was too late.

Vengeance, groaned Taldeer’s spirit stone. Macha had struggled ever since seizing the precious shard from Kyre. The dead farseer’s soul ached with pain, sorrow and confusion. It bled over into her own consciousness, leaving her feeling as cold and distant as the spirits of the infinity circuit.

‘Now is not the time for vengeance, dear sister,’ Ronahn said. He spoke heavily, camo-cape drawn close to hide the wounds Macha sensed he was suffering from. Luring the orks into storming the cage world’s vault had been a desperate gambit – were it not for the mon-keigh’s intervention it was doubtful he’d have been able to slip free from the alien’s clutches. Even more impressive had been the scale of destruction wrought by the mon-keigh. Macha had foreseen the importance of the impact they could have on the race for the spear, but hadn’t imagined the level of their own brutish urge to annihilate. The orbital bombardment had levelled an entire section of the cage world and exposed the core within.

While the distraction had allowed Macha to reclaim Taldeer’s spirit stone and reach the core first, it had come at the price in eldar lives, taken by the mon-keigh’s indiscriminate bombardment. The lost souls called to Macha in torment, a grieving wail that sent a shudder up her spine. She blocked them out as best she could. Now was not the time for grief.

‘Why did you bring us here?’ she asked Ronahn. ‘We have both sacrificed too much not to reach the spear first. I still do not believe Kyre will listen.’

‘It is not about the spear,’ Ronahn said. ‘It never was. Look within, venerable farseer, you know it to be true. And then, look down.’

He pointed to the lake beneath the outcrop on which they stood. The frozen, glassy expanse stretched away from Macha, shimmering silently. She could not see what the Pathfinder was referring to.

‘See it for what it really is,’ Ronahn urged, taking a step towards the farseer. ‘Our doom incarnate, given flesh, given form.’

Macha closed her eyes and loosed herself from the shackles of her body, rising on Acheron’s cold air currents to look down from above. She was surprised to sense Taldeer’s presence alongside her own, seeking out what her brother had found. Ronahn seemed to have brought a degree of calm to her confused thoughts.

For a moment, looking on from above, Macha still couldn’t discern anything curious about the lake. Then a sense of horrified realisation crept over her. There was a shape beneath the ice. It was hidden by its sheer size – the swirls of frozen water and hoarfrost broke up its gargantuan form, but viewed from above the underlying shape became visible. It was a vast body of black musculature, its skull-like head frozen in a leering, dead-eyed rictus, its brow crowned by a ridge of great, curving horns. Even with its bloody sentience slumbering far below the icy depths, Macha could still feel its hatred – hatred she had ascribed to Acheron itself – bleeding into everything.

The realisation dragged her back to her own body with a rush. She gasped, putting one hand on the leg of the statue looming over them. Now that she was fully aware of it, the dark, psychic sentience emanating from the daemon beneath them was palpable.

‘It has been feeding off the slaughter we have brought to its world,’ Ronahn said. ‘To its prison.’

Macha again recalled the mountain, the great monolith of butchered champions. It was a reflection in the warp, the manifestation of the war that the eldar, orks and mon-keigh had brought to Cyprus Ultima and the Wandering World. It was a tribute, she realised. A sacrifice towards the true master of Acheron. And the bodies were now forming a pinnacle. The mountain was reaching its peak.

‘Taldeer is lost,’ Macha said. ‘And without her guidance I am not strong enough to overcome this threat. The seer council will not be able to send help in time.’

‘My sister is not lost,’ Ronahn said firmly. ‘She is still here, with us. Are you not?’

He grasped the spirit stone hanging around Macha’s neck. The farseer tensed, expecting the same angry psychic backlash she had experienced when she’d taken the stone from Kyre. Instead, a wash of soothing calmness filled her, salving the sharp edges of fear and pain.

I can see, breathed Taldeer’s thoughts. For the first time, I can truly see.

‘Be free of your sorrows, sister,’ Ronahn murmured, his eyes closed.

I have led us all astray, Taldeer admitted. I was blinded by my own agony and hatred. When I realised that Kyre sought to make war on the aliens... I should not have spoken of the prophecy as freely as I did.

‘Speaking of it was unavoidable,’ Macha said. ‘An inevitable confluence of the pathways of fate. It has led us here, to the Wandering World, and to its master.’

‘We must show Kyre,’ Ronahn said. ‘Give him one last chance before he damns himself. One last attempt to avert this disaster.’

‘He will kill us,’ Macha said.

He will try, Taldeer willed. But together, Macha, we have the devices to stop him.

The farseer felt her attention drawn to the statue they were standing beside, the graven, kneeling image fashioned in the likeness of some mighty eldar warrior, its form befouled by dirt and moss. She understood.

‘I will take my leave, before he arrives,’ Ronahn said.

Even if Kyre claims the spear and awakens the Beast, there are ways that we might yet triumph, Taldeer thought. But we shall have to call upon every resource at our disposal.

‘And we shall,’ Macha agreed. ‘The path is a straight and simple one now. It is victory, or it is death.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In the short time since the humans’ bombardment had collapsed a section of Acheron’s superstructure, the area below the newly torn hole had been transformed into a sprawling scrapyard. Gorgutz had ordered in the full capabilities of his downed fleet’s air wing – at least, everything that had survived the initial impact with Acheron’s outer surface. Now mega fliers were ferrying the mobs down onto the core, the backwash of their huge, rattling engines melting snow and kicking up clouds of grit with each ungainly landing.

Git-Grinda had already been hauled down via a stub-winged super-loader, its graceless bulk grinding Acheron’s boulders to dust as it clattered off the hold ramp. Gorgutz clambered up onto the forecastle and cast his gaze over his assembling warbands. The mob had suffered – the fighting on Cyprus Ultima, breaking the humie void blockade, then the bombardment that had split the cage open. Only the biggest and the best had survived. Gorgutz would have it no other way.

The pointy-ears had already gone. Gorgutz could see the receding trail of their grav-tanks up ahead, zooming away into the mist that hung over the strange, frozen lake. Gorgutz recalled the pointy-eared prisoner’s words about the spear they sought. Even if the skinny git had been lying through his perfect white teeth, racing them to the relic guaranteed a good scrap. The carnage that had enveloped Gorgutz since departing Cyprus Ultima had been gratifying, but he was far from done yet.

He leaped down to the lower decks of his battlewagon, the thick metal shuddering beneath the impact. Grots scattered as he snatched one of the communication horns, the battered cone speaker dwarfed by his mighty green fist.

‘This is da boss,’ he growled. ‘Any of yous still got wheels, get after dem pointy-ears. Dey is runnin’, and I want ’em caught.’

Without waiting for any sort of response, the Head Hunter banged Git-Grinda’s cramped drive compartment.

‘Wazzmakka, is da big walka ready?’

‘Gotta get Beauty back first!’ the Mek shouted. ‘I’ve got lads on it right now!’

‘Then get movin’!’

They found him amidst the rubble of the fallen superstructure. Diomedes had managed to track his vitae signals to Acheron’s core. They were wavering and inconsistent – they seemed to be fading.

It wasn’t long before they caught sight of him. Gabriel Angelos still lived, and still fought. He had fallen amidst the remains of the ork’s tractor beam. The greenskins were attempting to recover it, a wave of footsloggers charging across the rubble of the broken superstructure. While Angelos still lived, and while he still fought, there was hope.

‘He’s alive!’ Diomedes told Novorex as the Corvus Blackstar circled the combat zone. ‘The Emperor watches over him! Nothing can stand in the way of the Chapter Master and his duty. Put us down!’

The Shadow Haunter complied. Diomedes stormed from the transport ahead of the kill team, roaring the Litany of Hatred. Gabriel didn’t turn from his brutal work, but a smile twitched at the corner of his scarred lips.

‘The honour is repaid then, brother-chaplain,’ he exclaimed as Diomedes’ crozius slammed a greenskin back off the ramp of black, broken stone Gabriel was defending.

‘It is all mine, Chapter Master,’ Diomedes snarled, turning his bolt pistol on the nearest xenos. The rest were recoiling as the Deathwatch added their fire to that of the Blood Raven, methodically gunning down those aliens closest to them and working their way towards the back of the mob. Diomedes realised he was firing on empty, his pistol’s chamber clicking dry. He took a moment to quell his burning zeal, and mag-locked the weapon.

‘They will come again,’ Gabriel observed as they watched the greenskins rallying outside of effective bolter range. ‘They want the tractor weapon. Much of it has survived the fall.’

‘Much like yourself,’ Diomedes said. ‘When I saw your vitae signs I feared we would lose you before I could arrive. It is a blessing that you are unharmed. I feel the hand of the Emperor in your survival.’

‘My armour was damaged by the fall,’ Gabriel said, indicating his battered Terminator plate. ‘Along with my vitae readouts. The machine-spirit has been injured.’

‘It continues to serve,’ Diomedes said. ‘As do we all.’

‘What of Zaphiel and the First?’

‘Still on the superstructure. I came with the Deathwatch. There was not sufficient transportation for us all.’ Gabriel nodded his thanks to Novorex, who was deploying his kill team across the rocks below.

‘We will need more than our current numbers if we are to contest the spear,’ the Blood Raven said. He pointed out beyond the nearest mobs, at the mass of greenskins assembling beneath the hole in the black-plated sky.

The orks were on the move again. The fastest warbikes and buggies had already roared away, following the eldar warhost that was racing across the great ice-lake below. The heavier tanks and artillery pieces clattered after them, dominated by the land-behemoth that seemed to act as their warlord’s scrap-covered, totem-bearing mobile command centre.

There was another machine taking shape at the heart of the horde as well, some sort of heavy walker. Gabriel’s genhanced eyesight took in the figure bellowing and gesticulating towards it from the tower prow of the battlewagon. Generally, even the most dedicated xenologist could discern few physical differences between various individual orks, beyond their size. Gabriel, however, knew immediately that he recognised this particular brute. He’d fought it too many times before to forget the great mechanical claw, or the trophy rack clattering with skulls, or the sheer bellicose belligerence it displayed, even from a distance.

‘Head Hunter,’ he said out loud. Diomedes followed his gaze.

‘You recognise their warlord?’ he asked.

‘We have fought the xenos before,’ Gabriel admitted. ‘And defeated it.’

‘That may work to our advantage,’ Diomedes said. ‘You know its weaknesses?’

‘It is difficult to find weakness in a creature simply following its base desires,’ Gabriel replied. ‘We do not even know if it is aware of the spear. I suspect the eldar are manipulating its presence here, though why I do not know. Perhaps the orks are designed to cover their rear, ward Holt off from seeking a full-scale invasion of the core?’

‘Or perhaps, as you say, they simply seek slaughter,’ Diomedes said. ‘Regardless, their presence continues to complicate our mission.’

The Chaplain was correct. The Corvus flier that had brought him down to the core’s surface had been forced to go to ground in the craggy foothills west of the breach in the cage above. The orbital bombardment had barely lifted when the skies had filled with xenos scrap-fliers, transporting the battered mobs down into Acheron’s heart.

Aquila Kill Team Novorex had therefore abandoned the sleek, black-plated gunship and taken up overwatch above the orks’ landing site. There was little chance that they could catch the eldar now, but the fastest elements of the greenskin horde still had hope. And if the fighting on the core’s surface became as closely contested and bloody as it had on the cage above, the Space Marines could yet seize the day.

‘You think the ice is thick enough to take them?’ Novorex wondered as the leading elements of the orks’ heavy armour ground out onto the lake.

‘You think they care?’ Gabriel responded.

The Blood Raven was about to suggest moving out, advancing parallel with the main route of the orks’ pursuit, when a squeal of vox transmission code jabbed in his ear. A moment later and Captain Balthazar’s voice broke through the static.

‘Chapter Master, we have your coordinates. Third Company is inbound.’

‘Holt has permitted your intervention?’ Gabriel asked, gaze drawn to the crack in the superstructure above.

‘No,’ Balthazar replied. ‘But he cannot stop us now.’

The words had barely reached Gabriel before thunder crashed through the split in the cage, pounding the core below. It was a thunder the Chapter Master recognised. Drop pods. They hammered Acheron’s black rock and pulverised the greenskins still milling about the remains of their drop zone, throwing up dust and twisted wreckage. As the Blood Ravens deployed, more shapes dropped through the superstructure’s open wound – the heavy forms of Thunderhawk gunships, red and bone-white hulls lit up with the firepower of their bolter sponsons. They were carrying the Third Company’s armour rather than its infantry, Rhino and Predator main battle tanks that they set down and auto-unclamped in the perimeter established by the steel rain.

‘Will you join us, Novorex?’ Gabriel asked. The Deathwatch Marine was watching the Blood Ravens insertion without expression, but he nodded once.

‘As you said, Chapter Master, the time for stealth is over.’

Gabriel advanced to the drop site. Half of the Third had deployed to the core – Third through Fifth squads, the Assault brethren of Seventh and the Devastators of Tenth. They had cleansed the last of the ork stragglers, supported by the Thunderhawks now banking back towards the split in the cage. Gabriel spotted Balthazar at the centre of the newly established landing site, surrounded by his command squad and Orion. The sight of the company’s battle standard, its heavy, scarred silk rippling in Acheron’s cold wind, sent a rare shock of memory through Gabriel. It felt like a long time since the Third had been his own company.

‘Well met, brother,’ Gabriel said as he joined Balthazar. ‘Your arrival is timely. Who commands the Dauntless now?’

‘Sergeant Alemar, of Sixth squad,’ Balthazar responded.

‘That is well. Holt has been trying to block all communication between us.’

‘We were monitoring the situation,’ Balthazar said. ‘The vox seneschal suspected foul play. I would not stand by any longer with you alone down here.’

‘How did you make it through the blockade?’ Gabriel asked. ‘Did Holt finally admit his bluff?’

‘Not exactly,’ Balthazar replied, scarred features twisting with a rare smile. ‘There was a degree of subterfuge involved, ably assisted by our new allies.’

Gabriel was spared having to ask who those allies were as a monstrous shadow engulfed them. The light penetrating the cage through the hole blasted directly above them was momentarily blocked, as a great super-heavy lander negotiated the crumbling edges of the broken superstructure. The shriek of its huge engines and the gale-like buffeting of its downdraught were eclipsed by the earth-shuddering impact of its cargo as it was allowed to plummet. It struck the core’s surface only a few dozen paces from the edge of the Blood Ravens’ cordon, slamming up a wall of dirt, stone and snow. Gabriel had discerned its shape as it fell from above, but even though he was aware of what had just landed, the sight was still a glorious one.

As the tremors of its impact shuddered away across Acheron, the Drakaina rose from its impact crater. The Imperial Knight stood on juddering servos, its limbs unlocking from their clamped transportation pose, whirring as they received power from the central core. The Knight had been refitted since Gabriel had last gazed upon it – now both upper limbs ended with great Avenger gatling cannons, their many barrels burning with potency as they cycled up, while the mighty walker’s armour-plated back was topped by a Stormspear rocket pod. The scales that adorned the ancient leader of House Varlock glittered in the shadows cast by its transport ship overhead, while its dragon pennants snapped in the wind.

‘Hail again, Gabriel Angelos,’ Lady Solaria’s metal-edged voice blared across the broken tundra. ‘Captain Balthazar came to me with news of your plight. The time to repay my debt is at hand.’

‘Hail, Lady Solaria,’ Gabriel replied, inclining his head towards the towering Knight. ‘You honour us with your presence here.’

‘The Dauntless was shielded by her Knight transports,’ Balthazar confided. ‘Holt did not dare open fire on both a Blood Ravens battle-barge and the foremost vessels of so ancient a Household.’

‘Your arrival may have turned the tide in humanity’s favour, my lady,’ Gabriel told Solaria. ‘But this is no time for words. Our enemies near their prize.’

‘Then let us strike,’ Solaria blared. ‘For House Varlock, the Blood Ravens, and the God-Emperor.’

Kyre’s headlong charge towards the Temple of Khaine fell short at one of the crouching statues studding the ice lake. The autarch sawed his jetbike into a hard break, shards of ice scattering beneath the flier’s gravitation pull, wreathed in hoarfrost. For a moment he scarce believed his eyes. Macha had squandered the lead she’d gained when she’d stolen Taldeer’s spirit stone. Here she was, boldly blocking his path to the temple, alone.

‘Traitor!’ Kyre roared, leaping from the jetbike’s saddle and ripping his diresword free of its scabbard. ‘Kin-slayer!’

‘Restrain yourself, Kyre,’ Macha replied coldly as he approached across the ice. ‘Your anger has done enough damage already.’

‘You stole the spirit stone of Honoured Taldeer,’ Kyre went on, voice rising even further. ‘You are lower than the lowest thief, the most base of blasphemers!’

She set me free, Taldeer’s spirit said, the icy thought cutting through the fug of Kyre’s fury. She showed me the danger that my need for vengeance has unleashed. Look below, Autarch Kyre.

‘This cannot be,’ Kyre exclaimed, eyes not leaving Macha. ‘You have perverted her. Where is the stone, traitor? Give it back to me, in the name of the Bloody-Handed One!’

‘Taldeer was misled,’ Macha said. ‘She admits it freely. The spear is not some ancient relic of our forgotten ancestors, it is a trap. This entire world is a prison, a cage constructed around a monstrous daemon. The blood we have shed here in our greed and our lust and our hatred has only served to stoke its slumbering consciousness. It is the Lord of the Corpse Mountain and the Master of the Wandering World, and if you attempt to slaughter your way to the Spear of Khaine, you will set it free.’

‘Taldeer’s madness has infected you,’ Kyre snapped. ‘I do not need you or the stone. I am my own prophecy, made manifest. Surela, kill this traitor.’

The Dire Avenger Exarch raised her twinned Avenger catapults, but hesitated.

‘Haven’t enough eldar fallen already today, honoured autarch?’ she asked.

Before Kyre could respond an electrified hum split the air, filling it with the crackle of static charge. The stone beneath Kyre grated and shifted. He turned back to Macha in time to see her slip down through a crack that had appeared in the graven statue dominating the rocky outcrop, vanishing from sight. Not a statue, Kyre now realised. It had started to move.

Earth and grit cascaded from the carving as it rose on grinding psy-electroid servos, its motions juddering and uncertain after so many millennia of inactivity. Kyre noticed Taldeer’s spirit stone for the first time, embedded in the centre of the tall walker’s breastplate. It rose to its full height, dwarfing Kyre and the Dire Avengers, its shadow falling across the frozen lake.

A Wraithknight.

‘May She Who Thirsts consume your damned soul, Macha!’ Kyre shouted, raising his diresword. In a heartbeat the towering eldar war machine had drawn twin Ghostglaives from their scabbards, each one longer than Kyre was tall, their wicked edges throbbing with power. Kyre lowered his weapon, shuddering with rage.

‘You will be called to account, renegade,’ he said, his fury still urging him to strike. The Wraithknight didn’t respond. Piloted by the twinned spirits of Macha and Taldeer, it turned and stepped down from its rocky plinth, the ice beneath it splitting but holding. Still clad in lichen and dirt, like some monstrous warrior returned from the grave, it began to stride eastwards. It was moving not towards the Temple of Khaine, but towards the lake’s edge.

‘You cannot escape!’ Kyre shouted after the Wraithknight. ‘I will find you once I have claimed the spear! Then you will learn the price of defying prophecy!’

‘Honoured autarch, we are detecting hostile contacts on the sensory arrays,’ Surela said. ‘The greenskins are on the move again. And… it seems the mon-keigh have returned, in force. The Hidden Heart yet lives.’

‘To the temple,’ Kyre said, eyes still fixed on the form of the retreating Wraithknight. ‘With the spear we will slaughter them all. Let us end this.’

Twin bolts of blue energy, spat-cracked from the lascannon sponsons of the Predator Amaltheus, speared an ork scrap wagon as it shot past the Space Marine battle tank. The ill-made xenos war machine detonated, immolating its crew and sending burning pieces of metal and meat scattering across the ice.

Amaltheus rolled on, flanked by its brothers, Crato and Marillus, their heavy autocannons decimating greenskin infantry and light armour alike. The Predator trinity formed the spearhead of the Blood Ravens’ offensive, the fast and cutting edge of a mechanised column that was forging across the lake towards the tumbledown ruins of the distant alien temple. The Space Marines had plunged into the rear of the orkish advance, decimating their light transports and leaving the greenskin infantry for Solaria to mop up. The Drakaina followed the Blood Ravens at a more ponderous pace, the packed ice – half a kilometre deep and augur-scanned for the firmest routes – barely holding beneath the towering walker’s weight. As it went the Imperial Knight tore apart any and all opposition with a hail of heavy-calibre rounds from its twin Avenger cannons, reducing whole mobs to red stains smeared across the crater-scarred ice.

Gabriel ripped past it all in the kill team’s Corvus Blackstar. He had rejoined Novorex and the Deathwatch while the main elements of Third Company had flung itself into pursuit of the orks, bypassing the melees spreading on the lake below. The air was hardly a safer option, even with the initial support of the company’s Thunderhawks – a fleet of ungainly, mismatched ork aircraft rattled through Acheron’s gloomy skies, vying to pick apart the eldar who were themselves closing on the temple below. The sleek grav-tanks of the aliens were more than a match for the rival xenos warplanes, but they were heavily outnumbered.

‘The Thunderhawks are disengaging,’ Gabriel informed Novorex. ‘They must refuel and re-arm aboard the Dauntless.’

‘Understood,’ the Shadow Haunter responded. He was standing, like Angelos, in the Corvus’ narrow troop bay, mag-locked to the transport’s sealant clamps. The rest of the kill team was present, aside from the Salamander, who had taken the cockpit controls from the servitor pilot.

‘We’ve been target-locked again,’ the ebony warrior declared over the Blackstar’s intercom. ‘Stand by.’

The words had barely registered before the flier shuddered with a direct impact. Gabriel heard the pilot curse, and a moment later experienced the stomach-churning dislocation of a plummeting dive.

‘Brace, brace,’ the Salamander snarled.

Gabriel had already set his auto-stabilisers, but the impact was still jarring. The Corvus, black smoke pluming from its right engine block, ploughed into the lake. The pilot had managed to wrestle it into a near-vertical state, so the collision sent it sliding for several hundred yards, kicking up a great shower of ice. It finally slewed to a stop, flames licking at its engine, the scarred, black cruciform settling with a metallic groan.

The embarkation hatches opened, along with the pilot’s cockpit. Gabriel crunched out onto Acheron’s ice, the kill team spreading out around him. A shrieking noise passed over them as the eldar grav-tank that had downed the Corvus darted overhead. It was already being pursued by a crude ork fighter, streams of hard rounds laddering ineffectually back and forth as it tried to clip the rolling eldar vehicle.

The Corvus had come to a stop just a few hundred yards short of the temple objective, its broken pillars rising in tiers atop a rocky mound that dominated the lake’s centre. All around it was carnage. Orks and eldar fought tooth and nail, all cohesion seemingly lost as they engaged in point-blank firefights with little to no cover, or clashed furiously with blade and rifle butt. The greenskin warlord had just arrived, its battered behemoth of a tank grinding to a halt near the bottom of the winding staircase that led to the temple’s cloistered heart. The roaring of the greenskins, so close to victory, was making the ice shudder and crack underfoot.

‘We must reach the temple,’ Gabriel told Novorex.

‘We will clear you a path, Chapter Master,’ the Shadow Haunter responded. ‘We cannot all make it through.’

Gabriel realised he was right. A mob of ork footsloggers had noticed them and peeled off from the melee with the eldar. With a roar they made for the black-armoured Space Marines, iron-shod boots pounding the ice.

‘Pick your targets,’ Novorex ordered his brethren. ‘Incision pattern fire control. Clear a path for the Blood Raven.’

As the kill team opened fire, Gabriel hefted God-Splitter, a snarl on his lips. One more effort and the Spear of Khaine would be his.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Gorgutz bellowed with battle-fuelled delight as the scrawny eldar caught in his power claw came apart, drenching him in a rain of blood and viscera. He tossed the broken pointy-ear into the surrounding carnage, an easy backswipe of the great claw sending another of the white and green pale-skins flying from the temple’s steps.

Behind him the Morkanaut fired again, dragging an eldar grav-tank from the air and slamming it into a clutch of its kin, pulverising their bodies and shattering the sleek vehicle like a child’s toy. It had taken precious time to salvage the traktor beam, even after the red-armour humie beakie had left its remains. It was worth it though – the towering, clanking scrap-mountain had opened a path for Git-Grinda. Now he’d reached the temple first.

With such good fighting, it was a struggle for Gorgutz to remember what he’d come all this way for. All he wanted to do was keep smashing. But that sort of instinct was the kind of thing a lesser boy would succumb to. If he kept going and claimed the pointy-ear’s pointy-stick first, he’d surely guarantee a scrap even more glorious than this one.

He began to climb the twisting staircase to the temple, ignoring the little barbs fired by the enemy that dug into his flesh or clattered from his scarred armour plates. Wazzmakka had parked Git-Grinda up hard against the stair entrance, the battlewagon’s dakka laying down a hail of fire all around. Ahead, the broken archway of the temple’s entrance beckoned. There was no one ahead of him. This one was all his.

Kyre decapitated another greenskin and kicked its disgusting remains back down the rockface. An icy, murderous rage had replaced the screaming fury that had brought him through the battle around the Temple of Khaine. He had been so close when brutish ork aircraft had strafed his vanguard, wrecking his jetbike and leaving him with no choice other than to continue on foot. The rest of the strike force had become strung out across the lake in another chaotic running battle with the greenskins. Their warlord had overtaken him in its wagon, and the area around the temple had devolved into a pitched battle without rhyme or reason. The mon-keigh’s red-armoured warriors had arrived too, adding to the carnage. They were led, of course, by the brute Angelos. Again, Kyre cursed Macha and her base treachery.

The autarch had seen the temple’s stairway entrance swarming with orks, and realised that slaughtering a path through them would take too long. Instead he’d made for the rocky flank of the mound the temple was built upon. Surela and the Dire Avengers formed a defensive cordon at the base of the section Kyre had chosen, laying down a curtain of shuriken through which nothing could pass. Kyre had begun to climb, cutting down the few greenskins that were attempting to do likewise. He did so with a lithe and manic speed, leaping from one handhold to the next, a prayer to the Bloody-Handed God on his lips. He was so close now, the ache of it was like a wound to his heart. He could not let the filthy aliens defile the relic. The prophecy was a screaming incantation in his ears, driving him on, drowning out every other thought and consideration. The rock’s pinnacle was near, along with the temple’s broken walls. The Spear of Khaine was mere feet away. Nothing would stand in his way.

Gabriel backswung God-Splitter, another booming discharge echoing over the ice fields as an ork was blasted apart.

‘Hold here!’ he barked over the vox, using the passage cleared by his hammer’s passing to take a breath. ‘Blood Ravens, rally!’

The charge for the temple was faltering. The Space Marines had been bogged down by the numbers arrayed against them. Most of the supporting armour had been forced to halt, immobilised or wrecked by their opposing numbers. Sergeant Poliver’s Assault Squad had managed to get close enough to the temple rock to power up and over its side with their jump packs, but it had been minutes since they had reported back. Gabriel could only assume that the fighting had reached the temple’s heart, and with its steps clogged with howling greenskins there was no way the Blood Ravens could hope to reach the inner chambers now before the enemy. They had to consolidate, and prepare for whatever was to come.

‘Brother Angelos,’ called Orion.

The Librarian was striding ahead of Balthazar and the rest of the command squad, his face strained, energies snapping and crackling around the haft of his force staff.

‘Well met, brother Orion,’ Gabriel said, stepping back as the Tactical Marines of Fifth Squad set up a cordon around them, bolters hammering.

‘Something is coming,’ the Chief Librarian said, stopping before Gabriel. ‘The warp has begun to coruscate around Acheron once more. I can feel it, even through the nullifying effect of the tesseract plates. I fear the planet will soon return to the empyrean. Or worse.’

‘Worse?’ Gabriel asked.

‘I cannot be sure but… I fear something is coming. Something we are not strong enough to resist alone. Even Holt and his witch could not have foreseen this.’

‘Then we must contact the Dauntless and order the Geller field to be raised,’ Gabriel said. ‘The spear is lost for the time being. We have not the numbers to reach it before the xenos. We must consolidate our strength.’

‘I fear the fighting has only just begun,’ Orion said.

‘I am running low on ammunition, Chapter Master,’ said Lady Solaria’s voice over the vox. ‘The xenos are endless.’

‘Contact your transport and prepare to embark,’ Gabriel advised. ‘If Acheron re-enters the warp we will be trapped here. If that happens none of us will survive, and our souls will be forfeit.’

‘The Dauntless isn’t responding,’ Balthazar reported. ‘Holt may be jamming the signal.’

‘Damn him,’ Gabriel said viciously. ‘His hubris will see the spear lost. Fall back on the high ground to the south east.’

Gabriel looked up as the Blood Ravens began to manoeuvre, covered by a blizzard of firepower laid down by Solaria. The plates of the superstructure above were partly obscured, broiling black clouds blossoming in Acheron’s fell skies. Gabriel could feel the sense of dread on the air, an undercurrent to the frenzied slaughter that was growing more pronounced with each passing moment. Orion was right. Something was coming.

Macha closed her eyes and found her centre, focusing through the hate-fuelled butchery that was playing out around the Temple of Khaine. She was seated before the towering form of Taldeer’s Wraithknight, legs crossed, her body floating a few feet above Acheron’s snowbound surface. A phantom breeze tugged gently at her white and green robes, and at the long, red hair she’d left unclasped.

They had climbed a little way into the hills bordering the lake, alone, avoiding the running battle that had spilled out across the lake. Macha could not sense Ronahn or his Rangers nearby. The Pathfinder had already played his part in the weave of fate, freeing his sister’s soul from the darkness that had gripped it. That would be enough.

In her mind’s eye, Macha saw Taldeer. The venerable farseer stood at the foot of the Wraithknight, draped in black funerary garb, her dark auburn hair a sharp contrast to her pale flesh. She watched Macha with a gleam of sadness in her eyes. Macha met it, knowing that to shift even slightly would be to cause the psychic apparition to dissipate. Taldeer’s flesh was long gone, but her soul remained, whole once again.

The living and the dead met, minds becoming as one.

Together, we can finally see, Macha willed, the words passing telepathically to the spirit stone. Taldeer nodded, once.

Her perception changed. She was above the ruins of the Temple of Khaine, an invisible spectator to the scene playing out below. The cracked stone steps of the temple shuddered as a hulking beast stomped to its pinnacle – the greenskin warlord, the Head Hunter. He had fought through all opposition, and reached the prize first.

The Spear of Khaine was before him, planted atop a lichen-blotched dais inscribed with the flowing runes of the eldar. An aura of power hung around the ancient weapon, visible to Macha’s witch-sight, blazing with blue-tinted, lethal energies. The plinth it was buried in lay at the centre of the temple’s ruinous heart, a chamber of cracked colonnades and split flagstones, its ceiling long-since collapsed. Corpses already littered the space – eldar, ork and mon-keigh, mixed together in death, the bloody sacrifice required to see that their leaders reached the relic weapon. It drew them on, a life at a time. Macha could see it for what it was. Stopping the slaughter from playing out had ceased being a possibility some time before.

They were too late. All of them. All they could do now was attempt to contain the damage.

Do you see the spear which drew us here? Taldeer’s words slipped into Macha’s thoughts as though they were her own. Beneath her the Head Hunter reached out and grasped the glittering relic.

Yes, she responded. And the ork who craves it.

With a bellow of triumph, Gorgutz dragged the Spear of Khaine free. The Temple shuddered with a discharge of psychic power, a low moan filling the air as the spear flared in the greenskin’s mighty fist. The ork warlord’s victory was short-lived. Swooping down from the ruined rafters, Kyre landed atop the dais, diresword rasping from its scabbard.

‘Beast,’ the autarch snapped. ‘The spear is mine. Release it.’

Gorgutz roared and lunged. The sheer speed and savagery of the blow caught Kyre as he was still finding his balance atop the empty dais. Yet, for all the force behind the strike, the tip of the ancient weapon merely scored off Kyre’s armoured side, barely even marking the white plates. For a moment both combatants seemed stunned. Then Kyre laughed.

‘The spear is worthless in the hands of a barbarian like you, greenskin. Its true potential can only be unlocked by a son of the Bloody-Handed God. That is why I am here.’

The eldar lunged, diresword sliding along the length of the spear’s haft before slicing into Gorgutz’s forearm. The greenskin bellowed with pain as the power-wreathed weapon cut him to the bone. The spear fell from his grasp. Kyre lunged, ducking beneath a vengeful swing of the ork’s ignited power claw.

Do you see Kyre, Taldeer asked, who desires it all the more?

With a shriek of triumph, Kyre snatched the spear and spun behind the ork. He lunged for the greenskin’s exposed back while it was still recovering from its swipe at him, the relic’s haft gripped in both hands.

Yes, Macha thought. I see his triumph –

The spear caught the ork squarely in the small of the back. Instead of running the alien warlord through, however, it shattered. The haft split into a hundred shards, as though it had been made from yielding wraithglass, splintering apart in Kyre’s hands.

– become meaningless, Taldeer finished.

Kyre simply stared at the cracked remains of the Spear of Khaine, lying shattered around his feet. Only the head remained intact, but despite its wicked appearance it hadn’t even nicked the ork’s flesh.

As the autarch sought to process what was happening, horror and confusion emanating from his thoughts, the air in the temple began to change. It took on a bloody, crimson hue, the shade of deep muscle, freshly exposed, the skin flayed away. Kyre’s despair and the ork’s amusement were eclipsed utterly by an upsurge of anger and hatred, twinned with a feral, deadly satisfaction. The nightmarish mind made Macha’s stomach churn, and threatened to break the balance of her spirit-walk.

This whole enterprise was a trap, she thought, seeking to marshal her thoughts and find calm once again. Below her Kyre stumbled, and then let out a cry. The sound rose to a tortured shriek as some invisible force grasped the eldar and dragged him into the air.

The autarch’s armour shattered, the psychoplastics torn from his body by the destructive energies that had ensnared him. The eldar’s rage and lust for power had gone, replaced by raw panic. His screams cut off with a terrible gargle, as the red haze that had gripped the room seemed to rush in around him, choking him. His flesh started to liquefy, running like tallow, sloughing off in great pieces. The muscles beneath tore and burst, every vein and artery ripped open. Every single one of his bones splintered, the marrow bursting forth. His eyes popped and his distended jaw snapped seconds before his skull split open, his brain rupturing from the jagged opening. Finally, the entirety of the autarch’s exsanguinated body exploded, a blaze of gore and torn organs that melted into a red haze.

All this battle – Macha thought.

– nothing but a blood sacrifice, Taldeer finished.

The ork warlord was already fleeing, abandoning the broken prize he’d fought so hard for. Behind him the temple began to shake itself apart, stone shattering, pillars collapsing, crushing the bodies that littered the central chamber. Kyre’s liquefied corpse was whipped upwards by a sudden, violent wind, drawn into the sky where a dark thunderhead was gathering. The storm was nebulous, obscuring the black plates of the cage above, it’s depths riven with ugly pink bolts of warp lightning.

The sound of the temple’s demise was eclipsed by a crash that sounded like the ending of the world. The frozen lake beyond the temple heaved upwards, thousands of tonnes of ice shattering in a towering pillar of frozen shards. A dark form roared from the frigid depths, the sound of its furious triumph shaking Acheron to its core.

Macha cried out with pain as she felt a new and terrible presence awake, its consciousness blazing with bloody hate. In her mind’s eye she saw the mountain, the towering monolith of corpses that had haunted them all since Acheron’s saga had begun. It stood complete now on its dusty plain, the grey sky above it empty, devoid of falling flesh. Kyre’s body was the last to have topped the insurmountable heap, the sacrificial blood-pinnacle.

It had feasted on their souls, one by one, each adding incrementally to its strength and stoking its consciousness with ever-greater hunger. Now, with the final death, it had attained the power it needed to break the bonds put in place aeons before. The Daemon Lord of Acheron rose like a titan above the lake and its temple. It was wreathed in a bloody haze, its vast, bare musculature glistening, the dying light gleaming from wicked fangs and horns. Still it rose, its dark elation palpable, a thunderous cackle shaking the hills and dislodging parts of the ancient, useless fortifications that had once ringed its prison-tomb. It spread itself, its form becoming immaterial, ever more monstrous, melding with the storm clouds above. The thunderhead coalesced with it, forming discernible shapes – great, broad shoulders and outstretched arms, and its leering, horned skull, lightning flickering deep within its eye sockets.

Your vision was no prophecy – Macha said, struggling to maintain her contemplative detachment. Every instinct was screaming at her to return to her body as fast as possible and flee. The daemon’s psychic presence dwarfed them all.

– it was a warning, Taldeer finished. With a sudden, shuddering rush, Macha found herself once more a being of flesh and bone, dragged back by the dead farseer. She dropped to her feet. Taldeer’s spirit form was gone, but the Wraithknight had awoken, her stone glowing with consciousness. The towering construct raised its twin ghostglaives. Macha understood. Their enemy had played his hand. All that remained now was to fight. Fight, and place their trust in those who wished for nothing less than their total annihilation.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Henghast started screaming again. Holt looked away from the holochart mapping the core’s surface, face twisting with annoyance.

‘Not now,’ he snapped. ‘We need to locate a suitable mass landing site for–’

Henghast’s head exploded. Blood and brains splattered Holt and Winlow and gouted across the decking plates as the Astropath’s headless corpse tumbled down the throne dais steps. For a second, Holt just stared, blood dripping from his face and darkening his robes.

‘My lord, something’s wrong,’ the primary immaterium prognosticator called from his post.

Holt was still staring at Henghast’s body as it came to a stop at the foot of his dais. A sudden migraine split his confused thoughts, causing him to hiss and raise his hand to his temple. Judging by the reactions of the rest of the bridge, he wasn’t the only one to experience the sudden pain. The ship itself seemed to share in the flare of agony – a dozen major alarms clattered to life, and the spartan stone walls and voidfaring machinery of the bridge were doused by vicious red warning lights.

‘What in the name of the Throne is happening?’ Holt barked, both hands clasped to his aching head.

‘The probes are reading an unexpected transitional immaterium spike, lord!’ shouted the wide-eyed primary immaterium prognosticator, fingers dancing across his servitor’s flesh-wired rune pad.

‘Meaning?’

‘I... I think Acheron is breaking back into the warp, my lord. Right now.’

‘Real space is degrading,’ the secondary immaterium prognosticator said, straining to make his panic-edged words heard over the alarms.

‘Initiate the Geller field!’ Holt snapped.

‘Initiated,’ canted Magos Lerach, monotone machine voice failing to reflect the situation’s peril. ‘Ten per cent, climbing.’

‘Emperor preserve us,’ Winlow said, Henghast’s blood still running down the side of his face.

Acheron was leaving real space as abruptly as it had appeared, and it was dragging the Imperial fleet trapped in orbit with it. None of them would survive more than a few minutes in the warp without their Geller fields. They would be ripped apart, body and soul, by the nightmare daemons that inhabited the maddening alternative dimension that Acheron called home.

‘Get that damned field up!’ Holt shouted at Lerach. ‘And order every ship hand and crew personnel member to stand to!’

Gabriel placed a gauntlet on Orion’s pauldron. The Chief Librarian looked at him, his scarred features tense and trembling.

‘Be strong, brother,’ the Chapter Master murmured. ‘We will not abandon you.’

The sudden dislocation into the warp was taxing all of them, but Orion most of all. It was nothing, however, compared to the psychic backlash generated by the entity that had recently torn its way into existence on Acheron. Gabriel did not need the throbbing headache and skin-crawling sense of unease to recognise the vile, sickly-sweet stench upon the air. The reason for Acheron’s existence was now apparent – it had been a prison, and the inmate was free.

Third Company had withdrawn from the temple when the daemon had torn itself from the ice, rallying on one of the shattered eldar statues that dotted the hills around the lake. The orks and the eldar had also fallen back – the former across the far side of the temple from the Blood Ravens, while the latter seemed to have simply vanished. Communications were all but non-existent. They had managed to establish that the Imperial fleet was still in orbit above Acheron, but their raised Geller fields made direct contact essentially impossible. Given the sudden and violent translation into the immaterium, Gabriel feared the fleet would be struggling to contain daemonic incursions on board. Certainly, warpspawn had started to materialise on the planet around the Blood Ravens.

‘What are your orders, Chapter Master?’ Balthazar asked.

Cohorts of daemonic entities were gathering around the temple’s ruined remains, their shrieks carried on the cold air. Overhead the dark thing that had broken free from the lake continued to leer over everything, foul warp lightning crackling about its gargantuan, insubstantial form. The daemons sought its favour, capering and shrilling as their numbers continued to multiply. Gabriel knew from bitter experience that a place such as this – ancient, cursed and bathed in the power of the warp – would soon be crawling with unholy monstrosities.

‘She’s here for you,’ Orion said.

Gabriel turned to the Librarian. ‘Who is, brother?’

‘I can’t keep her out any longer,’ Orion continued, his teeth clenched. ‘She must speak with you.’

Well met, Hidden Heart, said a voice, intruding directly into Gabriel’s thoughts. Before the Blood Raven could respond to the witchcraft he blinked, and found himself elsewhere. Darkness encased him, a void of nothingness. He could not see or even feel himself. There was nothing but consciousness itself, and the voice. Macha’s voice.

Things have not gone as planned, she said, her words echoing around inside Gabriel’s mind. For either of us.

‘Get out of my head, witch,’ the Blood Raven growled. ‘You have done enough damage already.’

The interferences of others have cost us dear, as ever, the alien responded. But it is not too late, if we are willing to sacrifice pride.

‘I knew it wouldn’t be long before you came crawling, begging for some form of alliance,’ Gabriel said. ‘It’s always the same with your treacherous race. I have had my fill of your meddling.’

We do not have time for petty diatribes, Macha snapped, a rare flush of uncontrolled anger entering her words and bleeding over into the Blood Raven’s own thoughts. We have been dragged from the material plain and tricked into unleashing a monstrosity that will damn us all. Our only hope is to destroy its vessel. Destroy Acheron.

‘Destroy the planet? The fleet would have to launch a combined bombardment for days. It will be fully free by then. Assuming the ships above us aren’t already swarming with warpspawn.’

There is a more direct way, the alien replied. The planet is unstable. If we rupture one of the tectonic plates and expose the molten core it may be possible to do sufficient damage to destroy it.

‘It would take a nova cannon blast at least,’ Gabriel said. ‘And they are too inaccurate to strike between a planet’s plates, even if they are ruptured.’

Then the sacrifice will need to be greater. Your flagship is currently assaulted by a daemonic horde.

‘The Dauntless,’ Angelos growled. ‘You lie.’

I do not. The servants of the Dark Gods are tearing apart your ship, inside and out. Only by escaping from the immaterium can we banish them, and we can only do that by destroying Acheron. There is no other way, and we are running out of time.

‘I will not sacrifice the Dauntless–’ Gabriel began, but the eldar cut him off.

Your first care is always for your battle-brothers, Gabriel Angelos. I know this. Your heart is not as well hidden as you like to imagine. Know that if we do not help one another now then our mutual destruction is guaranteed. The daemons will slaughter the crews of your fleet, while here within the core a rising tide of damnation will overwhelm us. Our souls will be seized and tortured for all eternity. Worse, the beast we have unleashed will shatter what remains of the cage and be loosed upon the galaxy. Countless worlds will burn in the fires of its vengeance. This is not a plot designed to entrap you, mon-keigh. It is not some uncertain prophecy conjured by the runes. It is a logical certainty. There can be no denying its inevitability. Our only hope is to break this accursed world apart while we still can.

Gabriel said nothing, and Macha went on.

I will give your warpsight-touched battle-brother the strength to contact your ship. You must purge it, Hidden Heart, and set it on the course I provide.

‘Will there be time to evacuate it?’ Gabriel demanded.

I will ensure you are not on board when it strikes.

‘But what of the rest of the crew?’

You will have to hurry. Even now, our delay is costing lives.

‘You claim you know me, xenos,’ Gabriel said. ‘If that is true, then you also know that if you betray me I will hunt you down and break your weak body into a hundred pieces. I do not issue threats often, or in vain. Remember that.’

If Macha heard him, she did not respond. Gabriel suddenly found himself back beneath the broken eldar statue that the Blood Ravens had rallied around, Acheron’s cold wind whipping at him, the shriek of daemons and the thudding of bolters surrounding him.

‘Chapter Master?’ Balthazar said, a look of concern on his scarred face.

‘It was a warp dream,’ Orion said, force staff grasped in both hands, as though afraid Gabriel would suddenly lash out. ‘A xenos witch. She was too powerful for me to stop. I am sorry, Chapter Master.’

‘It matters not, brother,’ Gabriel reassured him, trying to order his thoughts. ‘The warpspawn have begun their assault?’

‘They are only probing us, for now,’ Balthazar said. ‘But their numbers continue to increase. We cannot hold this position for much longer.’

‘Brother Orion, can you reach the Navigator aboard the Dauntless? Or one of the bridge astropaths?’

‘It will be difficult,’ Orion replied, looking doubtful. ‘And given that I fear only the presence of that black cage above us is stopping the warp completely overwhelming this place, I cannot guarantee my efforts would not meet with the attention of some sort of malicious entity.’

‘You must try anyway,’ Gabriel said. ‘Reaching the Dauntless is now our only hope. If you are able, pass on our current coordinates and request full aerial support. Make known the desperate nature of our situation.’

‘As you wish, Chapter Master,’ Orion said, closing his eyes and gripping his staff tighter. Gabriel turned to Balthazar.

‘Brother-captain, prepare the company for aerial extraction.’

It is done, Macha willed, allowing her aching body a moment to relax.

I have given the mon-keigh seer the strength and foresight to reach his flagship, Taldeer’s soul song responded. We can only hope their blind hatred does not overcome their reason yet again.

The Hidden Heart has not succumbed to his race’s savage instincts before, Macha thought. I do not believe he will do so now.

You do not know them like I do, young Macha, Taldeer replied. You have not suffered at their hands as I have.

For a moment, Macha recalled the dead farseer’s muttered yearnings for vengeance, bitter with insanity-fuelled pain. She suppressed a shudder. If Taldeer noted her discomfort, she said nothing.

Half of the plan is in motion, Macha said. Now we must begin the other half. She began to quest out with her mind once more, rune stones rattling, her brow furrowed with concentration.

Tread lightly, Taldeer advised. These beasts are more dangerous than the mon-keigh, in their own way. The psychic field that surrounds them is one of rawest and most uncompromising savagery.

I understand, Macha willed. I wish there was another way. But there is not. Without them we are doomed.

The battle had changed, but it was still a battle, and in that Gorgutz rejoiced. The pointy-ears had withdrawn after their boss had been turned to red paste by his broken spear. Gorgutz would have pursued, had an even bigger and badder enemy not presented itself. Now his mobs were battling through the ever-changing hordes of the warp. The first ones to materialise around Gorgutz were weak and ill-formed, their scattered numbers easy prey for greenskins with their blood up. As time passed, however, their numbers seemed to be multiplying. And that didn’t concern the Head Hunter one bit.

What did concern him was the big boss who had materialised over the battlefield. He was right up with the clouds, as one with the storm that stood poised, ready to burst across Acheron’s bleak crust. How Gorgutz was supposed to reach him in order to give him a good crumpin’, the warlord had no idea.

He squeezed his power claw, the rancid little plague thing squirming in his grasp bursting with a wet pop. They were no fun on their own, these daemon-boys. More often than not they simply dissolved if you hit them too hard. Still, when there were enough of them it was usually a fight to remember.

Sudden pain flared behind the warlord’s eye, making him grunt and probe his bionic left optic. It did no good. Suddenly, he was surrounded by darkness, even the actinic glow of his power claw lost in the void. He bared his tusks, twisting, looking for the source of the trickery, but still he could see and hear nothing. The reassuring mass of the mob was gone.

Be still, greenskin, said a voice.

‘Wat!’ Gorgutz bellowed. ‘Who’s dat?’

You know me, Head Hunter, the voice replied. The greenskin sensed rather than saw a form materialise before him – the pointy-ear with the spear that screamed. He tried to lunge towards the half-imagined apparition, but found he could not move. He bellowed with frustration and confusion.

You came here to fight, nothing more, nothing less, the pointy-ear said, words rebounding within the ork warlord’s thick skull.

‘And we’d be doin’ a whole lot more if you pointy-eared gits didn’t keep runnin’,’ Gorgutz snarled at her, railing against the psychic force keeping him in check.

What if I offered you the greatest fight of your life then, ork? The thing you crave the most, a true challenge against an immortal enemy, responsible for the deaths of millions.

‘Quit yer lyin’,’ Gorgutz raged. ‘And put me back with da ladz.’

It’s no lie, Head Hunter. You’ve already seen him. The daemon lord of Acheron. This is his realm we are battling across. His minions will continue to multiply around us, until we are all dead. There is an opportunity, however, to not only win the fight of your life, but live to fight again.

Gorgutz said nothing. It was true that the Head Hunter understood the importance of survival more than most – perhaps any – other greenskin. Fighting was all good, but fighting and dying meant no more fights to come. And at that moment, the ork realised he had no idea how he was going to get off Acheron. As though sensing his thoughts, the pointy-ear carried on.

I can destroy this world, Acheron, but I cannot do it alone.

‘Why’d you want to destroy it, ya crazy pale git? We’re all still on it!’

And I can get you off. With Acheron gone the daemon will be banished or weakened, and you can destroy it. Where you go and what you do afterwards I leave up to you.

‘Sounds like another trap,’ Gorgutz grunted, squinting.

Have I led you astray yet, Head Hunter? Didn’t I deliver everything promised by my emissary? A straight fight, a slaughter to quench your bestial thirst.

‘Don’t know about all dat,’ Gorgutz said. ‘But I enjoyed crumpin’ ya pointy-eared mates. Hope ya don’t mind me killin’ them all.’

Help me destroy Acheron, the voice urged.

‘How?’

There is a rift in the planet’s crust, the largest of the lava flows, north of the temple that marks your last battle. Go there, and fling the most explosives your minions can devise into it. Split the crust, that is all you need do. I already have another poised to strike the killing blow.

‘How’s all dat meant to help me get off this freeze-ball?’ Gorgutz demanded angrily.

When the explosives have been set, lay hands on the great pillar you will see upon your approach. When you do, you will be transported away.

‘Away where, pale git?’

Away, the voice repeated, fading. Gorgutz bellowed after it, but the apparition was receding. Suddenly, the darkness that had overtaken him was gone. He blinked, realising his nobs were staring him.

‘Wot?’ the Head Hunter bellowed, brandishing his claw. The remains of his retinue cringed back.

‘You was just starin’, boss,’ Wazzmakka said hesitantly.

‘I was havin’ an epiphany,’ Gorgutz said defensively.

‘A… wot?’

‘I dunno!’ the Head Hunter snapped, smacking Wazzmakka across his thick, metal-plated skull. ‘Just get your dakka together and make me da biggest bang you can find. Stick it in da bottom of Git-Grinda.’

‘Why boss?’

‘Cause we’re gonna make this world go boom,’ Gorgutz said, leering with a sudden and new-found delight. Wazzmakka opened his half-mechanical jaw, then thought better of it. Gorgutz pointed north, not really understanding how he knew that was the direction they were supposed to move in, but being certain of it all the same.

‘More fightin’ to do, lads!’ he bellowed at his mobs, who were becoming increasingly beset by the daemonic hordes ripping their way into reality around them. ‘Let’s get stuck in! Waaagh!’

The Thunderhawks saved them. Third Company’s extraction was conducted under fire, a swelling tide of daemonic filth assailing the lower slopes around the Blood Ravens’ position. The Space Marines dropped back by combat squads, covering one another with disciplined fire protocols, leapfrogging towards where the gunships were alighting two at a time around the base of the looming xenos statue. Solaria had already departed, her gatlings empty, her scarred Knight transported back into orbit by her super-heavy lifter.

Orion had managed to break through to the Dauntless’ astropath, warp energy snapping around his force staff and psychic hood, blood running from his nose as his prodigious abilities were pushed to their limit. It was as the xenos had said – the battle-barge was under attack from both without and within. The warp jump forced by Acheron’s transition had been too sudden. Locked in its gravitational pull, the Geller field hadn’t been at full capacity. Daemonic entities had exploited the hairline cracks, materialising across the venerable ship even as it struggled to stabilise. If it hadn’t still had the remains of the Third on board, it would surely have been overrun, it’s helpless serf crew butchered, its bridge turned into an altar to the dark gods.

The Blood Ravens denied such a blasphemous fate, assuming holding positions in the enginarium and across the command decks. As the Geller field finally reached one hundred per cent, the pockets of worst infestation were sealed off with blast doors, and air locks were opened, the nightmares vented back out into the hell that had spawned them.

When Orion’s message reached Sergeant Alemar he’d led Sixth Squad in a counter-attack that cleansed the main shuttle bays. The Tactical Marines then dispersed to crew the three fuelled Thunderhawks on station. The Dauntless’ proximity to Acheron, and the seemingly calming effect the planet’s black-plated superstructure had on the maddening currents of the warp, meant the trio of gunships were able to enter the core’s atmosphere, the pilots doing their best to ignore the disembodied scratching noises coming from the outside of the hull.

They brought their fire support down just as the daemons surrounding Gabriel’s strike force began to attack them in earnest. The hail of bolter fire and bombardment cannon shells gave the squads the chance to begin their withdrawal protocols. The gunships were soon assailed however, swarmed by flocks of leathery-winged, shrieking furies and vast, bloated plague flies. Those below had to battle on through a falling hail of black ichor and disintegrating warp flesh.

Gabriel was the last to leave the core’s surface. He fought as hard against the urge to stay as he did against the daemons that came shrieking at him from the lake’s ice mist. The eldar had performed their usual underhand tactics – as much as he distrusted them and railed at the idea of adhering to their suggestions, Macha’s words had rung true. There was no other logical course of action. He had failed to contain the spear’s evil. Their only hope was to destroy this cursed world, and the monstrosity that now ruled it.

The Chapter Master pulverised a final shrieking she-daemon and stepped in through the Thunderhawk’s access hatch, banging the embarking rune with one armoured fist. Even as the prow hatch closed, the gunship was lifting off, Gabriel’s auto-stabilisers compensating for the pitch and roll of the deck as the ship sought to throw off the horrors swarming it. The Blood Raven turned to regard his brothers, the Tactical Marines of Fifth Squad. Balthazar and Orion had been in the Thunderhawk before his own. It wasn’t certain they would all make it back to the Dauntless, and someone had to enact Gabriel’s orders.

‘Status report,’ he ordered.

‘Ammunition at sixty per cent, Chapter Master,’ Sergeant Belisarius replied. ‘Two casualties, brothers Amon and Rhotep. Gene-seed and equipment both fully recovered.’

‘You have done the Chapter credit this day, brethren,’ Gabriel told the ichor-splattered Space Marines. ‘But the battle is not yet over. Stand by.’

Gabriel met Sergeant Alemar in the Dauntless’ shuttle bay. The Sixth Squad leader was almost shuddering with battle-fury, incensed at the presence of warpspawn aboard the ancient battle-barge.

‘Have you received word from the rest of the fleet?’ Gabriel asked.

‘Fragmentary,’ Alemar reported. The claws of something hideously strong had raked jagged gouges down the left side of his helm, leaving one red eye lens dull and dead.

‘They are assailed as well,’ the sergeant went on. ‘The filth is everywhere, Chapter Master. It will be a battle just to make it back to the bridge.’

‘Battle is the purpose of our existence,’ Gabriel said with a grim smile, unlocking God-Splitter. ‘I would have it no other way.’

Alemar had sealed off the bay’s blast doors after they’d fought their way inside. Gabriel ordered the Blood Ravens to assemble before them, flanked by Balthazar, Diomedes and Orion. The cold sound of magazines being clicked home and rounds chambered contrasted with the muffled howls and pounding coming from the far side of the doors. Gabriel activated God-Splitter and signalled for the doors to be opened. As they juddered apart, hell itself spilled into the shuttle bay – a morass of fleshy, grasping appendages, wailing fang-maws and bloodshot eyes. Gabriel didn’t hesitate.

‘With me, brothers!’

A hail of bolter fire ripped the amorphous monstrosity apart even before Gabriel’s charge reached it, his daemon hammer obliterating its blasphemous remains and sending warpflesh juddering back into oblivion. Beyond the nightmare creature more monstrosities were crowding the corridor, hissing and shrieking at the Chapter Master. He pressed on without hesitation, God-Splitter an energised blur, ichor painting the walls and ceiling. Those that did not fall immediately met Balthazar’s power sword, Diomedes’ crozius arcanum or Orion’s force staff. For all their terrible power and nightmarish visage, the daemonspawn could not withstand the faith and fury of the Blood Ravens’ counter-attack.

Gabriel did not stop until he had reached the bridge’s blast doors. They juddered open, the human serfs of the bridge crew visibly relieved to see their masters return, painted though they were in the remains of daemonic filth.

‘We are evacuating,’ Gabriel announced to the assembled crew. ‘We fight our way to the salvation pods, or back to the Thunderhawks. Anything that will get us off the ship.’

‘Evacuating?’ Diomedes asked, his voice stern. The righteous fury of combat with the unclean was still coursing through his veins.

‘Correct, brother Chaplain,’ Gabriel said, fixing the scarred skull helm with his own stony gaze. ‘I have new coordinates for the helm. The Dauntless is going to negotiate the superstructure, and ram Acheron.’

‘Chapter Master…’ Balthazar began, but Orion stilled him.

‘Angelos is right. I can sense the nature of the peril we are all in here. This beast that we have unleashed will be the undoing of billions if we do not smash its existence.’

‘I will input the new course personally,’ Gabriel said. ‘Vox pits, issue directives to every and all station and deck. All hands are to evacuate.’

‘The warp will tear us apart as soon as we leave the protection of the Geller field,’ Diomedes warned.

‘Its strength is lessened around the plates that enclose the planet,’ Gabriel said. ‘That is how we were able to reach orbit via the Thunderhawks, and it is why the Dauntless and the rest of the fleet weren’t immediately overrun when the Geller fields were not at full capacity.’

‘If the Emperor and the primarch are willing, destroying Acheron will rip us back out of the warp,’ Orion added. ‘It is our only hope. Even if we were able to complete a successful warp jump, abandoning Acheron now that its master has regained control of it would spell doom for whichever sector it re-emerges in. There are none left to stop it now, bar us.’

‘I will ensure the bridge remains secure for as long as possible,’ Gabriel said. ‘If the warpspawn are able to seize it they may be able to alter its course. We must strike at the planet’s weakest point.’

‘We shall stand with you,’ Balthazar said, but Gabriel shook his head.

‘You have been a credit to your company and the Chapter, brother-captain, but I must urge you to adhere to my directives one last time. To lose the Dauntless is a grievous blow, but we cannot lose an entire company with it. Nor is it certain I will survive. If I can escape the ship before impact I may well find myself facing the daemon itself. Should I fall, or contact be lost, you must carry word of what has happened here back to the Imperium. You must prepare mankind for Acheron’s return. And you must not let Holt stop you.’

Balthazar turned to Diomedes, even his discipline clearly shaken by the gravity of the order. But the Chaplain shook his skull helm, once.

‘As ever, the Chapter Master’s plan bears the hallmarks of true righteousness, brother,’ he intoned. ‘A single, worthy blow against the unclean, rendered in sacrifice. The possibility of total victory held in check only by the degree of our own willingness to act. Let us not be found wanting by his directives.’

‘My thanks, Brother-Chaplain,’ Gabriel said. ‘Now, let us waste no more time. The company will secure the shuttle bays once more along with the salvation pods. Facilitate evacuation. I will anchor the defence here.’

‘Knowledge is power,’ Balthazar said, his expression grim.

‘Guard it well,’ the surviving Blood Ravens echoed.

For once, Holt had drawn his plasma pistol for more than mere intimidation. Around him the bridge of the Final Judgement was experiencing a moment of respite. Broken cogitators sparked and clacked, and the air was filled with a haze of weapons discharge and grenade blasts. The bridge’s augur array had become a temporary barricade, armsmen, Navy ratings and every bridge officer and member of Holt’s staff who could carry a laspistol arrayed opposite the buckled remains of the blast doors.

‘How long?’ Holt barked. There was a moment’s silence before the primary immaterium prognosticator answered. Until ten minutes previously he had been the secondary immaterium prognosticator, before a red-skinned hound had torn his superior’s face off.

‘The drives are still consolidating power, sire,’ the prognosticator said, desperately scanning his logic boards. ‘The enginarium has reported hostile contacts.’

‘That’s not good enough!’ Holt screamed. ‘We’re all going to die here, or worse, because you can’t do your job properly!’

Something dark, hideous and made of nightmares loomed beyond the blast door’s remains. A blizzard of panicked fire from the bridge’s defenders drove it back, shrieking, into the inky darkness beyond.

Holt checked his pistol’s power setting, trying to focus. His headache was growing worse, a migraine that felt bad enough to split his head open. Like most of the bridge crew, he was constantly cuffing blood away from his nose. The filth of the warp was everywhere, a rotting stench in the air, a greasy substance on the skin, a prickling sense of discomfort, a churning stomach, the hideous, eye-aching pink light that burned around the sealed viewing port shutters. It stoked the panic that drove the inquisitor’s thoughts, almost as surely as the scratching noises coming – impossibly – from the other side of the outer hull.

‘We need to break into real space,’ he said for the seventh or eighth time. Winlow, crouched next to him, merely grunted. He seemed to have lost the powers of speech since Acheron had dragged them all into the immaterium. The monsters that now haunted the Final Judgement were beyond the comprehension of any of them. Holt was not a member of the Ordo Malleus, and the few arcane rites and litanies he had learned from Lord Inquisitor Toth were far from sufficient for a situation such as this.

‘It’s Acheron’s cage layer, I think,’ the prognosticator was stammering. ‘It… appears to be disrupting and negating the warp currents around the planet. It’s also possibly keeping the worst effects of immaterial dislocation at bay, but it’s also slowing the charging of our warp drives.’

‘I don’t care,’ Holt snapped. ‘Just get us back to real space!’

‘Sir, contacts over the oculus,’ one of the augur assessors said, glancing away from the blast doors to peer at one of the few stands not yet wrecked by the initial clashes with the warpspawn. Holt looked back at the stand, frowning.

Since entering the warp the entirety of the Imperial blockade had remained stasis-anchored, each ship desperately trying to get its Geller field up before it was overrun by shifting, chaotic monstrosities. Communications between each vessel had become chopped and unreliable – most were now unresponsive, others were clearly in the throes of vicious hand-to-hand combat between crewmen and warpspawn. A rare few, like the Ramillies Charon, were actively transmitting that their situation was stable and their fields fully active. They could not, however, launch shuttles to assist those vessels being invaded – the likelihood of unshielded craft surviving the raw madness of the warp swirling and shuddering around them was next to zero.

One ship, however, was no longer static. Holt watched the sigil representing the Blood Ravens battle-barge Dauntless as it crept across the oculus stand’s static-washed display. Already on the cusp of low orbit below the majority of the blockading Imperial vessels, it had begun to dip below into Acheron’s lower gravitational pull, seemingly headed unerringly towards one of the gaps in the great black plates of the outer cage.

‘We’re getting a signal, sir,’ one of the vox officers reported, headphones pressed to one ear. ‘It’s distorted but…’

More small arms fire cracked across the bridge as something with too many jaws, back-jointed limbs and not enough eyes attempted to prowl into the cleared space around Holt’s crew. The thing shrieked and leapt back into the darkness it had slunk from.

‘The Dauntless is abandoning ship, sire,’ the vox officer said, looking up from the communications pit at the crouched inquisitor. ‘With all hands.’

‘Madness,’ Holt hissed. ‘The salvation pods will be torn apart.’

‘Possibly not,’ the prognosticator interjected, still not daring to look up from his readouts. ‘The closer the vessel is to the outer plates, the lesser the strength of the warp currents around it. Launched near enough, it seems likely even something as small as a salvation pod could survive, albeit for a brief period of time.’

‘The warp drives!’ Holt bellowed, his words undercut by more panicked gunfire. ‘Dedicate yourself to your task, prognosticator, or I will find someone who can!’

The threat was hollow – anyone else with the necessary expertise had long since been torn limb from limb – but threats from a member of the ordos rarely rang false.

‘Sire, the Dauntless is requesting evacuation assistance,’ the vox officer continued. ‘It’s begun to launch shuttles.’

‘Denied,’ Holt snapped. ‘They’re all doomed anyway. It was the Throne-damned meddling of the Blood Ravens that brought all this about in the first place. Where is their ship’s course taking them?’

The inquisitor looked around in vain for a response. The augur arrays were mostly a sparking machine-wreck, and the sub-divisio staff had been among the first to fall when the daemonic incursion had broken out across the ship. Holt let out a despairing snarl.

‘It looks as though it intends to strike the planet itself,’ Winlow said quietly, his voice apparently recovered as he stared at the blinking oculus screen.

‘Ridiculous,’ Holt said. ‘They intend to ram a planet?’

‘Yes,’ Winlow said, a degree of confidence beginning to enter his voice. ‘I do believe that’s exactly what they’re about to do.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

At first the ork assault went well. The greenskins surged across the core’s rugged surface, Acheron’s bitter air resounding with their roars and the thunder of their engines. The daemons answered with shrieks of their own, flocking towards the oncoming mobs. A storm of inaccurate fire riddled the first nightmares that attempted to stand in the green tide’s way, their thrashing forms reduced to immaterial nothingness or ground to ichor-smears by thick treads and tyres.

Gorgutz bellowed his approval from atop Git-Grinda. The battlewagon was shuddering with the weight of fire being pumped from every loophole and weapon mount. The barrage of wildly-aimed shots reduced a swarm of vast, bloated flies – each bigger than Gorgutz – to a drizzle of rotting flesh and pus, and mulched a carpet of capering pink, multi-limbed creatures that were then further churned up by the Grinda’s monster treads.

Gorgutz rejoiced in the killyness, even as the opposition grew more intense. With every yard the orks advanced, the number of daemonspawn grew, their ranks becoming ever more dense. A huge beast, like a boar fashioned from hell-steel and brass, charged a careening warbuggy head on, its horned, metal-plated skull crumpling the machine like foil. It carried on through the ensuing explosion, goring and trampling greenskins with every step. Nearby, a clutch of lithe female daemons danced around Zograt’s footsloggers, crab-like claws and slender blades cutting hamstrings and taking out eyes with contemptuous ease. A clutch of Deff Dreads, wading into a pack of red-scaled daemon-hounds, were struck by coruscating bolts of blue flame flung at them by capering, twisted creatures whose azure bodies were covered in unblinking eyes. As soon as the unnatural flames struck the ork walkers’ armour the metal deformed, transmuted into fleshy mouths and snapping jaws that consumed the bellowing pilots within.

Such horror would have broken the sanity of most mortal warriors. The terrors of the warp, however, meant nothing to the greenskins. The hell-forged boar goring its way through the mob was tripped and dragged down by a mob of shrieking gretchin with nets. Orks swarmed the snorting, struggling beast, beating its metal hide with cleavers, chainaxes and clubs until finally it split and its bloody, shrieking essence was freed. A high-explosive shell from a looted battle tank slammed into the melee involving the female daemons, blasting ork and warpspawn alike to bloody pieces. Three of Grubsmakka’s biker boys roared over a brow of dark, jagged Acheron rock to plough into the blue daemons summoning their magical warp flames, their scrawny bodies pulverised by revving tyres and whipping chains. The bikers roared onwards, bellowing gleefully as they raced one another, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake.

Gorgutz’s horde went forward. A mob of footsloggers was decimated by a slender chariot that was all wicked barbs and spikes, only for the disturbingly elegant contraption to become bogged down in ork dead. The mob’s survivors clambered all over it, impaling themselves even as they dragged down the female daemons and hacked them to pieces.

Another logic-defying contraption, all blood-drenched cogs and red-hot brass, spat a blazing skull across the battlefield with a shriek, pounding into Ogruk’s truck and causing the ramshackle transport to detonate with such force that it incinerated Ogruk and the entirety of his mob before they could leap clear of the wreckage. Before the whirring, bloody contraption could fire again, a blaze of firepower from Yelboy’s flash gits pounded into it, shattering mechanisms and ripping apart the red-scaled, horned creatures crewing it. Yelboy and his lads were so focused on their dakka that they failed to spot a clanking, eight-limbed monstrosity of fused warp-metal and spawn-flesh that clattered into their flank. It snatched Yelboy in one great pincer-claw, slicing him in half and flinging his remains into his boys. It was in amongst them before they could haul their heavy, kustom shootas round to face it, cleaving and ripping greenskins apart with every swipe of its spider-like metal limbs.

Above Git-Grinda Gorkin’s wild stormboys collided head-on with a shoal of undulating purple sky-rippers. The screaming daemons bisected and eviscerated orks as they shot past, spiny frills and maw-talons sliding through ork flesh as though it wasn’t there and causing the rockets strapped to the stormboys’ backs to detonate in mid-air. Gorkin was having none of it though – he rammed a stick grenade down the snapping, drooling maw hole of one of the things as it shot towards him, grappling with it in flight until the detonation caused it to vanish in a multi-coloured cloud. Another of the stormboys succeeded in snatching hold of the whipping tail fin of another, clawing its way up its shimmering back until he had mounted it. The thing’s unnatural, malleable flesh warped and distended, swallowing the greenskin’s legs, but he hacked at it with his battle axe until it came apart. The stormboy then shot away with his rocket pack, bellowing his triumph whilst seemingly unaware that the screamer’s ichor had reduced his legs to acid-chewed bone.

Still the orks advanced. The inexorable tide of screaming, nightmare beasts continued to rise around them, flailing tentacles choking and tearing, snapping maws gorging on ork meat, purple-veined flesh writhing and reforming around hack and blast wounds.

Gorgutz loved every moment of it. He bellowed with slaughter-born delight as he watched a mob chop and batter its way to the top of an ancient parapet amidst Acheron’s broken fortifications, planting their raggedy skull banner atop the alien stone. He saw Rork’s Deff Dread pick up and fling two snapping daemon hounds into a stream of slow-flowing lava, their warp-flesh disintegrating. He beat his fist against the buckled edge of the forecastle as Git-Grinda ploughed into a hulking, bloated rot creature head-on, the treads squealing with effort as they slowly ground over the moaning beast. Eventually it popped like a gigantic blister, showering the battlefield with effluvium. Through it all Gorgutz roared on, coursing with the power of the waaagh! Here, at last, was a proper scrap. He itched to get stuck in.

The objective was in sight. The great rift in Acheron’s crust lay ahead, a canyon of jagged, blackened stone lit infernally by the sea of lava that bubbled beneath. To his right, Gorgutz could see the rising pillar of stone the pointy-ear had told him about. He was too embroiled in the frenzy of battle to care any more whether the eldar intended to betray him.

‘Push’em!’ the Head Hunter yelled, his voice bellowing over the thunderous slaughter. ‘Get ’em over da edge!’

The horde’s remains surged on as one, driving towards the canyon. The daemons that tried to stand before them were hacked, or trampled, or thrust straight over the rift’s edge in a cascade of flailing appendages and furious shrieks. Git-Grinda juddered and bounced as it rolled over a carpet of unnatural flesh, its treads thick with disintegrating meat, its sides splattered with hissing ichor. The mighty battlewagon’s vast reserves of dakka were almost wholly spent, shootas and cannons clicking dry. Less than a hundred yards from the canyon’s edge a new monstrosity leapt from the press – lissom, androgynous and shrouded in a cloying purple haze, its size belied its unnatural speed. It was atop Git-Grinda’s grille prow in a heartbeat, all snapping crab-claws, pale flesh and large, gleaming black eyes.

‘Hit it!’ Gorgutz bellowed as it mounted the battlewagon. The thing’s soporific musk enveloped the forecastle, and the warlord felt suddenly light-headed. He clutched the side of the raised platform, swaying slighting.

‘H-hit it,’ he mumbled, staring up at the Greater Daemon as it reared above him. It emitted a shill, haunting cry, shuddering through both the warlord and the deck beneath him. It was just so… so killy, and so hard to focus… on…

As the alluring monstrosity drew itself back to strike, a terrific zapping sound split the air. One of the gunnery grots, overpowered by the daemon’s mind-numbing musk, had passed out on top of the smasher cannon firing lever. The insane weapon – another of Wazzmakka’s most prized experiments – discharged right into the Greater Daemon’s equine face. An unstable, localised energy field encased it, crackling as the creature’s claws slammed impotently against the coruscating sphere.

Supposedly, the smasher gun was meant to hoist the daemon into the air and crush it, the energy field snapping shut like a giant, unstoppable fist. As with most of Wazzmakka’s contraptions, however, it didn’t quite work that way. Instead of simply hauling the daemon skywards, it fired it right off the battlewagon, shooting it out over the edge of the canyon. The thing shrieked and wailed in vain as it plummeted, the energy field snapping from existence to leave it in freefall. It plunged into the lava flow with a crack, the air shuddering as its warpflesh scorched away and its black, lust-filled soul was sent tumbling back into the immaterium.

Gorgutz snapped out of his stupor, cuffing away a string of drool. Git-Grinda had broken through. It was about to pitch over the edge of the canyon.

‘Now, Wazzmakka, ya git!’ Gorgutz yelled. ‘Now’s ya time!’

Without waiting to see if the Big Mek was following orders, the warlord heaved his bulk over the side of the tower and into the snow heaped around the canyon’s edge. His nobs followed him, dropping to the ground with grunts and pulling themselves to their feet as the massive, clattering battlewagon rolled on past. The rear hatch clanged open even as it teetered on the edge of the precipice, and Wazzmakka came lumbering out. He was armed and armoured in his yellow-painted mega armour, his grot oiler scurrying in his clanking wake. Presumably the Big Mek had tied another grot to the acceleration pedal. Abandoned, Git-Grinda hit the edge of the canyon, teetered for a moment, tracks kicking up snow and ichor, and then finally lurched with an ungainly grace over the edge.

Gorgutz was already running. The pillar picked out by the pointy-ear loomed ahead, its bone-like tip rising above the furious melee that had developed all along the canyon’s edge. Gorgutz beat and hacked his way through everything that got in his path, ork and mad-beast alike. The heavy dakka laid down from Wazzmakka’s clanking accompaniment helped clear a path. Behind him the Head Hunter heard a crash echoing up from the canyon’s depths – Git-Grinda had hit the bottom.

At Gorgutz’s orders, the battlewagon had been packed with every bomb, shell and bullet the greenskins had been able to cram into the hold. That wasn’t, however, all the orks had to offer. Right behind the engine block Wazzmakka had lodged another of his prized ‘sekret weapons’ – the Splitter. What made it tick was far beyond Gorgutz – and indeed, was probably beyond his Big Mek too – but the principle involved taking an energy field not unlike that generated by the smasher cannon and causing it to expand at thermatic-nuclear speeds. The idea was to cause such a violent spatial dislocation that everything within the field’s substantial blast zone would be atomised.

It was all very killy in concept, and Gorgutz was more than a little perturbed at not having had an opportunity to witness such a tool of total annihilation yet. Wazzmakka had complained that the weapon had no delivery system – short of driving the Splitter straight into the target, the Big Mek hadn’t been able to work out how to set it off without being wiped from the face of the planet.

Now, however, he had his solution.

Git-Grinda ploughed into Acheron’s broiling magma nose-first, treads still churning, exhaust fumes pluming out behind its leaden fall. The battlewagon’s impact threw up a great cascade of lava, hammering the sides of the rift. Wazzmakka’s explosives detonated next, the furious blast further shattering bedrock and flinging blazing lava all the way into the air above the embattled armies. Orks and daemons alike bellowed and howled as they were struck, scorched or immolated by the burning rain that fell among them.

Then the Splitter went off, triggered by the initial blast, as Git-Grinda’s shattered husk sank beneath the magma. Gorgutz found himself sprawling. The earth underfoot erupted, shuddering as though in agony at the blow struck to its heart. The shockwave generated by the Splitter slammed into the battered sides of the canyon like an axe stroke into a fresh wound, ripping into the rock already destabilised and exposed by the previous detonation.

The earth quaked. Stone columns toppled and low hills fell in on themselves. Behind the ork horde the ice on the lake not yet shattered by the daemon’s escape erupted into a million shards, splintered by the force of the seismic shock. The cavern collapsed in on itself, doubling in size as the edges came away in great cascades. Orks and warpspawn were flung into the roiling lava below, caught up in the debris, the sounds of their fury lost amidst the ear-splitting crash of a world being dealt a crippling blow.

Gorgutz didn’t look back at it all. He fought his way to his feet and carried on, crushing anything and everything in his path. Wazzmakka’s dakka, laid down from his mega armour, helped clear a path as the Big Mek clanked in his warlord’s wake. The bone spire the pointy-ear had told him to reach towered ahead, one of the only objects not to have been toppled by the aftershock of the Splitter’s detonation. The ground around the Head Hunter was coming apart, new caverns and rifts tearing themselves into being as the crevasse yawned ever wider. The greenskins had wounded Acheron, opening up an artery of churning, white heat, shaking the very heart of the daemon world. It had been a good scrap, but Gorgutz wasn’t about to let it be his last. With a bellow of defiance the Head Hunter lunged for the bone pillar, debris and lava pounding down all around him, the earth collapsing. He hit the smooth surface of the pillar’s flank, his bulk and momentum carrying him into it.

Darkness took him.

Macha repressed a shudder. She had him. She had plucked the ork warlord into the webway just as the seismic destruction it had wreaked had threatened to drag it down to Acheron’s core. The thought of saving the life of such a savage repulsed Macha utterly, but she fought down her disgust. For the eldar, poised on the brink of extinction, repellent acts had become a way of life. If the fates decreed that it served a greater and more lasting purpose, then Macha would countenance it. It still didn’t make it easy though.

I will kill that greenskin myself, one day, she willed. She was seated beneath the inert Wraithknight, in the hills above the temple. In the distance it seemed as though the world was coming apart. A great wall of red flames blazed to the north, where the greenskins had struck the blow she desired. The earth beneath her was shuddering and quaking, while overhead the storm continued to roil. Ugly, purple lightning was now splitting the skies with a near-constant fury, mirroring the rage of the daemonic entity that ruled over Acheron. Each strike threw lurid shadows over the gloomy realm, cast into a premature and perpetual twilight by the storm.

How did you pluck the Head Hunter from the flames? Taldeer asked.

I recrafted the wraithbone core to accept the ork’s latent psychic field, Macha thought. Hideous though it is. One day we shall pay for these affronts.

But until then, press on, Taldeer urged. The final blow has yet to be struck. Where is the savage now?

I have him contained, Macha responded. When the time comes I shall unleash him once more.

That time will be soon. We must withdraw through the wraithgate, while we are still able.

First I must see the Hidden Heart to safety, Macha willed. He is making his play, as we desired.

The farseer looked up, into the dark heart of the daemonic storm that lashed Acheron. Before her eyes, the clouds began to part.

The final fury of the mon-keigh had arrived.

Daemonic ichor coated the Centrum Dominus’ command dais, making Captain Ravald’s gleaming boots stick to the decking plates with every step. Her power sword and once-pristine uniform were similarly befouled, rendered almost black by the hideous vitae of the warpspawn that had materialised across the Charon.

The stink of their remains turned Ravald’s stomach, and the mere thought of their lifeblood touching her clothing made her want to scream. Instead, she forced herself to plant the tip of her deactivated sword against the deck, placing both hands on the pommel, looking out across the bridge, and to ignore the cloying, bittersweet stench that accompanied the presence of the creatures of Chaos.

The Charon’s command decks had been cleansed. It had been a long, desperate battle – a lesser vessel would surely have been overrun by the horrors that had ripped themselves into reality after Acheron had plunged them into the warp. The quick work of Archmagos Dotarii and the size of the starfort’s defence staff had been enough to avert disaster, just. Reports were still trickling in from across the Ramillies of creatures tearing apart the lower crew berths or slinking and squirming through darkened service corridors and ventilation ducts. They would be hunted down and banished, with time. The important thing was that the Geller field was now at maximum capacity. Nothing more was getting in from beyond real space.

‘Report!’ Ravald barked across the bridge. ‘All systems!’

The familiar orders served to jolt the survivors from the stupor that had fallen over them. None of them had ever encountered the nightmares of the warp so directly, so viscerally, before. Even Ravald had only heard dark tales and had her own troubled dreams to call upon, until now. She’d heard stories of the fate of those who’d come into contact with the warp and survived. She’d heard about what the Inquisition did to them.

That wasn’t her concern right now. What mattered was getting the remains of her crew functioning again. As long as the Geller field was up they would be able to get the warp drives active and escape from the hell Acheron had dragged them into.

Reports began to ping back as the bridge staff returned to their stations. Large sections of the starfort were unresponsive, or disabled. Crucially though, the vital systems still functioned.

‘What of the rest of the fleet?’ Ravald demanded of the augur stations and vox pits.

‘All holding station, captain,’ replied the Augur Chief. ‘Except… except for the Dauntless, sir. The Blood Ravens battle-barge. She appears to be setting course for the planet itself.’

‘Lower atmospheric entry?’ Ravald demanded. ‘A collision course?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Captain, we have the Dauntless on vox,’ a signals officer added. ‘All hands are abandoning ship. They’re requesting assistance.’

‘In the midst of the warp?’ Ravald wondered out loud.

‘The currents around us have calmed, captain,’ Archmagos Dotarii canted from his machine station. ‘I believe due to the unknown anomaly of the planet’s tesseract cage. Unshielded voidcraft, even small ones, could likely survive for a time beyond any Geller fields.’

‘Are any other ships responding to the Dauntless?’ Ravald asked.

‘It doesn’t seem like it, sir,’ the Augur Chief responded. ‘And we’re one of the closest.’

‘What of Inquisitor Holt?’

‘The Final Judgement is unresponsive, sir.’

‘Then what in His name are we waiting for?’ Ravald snapped. ‘I want every rescue shuttle we have launched, right now.’

Of course, Balthazar had been the last to leave. Gabriel had thought for a moment that Diomedes would physically drag him all the way to the shuttle bay. Orion, too, had abandoned both the Dauntless and his Chapter Master only grudgingly.

‘Time is running out,’ the Librarian had warned.

‘As are our chances of victory,’ Gabriel had answered. ‘Now go.’

He had gone. For a while Gabriel stood alone. It was a strange sight, to see the bridge of the valiant battle-barge entirely deserted, its stations and benches bare, its servitors dead-eyed and running off their own preset arcanorithms. Rune banks and augur arrays blinked and chimed for attention, while the whole structure around Gabriel shuddered and moaned with atmospheric turbulence. The ship’s shields, burning amidst the fury of a lower atmospheric entry, were warning of an overload.

None of that mattered now. The course had been set and locked. The rent in Acheron’s heart lay below, the Blood Ravens ship plunging towards it like a lance towards a split in an enemy’s battle plate. Regardless of xenos trickery, Gabriel was certain now that he had made the right choice.

The daemons came. They had gorged themselves on the lower crew decks, on Chapter serfs and ship bondsmen. They came at Gabriel splattered with the blood of the Emperor’s servants – red-scaled swordlings, shifting pink and blue horrors, dancing daemon women, shambling plague tallymen. God-Splitter’s haft ran black with ichor and its head smoked, its force unstoppable as the Blood Raven swung it, again and again, to split horned skulls and shatter torsos.

There were too many for him to overcome, at least with any hope of reaching a gunship or salvation pod. He knew this. He had accepted it. He planted himself before the bridge’s blast doors, both unmoving and immovable, banishing the filth of Chaos with every charged swing of his warhammer. Behind him, the red haze of orbital fire around the Dauntless’ prow cleared, revealing Acheron’s dark bulk rushing to meet the capital ship. The thread of white heat, the wound gouged by the eldar’s machinations, grew in the expanse of the viewing port, until it entirely dominated the crystalflex. Gabriel activated his stabilisers and mag-locks as Acheron’s gravity battled with that generated by the Dauntless, trying to fling him over.

A creature viler than all the ones Gabriel had banished aboard the battle-barge dragged its way to the fore of the monsters pressing around him. It was distended and rancid, a great bloated sack of rotting meat and pustules with a leering, cyclopean head. It gibbered with sickly laughter as it lunged at Gabriel, meaty arms and stiff, yellow claws grasping at him. Even braced, the impact of the thing’s attack staggered the Blood Raven, smearing his already befouled Terminator armour in viscous slime.

Gabriel would have obliterated the thing with a single strike of God-Splitter, but the bloated thing’s festering minions were swamping him, dragging at his limbs and weighing down even his servo-enhanced strength. Acheron was close now, the Dauntless mere moments from impact. It was over.

The daemon reached back to lunge again, bellowed, corrosive spittle splattering the Blood Raven. Yet even as Gabriel saw his death play out, his skull pulverised and his body infested, he sensed a new presence behind him. It was incorporeal, ghostly, but undeniably real. Gabriel knew it instantly. Hatred and disgust warred with relief.

Macha’s spirit-form placed a hand on his pauldron. The daemon’s claws rent only air, and its roar of frustration echoed through the ship.

Gabriel Angelos was gone.

The Dauntless surged on, roaring between the final black plates of the cage. With no tech adepts to attend to them, the ship’s mighty plasma engines began to rupture, overloaded and burning. One detonated, wreathing the ship’s tail in blue flames. It streaked on, a comet come to bring total annihilation, the pre-set heading algorithms guiding it unerringly to the rupture blown in Acheron’s dark core.

It plunged between the crags broken open by Gorgutz’s improvised bomb, a colossus of void-scarred red and bone-coloured adamantium bulkheads, as inevitable and unstoppable as a prophecy given form. The daemons that carpeted the core’s surface let up a collective wail that set the plates above shuddering, the outrage of a billion damned souls denied their tormented pleasures.

The Dauntless plunged into the magma core of the daemon world, a spear of righteousness driven irresistibly home by its vast engines. The depths seemed to consume it with a slow grace, swallowing its prow in a great bow-wave of lava and molten rock. It reached its midship before the engines collapsed in on themselves, triggering a detonation that slammed the ship’s remains straight to Acheron’s heart.

The world came apart, not with a single, dramatic blast, but with slow surety. The thousands of fissures that split the core’s surface burst open, cracks multiplying and spreading in a latticework of shattered black stone. Steam filled the air as snow melted in the flash-heat, lava boiling and bubbling to the surface in great geysers. Daemonspawn perished in their millions, crushed by tectonic instability or sent burning back to the warp. Whole cohorts simply flickered from reality as the dark magics binding them to the material plain came undone. The planet’s mantle ruptured in a hundred places, its surface disintegrating as new mountains were torn into being and then collapsed in on themselves. The ancient eldar fortresses and bastions shattered like fragile glass, and the swelling lakes of magma became surging oceans that swallowed entire continents. Finally, something deep within the planet’s heart gave out, and an explosion, its fury lost to the void’s silence, ripped Acheron’s tortured remains into a hundred billion broken shards. The cage shattered with it, the black tesseract bursting and collapsing into countless fragments.

If it had ever struck the fleet, the shockwave and the accompanying storm of debris would surely have annihilated each and every ship. But the fleet was gone. The destruction of Acheron tore the Imperial vessels back into real space, plunging them back into the reality of their previous anchorage in the Cyprus system. As shaking, wide-eyed bridge crews assessed their readouts and display stations, it appeared as though they had never left. Only one thing was missing.

Acheron.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Space Marines rarely slept, and dreams were even rarer, but Gabriel Angelos felt as though he were waking from a nightmare as he came to. Where his consciousness had fled to, he had no memory. He was even less certain of where he was. He was on his knees. The surface beneath him was glassy, impossibly smooth and black as damnation. It stretched out either side for a hundred or more yards, and yet beyond that there was nothing. A void. Total, utter emptiness. Where the pale light that was enabling him to see was coming from, he couldn’t fathom. He was suspended in oblivion, in a reality removed from the one Gabriel had known all his life.

He was not alone on the strange shard of rock. Three other figures already waited. Two he recognised instantly, and the sight of them stirred up equal amounts of hatred and surprise. Macha was to his left, her slender, alien expression unreadable, Singing Spear clasped in one hand. To his right was the greenskin warlord, the damnable Head Hunter. The huge ork was panting, its body slicked with blood and ichor, its armour plates dented and buckled. Gabriel realised that he probably looked much the same.

The final figure present on the black shard occupied the space between Gabriel, Macha and Head Hunter. Even without its hateful, sickening aura, Angelos knew immediately that it was a daemon, and a powerful one at that. It was larger, larger even than the Head Hunter, black-fleshed and bare, crouched back on its clawed toes like one of the great gargoyles that studded the flanks of the Imperial Navy’s capital ships. The vicious skulled visage was one Gabriel recognised – it was the same hellish face rendered vast and unreachable in the clouds of Acheron. Yet here it was, reduced to flesh and bone, before him.

‘Where am I?’ Gabriel snarled.

‘We have passed beyond the veil of reality,’ Macha said. ‘We have fashioned this place ourselves.’

‘That means nothing,’ Gabriel said. He realised God-Splitter was still in one hand. His gauntlet clenched around it, he rose. ‘What fresh witchcraft have you invoked?’

‘This shard is Acheron’s black heart,’ Macha said. ‘All that remains of the planet. And this is the beast that was once its master. Weakened, but not finished. Together, we must strike the final blow.’

The daemon mirrored Gabriel’s rise, standing now on its back-jointed legs. At Macha’s words it let out a growling laugh.

‘Gabriel Angelos,’ it said, the words slipping from its slick, black tongue like intestines slithering from a gut wound. ‘Murderer of Cyrene. Defiler of Tartarus. Freer of daemons. Kin-killer. I should bend the knee before one who has advanced the purposes of my masters so much down the centuries. Truly, brother Gabriel, you cannot be far from the blessed apotheosis of daemonhood, given all the innocents that you have slaughtered.’

‘Do not listen to a word it utters,’ Macha said before Gabriel could respond. ‘It is broken and cornered. It has little left to fight us with now but taunts.’

‘You are one to speak of weakness, sweet Macha,’ the daemon said, turning its burning gaze on the farseer. ‘Poor, lonely Macha, forever shut out from the circles of power within your seer council, forever living in the shadow of venerable farseer Taldeer. Even now you rely on her utterly, though her flesh has long since been a feast for worms and maggots. Truly pathetic.’

‘When we strike, it must be together–’ Macha began, but her words were cut off by the daemon’s grating laughter.

‘In an aeon of slaughter and destruction, never have I witnessed something as ridiculous as this! The detritus of a damned galaxy, come to die together. I suppose it’s fitting. Without the efforts of all of you I would never have found the strength to free myself. Your sacrifices were truly delectable.’

‘Enuff,’ grunted Gorgutz. Before Macha could utter a warning the ork warlord had flung himself towards the daemon, power claw ignited. For a second, it seemed as though the great, energy-wreathed weapon would collide with the daemon’s leering skull, pulverising it. Then reality shifted. Suddenly, the daemon wasn’t where it had been. The claw tore only air. Gorgutz’s wild lunge dragged him off balance, and the daemon’s fist crashed into his steel-plated lower jaw with a savage crack. The hulking greenskin went sprawling, the jaw buckled, dark blood bursting from his nose. The daemon’s laughter redoubled.

‘The so-called Head Hunter,’ it crowed. ‘Even by the standards of the company you keep, you are a weak creature. How many times have you failed, greenskin? How many times have you abandoned a fight and fled for your worthless life? For a race bred for war, you certainly have a talent for running from it.’

Gorgutz scrambled to his feet and charged again, bellowing. This time the daemon didn’t dodge. As the power claw again arced towards it a fist shot out, meeting the energised weapon. Gorgutz’s eyes widened with shock as, for the first time, his target didn’t simply disintegrate when struck by the claw and its disruptor field. The daemon’s fist locked with the weapon, rival energies snapping back and forth, throwing the ork’s furious expression and the daemon’s fanged grin into oscillating patches of light and darkness.

The daemon pushed, and Gorgutz began to go backwards, one aching, limb-shuddering step at a time. When the ork tried to dig his iron-shod boots in, the daemon’s other fist came round, clamping around the warlord’s throat. The ork grunted as the daemon began to squeeze.

Macha’s spear darted from the darkness, shrieking. It buried itself in the bicep of the arm choking Gorgutz, the weapon’s scream of retribution playing counterpoint to the daemon’s bellow as it released the ork. Macha darted to the daemon’s right, arm outstretched, the Singing Spear ripping free from the daemon in a spray of stinking ichor and returning to the farseer’s grasp before the daemon could snap it. She spun in low as she caught it in mid-leap, aiming a scything strike at the daemon’s cloven hooves. Again, however, reality betrayed her. The daemon was no longer quite where it had been a split second before, the spear’s black tip parting the air inches from its black-furred lower limbs. Gorgutz stumbled back, released, the energies around his claw sparking and shorting.

‘Angelos!’ Macha shouted, rolling beneath the daemon’s fist as she recovered from her overextended lunge. Gabriel was already moving, hefting God-Splitter, a prayer on his lips. Like Gorgutz though, he was too slow. The daemon blurred backwards, the Blood Raven’s anointed warhammer slitting the space it no longer occupied.

And suddenly it was behind him. It crashed into his back with all its strength, plasteel and ceramite buckling, even the adamantium rods in his ancient Terminator armour bending beneath the unnatural strength of its blow. Gabriel grunted as he was thrown forward, his grip automatically locking around God-Splitter’s haft even as his armour’s auto-senses warned him of structural damage and two broken ribs.

He slammed into the black substance of Acheron’s core and immediately pushed himself into a roll, teeth gritted as the ends of his smashed ribs grated together. The daemon’s fist pulverised the spot he’d occupied. He made it onto his knees, realising even as he did so that he wouldn’t be able to avoid another blow.

But it didn’t fall. The daemon paused, its nightmare features locked in a rictus of determination. Its limbs were frozen in place, bulging with the effort to crush Gabriel, rendered impotent by a mind as psychically powerful as it was.

Macha stood over Angelos, Singing Spear grounded, energy crackling through the air around her. The farseer’s mind had met the weakened daemon’s, and was holding it in check.

Gabriel found his feet, just as Macha’s strength gave out. The farseer stumbled back, and the daemon laughed contemptuously, looming over the three warriors.

Fight together, Macha willed, the words driven into the minds of her two companions. The daemon laughed again.

And die together, the monster’s voice intruded, bursting from within their own thoughts.

Macha began to move left, warily, like a female carnodon stalking her prey. Gabriel took the eldar’s lead, moving right, God-Splitter grasped in both hands. Gorgutz simply stood panting, glaring at the daemon.

It struck. It went for Macha, a reality-bending blur. Gorgutz didn’t respond to the attack and, for all the strength in his armour’s servos, Gabriel realised that he was too slow. Macha ducked and dodged its first two strikes, the combatants moving with a speed that the ork and the transhuman couldn’t possibly have matched. The eldar’s Singing Spear gashed a wound in the unnatural flesh of the daemon’s thigh, but the daemon responded with a blow that crumpled the psychoplastics of the farseer’s breastplate and came dangerously close to shattering Taldeer’s spirit stone, hanging from around Macha’s neck.

Gorgutz finally lurched into action as Gabriel pounded across the shard towards the melee. The ork went for the warp beast’s left side while it was engaged with Macha, power claw again arcing towards the daemon. It spun with a speed too quick to follow, a hand shooting out while Macha was still reeling and breathless. Gorgutz’s claw stopped as the daemon’s fist clenched around his skull. In that instant, the brutal warlord realised that he had finally, truly met his match.

The daemon grinned and dug its claws in, before dragging them down Gorgutz’s blunt face. The wicked black talons tore away great strips of grizzled green flesh, gouging through to the ork’s thick skull and shattering the greenskin’s bionic right eye in a gout of sparks and broken metal. Gorgutz bellowed with pain and fury, the blood from his wounds blinding him. The daemon maintained its grip even as Macha came at it again, a contemptuous flick sending the farseer reeling back once more. Then, with a great heave, the daemon flung Gorgutz.

The ork struck Gabriel as the Chapter Master drew back God-Splitter to smash it into the daemon’s back. The impact of the huge greenskin slammed him down, breastplate buckling, human and ork thrown over together. Gabriel heaved the Head Hunter off him with a bellow of fury, every instinct screaming at him to end the bestial alien once and for all. The warlord found his knees, wiping blood from his remaining eye, the bionic remains of the other sparking and smoking.

‘Pathetic mortals!’ the daemon boomed, its dark humour giving way to wrath. ‘Do you not understand? You have already lost! It was over the moment you freed me. I am unleashed, and I am ascendant!’

‘We will destroy you,’ Macha said, voice shaking. ‘Like we destroyed your world. The fates have decreed it.’

‘I will enjoy feeding your soul to She Who Thirsts, Macha,’ the daemon snarled. ‘You and Taldeer both.’

Before Macha could answer, Gorgutz charged. The huge ork roared as he came, not the tame battle cry of a desperate warrior, but the full-throated, animalistic howl of a king among savages. The force of the lone ork’s waaagh! sent the rock underfoot shuddering, and seemed to shake the air around the combatants. He struck the daemon with the full strength of his race’s instinctive animosity behind him, his sparking claw hammering through the daemon’s flank, biting through the dark flesh of its left forearm, jarring from bone and ploughing into the meat of its side. Gorgutz clenched the claw shut around a rib, snapping it, his blood-streaked features locked in a rictus of rage and exertion, the disruptor field searing away warp-spawned flesh and reducing ichor to reeking steam.

The daemon’s response would have pulverised the ork’s thick skull once and for all had Macha’s Singing Spear not again darted across the small, desperate space between the combatants. The farseer had thrown it from a spinning leap, so that this time the weapon struck at an angle. It lanced the daemon’s clawed right hand, dragging it down and pinning it against Acheron’s scarred bedrock.

The daemon bellowed, more in fury than in pain, and sought to drag itself free of the screaming weapon. Macha, however, had both arms extended, fingers bent like claws, her whole body locked and rigid as she channelled the full weight of her psychic power into her spear’s reactive wraithbone core. The tattered remnants of her robes billowed in an invisible witch gale, the spear’s screaming reaching a new, painful pitch as its haft shuddered between the two tremendous forces being exerted against it. Witchlights crackled and snapped across Macha’s body and danced around her hands, a low moan escaping her throat. Taldeer had lent her spirit-strength to her, smoke rising from the stone as it glowed brilliantly against the farseer’s chest. Even so, it would only be a few seconds more before the energies she was channelling tore her physical form apart and splintered both her spirit stone and Taldeer’s. The rock beneath Gorgutz cracked as the ork dug both feet in, broken tusks clenched.

Gabriel, Macha managed.

The Blood Raven flung himself forward. The servos in his armour powered him into a final leap. The pain in his battered and broken body was gone. The doubts and uncertainties that had plagued him since he arrived on Cyprus Ultima were gone. Victory blazed like a beacon, like God-Splitter, the ancient relic weapon inscribing an arc of golden energy as it split the darkness over the daemon’s head.

Even as the blow descended, the daemon tore itself free. One last blast of Chaotic strength shattered Macha’s Singing Spear into a thousand shards. It sent both Gorgutz and the farseer hurtling back, the roar of the daemon’s hatred threatening to shake the final shard of Acheron apart.

But it was too late. God-Splitter struck the daemon’s forehead, driven down with every last ounce of Gabriel’s transhuman strength, servo-power and burning faith. The daemon’s wail was eclipsed by the thunderous detonation of the hammer’s impact. The single, mighty blow obliterated the daemon’s head and ploughed down through its torso, pulverising warp flesh and bone, igniting it in a blaze of holy fire. The daemon simply disintegrated, its dark form undone by the fury and faith of Gabriel’s final blow.

By the time the Blood Raven slammed into the rock beneath, the daemon was gone. Acheron’s cracked remains shuddered. Only dark scorch lines marked the beast’s annihilation, and a distant howl, snatched away on an ethereal wind.

For a long time, nothing stirred. It seemed as though the monumental strike had ended reality itself. Gabriel remained on his knees in the crater hammered by his impact, head bowed, smoke rising gently from God-Splitter. Macha and Gorgutz had both risen. The only sound was the ork’s heavy, guttural breathing, and the pattering of blood on the dark surface underfoot.

Slowly, Gabriel stood too. The noise was accompanied by the grating of ceramite against stone, and the pained whir of his armour’s broken servos. He took a step, turned, and faced Macha and Gorgutz over the site of the daemon’s banishing. None of the three spoke. Eventually, Gabriel mag-locked God-Splitter, turned, and left. Macha watched him go, still shaking with exertion, hand gripped around Taldeer’s spirit stone. Then she, too, turned and went in her own direction, the darkness swallowing her.

Only Gorgutz remained. The great ork looked around, blinking, as though just awakening from a daze. It clawed scabbing blood from its remaining eye and then bent over, scooping an object from the broken ground. It was a spear tip, snapped from its missing haft. The head of the Spear of Khaine, the false relic that had set Acheron’s destruction in motion. The ork stared at it for a moment, then shrugged his broad shoulders and jammed it into his trophy rack. Then, without looking back, the Head Hunter departed.

Reality’s veil shimmered, and collapsed away into nothing.

EPILOGUE

It drifted through the void, broken, scarred and shattered. A single shard of Acheron’s superstructure, the only piece to have returned to real space when the planet was annihilated. Its creators, deathless and eternal, were already aware of the fate that had befallen it. They had looked on, in silent, cold fury, as the lesser races had tampered with their carefully wrought designs.

The cage was broken. The work of aeons was shattered.

Someone would pay.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robbie MacNiven is a highland-born History graduate from the University of Edinburgh. He has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Carcharodons: Red Tithe and Legacy of Russ as well as the short stories ‘Redblade’, ‘A Song for the Lost’ and ‘Blood and Iron’ for Black Library. His hobbies include re-enacting, football and obsessing over Warhammer 40,000.

An extract from Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin.

From out of the darkness, they came.

The blunted prow of the battle-barge Heart of Cronus split the veil of reality first, the strange angle of her re-entry a testament to the haste with which she had been hurled into the warp. The great ship juddered and pitched to starboard with the sudden deceleration, even as her escort frigates began to emerge about her. Strike cruisers and destroyers all jostled for the clear void as they tumbled from the empyrean, proximity alarms wailing and countless helmsmen fighting to bring their vessels back under control.

It was shambolic. Frantic.

Mortal voices, strained by emotion, echoed back and forth across the open vox; each shipmaster cursed the apparent ineptitude of his peers as the fleet spread out into what might pass for an operational grouping.

Nonetheless, in the fierce light of the Miral star, their transhuman masters tried to carry themselves with as much dignity as they could muster. To anyone who might have been watching, it was a most unusual sight – that of a mighty Space Marine Chapter humbled and brought low by its foes, its brothers resisting the urge to lash out at one another in despair.

Though there had been many amongst them who had truly believed that such a day would never come, the gaze of the Great Devourer had settled upon the galaxy once more. A new wave of tyranid hive fleets had crept into the Eastern Fringe under the cover of unprecedented human unrest, and with the return of the xenos had come the horrifying realisation that in fact mankind might never truly be rid of them.

And now, Sotha was no more.

Great and noble Sotha. The fortress-monastery at Mount Pharos. All gone – consumed by the foul, living tide of Hive Fleet Kraken.

But, like little more than ghostly shadows of their former selves, the Scythes of the Emperor lived on. They reeled from the death of their home world in a way that few beyond the Adeptus Astartes could ever truly appreciate.

The loss was shameful. It was inexcusable.

It had wounded them more deeply than anything else ever could.

The alert klaxons on the bridge were finally silenced as the Heart of Cronus swung into its high anchor approach. The acrid tang of burned-out circuits hung in the stagnant air, the main filtration system having been one of the many lost to the fire, and the deck plates around the command throne were sticky with retardant foam residue. Ragged and scorched crewmen, most still wearing their emergency breath-masks, blearily clung to their duties.

With a tortured grind of gears, the central blast doors slid open to reveal the strobing darkness of the corridors beyond, and Captain Thracian limped through. His proud, transhuman features were marred by an expression of utter defeat.

‘Fleet Master Zebulon is dead,’ he announced, coldly. ‘My brother-captain’s injuries were too severe. There was nothing they could do.’

Thracian’s black-and-gold power armour was scorched, and his cloak hung in tatters behind him. Each laboured stride sent dull pain shooting up his right side. As he passed the empty throne, he spared it only a single reluctant glance.

‘Shipmaster Devanti’s condition is critical, but he lives.’

The news brought a stunned silence to the human crew. It was not unexpected, but the reality of hearing it from a senior Chapter officer took it from a fearful rumour to stark, inescapable fact. Thracian wondered how many more truths would make that transition in the minutes, hours and days to come, under the circumstances.

He halted before the cracked, static-laced screens of the forward oculus. The left-hand pane was dead. So were the hololithic overlay projectors. ‘Tactical report,’ he called out to no one in particular, tying back the lank strands of his hair. ‘This is not my ship, but I would have a full appraisal of our location and disposition.’

A female serf-lieutenant with a hastily bandaged gash across her forehead stepped forwards, a data-slate in hand. Before the armoured Space Marine, she looked even more fragile and haggard, but her manner was firm.

‘We have arrived at the Miral System, my lord, as per Captain Zebulon’s original order. Seems we gave the local monitor patrols quite a scare – they weren’t expecting us, and our dispersal pattern was… a little sloppy. As a formality, they’re relaying our ident-codes to the Militarum outpost on the second planet now, for verification. We’re updating our horologs to the local mean time, although that loses us something like nine weeks, even after relativity adjustment.’

‘And how many ships made the jump with us?’

‘Information is still sketchy. We estimate no more than twenty-five vessels, based on the faint carrier signal transmissions from beyond the system-edge. About a third of them are apparently drifting without power, or have zero vox-capability after making the translation.’

Thracian furrowed his brow, prickling the superficial burns on the side of his face. ‘Only twenty-five. Less than a quarter of the Chapter fleet.’

The lieutenant nodded wearily, scrolling through the numbers. ‘Aye, lord. We had visual contact with at least another twelve before we entered the warp, but they are presently unaccounted for. It’s possible that…’ She sniffed, wiping dried blood from her top lip. ‘It’s possible that some may yet find their way here, but without long-range comms we’ll never know where the rest might end up.’

Glancing up at the crazed oculus, Thracian lowered his voice a little. ‘And what of the xenos hive ships? Could they have followed us?’

‘Highly unlikely, my lord, although we do have reports from the Dromea Bathos, the Pale Rider and the strike cruiser Atreides of continued action against tyranid boarders.’ The lieutenant paused for a moment, then continued. ‘Forgive my boldness, but Brother-Codicier Spiridonas might be better able to advise you on the matter of further pursuit.’

‘Aye. Perhaps.’

A few muted cries of alarm went up across the bridge. Out beyond the viewports, two of the stricken Chapter vessels – by their markings, the Ionia and the listing, battle-scarred destroyer Light of the Pharos – had drifted too close together. Thracian watched as the Pharos collided with the other ship, its dorsal ridge tearing a hole in her flank and spilling debris and flash-frozen atmosphere into the void. Other vessels close to the impact began to pull away, their shipmasters wary of being drawn into a cascading wreckage storm.

Cursing, he returned his attention to the fragile-looking lieutenant.

‘What is your name and rank designation?’

She straightened a little, although Thracian noted that she stopped short of actually standing to attention.

‘Hannelore, my lord. Serf-lieutenant, second class.’

‘You know this ship, Lieutenant Hannelore. Take me to the Navigator chambers.’

The undercroft spaces of the Pale Rider had become a charnel house. The stench of slaughter was heavy in the air, carrying with it the acidic reek of xenos bio-weapon discharge and other, even less wholesome smells. The ship had suffered badly at the teeth and claws of the invaders, though her crew were exceedingly lucky to be counted among those who had managed to flee the death of Sotha.

It was not clean fighting. It was cramped, and chaotic, and far too many had died, for so little gain. Fatigue dragging at his limbs, Culmonios shook the blood and ragged flesh from the teeth of his chainsword before whirling around to hack into another of the scuttling beasts as it leapt for him.

‘Brother,’ came a heaving, breathless voice over the short-range vox, ‘this is Nimeon. We have them contained. Port side, compartment nine.’

Culmonios battered the creature down, wrenching the gun-analogue from its forelimbs and ramming it over and over into the thing’s screeching face. His own pistol had long since run dry. There had, simply, been too many of them.

He threw the bio-weapon aside and grabbed the tyranid creature by the throat. It thrashed and snapped at him, until he broke its spine over his knee.

Hauling himself back to his feet with a wordless cry of exertion, took a splattering hit to the breastplate as he charged the last of their numbers, though the corrosive, organic projectile – whatever it was – did not pierce the ceramite. The pair of skulking creatures hissed at him as he closed the distance, trying to scramble away over the mounds of their dead kin, but Culmonios would not be denied. He slammed bodily into the first, sending it sprawling to the deck where he shattered its chitin-crested skull beneath his armoured heel.

With a bestial shriek the last creature tried to raise its weapon, but Culmonios grabbed its open jaw and sheathed his chainsword in its gullet with one savage thrust. The tyranid twitched as it died, gagging on the razor-sharp teeth of the blade.

‘Culmonios, are you receiving? Unknown hostiles were reported mass–’

‘Hunter-slayers,’ he growled. His twin heartbeats thundered in his ears. ‘Forty-plus confirmed kills. This deck is cleansed.’

‘Deck seventeen cleansed, aye. Heading to your position now. Are the others still with you?’

‘Negative. They are all gone.’

He ripped the chainsword free, and let the alien corpse crash to the deck. The blade rattled disappointingly, the mechanism evidently fouled by overuse in the past few hours, but Culmonios could only stare down at the steaming bone-case of the tyranid’s fallen weapon.

The damned thing had an eye. It stared back at him, the slit-pupil responding reflexively to the erratic flicker of the lumens overhead.

Disgust rose in his gorge. Disgust, and rage, and sorrow.

‘You vile, unworthy abominations,’ he muttered behind his helm visor. ‘How did your misbegotten kind ever take the home world?’

There was something in that vacant, alien gaze. Something that was not merely a weapon, not merely a tool. Culmonios gritted his teeth and, with one thumb, gouged out the eye and crushed it in the palm of his gauntlet.

He came up slowly, his hands trembling. Casting about the compartment, he took in the nightmarish scene that lay all around. A tableau of dead faces and spilled blood. Here and there, the bulky silhouette of a fallen Chapter brother. Spent bolter casings. Arcs of red splattered across the bulkheads, in some places right up to the vaulted ceiling. The deck plates were slick with gore, the remains of human and xenos alike hopelessly mingled.

It would all have to be disposed of. Ejected into the void, most likely, or scoured with flame. It was an undignified end for those Imperial citizens who had already died such a poor death.

The ventral hull zones were where the fighting had been thickest, but the short-range vox was filled with reports from his surviving battle-brothers and the frigate’s serf security teams as they drove the last xenos creatures back to the outer compartments. Culmonios gathered that the fleet – if it could be considered such – had made the jump back to real space, but the translation had not even registered upon his weary senses. For him, the past hours had been filled with naught but slaughter, and the frenzied cries of the alien attackers.

He trudged back to his most prized kill, letting his chainsword clatter to the deck as he went.

The hulking corpse of a full-grown tyranid warrior lay crumpled over a handful of its lesser cousins, its spilled innards cooling, its eyes glassy and black. The beast had claimed three of his battle-brothers before he had struck it down; Gordani’s empty helm was still gripped in its claws. Culmonios knelt beside the fallen monstrosity, which in life had stood easily half as tall again as an armoured Space Marine.

‘They don’t look so big when they’re on their backs,’ came Brother Nimeon’s voice from across the compartment. Culmonios had not heard him forcing his way through the barricaded entrance, though the warrior now picked gingerly through the carnage, sweeping the lamp of his bolter left and right. ‘Oh, Holy Terra – this was another one of the refugee holds.’

Culmonios nodded solemnly. The xenos boarding parties seemed to have been drawn to the least-protected parts of the ship, like predators seeking out the weakest members of the herd.

And they had fed well. The Scythes had arrived too late.

Drawing his combat blade, Culmonios wrenched the tyranid’s head up and began to saw at the corded sinews of its neck.

‘Brother, what are you doing?’ asked Nimeon.

Culmonios did not look up. A righteous fury burned in his hearts. ‘This was the greatest of them,’ he muttered. ‘It shall serve as a warning to those that follow.’

‘I do not think the xenos can be cowed by a gibbet.’

‘Who said anything about a gibbet? This is a trophy.’

With a meaty snap, he twisted the beast’s crested skull free and let the body fall away. As he rose, he hefted the crest like a shield, testing its weight. Bloody ropes of drool still hung from the creature’s slack jaws.

Nimeon removed his helm, repulsion written clearly upon his face, but Culmonios met his gaze unwaveringly.

‘They have taken everything from us, brother, and so shall I take from them as I damn well please.’ He did not bother to clean the blood from his knife, and it slid wetly back into the sheath at his hip. ‘We will have our vengeance upon the Kraken, one foul beast at a time.’

Click here to buy Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin.

To Matthew, Gohar and James, my original Dawn of War battle-brothers.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2017
This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Meduzarts.

Dawn of War III © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Dawn of War III, 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, and used under license.

This release is developed by Relic Entertainment and published by SEGA. SEGA, the SEGA logo, Relic Entertainment and the Relic Entertainment logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of SEGA Holdings Co., Ltd or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SEGA is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property
of their respective owners.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-610-1

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.