Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Illustrations

One

Two

Three

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Legal

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.

Roboute Guilliman.

Guilliman the tactician.

Guilliman the warrior.

History will remember the primarch of the Ultramarines by many titles. To us of the Blood he will have only one – Guilliman the butcher.

With law and edict, Guilliman ripped the heart from the Legions. Even his own sons were not spared his treachery. Where Horus had sought to use a hammer blow, Guilliman used a duellist’s blade. In the end, the result was the same.

Brother became cousin. Cousin became exile.

Guilliman’s new chapter, his new beginning, was a sundering to all that had come before. Stripped of honour and tithe, of history and deed, we were all of us undone.

Bastards of war and victory, we were Angels no more.

One

Denial

Amit stood alone in the shadows of his cell, careful to avoid the rear wall, where a shimmering stasis field shone blue in the darkness. He stared at the suit of Terminator armour suspended in the pale strands of light, and flexed the familiar joints of his own power armour, listening to the gnarled purr of its well-worn servos. His armour was as much a part of him as the twin hearts beating in his breast.

By contrast, the Terminator armour was a heavily bastardised suit of war-plate. Re-forged at Guilliman’s request, it had once belonged to Brother Bial of the Blood Angels First Company, but like the others whose battleplate the Terminator armour had subsumed, he was long dead. The Crux Terminatus on the left shoulder guard contained a shard of the Emperor’s own blessed armour. The storm bolters worked into its gauntlets had been taken from Brothers Aquinus and Furiel, veterans who had died by Sanguinius’s side.

Amit stepped closer, casting his gaze over the perfectly polished ceramite. It was meant to honour the reformation, to announce that the Imperium was unbroken, that its will was as strong as ever.

He growled.

Guilliman was an arrogant cur. The primarch of the Ultramarines had taken from him all that he was. He had stripped him of his identity and sought to replace it with a suit of armour, with a title: Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers.

Amit roared and smashed his fist into the wall.

Chosen son, captain, Blood Angel…

He raised his hand and struck again, buckling the plasteel, sending echoes of shock through his flesh.

Chapter Master, sire of Flesh Tearers, outcast…

Guilliman could take his decree and choke on it.

‘Azkaellon.’ Amit spat the Blood Angel’s name.

Azkaellon had been first among equals, but he had been too shaken by Sanguinius’s death, too weak to stand his ground and fight for the Legion. The rest of their brothers had shown little more conviction. He and he alone had voiced his discontent, and it had gone unheard, dismissed as the angry words of a grieving son, the rantings of a mad butcher. Amit grinned. He was both, and the universe would do well to remember it.

The pain in Nuriel’s head would not abate. It had grown from a sharp itch to a searing fire, so that it felt as though his skull were fractured, leaving his mind to bleed through the cracks. Yet he knew the pain was not there, not real in any sense an Apothecary could measure or treat. It was a dire echo of the plight his soul felt as the Victus carried him through the warp.

Even those of limited mind felt a gnawing ache as they sailed the tides of the immaterium. At worst their minds broke, leaving them to descend into madness. A blessed fate compared to what Nuriel risked. He was a Librarian and his soul blazed in the warp, a beacon calling the denizens of that daemon realm to feast. It would take but a moment’s laxity for him to succumb to their demagogic whispering. They would devour his soul and wear his flesh.

‘Not… today.’ Nuriel gritted his teeth and forced a smile. The pain was, at least, a sign that he had strength enough to resist.

Roaring, he clasped his head with both hands and squeezed, grimacing as real pain replaced the phantom, easing his torment.

‘Father, armour me against corruption,’ Nuriel snarled and drove his head into the steel of the wall. The metal buckled and dented under the blow, cracking further as he repeated the motion. ‘Seal my soul against the dark.’ Blood burst from Nuriel’s forehead, slicking the wall and running down into his eyes.

He slid to the floor and fought to stay conscious. Blacking out would bring him no respite and would deprive him of the pain he needed to stay focused. He looked across at the opposite wall. It shivered, rippling and groaning as he turned his gaze upon it. A churning sickness gripped his gut. He gagged, vomiting until there was nothing but bile dripping from his lips.

Averting his eyes, Nuriel saw the Warrior again. The same figure who had touched each of his visions since the Gates of Terra. The Warrior exuded greatness, the warmth of triumph. Clad in blood-red armour, he was a peerless swordsman and wielded a long blade of dark metal. Nuriel followed in his wake as he cleaved his way through a horde of desperate foes, men and women dressed in the rags of outcasts. The Warrior pulled his blade from a corpse garbed in crimson and turned to face Nuriel. It was the first time he had done so, and Nuriel found himself looking up into his own eyes.

‘True faith is hard. The path to salvation is riven with strife,’ the Warrior said to Nuriel, his voice like the roll of thunder, eternal and charged with power.

Nuriel felt himself nod.

His entire life had been a struggle, a continual test of his strength. Born on Baal Secundus, he had killed his first fire scorpion before his eleventh year. The trials to become a Space Marine had been arduous, but were nothing compared to the hardships he endured to harness his psychic talent. The Edict of Nikaea had sought to punish him further, but he had remained unbowed, fighting the daily urge to use his gifts, even at the cost of his brothers’ lives. He had survived Horus’s final treachery and the battle for Terra. He had done everything the Emperor had asked of him.

Nuriel snarled. ‘And for what? For this? This reward?’ Digging his fingers into the Flesh Tearers symbol on his pauldron, he tried to prise it free, snarling as the bonded ceramite held fast. ‘This new threat to my sanity. A blood-madness, a black rage that is claiming the minds of my brothers. No.’ Nuriel got to his feet. ‘I will not succumb to it.’

Slivers of hoarfrost spat and cracked as they formed and broke on Nuriel’s armour. Summoning a measure of his power, he stepped to the cell door. A thin line of energy danced over his fist before igniting, wreathing his gauntlet in obsidian fire. Grimacing, he drove his hand through the mag-lock and wrenched open the door. He had been alone long enough. Bathos and anger were poor company. He needed a release.

‘We cannot wait any longer. He must choose.’ Barakiel’s breath fogged in the cold air as he made his way along the corridor. Though much of the Victus was heated, allowing many of its human crew to function, this section was not. Its walkways and holy cells were meant for Space Marines. A thin layer of ice coated the walls, which seemed to be polished to the same parade-sheen as Barakiel’s armour.

‘He will not thank you for the interruption, brother.’ Tilonas kept pace beside him, the servos of his heavier Terminator armour drowning out the rumble of the ship’s engines.

‘He rarely does.’

Tilonas smiled. ‘Your promotion has made you bold, captain.’

‘It is not boldness but necessity. We have wasted enough time.’

An attendant serf flinched as the pair drew up outside Amit’s cell.

Tilonas regarded the man. He was too thin to have been gene-bred, lacking the pronounced musculature and thick skeleton of a fully developed Chapter-serf. Likely, he was just another wretch snatched from a liberated world and pressed into service. The man knelt on the floor, his tunic loose on his frame. Curiously, he had another wrapped around his shoulders for warmth.

Tilonas looked past the serf and grinned. ‘Ruthless little bastard.’

The serf’s eyes widened at Tilonas’s remark. He shot a furtive glance sideways. A naked corpse lay slumped beside him, the frozen body of another serf.

‘He’ll still be dead before the cycle’s out,’ Barakiel grunted, and banged his fist on the cell door. ‘Lord.’

‘Perhaps he has left,’ said Tilonas.

‘No, he is in there. Why else would this wretch still be here?’ Barakiel nudged the serf with his boot and struck the door again. ‘Captain… Master Amit.’

‘Enter,’ barked Amit.

‘You go ahead. I’ll wait here.’ Tilonas grinned and gestured to the door.

Barakiel pushed open the door and stepped into the cell. Amit’s back greeted him, the Chapter Master’s attention fixed on the rear wall. Were Barakiel not accustomed to Amit’s brooding, he might have been surprised by the mess consuming the cell. Most of the chamber’s luminators had ceased to function. The few that remained lit stuttered overhead, casting jagged patches of light over the piles of ruined battle-servitors that lay strewn around like broken dolls. Amit seemed oblivious to the orphaned head that was still stammering through its activation protocols.

‘Master Amit.’ Barakiel touched his fist to his breastplate in salute.

‘What do you want?’ Amit didn’t turn around, his attention fixed on the suit of Terminator armour suspended against the rear wall.

‘We are out of time, lord. Brother-Sergeant Grigori or Chaplain Varel. You must decide which–’

Amit rounded on Barakiel, his eyes narrowing to a knife’s edge. ‘You ask me to condemn one of our great heroes to death and consign another to a living tomb? Tell me, captain, which one would I be doing the greater honour?’

‘With respect, Chapter Master, this burden is yours to carry.’ Barakiel moved to the pict viewer attached to the near wall. ‘You knew Grigori better than any of us. He was a valiant warrior and I am certain he would be thankful for the chance to continue to fight. Varel was a revered Chaplain, and a great orator. His sermons roused our warriors to righteous fury. In these tumultuous times, his counsel is sorely needed.’

‘You speak of them as though they are already dead.’ Amit spat the words through gritted teeth.

‘With good reason.’ The pict viewer blinked on under Barakiel’s touch. He tapped a key, manipulating the feed-selector until an image of the Apothecaries resolved.

Grigori and Varel lay side by side on slabs of grey ceramite. Grigori was missing his left arm, his legs and most of his face. A series of tubes and automated syringes worked to maintain what remained of his torso. Varel’s body was intact save his abdomen, which looked like it had been ripped out to allow whatever had killed him access to his innards. His skin was dyed blue, an after-effect of being submerged in bio-solution. His chest cracked where the Apothecaries had tried to repair the damage.

Amit glanced at the viewer. His face softened but his eyes remained those of a murderer. ‘Inter Grigori. I will have Zophal prepare the final rites for Varel.’

Barakiel said nothing.

Amit read the disquiet in his face. ‘You have something to say?’

‘Lord,’ Barakiel stepped towards Amit, ‘I had hoped…’ He paused and started again. ‘I know your history with Grigori but–’

‘But nothing!’ Amit snarled, advancing to within an inch of Barakiel. ‘Do not think me weak enough to suffer from bias in this decision. Our souls were broken on Terra. Words will do nothing to repair our honour. We need warriors such as Grigori.’

Barakiel stood his ground. ‘Varel’s injuries are less severe. He has a greater chance of surviving the procedure. We must not waste what little of the bloodline we have.’

Amit paced away from Barakiel and lowered his voice. ‘I was there when Grigori fell. Even broken, he continued to fight, firing from his back until the battle was won. It is not for us to surrender him to death.’

‘Lord, Varel is–’

‘You have my answer.’ A trace tremor twitched under Amit’s right eye. ‘Test me no further.’

‘As you wish.’ Barakiel bit down a retort and dipped his head in acquiescence.

Nuriel slipped a blow meant to cave in his skull and drove his fist into his attacker’s nose. He savoured the wash of blood that splashed across his scarred face. Pressing the attack, he threw an uppercut, snapping his opponent’s head back before leaping forwards and slamming his palm down into his face. The other Flesh Tearer crashed to the ground unconscious, his nose a mess of ruined cartilage.

Nuriel held his position in the middle of the duelling stone. The monolithic slab of Baallite rock all but filled the low chamber. Braziers piled with burning coals bordered its high sides and threw jagged light across its surface. Weapon and equipment racks shadowed the stone’s circumference. Three stone statues hung out from the walls like the figureheads of ancient, Terran sea vessels. The first was of Sanguinius, unarmed and garbed in a simple robe. The other two were of his sons. Each was armoured and wielded a single blade. The triumvirate represented the Tempest of Angels, the honorific duel the chamber was fashioned to host, where one combatant fought to protect Sanguinius, while the other attacked. Nuriel grunted in derision. Sanguinius was dead. Now there was only attack. ‘Who’s next?’ He turned in place, casting his gaze over the other Flesh Tearers assembled in the chamber.

Nuriel tensed, pivoting to his left as a blade stabbed towards him. Parrying its edge with his vambrace, he speared his other hand over the top, driving his fingers into his attacker’s throat. The Flesh Tearer, Brother Manakel, gagged and dropped his weapon. ‘You insult me. I cannot be blindsided by such a careless attack,’ said Nuriel, grabbing the back of Manakel’s head, holding it firm as he drove an elbow into his face. Nuriel struck again and again, grinning as he heard the crack of bone. He released Manakel, letting him topple onto his back, and moved to finish him, raising his boot to bring it down on the prone Flesh Tearer’s head.

‘No!’ Brothers Vaul and Sere roared and leapt onto the duelling stone.

Nuriel abandoned Manakel and met the other two Flesh Tearers head on. Splaying his fingers, he channelled his will into a raw bolt of telekinesis and unleashed it against Sere. The psychic shockwave struck Sere in the chest, cracking his breastplate and propelling him from the platform.

Nuriel grinned in triumph, continuing his charge to crash into Vaul. He wrapped his arms around the other Flesh Tearer, tackling him to the ground. Pinning Vaul’s arms with his own, Nuriel used his head like a hammer, smashing it down into his opponent’s face. Vaul struggled in vain to free himself, his armour’s servos spitting in torment as Nuriel’s embrace began to crush it. Nuriel continued to attack, pounding Vaul’s skull with his own until the other Flesh Tearer’s body went limp.

Blood dripping from his face, Nuriel got to his feet and stretched his frame. He could feel every muscle in his body as it tensed and relaxed. He had rarely felt so alive. He was stronger, faster than his brothers, a champion among champions. He snarled as a needle of disquiet burned his gut. If only Sanguinius could see him now. He knew his lord would not have made Amit’s mistake.

Wiping Vaul’s blood from his eyes, he looked down, watching Manakel with faint amusement as the Flesh Tearer grimaced and rolled onto his front in an effort to get to his feet. A blade lay just beyond Manakel’s grasp. Nuriel paced around him as he struggled forwards, reaching for the weapon.

‘Learn when you are beaten.’ Nuriel grabbed Manakel by the throat, and hoisted him into the air.

‘Nuriel! Put him down,’ Brother-Sergeant Seraph barked, stepping onto the duelling stone. The rock was awash with the blood of his brothers. Blood begets blood. The thought drew a growl from Seraph. He would make Nuriel bleed for his sins.

Nuriel lowered Manakel but kept his hands locked around the Flesh Tearer’s throat. ‘No. He has not submitted. We are not done.’

‘You are done, brother.’ Menadel stepped onto the opposite side of the platform, his power sword flickering with menace. ‘Do not make us kill you to prove the point.’

‘Not yet,’ Nuriel roared and threw Manakel at Seraph.

The sergeant dropped into a roll, avoiding Manakel’s body as it shot past him to strike the chamber wall. ‘Death then,’ Seraph said and drew his weapons, a vicious chainaxe and short-bladed chainsword, which howled as he thumbed their activation studs.

‘Fools,’ Nuriel spat. ‘Look around you.’ The Librarian held out his arms, gesturing to the bodies slumped around the duelling stone, to the veterans of combat he’d broken and discarded. ‘I have bested your entire squad, Seraph. What challenge are the two of you?’

Menadel spun his blade once, testing its weight, and activated his storm shield. ‘Let us find out.’

Silence and darkness held dominion over the Reclusiam.

The four thousand electro-braziers that hung from the ceiling had been extinguished. The cohort of psyber-cherubs that had attended the lanterns had been slain, along with everything else. They had yet to be replaced, and so the eaves and rafters were silent, devoid of the cherubs’ singing and the clacking of their golden wings.

It was as though the chamber itself were in mourning, waiting for the brotherhood it served to lend a voice to its pathos.

‘The Blood lend me strength.’ High Chaplain Andras knelt in the chapel’s nave, his ashen tunic stretched around his torso. He looked up at the bronzed altar. It was the same pulpit he had preached from for three decades. On it stood the same lectern he had braced himself against as he preached the Moripatris and delivered battle eulogies.

‘Emperor, keep me in Your sight.’ He sighed, feeling as though the weight of the chapel itself were pressing down upon his shoulders.

Everything remained the same, and yet it was not. The stone of the walls was bare, stripped of iconography and sculpture. The marble plinths bordering the chamber were empty so that no pantheon of heroes gazed down upon him. He cast his gaze to the ceiling, his enhanced eyes finding the image of the Emperor in the darkness. Rendered in oil and wax, the painting spanned the domed ceiling and depicted the Lord of Mankind in the guise of a warrior cleric. Armoured in golden plate, the Emperor wielded a bronzed mace and clutched a thick parchment. His mouth hung open in sermon while His eyes were narrowed in judgement. The many worlds of His domain bled into one other, blending to form a cloak that framed His shoulders and spilled out around His feet.

‘Why?’ Andras whispered, his voice faltering as he spoke to the painting.

‘Why what?’

He turned, surprised to see Chaplain Zophal stood behind him. The Blood Angels Chapter symbol had been ripped from his pauldron, leaving behind a jagged wound of grey metal. Scorch marks covered his armour like a foul rash where the purity seals and litanies of battle had been burned away.

‘Your armour, you haven’t repaired it?’

‘This will suffice for now.’ Zophal stepped forwards and knelt next to Andras. ‘Why what?’

‘Sanguinius, our father. He was touched by the sight, and yet he did nothing to change his fate. I do not understand why he went willingly to his death.’

‘Not even our father could be certain of the future. He was a warrior first and our sire second. The Emperor needed his aid. Would you not have laid down your life as he did?’ Zophal’s eyes were hard, probing Andras with an interrogator’s stare.

‘Of course.’ Andras bared his teeth. ‘But what now? Who do we fight for now?’

‘The Emperor lives. We fight for Him.’

‘We are no longer His angels, Zophal. Guilliman has broken us.’

Zophal was silent a moment before answering. ‘We are who we choose to be, High Chaplain.’

Andras smiled, though his face held no warmth. ‘I fear you would have been better suited to the rank than me, brother.’

Zophal said nothing. He would not allow his thoughts to turn to such matters, and even if in weakness and selfish pride they did, he would never speak of them.

‘You must find your faith, High Chaplain, your strength.’ Amit’s voice filled the Reclusiam as he entered the chamber, his every syllable a certain command. ‘We, I, will need it in the days ahead.’

‘Lord Amit, forgive me.’

‘There is nothing to forgive.’ Amit knelt by Andras. ‘It was always Sanguinius’s wish that you become High Chaplain,’ he said, and paused. ‘Zophal has another path to walk.’

Andras was not blind to the look that passed between the Chapter Master and Zophal, but he knew better than to comment. ‘You have need of us?’

‘Yes,’ Amit sighed. ‘Brother-Chaplain Varel will be dead soon.’

‘Sanguinius keep him.’ Andras clasped his fist to his chest in salute.

Amit nodded. ‘Zophal…’

‘I will see to it.’ Zophal stood, his armoured footsteps barely making a sound as he crossed the chamber.

‘His time among the sons of Corax was well spent,’ said Andras.

Amit grinned. ‘Chaplain Zophal is well suited to walking in dark places.’

The two said nothing for several moments, each alone with his thoughts, before Andras broke the silence.

‘Are we simply to forget the dead?’ The High Chaplain gestured to the rows of votive candles behind the pulpit. There were thousands upon thousands of them, stretching in serried ranks back into the cloisters and rising up to meet the eaves. Since the Reclusiam’s consecration, such candles had been lit in honour of the dead. Now, only a single flame flickered in the darkness.

Amit looked to the lone candle. ‘We remember our father.’ He dipped his head as he spoke, hiding his face from Andras. ‘It is no longer our place to honour the lives of fallen Blood Angels. They will be remembered by their brothers, in a chapel that carries their Chapter symbol.’ Amit paused. ‘Our own sorrowful history has still to be written.’

‘I do not know which concerns me more, the angry dead or the sorrow of those left behind,’ said Andras.

‘If we are to triumph, to rise from this darkness,’ Amit said as he looked up, his face hard, his eyes dark pools of rage, ‘then our anger must eclipse both.’

‘Is that why we journey to Zurcon? To vent our anger?’ asked Andras.

‘Zurcon is a lost system. An unconquered frontier.’

‘And it is far from the crusades of our brothers,’ said Andras.

Amit smiled. ‘It would seem my faith in you was not misplaced, Chaplain.’

Andras’s reply was lost under a series of heavy footsteps. Amit turned to find Druel by the chamber’s entrance. Even without his Terminator armour, the Flesh Tearer was huge. Clad as he was in it, he more closely resembled the idealised statues of Space Marine heroes that adorned the plazas of Imperial cities.

‘Is there nowhere I may find peace today?’ said Amit. ‘What is it?’

‘Forgive the intrusion, Chapter Master, High Chaplain.’ Druel made the sign of the aquila over his chest and bent to one knee. The servos in his armour whined in complaint, the heavy war-plate ill-suited for such civility. ‘Librarian Nuriel has attacked our brothers in the duelling arena.’ Druel’s face was troubled, his eyes heavy with concern. ‘He–’

‘The rage?’ Andras tensed, his voice a whisper. The death of their father had done more than undo the Legion; it had cursed them, leaving them with visions of doom and a beast’s thirst for blood. The madness was incurable. It claimed more of their brothers with each passing cycle, turning them into frenzied killers who made no distinction between friend and foe.

‘No.’ Druel shook his head, though his face remained tight with concern. ‘It is pride not anger that drives Nuriel. Menadel and Seraph are trying to subdue him, but his gifts–’

‘Damn him,’ Amit roared, getting to his feet. ‘He knows better than this.’

‘He is not of sane mind, lord. We may have to ki–’

‘No.’ Amit stalked past Druel towards the exit. ‘I will deal with Nuriel.’

Andras looked to the votive candles, idly wondering how long it would be before he had ignited them all. ‘The Blood protects,’ he whispered as the door closed behind Amit.

‘Not today,’ Druel said, following Amit from the chamber.

‘Librarian!’ Amit called as he entered the duelling chamber, arriving as Nuriel threw a punishing right hook that cracked Menadel’s storm shield and knocked the Flesh Tearer to the ground. Seraph lay just beyond them, twisted and pinned to the base of the platform by a knife driven through the flesh of his forearm. ‘Nuriel!’

‘What?’ Nuriel screamed in frustration, a measure of ire drained from his face as he turned to face the Chapter Master. ‘Amit.’

‘Enough.’ Amit paced to the weapons rack. ‘Menadel, take Seraph and go.’

Menadel pushed himself to his feet. Hatred burned in his veins, howling at him to fight, to render Nuriel a corpse. He looked at Amit, took a slow breath and nodded. He was duty bound to honour the Chapter Master’s command, and duty was all they had left.

‘You know better than to use your gifts while in the warp, Nuriel.’ Even from real space, the soul of a psyker blazed like a beacon in the warp. The tide of daemons that swam in that place clamoured to those beacons with hungry intent. A moment’s lapse in concentration, the slightest break of faith or oath, and the psyker was doomed. To draw on such power from within the currents of the warp itself was foolish beyond measure. ‘A hand held too close to the flame will burn, Librarian. It is only by the grace of the Emperor that you have not damned us all.’ Amit drew a short blade from the rack and stepped onto the duelling stone.

‘Do not lecture me, Chapter Master,’ Nuriel sneered. ‘Have I not proven myself more than capable? My mind and soul are as armoured as the hull around us.’

‘Are they? Then I feel no safer. Even the Victus has not endured these long years without breach. Someday, we will ask too much of it.’ Amit let his words and their implication hang in the air a moment. ‘You think your pain greater than any of your brothers?’ He paced around Nuriel as he spoke, gesturing to Vaul and the others. ‘You think it gives you the right to do this?’

‘My pain is beyond your knowing.’ Nuriel bunched his fists and took a step towards Amit. ‘The burden of my gifts is great, and now this rage…’ He paused, anger strangling his voice. ‘Yet still you think me weak.’

‘Is that what troubles you, brother?’ Amit advanced on Nuriel. ‘You wish to be Master of Librarians?’

‘Yes!’ Nuriel roared, his warp-charged muscles straining against his skin. ‘Why? Why did you choose Baros over me?’ Nuriel closed the distance with Amit in a single bound, thrusting his blade towards the Chapter Master’s throat. ‘He is weak!’

‘It is not about strength.’ Amit slipped Nuriel’s blade. ‘It is about conviction,’ he said, thundering his fist into the Librarian’s jaw as he angled off. ‘You do not have Baros’s heart.’

The blow staggered Nuriel. He roared again, eyes flashing with fulgurant energy as he summoned his power.

‘No.’ Amit clasped the back of Nuriel’s head and pulled it onto his fist, driving a punch into the Librarian’s face. The blow dented bone, leaving a gnarled imprint in Nuriel’s forehead.

Nuriel dropped his blade and clutched his head, unable to focus beyond the pain.

‘You defeated Menadel and Seraph through your gifts alone. You want to prove your strength, then fight me without them.’ Amit kicked Nuriel in the chest, sending him tumbling backwards. ‘Or sure as the Blood runs in my veins, I will kill you.’

Nuriel came at Amit in a frenzy of limbs, punching and kicking with all the skill and fury he possessed.

Amit rode the blows, using his arms and shoulders to exhaust Nuriel’s rage. ‘If that is all you’ve got, brother,’ Amit said as he pushed through the Librarian’s guard to grab his gorget, ‘then perhaps I shall kill you regardless,’ he concluded and headbutted him.

Nuriel backed off, spitting a gobbet of blood onto the floor. ‘You think you are better than me because Guilliman changed your title, captain? We are Blood Angels. You are master of nothing.’

Amit’s eyes narrowed. ‘All things change, brother.’

‘Except war,’ Nuriel hissed. ‘It has been the same since man could wield a rock.’

‘Yes.’ Amit paused, struggling to order his thoughts in the face of his blood lust. ‘We are instruments of war, Nuriel, nothing more. War is why we were created – it is why we live, why we breathe. We are the Emperor’s shields and we are His blades, and we will fight under whichever banner He deems to give us.’ Amit forced the words from his lips, unsure whether he believed them or not.

‘I am a son of Sanguinius, a Blood Angel! I will not let Guilliman, you or the Emperor Himself tell me different.’ Nuriel lashed out and kicked Vaul’s body from the platform.

‘Sanguinius is dead!’ Amit snapped.

‘And how soon we forget his greatness.’

‘I stood with our father in countless battles. I knew him as well as any of his sons.’ Amit’s words were barely audible over the growl in his throat. ‘But I will not yield to this grief.’

‘Liar!’ Nuriel snarled and threw out his arm. A blade shot from the rack into his grasp. ‘Your grief consumes you. It burns raw like a dying sun.’

Nuriel attacked. Amit darted forwards inside the blade’s arc. Gripping Nuriel’s weapon arm with both hands, he brought his knee up and spiked it into his abdomen before smashing his head into Nuriel’s face. Amit held him in place, headbutting him again and again until his body went limp and he dropped the sword. Finally, he tossed the Librarian to the ground.

Nuriel groaned and struggled to his feet, his face broken.

Amit watched him stand and then kicked his legs out from under him.

‘Kill… me, then.’ Nuriel spat the words through mouthfuls of blood.

‘No. There is enough death in our future.’ Amit pressed his knee down onto the Librarian’s chest. ‘You are a Flesh Tearer now, Nuriel. Live with it or don’t, but trouble me no more.’ Amit grabbed Nuriel’s head and drove it into the ground. The Librarian went slack.

Amit rose and made for the chamber’s exit where Druel was waiting, his assault cannon spinning on idle. ‘Have Nuriel and the others taken to the apothecarion. Then have this Baallite slab ground to dust and ejected into the void.’

‘What shall I replace it with?’

Amit stopped at the exit, turning back to look at the ancient stone and the injured Flesh Tearers strewn across it. ‘Nothing.’

Amit’s mood grew fouler as he walked the corridor. He had not asked to lead them. Their fates had been thrust upon him, their concerns made his. He ground his teeth in frustration and activated the maglift. If he could not find peace in solace, then he would find it as he always had – in blood.

His armoured boots tensed, locking him to the floor as the platform sped him downwards. He closed his eyes, thankful of the isolation, and listened to the rising beat of his hearts as they sped in time with the maglift’s thrumming. He clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling a growl build in his throat as he pictured what was to come.

The maglift shuddered to a stop and he stepped off into a lightless corridor. Amit paused a moment while his enhanced eyes strained to adjust to the darkness. They could not. The gloom was total, thick and impenetrable, the corridor shrouded by technology that defied even the keenest of auspexes.

The priests of Mars had made good on their word. The modifications they had made to the Victus were impressive. The deck he walked on existed on no schematic or official record. It was a void in the ship, a place of nothingness. His actions here would not define him, for they would never truly have happened. His deeds would be swallowed by the darkness, stolen away before they could mar his soul.

Amit paced forwards, unwilling to dwell longer on what he might still owe Mars for its help. He took care, following exactly the route imprinted in his memory, aware that a single misstep would see him fall to his doom amid the bowels of the ship. The space was not serviced by ventilation grilles or air shafts, and the atmosphere was thick with a rank smell that reminded him of gore-soaked trenches and the visceral stench of freshly spilt innards. A row of cells shadowed him as he moved along the corridor. Each of them, he knew, were locked tight, plasma-sealed and psy-warded.

‘You should have killed Nuriel.’ Zophal’s voice sounded from the darkness ahead. ‘Your wrath would have been better spent. There are not many remaining here.’

Amit stopped walking. ‘No. We have lost enough brothers to the enemy, to the Rage. I will not add to that tally.’ Amit took three more paces and stopped. ‘How many remain?’

Zophal ignored the question in favour of his own. ‘What you said to Nuriel, whose soul were you trying to save? When will you accept that things are how they are? That not everything can be changed by blood and rage?’

Amit bit back a curse. He wasn’t surprised that Zophal knew; the damnable Chaplain always knew. ‘Save me the sermon, Zophal. It is not why I am here.’

‘You have been coming here more frequently of late.’

Amit grunted at the insinuation. ‘How many are left?’

‘Seven. Two in the cell nearest you, a further four spread among those at the end of the corridor, and…’ Zophal cast a glance into the gloom. ‘Omari.’

‘The one who prophesies his innocence?’

‘Yes. He still maintains his loyalty to the Emperor.’

‘Lies. He is a son of Magnus, a traitor.’

‘It has been months. My testing of his flesh unrelenting. How can you be so certain?’

‘Because I am.’

Zophal studied the pitiless depths of Amit’s eyes and chose his words carefully. ‘The universe is not as simple as it once was, brother.’

‘You think me blind to that?’ Amit swallowed a knot of anger. Had it been anyone but Zophal stood before him, he would have struck them. ‘Even now, amidst this lunacy, some things are still certain. It is blood that binds us and the spilling of it that frees us. Treachery flows in Omari’s veins. He can no more turn from it than we can abandon our own curse. He is a coward and a traitor, and I will kill him last.’

Zophal sighed. ‘And what then will you do when he is dead? When they all are?’

‘They die too easily.’ Amit grinned in an effort to ease the tension but he could not shake the seriousness of the Chaplain’s question. ‘I will find more of them, and I will continue to kill them until there truly are none left.’

‘And then?’

‘Let us worry about that if I still number among the living.’ Amit removed his gauntlet and pressed his hand to the wall panel on his right. The sheet of adamantium hummed softly as its bio-scanner read his genetic imprint. He withdrew his hand as the panel chimed once before sliding away to reveal a thick-set handle. He grasped the bar, feeling a surge of excitement as he twisted it. Unseen gears ground against one another, drawing away the wall section to grant him access to the cell behind.

‘If I am not back in seven minutes, purge the chamber.’

Zophal nodded, summoning the status of the chamber’s failsafe measures onto his helm display. The heavy flamers mounted in the chamber’s four corners were fuelled and primed for firing. On his command, they would dose the chamber in liquid fire, scrubbing it of life and all else. ‘There are only two of them,’ said Zophal, his voice heavy. ‘I will see you in three.’ He disappeared, slipping back into the gloom of the corridor.

Amit stepped to the cell door as the wall shuddered closed behind him. Replacing his gauntlet, he slid free the deadbolts and opened the cell. The beating of his twin hearts seemed to merge to a single, deafening pulse as he entered. Guilliman. Amit’s hearts roared at the thought of the Ultramarines primarch, but Guilliman had not taken everything from him.

Before him, mag-shackled to the wall, were two Space Marines. Traitors, filth-scum captured after the Siege of Terra.

‘Blood Angel,’ the first rasped. ‘I wondered when you would come.’ He spoke with the sibilant consonant sounds of a serpent. His armour was scorched black, scoured of insignia so that only a hint of its purple heraldry remained. His face was narrower than Amit’s – an artist facing a thug.

‘No, son of Fulgrim,’ Amit said closing the door. ‘I am no angel.’

‘You… your soul is as dark as mine, cousin.’

The words were thick on the second’s tongue, his voice subsumed by the guttural snarl that lived in his throat. Dried blood caked his armour, his Chapter symbol, a set of jaws worked into his pauldron, only just visible under the mire.

‘The World Eater is right – there is no place for you in Guilliman’s new age. You will be cast aside. Join us. Let us finish what Horus started.’

‘Perhaps.’ Amit spoke low. Whatever truths lay in the traitor’s words, he would not allow them to cheat him of his focus. ‘I did not come here to contemplate the future. I did not come here as part of Guilliman’s plan.’ Amit depressed a section of his gauntlet, and the restraints locked around the traitors’ wrists and ankles opened, dropping them to the floor. ‘I came here to embrace the now, to answer the call of my father’s blood. I came here to kill you.’

Shipmistress Ronja Nokkan had served the fleets of Baal since before the Great War. Plucked from among the throng of surviving Naval officers, she now stood in command of the battle-barge Victus, flagship of the Flesh Tearers. Yet to those she served, it was more than a mere vessel. It was their home. A space-borne fortress clad in kilometres of layered ceramite and bonded adamantium, it bristled with enough weaponry to conquer a sector. The ship was a spiritual refuge studded with cathedral-like spires that stretched out to bring the Emperor’s word to the heavens. Like the Space Marines who dwelt within its armoured hull, the Victus was both a beacon of hope and a harbinger of doom.

Ronja felt her chest fill with pride as she thought of her charge. She knew that she had not been Lord Amit’s first choice for the posting. Shipmaster Ivar had more experience, and Yelst was said to have been held in high regard by Lord Sanguinius himself.

In this life, only the kill is certain. Ronja smiled as she remembered her mother’s words.

Ivar was dead, immolated when the shuttle transferring him to the Victus lost engine containment. Yelst was gone too. She had taken her own life, unwilling to sully her honour by serving under Amit and his killers.

Ronja was not deaf to the rumours, the hushed mumblings that drifted from the other shipmasters like dark secrets. She served a bastard Chapter, and its master was the maddest of butchers. The nobility of Baal did not follow the Flesh Tearers to battle. Whether such things were true or not mattered little. The Flesh Tearers were Space Marines, warrior gods. It was not her place to judge them, and she would not defy the fates. The winds of chance had carried her through the war and favoured her now with this honour. She would not disappoint either of them.

‘Emperor’s teeth,’ Ronja cursed, forced to grip the armrest of her command throne for balance as the Victus shuddered violently. ‘Surveyor, status?’

‘We’ve struck a warp current head on, mistress. The Geller field is taking a lashing. Possible…’ The surveyor paused as he studied the bank of cogitators chattering around him. ‘Possible weakening in sub-deck one hundred and eighty-three, annex seventeen.’ The surveyor slowed as he spoke, each word quieter than the last, his voice thick with fear.

‘Elaborate.’ Ronja fought to keep her voice level. Warp travel offered a shortcut through the universe but was among the most dangerous things man could attempt, and safe passage was far from assured. Even the great certainties of time and death were undone within the folds of the warp’s tides. It was not a natural realm, if indeed it was a realm at all. There were none who understood its vagaries. To even attempt such an understanding would be to condemn oneself to madness. Some believed it a mirror for all man’s emotions, a maelstrom of passion and violence. Others believed it a place where nightmares were made real. Ronja knew it as the Sea of Souls, a place where the spirits of all raged against eternity. She swallowed hard. The warp was eternity and it was nothingness. The Geller field was all that protected the Victus and those aboard her from the raging energies enveloping them, and from the daemons that dwelt within the warp’s malevolent swell.

‘There was a flickering breach, a puncture in the field for the briefest of instants.’ The surveyor regained his composure.

‘You are certain it is sealed?’

‘Yes, mistress. The field is intact.’

‘Thank the Throne.’ Ronja took a breath, rubbing her thumbs together the way her grandmother had shown her. No matter how small the breach, a single lapse in the field could have doomed them to an eternity of torment. The ship should have been shattered, torn apart as the daemons rushed in to feast on their souls. Nothing but chance and fortune had saved them. ‘Who was in that section?’

‘Checking.’ The surveyor cast his gaze over a series of control panels as the rattling click of the cogitators intensified. ‘A few dozen serfs on sleep rotation, mistress. No essential personnel.’

Steeling herself, Ronja opened a channel to Chaplain Zophal.

‘Report.’ The Chaplain’s voice was a guttural rumble.

Despite herself, Ronja flinched. ‘Forgive the interruption, lord.’ She felt her throat burn dry as she swallowed the urge to beg for forgiveness. ‘The integrity of one of the sub-decks was momentarily compromised. There was–’

Zophal snarled. ‘Is it sealed?’

‘Yes, lord. We–’

‘Send me the deck location. I will ensure none have been tainted.’

‘Should I–’

‘Do nothing.’

Ronja winced at the static in her ear as Zophal cut the comm-feed. She steadied herself and tapped a series of buttons on her console, transferring details of the breach to the Chaplain’s helm. If a single serf had been exposed to the warp, corrupted by its touch, then daemons would be free to walk aboard the ship. Whether the serfs had been exposed or not, she knew they were dead. In this, there was no room for laxity or mercy. Zophal would kill them to be sure. A fact she was glad of.

‘Ensign Mikko.’

‘Yes, mistress?’

‘Inform the Gangmaster that we have a lost a full shift’s complement of labour.’ Ronja knew that there would be no time to rouse and ready a third shift until after they had translated and secured entry back into real space. ‘There will be no rotation for the next cycle. Have him double the stimms and endurance enhancers.’

Mikko nodded and carried out her order.

Ronja knew she was consigning the current work crew of serfs to death. When the stimms wore off, the serfs’ bodies would collapse into shock. They would die in agonised withdrawal.

‘Mistress Nokkan, Navigator Calix has signalled. We are approaching our exit.’

‘Very well. Have all weapon-servitors stand ready. Prepare sensoria for system-wide sweep. I want to know everything worth knowing within five minutes of translation.’

‘Aye, mistress.’

The background thrum of cogitators rose to an industrious clatter as Ronja’s orders were enacted. Below her, the rows of data-servitors, who stood ten abreast, shackled in the shallow trench that flanked both sides of the bridge’s main walkway, began to chatter incessantly, the metal studs of their teeth hammering out code onto bands of filament ribbon spilling from their mouths. Attendant serfs tore off the ribbon at regular intervals and passed it to the cohort of tech-adepts who shared the lower portion of the bridge chamber.

Ronja observed everything.

Sailing in the immaterium was never smooth but this journey had been more tumultuous than most. Even as the blast shields had closed over the occulus, and the engines had built power to translate them into the warp, the void shields had begun flaring, rippling with serpentine energy. The crew thought it to be an ill omen, a sign that the jump was cursed. Ronja had silenced such whispers and put such superstition from her mind. Only a fool worried about that which he could not affect. She had been vigilant and done her duty, and that had been enough. But now, on the brink of translation back into real space, the Victus was at her most vulnerable. A single mistake and the ship would be rent apart by the warring energies of her engines and the warp. Worse, if they rode the wrong current, even clipped it, just for an instant, they would be ripped along its path, tossed across space and time, lost in the truest sense of the word.

Ronja listened to everything. The pulse of the sensorium banks as they built power, the clamour of booted feet striding across the deck, and the metallic thunk of the door behind her as its mag-locks engaged, securing the bridge. She heard it all, everything, and then nothing, silence. She gripped her armrest, knowing the stillness to be a trick of her mind; the calm before the storm. The activity on the bridge reached a crescendo. The light above the occulus shone crimson.

Ronja opened the vox-link to the bridge crew. ‘Brace.’ She tensed.

The deck shuddered beneath her. The screech of ceramite, of a vessel tortured and stretched to the limits of its design, burned in her ears as the Victus tore back into real space.

‘Report.’ She touched her face with the back of her hand, wiping away a drop of blood from her nose, and cast her gaze over the bridge crew.

She knew that each of them experienced the shift in a different way. For her, it was always the same: a thousand children screamed, crying in anguish as fire consumed them. Yet never once had her jaw trembled or her eyes wept. Those who could not defend themselves had no place in the Imperium. Weakness, she had been taught since birth, was a cancer that would see all endeavours undone. The elders of her tribe had ruled by three simple maxims: those who did not hunt, starved; those who could not construct a dwelling, froze; and those who could not fight, died. Ronja felt the warming embrace of reassurance as she remembered the truths she had been raised on.

‘Translation complete. All ship–’ the comms-man began.

‘No! The flesh! The flesh hides the truth!’ One of the junior surveyors interrupted him, shrieking as she clawed at her face, peeling the skin from her cheeks. ‘We must look deeper. We must–’

Ronja drew her pistol and shot the women in the head. The charged round cut a neat hole through the woman’s eye socket, boiled her brain and left her body to slump to the ground.

‘Get her off my bridge,’ Ronja snarled. Weakness – there would be no salvation for the weak.

‘Yes, mistress.’ A hunched Chapter-serf detached himself from one of the bridge’s many alcoves and dragged the corpse from the chamber. Another crawled along behind him, mopping up the trail of blood with the slack of his tunic.

‘All ships accounted for, mistress,’ the comms-man finished his report, as the strike cruisers Shield of Baal and the Bleeding Fist blinked onto the central tactical hololith. They were joined a moment later by their escorts – the Merciless, the Butcher and the Redeemer. The three Gladius-class frigates fired boosters and spread out in standard tactical formation, covering the fleet’s perimeter in a wide sweep.

‘Surveyor, positional report.’ Ronja snapped the command as the Victus’s sensorium reached out to detail their surroundings.

‘All known system maps cross-referenced. Distance from Terra established,’ the surveyor said in clipped idiom, twitching as he processed the raft of data flooding through the data cable welded to the base of his skull. ‘Confirmed. We are in the Zurcon System.’

‘Inhabitants?’ Ronja regarded the hololith as the sector’s seven planets resolved into focus.

‘Three worlds are inhabited.’ The images of the three planets closest to the system’s centre began to pulse as the surveyor relayed the information.

Ronja manipulated the hololith, bringing the planets into sharp relief. ‘Ident-tag them – Primus, Secundus and Tertius.’

‘Aye, mistress…’ The surveyor paused. ‘Warships detected in Primus high orbit.’

‘How many?’ The Zurcon region hadn’t been charted since long before the Great War, and it had been a calculated risk to exit the warp so close to the system’s heart. Ronja had set the sensorium to fire staccato ranging pulses, starting with larger masses and scaling down. Although the information was staged, it came faster and provided a more comprehensive picture than a proximity burst that highlighted near objects and moved outwards.

‘Sixteen vessels in all. Five warships and a shoal of smaller craft.’ One by one, the ships appeared on the hololith. Clusters of information nodes hovered by each image as the Victus’s sensorium began gathering data on their class and armament.

‘Open the occulus.’ At Ronja’s command, the vast blast shield bordering the chamber’s prow edged up into a recess in the ceiling, revealing the metres-thick, reinforced armourglass that allowed them to peer out into the void. Ronja pulled a short-framed monocular from a pouch on her waist and pressed it to her eye. Twisting it clockwise, she felt her face twitch as the device locked to her bionic. She knew of Naval officers who had taken their own lives after their eyes had been replaced with such augmetics. Unable to recognise themselves in the flat grey of the pupils that stared back at them in the mirror, they had descended into madness, cutting into their own flesh with a cruelty and vigour normally reserved for a foe. Ronja smiled as she looked out into the void, the cogitators in her eyes allowing her to see every particle of space dust. She focused the lens towards Primus and saw the faint flare of engines powering up. ‘Range?’

‘The ships will be in comms range within three minutes. Weapons range in a further seven.’

‘Mistress,’ said another of the surveyors. ‘There are two more vessels moving in from the system’s edge.’

‘Classification?’

‘A pair of light cruisers burning at attack speed.’

‘Hail them.’

‘No response.’

Ronja stared at the blips on the hololith as they closed on the Victus and the Flesh Tearers fleet.

‘Mistress.’ The surveyor turned in his chair to face Ronja, his augmented eyes wide, blinking red in alarm. ‘They are charging weapons.’

‘Which ships?’

‘All of them.’

Ronja looked to the tactical hololith as the ships bordering Primus flickered red. A moment later, an innumerable number of klaxons began wailing as they called the Victus to battle.

They shall know no fear.

The Emperor ordained it, and so it is.

He cast us from iron and muscle, and loosed us upon the stars.

He clad us in armour, and cut weakness from our souls.

He made us angels.

But we are angels born of blood. Anger simmers in our core, a fire kindled within our hearts. It is a beast bred for destruction, nurtured by the blood in our veins. It begs to be unleashed, and threatens to consume us, lest we allow it to burn.

Rage.

It is the cruellest of ironies that the Great War took everything from us but this.

We are burning avatars of death, and we care not who we claim.

Two

Anger

Moments. Moments was all it took for the largest and most powerful ship in the Flesh Tearers arsenal to ready itself for war. Weapon ports ground open, their shutters hoisted free by lengths of chain, each link stained by the sweat and blood of vat-muscled serfs. Weapon batteries hummed in rhythmic pulses as they built to firing power. The engines bucked in their housings, rumbling as they prepared for sudden acceleration. Corridors, access ducts and intersections filled with gun-servitors, the red pinpricks of their targeting lasers casting the dark passages in hellish relief. Three hundred Flesh Tearers assembled in the assault bays, stowing themselves in drop pods that were lowered from their cradles into launch position, or boarding the Thunderhawk gunships that sat fuelled on deck.

Every non-active serf had been thawed and pumped full of adrenal-stimms, handed a welding las and dispersed around the ship to await signs of structural damage. The bio-freezing was a harsh and unusual practice. It left serfs disorientated and ate away at their sense of self. After several incubations most behaved more like servitors than men. It was a necessary process, though. The conditions aboard a Flesh Tearers warship were spartan and the lives of serfs short; there were enough things vying to kill them without age lending a hand. Replenishing their numbers meant withdrawing from combat, an act Amit was unwilling to countenance.

‘Status?’ Ronja winced as a series of spiked mechadendrites emerged from her throne and stabbed into the auxiliary jacks studding her spine. Her body spasmed as the serpentine cabling locked in place with a clacking hiss. A tremor rippled across her skin, distorting her features as her nervous system adjusted to the mono-molecular electro-filaments that slipped from the tip of the mechadendrites to infiltrate her musculature and coil around her heart. She was now linked directly to the Victus’s power core and regulatory cogitators. The electros would keep her mind and body functioning even beyond death, allowing her to command the vessel until the battle was over.

The storm of motion had lasted only moments. The clamour of movement ceased, the agitated reports of cogitators settled, and the klaxons dulled and fell silent.

‘Providence measures complete, mistress. All hands signal full readiness.’ Bohdan, Ronja’s aide, looked like a badly dubbed pict recording as he spoke, the movements of his mouth at odds with the words coming from it. One week out of the training schola and Bohdan had been late to duty. He had wasted precious seconds straightening his uniform and slicking his hair back. She had seen to it that he would never look polished again, injecting the muscles of his face with a wasting mix of chemicals. In time, if he redeemed himself, she would have his mouth replaced by a vox implant and see that any longer-lasting effects were retarded. If not, she would leave him to devolve into a drooling mess.

Ronja glanced over the data-slate Bohdan handed her and nodded; it confirmed what she already knew to be true – the Victus was battle ready. Deep in the marrow of her bones, Ronja felt the battle-barge’s machine-spirit. ‘Helmsman–’

She paused as the bridge doors hissed open and the familiar thud of armoured boots sounded over the background murmur of her crew. ‘Master Amit.’ Ronja dipped her head in greeting as the lord of the Flesh Tearers ascended the ramp to her command platform. The squad of armsmen guarding the platform issued hurried salutes as they stepped aside, visibly shaken as the Chapter Master moved past them.

It was a sentiment she sympathised with. Amit’s presence made her uneasy. His temperament was not well suited to the detached nature of Naval combat. The tension in his body was palpable. He was like a caged beast, constantly pacing in an effort to exhaust the energy he’d sooner be using to rip apart his foe. Once, he had ordered her to let an enemy vessel close, to let its warriors board the Victus. He had spoken of sparing the vessel in order to salvage it. Ronja ground her teeth at the memory. She knew even then that he was lying.

‘Shipmistress.’ Amit shot her a look in greeting before shifting his gaze to the hololith. ‘What do we know of our enemy?’

‘Very little, lord. Judging by their warships and engagement pattern, they are, or at least were, human. They have made no declaration of allegiance or intent.’

‘They powered their weapons?’

Ronja nodded.

‘Then their intent is clear enough.’ Amit stood a moment, studying the hololith. ‘Bring them death.’

‘Lord.’ Ronja hid a smile and placed her fist against her chest in salute. Amit had appraised the situation and not found her lacking. He would leave her to her task. Pride swelled in Ronja’s heart as she turned back to the main tactical hololith. ‘Helmsman, hold position. Ask the Fist and Shield to form up and stand ready,’ said Ronja. She would never dare issue an order to a Flesh Tearer, let alone the captain of a strike cruiser. Even with Amit’s support, she had no doubt that such an act would see her swiftly join the ranks of drooling servitors that swept the waste from the engine vents. If I were lucky, she thought, darkly.

‘Vox-link established, mistress. Request relayed.’

‘Launch torpedoes, full spread.’ Ronja fixed her gaze on the tactical hololith as the Zurconian fleet closed on them.

‘Aye, mistress.’

Six triangular ident-icons sprang onto the display as the silos in the Victus’s prow snapped open and a salvo of melta torpedoes shot into the void. The icons streaked across the tactical display as the torpedoes continued to accelerate, their onboard thrusters hurling them towards the Zurconian ships.

‘Second salvo ready, mistress.’ The metallic grille replacing the gunnery serf’s mouth leant his words a gnarled tone.

The sound pleased Ronja. It served as a reminder that those controlling the Victus’s weapons batteries were strangers to both pity and mercy. ‘Fire.’ At her order, another clutch of torpedoes blinked onto the hololith.

Her eyes narrowed as she shifted her gaze to the far side of the hololith and the Zurconian ships, weighing them up, measuring their strength through virtue of the endless stream of data scrolling across the display. Compared to my ship they are… She shook her head and muttered a curse, admonishing herself for allowing such a notion to enter her thoughts. The Victus was not hers. She was its mistress, and served only as long as its machine-spirit would have her.

The Victus was a mighty vessel, capable of challenging any ship the Imperium had in its arsenal, but the Flesh Tearers flagship lacked the long-range firepower afforded by lance batteries. Like all Space Marine vessels, it was designed for surgical attacks, angling in with only its super-reinforced prow armour showing, to deliver a barrage of ordnance before peeling off and diving back for another attack run. At current range, the spread of torpedoes would be unlikely to cause serious damage to the Zurconian ships. Indeed, that was not her intention. The torpedoes would slow the Zurconians down, force them to break formation.

‘Third salvo loaded, mistress,’ said the gunnery serf.

‘Launch.’ Ronja allowed herself a smile. Endless drills and combat simulations had birthed a crew at peak efficiency. Yet she knew that sweat in training was not the only cost. Far below, in the ordnance decks, dozens of serfs had already given their lives. The second and third salvos had been ready too quickly; there was no way the serfs could have cleared the firing chamber. As each subsequent salvo was fired, the preceding gang of loaders would have been incinerated, boiled to ash by the backwash of thrusters.

‘If they want us, then they’ll have to fly through hell to get to us,’ she said, revelling in a rush of adrenaline. Death in the void was as cold a thing as man had witnessed, but the thought of it warmed her veins like thrice-distilled rice wine.

At the edge of her mind, a press of system reports clamoured for attention. She ignored them, her eyes remaining fixed on the hololith, studying the Zurconians as the torpedoes streaked towards them. She tracked and interpreted every fluctuation in engine output, each subtle change in trajectory and course. Patience – a single gap in their line was all they needed. She formed the words in her mind as she felt the Victus’s machine-spirit rail against her caution. It wanted to attack. To unleash the fury of its guns. To pict-record the silent screams of the dying. It wanted to kill. Now. Patience, she repeated, layering her measured tone over the snarl of the ship. When the time came, they would strike hard and fast, exploiting the Zurconians’ inevitable error before they were even aware of their mistake.

‘Comms, open a channel to the strike cruisers.’ Ronja issued the order without shifting her gaze.

‘Mistress.’ The comms-man nodded and manipulated a series of dials on his console. In response a pair of hololiths stuttered to life on the arms of Ronja’s command throne. The images did not hold the crisp detail of the tactical hololith or onboard pict viewers, and looked to be assembled from thick grains of light stood on top of one another. On the left, Captain Aamon of the Bleeding Fist. On the right, Captain Eligus of the Shield of Baal.

‘Greetings, lord captains.’ Ronja addressed the Flesh Tearers without looking at them, her attention fixed on the Zurconian fleet.

‘Shipmistress,’ Aamon returned her greeting.

Eligus said nothing.

‘The Victus will draw the Zurconians’ fire and weaken their shields,’ Ronja began. ‘I will drive a wedge through their formation, allowing you to move in from the flanks and pick them apart a ship at a time.’

‘As the Blood wills it.’ Aamon’s assent was typically brief.

‘We will hold position as requested, but do not have us waiting long,’ Eligus spat, his contempt for Ronja as obvious as the thick scar that bisected his face.

She bit back a reply. She knew he hated her. The captain of the Fourth Company was first among the Flesh Tearers warship captains, and had openly questioned Amit’s decision to place her in command of the Victus, an honour that should have fallen to him. True, she was not as physically strong or robust as a Space Marine, and death would likely render her a soulless husk long before it claimed Eligus, but she had been crafted to be a shipmistress. It was her sole purpose for being. The cognitive and neural enhancements wired into her mind made her sharper than even an Adeptus Astartes. Moreover, she was not subject to the same outbursts of temper that led to rash decisions. No, in this theatre of war she was neither their subordinate nor their equal. She was their better. A tight smile of resolve drew across her face as the Victus’s machine-spirit growled in agreement.

‘The escorts will–’ Ronja paused, distracted by a line of code spiralling across the hololith. A shiver ran up her cheek, terminating in her eye as she brought the data-packet to the fore of her mind. ‘Two of the Zurconian cruisers are breaking off from the main formation. They will encroach on our flank within ten minutes, Terran. Lord Aamon, the Bleeding Fist is best placed to head them off. The Redeemer can provide support.’

A bark of static preceded Aamon’s reply. ‘Agreed.’

‘Lord Eligus, the Shield must be ready to accelerate to attack speed once the Zurconians break formation. We’ll cut across their right flank and link up with the Bleeding Fist to swing around their rear.’

Eligus grunted and cut the holo-feed.

‘Full thruster burn, bring us to strafing speed.’ Sergeant Namtar felt the shift as the Redeemer gathered momentum. He drew his hand through the shimmering holo-display projecting from the command console. In response, everything but the two Zurconian vessels he was hunting and the Flesh Tearers strike cruiser Bleeding Fist faded from view. ‘Captain Aamon, we have your flank,’ Namtar signalled the Fist.

‘Acknowledged. Target the lead vessel then rejoin the Victus,’ Aamon’s voice sounded in Namtar’s helm.

‘As the Blood wills it.’ Namtar regarded the Zurconian vessels as they swelled to fill his hololith. They were each many times the size of the Redeemer. His ship was as a child challenging a pair of gods. He grinned. As a novitiate Scout, stood in defence of Holy Terra, he had cut down a foul servant of the Archenemy – a many-limbed beast that died in pieces, ripped apart by a thousand strokes of Namtar’s chainsword. He frowned at the memory. Size didn’t matter. Aggression and tenacity were everything. He would tear strips off the Zurconian vessels, blasting apart their hulls until they were reduced to burned-out shells. ‘Valac, their ident-tags.’ Namtar barked the command, eager to know the names of his foes.

‘Sensorium scanning now,’ the Techmarine answered without looking up from his console, the sand-red of his armour cast in copper relief by the low light of the bridge.

Namtar nodded in approval. Valac had been on board for less than a Terran week, and had yet to prove himself in combat. His predecessor, Techmarine Ose, had died in the Redeemer’s last engagement.

‘Scan complete. The lead Zurconian vessel is the Paladin. The other is the Divine Light.’ Strobing ident-tags flashed onto the holo-display as Valac spoke.

‘The Divine Light, again?’ Brother Zegan’s voice was thick with disdain. The Redeemer’s gunner was a veteran of Naval engagements and had served on the Gladius-class frigate since before Namtar took command. ‘It seems that only the unimaginative are allowed to name vessels in this millennium,’ he snorted, referring to a cruiser they had recently destroyed. Yet his jest was a thin mask for his rage: that such heretics would claim anything as divine burned him to his core.

‘You’d rather we let this one pass, Zegan?’ Namtar smiled. Unlike the vast strike cruisers and battle-barges it accompanied to war, the Redeemer was a relatively small ship. Besides Namtar, Zegan and Valac were the only other Flesh Tearers aboard. The three sat close together in the armoured housing of the bridge’s raised dais, and were as close as any brotherhood.

‘I’d rather we had a different honorific to write on the wall when we kill these wretches.’ Zegan cast Namtar a dark grin, indicating a bulkhead to his left. The plate of adamantium was rough-hewn, scarred by the manifold names of the ships the Redeemer had destroyed.

‘You need to use a smaller blade if we’re to fit anything else on there,’ said Namtar.

Zegan laughed. ‘I’ll see what I can find.’

‘Bring us in high over its bow, drop hard when we reach battery range, and bring us to attack speed along its underside,’ said Namtar.

Valac muttered a raft of machine prayers as he began programming the course into the navigation and tactical systems. Below him, in the data-trenches, a mass of servitors and cogitators chattered with increased fervour, turning his commands into something the Redeemer’s machine-spirit could interpret.

‘Three minutes to engagement range,’ said Zegan. On the gunner’s mark, a slew of icons trailed across his console, indicating that the legion of servitors and Chapter-serfs manning the lower decks were battle ready.

Namtar consulted the hololith. The Bleeding Fist was trailing to their port side. Tapping a button on his console, he signalled attack readiness to Brother-Captain Aamon.

‘Incoming fire,’ Zegan said as the Redeemer’s sensorium registered a beam of super-heated energy exploding off their port side. Yet his warning held no trace of alarm. Despite the torrent of lethal weapons fire stabbing towards them, the Flesh Tearer could have been reporting a power outage in one of the chamber’s luminators.

‘Entering ordinance range in five,’ said Valac.

‘All hands brace for impact.’ Namtar issued the order over the ship-wide comm, and gripped the armrests of his command throne.

The Redeemer was too small and moving much too fast for the Paladin to lock on to with its lance batteries, but the Zurconian cruiser’s gun batteries would throw out a dense wash of explosive missiles and plasma bursts. Without the protection of its shields, the Redeemer would be as a naked man swimming through an ocean of glass.

‘Shields holding within tolerance.’ Valac relayed the update as the Redeemer shuddered, rocked by the Paladin’s weapons. The frigate’s shields flared as it drove deeper into the maelstrom, exploding with incandescent energy as they repelled the worst of the fire.

‘Hold course.’ Namtar leant forwards in his chair, glaring out through the main occulus as the crenellated hull of the Zurconian vessel loomed large, rushing to meet them like the side of some giant mountain. ‘Keep our approach tight to their prow.’ Like most warships, the bulk of the Paladin’s weapon batteries lined its flanks. A tight insertion line was all that stood between the Redeemer and oblivion. If they drifted too far to either of its sides, they were dead.

Seven thunderous heartbeats passed as they closed on the Paladin. Warning sigils and strobing luminators flashed over them as the Redeemer continued to shudder, ravaged by the swathe of ordnance loosed against it. Finally, Valac spoke. ‘We’ve cleared the prow.’

‘Now, down.’ Namtar snapped the command, bracing himself as the Redeemer dived. What his ship lacked in firepower, it more than made up for in thrust and agility. The hull around them squealed in protest as the manoeuvring boosters fired on full, arresting their course and spearing them downwards under the Paladin’s belly. Even with the motion dampeners in his armour and the mag-locks holding him in his command throne, Namtar had to fight to stay in his seat. ‘Target launch bays and gun hatches.’

‘Firing,’ Zegan said.

The deck shuddered as the Redeemer’s weapon batteries opened up in anger, raking the Paladin with tight streams of plasma and searing laser blasts.

‘Optimum range achieved,’ Valac said as the Redeemer closed to terminal distance with the Paladin. It was a testament to both the Redeemer’s construction and Valac’s skill as a pilot that they did not simply collide with the Zurconian vessel.

‘Launching.’ Zegan tapped a series of dials on his console, opening the Redeemer’s silos to send a barrage of missiles up into the Paladin. ‘Pass complete. Clearing their aft in three.’

‘Get us out of range,’ Namtar ordered.

The Redeemer’s weapons fell silent as it accelerated to maximum speed, boosting clear of the Paladin before its guns could reacquire them.

‘And so we turn our backs and flee,’ Zegan cursed low.

Namtar shared his brother’s frustration, but ignored the remark.

‘Bring us around for another pass. Valac, damage assessment.’ Namtar sat forwards, eager for the Techmarine’s report.

Valac said nothing, his back to the brother-sergeant.

‘Valac, report.’

The Techmarine turned in his chair, his brow twisted with confusion. ‘Negative impacts. We… we hit nothing,’ Valac stammered like a damaged servitor, his flat machine-tone incongruous with the bewildered look in his eyes.

‘Nothing?’ Namtar spat the question, rising from his chair to close with the occulus.

‘Valac is right,’ Zegan confirmed. ‘We did not hit the Paladin.’

‘Then what were we shooting at? The Divine Light?’ Namtar swallowed the knot of rage rising in his gut. ‘Valac, are the ident-tags off?’

‘No. The sensorium is functioning within normal limits. We simply hit–’

‘We hit nothing,’ Zegan finished Valac’s sentence with a snarl.

‘How in–’ Namtar was cut short, thrown forwards into a pair of human serfs as the Redeemer convulsed, rocked by a blistering hail of lance fire. The serfs died instantly, crushed by Namtar’s armoured bulk, their bones breaking with a wet crunch. ‘Evasive!’ Namtar roared as another shock wave pitched him into a rear bulkhead.

‘Shields are failing across all decks,’ said Zegan.

‘What in the Emperor’s name?’ Namtar’s mind raced as he climbed back into his command throne. ‘Valac…’ He looked to the Techmarine for answers.

‘Improbable,’ Valac stammered. ‘Impact trajectory indicates the Paladin is to our starboard.’

‘We’ve got less than a minute until their lance batteries recharge for firing,’ warned Zegan.

‘Noted, but we cannot evade what we can’t see coming,’ Namtar spat through gritted teeth, and consulted the tactical hololith. The shimmering display still showed the Zurconian vessel to their aft and port. ‘This makes no sense. Valac recalibra–’

The rest of Namtar’s order died in his throat as the Redeemer shuddered and convulsed, assailed by a withering barrage of fire.

The Flesh Tearers ship was unshielded, naked in the void. The fusillade stripped away the Redeemer’s armour plating and blasted great holes in its outer decks. Shrill klaxons and secondary detonations fought for dominance as the Zurconian guns continued to fire, hammering the Redeemer’s hull until it seemed as though the stars themselves were trying to force their way inside.

‘Blood! How in Sanguinius’s name did they get into battery range?’ Namtar’s voice was a guttural snarl as he cast his gaze around the bridge in vain search for an answer.

The chamber was broken. Adamantium bulkheads trembled as jagged cracks widened and fractured them. Flame sped across the walls and dripped from the ceiling like wax. Stuttering, red warning lights flickered in pained bursts, throwing strobing light across dead serfs and sparking servitors.

‘Port-side weapons disabled. Venting engine plasma.’ Valac began listing the damage as another fusillade wracked the Redeemer, sending a torrent of explosions tearing through the bridge to shower the Flesh Tearers in shrapnel and the burned remains of serfs.

‘Blood of heretics!’ Namtar smashed his fist down onto a console and shrugged a lump of charred flesh from his shoulder guard. ‘Valac, all remaining power to engines.’ Punching a series of buttons on his console, he manipulated the hololith until it panned out, projecting an image of the wider sector. ‘There, Valac – get us behind that moon.’ Namtar indicated a small moon to their port side as the Redeemer rocked under another hail of fire.

‘Course relayed, engaging.’

Namtar was forced back into his chair as the Techmarine executed his order and the Redeemer sped towards sanctuary. ‘Zegan, Alert the Fist–’

‘Brother-sergeant…’ Zegan interrupted, rising from his chair to gesture to the occulus.

Namtar followed his gaze, watching in awed disbelief as the Bleeding Fist drifted past them. It was a ruin, a shattered wreck consumed by fire. It seemed to stall, to hang suspended a moment, before an incandescent beam of energy flickered out from one of the Zurconian vessels and sliced it apart.

‘Emperor’s mercy…’ The words fell from Namtar’s lips as the two broken halves of the Fist slowly tumbled away from one another. ‘Zegan, survivors?’ he asked, as the shrapnel remains of the Fist began to collide with the Redeemer’s hull.

Zegan tapped a series of buttons on his console, and a cluster of icons denoting Flesh Tearers craft resolved onto the tactical hololith. ‘Five drop pods and a pair of Thunderhawks ejected from its starboard side. They’re burning off towards the planet. Arrival in…’ He paused, turning to regard Namtar. ‘The Divine Light has launched a wing of fighters in pursuit.’

‘Will they make it?’ Namtar already knew the answer.

‘No.’ Valac’s voice was heavy with regret. ‘The fighters will intercept them in one minute fifty seconds.’

‘Blood!’ Namtar roared, gripping the armrests of his command throne so tightly that they came away in his fists. ‘Take us back in.’

‘We will not survive another salvo from the Paladin.’ Valac kept his head low as he spoke.

Namtar snarled. ‘Do it.’

‘As the Blood wills it.’ The Techmarine nodded, carrying out Namtar’s orders.

‘Zegan, target the fighters,’ ordered Namtar.

‘We need more speed or we will not catch them in time.’ Zegan looked to Valac.

‘This is all the thrust we have. The engines on deck seven through fifty are out.’

Namtar felt his gut twist in frustration as he watched the Zurconian fighters accelerate ahead of them on the tactical hololith. ‘Launch our remaining missiles.’

‘We’re still beyond effective range,’ cautioned Zegan.

‘Agreed, but we’re close enough to rattle them, slow them down a bit.’ Namtar did well to keep the desperation from his tone. ‘We need only gain a few hundred kilometres.’

Zegan nodded, opening the Redeemer’s silos to loose a dozen missiles in pursuit of the Zurconian fighters. A moment later, the Redeemer shuddered again, and a fresh wave of warning klaxons erupted into life.

‘Shut them off,’ snapped Namtar. ‘Report.’

‘One of the missiles detonated in its silo. We have breaches on half a dozen decks,’ said Zegan, his voice dispassionate, his gaze fixed on the weapons console. ‘The others are reaching maximum range now. Detonating… It worked, we’re gaining on the fighters. Battery range in fifteen seconds.’

Namtar stared out through the occulus, his eyes fixed on the pinpricks of light that were the fighters’ thrusters. In his mind’s eye, he was alone with them. He could no longer see the flames licking their way across his bridge or those coating Valac’s armour. He was oblivious to the charnel smell of the dead serfs that littered the deck. Even the fulgurant crack spread around the occulus itself was invisible to him. There were only the fighters and the rising beats of his hearts as they counted down the seconds to–

‘Range,’ barked Zegan.

‘Fire!’ Namtar clenched his fist, wishing for all the universe he could crush the Zurconian craft in his gauntlet.

The Redeemer trembled, shedding more of its fractured hull, as it brought its weapons to bear. The vicious salvo tore apart the Zurconian fighters, obliterating fully half of them in a halo of explosions.

‘Status?’ Namtar’s voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

‘There are three left. They have repositioned to our port side.’ Valac struggled to indicate the remaining fighters on the hololith, his left arm pinned in place by a fallen support strut.

‘Heretic filth,’ Namtar spat. ‘I will not be denied. Kill the engines, and bring us hard about.’

‘Yes, brother-sergeant.’ Valac knew it was only speed that had protected the Redeemer thus far. He knew that the manoeuvre would be the final one he executed. ‘It has been my honour.’

The Redeemer groaned as it turned, its hull emitting a tortured wail like the death throes of a giant, primordial sea beast. Plasma shells and laser blasts hounded it as it slowed, punishing it for its arrogance. The noise was overwhelming, the destruction incessant as round after explosive round struck the Redeemer, mauling it, stripping its hull and smashing its innards. Thousands of bodies bled off into the void as the outer decks crumbled and were torn away.

Amid the turmoil, Namtar was still. Unmoving, he didn’t register Valac’s death, nor the collapse of the occulus and the sundering of his bridge. Not even the adamantium fragment that speared his chest drew his attention from the embers of the Zurconian fighters as the Redeemer’s guns blasted them from existence.

‘The drop pods?’ asked Namtar, unsure if he’d find an answer.

‘They’ve made planetfall.’ Zegan’s voice was wet, his throat and lungs thick with arterial fluid.

Namtar managed a nod. ‘The Blood keep us,’ he grinned, unbowed as his life vanished in fire.

‘Negative returns. Zero hits on target. No course deviation,’ relayed one of the servitors assembled under the main tactical hololith, its measured machine-tone at odds with the incredibility of the news.

‘Impossible.’ Ronja rose from her chair and stared up at the hololith. The Zurconian battle line remained intact; not a single torpedo had found its mark. All sixteen vessels were continuing on course, powering towards the Victus and the Flesh Tearers fleet. ‘How can this be? How could–’

‘Shipmistress,’ the comms-man stammered. ‘Mistress, the Bleeding Fist. It’s gone.’

‘Clarify,’ Ronja snapped, allowing her frustration to quash the wave of panic threatening to steal the order from her thoughts.

‘The Bleeding Fist has been destroyed.’

‘Confirm that report.’ Ronja could feel Amit’s eyes upon her. If she showed a single moment’s hesitation, he would take control of the Victus and all that she had fought for, all that she had suffered, would be for nothing. A moment’s laxity was all it would take for her to be cast down and for all of her glories to be forgotten.

‘I have confirmation. We received an audio transmission from Brother-Sergeant Namtar of the Redeemer.’

‘Hail him, now.’

‘I cannot.’ The serf was death-white, as though what had transpired had been his fault. ‘The Redeemer’s energy signature was lost a moment after we received the recording.’

‘Survivors?’ asked Ronja.

‘According to the Redeemer’s report, five drop pods and two Thunderhawks escaped the Fist’s destruction and made planetfall, but we have had no contact from them.’

‘Keep trying to reach them,’ said Ronja, though for the moment she was far more concerned with the pair of Zurconian ships the Bleeding Fist and Redeemer had failed to intercept. The Zurconian battleships were now bearing down on the Victus and the Shield of Baal. ‘We cannot allow them to flank us.’ Ronja’s hands darted across her throne’s control panel as she input a series of coordinates. ‘Comms-man, signal the Shield of Baal. Have them attack along this vector.’ A series of strobing way-markers drifted onto the main hololith as Ronja worked. ‘Order the Merciless and the Butcher back into close formation. Have them form up to our aft – our shields and hull should offer them some protection.’

‘Aye, mistress. Orders transmitted.’

No sooner had the serf spoken than Captain Eligus’s voice crackled over the main comm. ‘That path will take us right through the middle of the enemy fleet.’

‘I am aware of that, lord captain.’ Ronja kept all trace of emotion from her response. She would not lower herself to Eligus’s wild rants. ‘Faced with such odds we have little choice. We cannot outmanoeuvre that number of vessels. We have only the speed of our engines and the skill of our crew to our advantage. We’ll hit them hard, disrupt their formation and turn for another pass before they can regroup. Unless of course you have a better idea?’

‘Do not test me, woman,’ Eligus snarled and cut the feed.

Ronja smiled, glad to have irritated the Flesh Tearer. ‘Helmsman, flood the plasma drives, engines to full speed. Gunnery, power bombardment cannons. Lock targets for close-fire ordnance.’

Flanked by the Shield and with the Merciless and Butcher tucked tight to its hull, the Victus raced towards the Zurconian fleet, and into a maelstrom of violence. Powerful beams of lance fire flickered out to strike the battle-barge’s prow armour. Its shields flared and shattered in a halo of blue-white under the sustained fire, beaten to submission by the columns of super-heated energy that slammed into them. Undeterred, the Victus continued to close, but the Flesh Tearers flagship did not go unpunished for its arrogance.

Bringing their broadsides to bear, the Zurconians scoured away the ornate detailing and armoured statues studding the Victus’s prow. Under a relentless fusillade of plasma and laser rounds, the battle-barge’s ridged plating buckled and peeled away, leaving the outer layer of adamantium to crack and crumble.

‘Optimum range achieved.’ The gunnery serf had to shout to be heard over the concussive impacts riddling the Victus.

Ronja rose from her throne and gripped the command rail with both hands. ‘Let us teach these heretics the meaning of wrath. Fire.’

On her command, the Flesh Tearers vessels let loose their wrath.

It took all of Ronja’s restraint to remain still as her heart rate quickened. She felt her muscles twitch as they swelled with blood. A shiver of disquiet knotted her breath as all her emotions tried to occupy her at once. She grinned, her focus drawn to a narrow horizon, revelling in the adrenaline flooding through her as the Victus shuddered and its bombardment cannons fired. At such close range, no shields would be proof against the barrage of magma shells. The Zurconians would be annihilated, their armoured flanks stripped and their innards broiled away.

‘Capacitors cycling, gun crews rotating, making ready for second volley,’ the gunnery serf said as secondary vibrations shook the battle-barge and it opened up with every other weapon in its arsenal. Plasma blasts joined laser rounds and clusters of torpedoes in a hail of destruction meant to remove what remained of the Zurconian fleet.

‘Surveyor, damage report.’ Ronja was only half listening for a response. The blow they’d dealt the Zurconians was crippling. Her attention had already shifted to plotting the next attack run.

‘Negative impacts… Targets…’ The surveyor turned and stared up at the tactical hololith as the icons denoting the Zurconian ships vanished. ‘Targets have gone.’

‘What in the name of the Throne…’ Ronja’s voice was weak with disbelief as she regarded the hololith. ‘Recycle the sensoria. Confirm enemy positions. Launch a cluster of way-buoys. Someone, anyone, find me something to fire on.’

‘Battleships inbound!’ Another of the surveyors spoke, his voice shrill with alarm, as the tactical hololith updated to show the Zurconian fleet in a position to cut across the Victus’s port side.

Ronja gripped her command rail and stared, slack-jawed, at the hololith.

There was no time to do anything.

Nuriel threw a hand out, bracing himself on the walls of the corridor as the deck shuddered violently beneath him. He groaned, ignoring the hurried serfs and gun-servitors that trundled past him as he slunk back to his cell. Around him, the ship continued to quake.

‘Librarian, do you need aid?’

Nuriel turned to find Brother Sylol, his black gauntlet outstretched. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I…’ He paused, a wave of nausea washing over him. The other Flesh Tearer seemed to blur in front of him, the edges of his armour softening until Nuriel could no longer focus. He blinked hard in an effort to clear his vision. Nuriel grunted; Amit had hit him harder than he thought. Wiping his eyes he looked again at Sylol. He was glowing.

A faint line of white energy traced the Flesh Tearer’s outline, riming the edges of his jump pack and spreading out to form etheric pinions.

‘Brother Nuriel?’ Sylol’s face creased in concern.

Nuriel stared at him, transfixed, his fingers reaching out to touch the shimmering halo.

This time it was Nuriel who shuddered. His body convulsed as he touched the light; his muscles seized and cramped, toppling him to the floor in their sudden palsy. He coughed up a mouthful of ashen phlegm and lay still. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, dragging him into cold darkness, before reopening on a world he didn’t recognise.

Jagged structures of black rockcrete crowded the landscape, stabbing up from the ground in irregular columns. The largest of them towered up past the edge of Nuriel’s vision, their peaks hidden in layers of malachite smog. They were as sentinels, standing watch over the world below. Nuriel coughed, dropping to one knee as his body adjusted to the noxious atmosphere. The action sent a sliver of pain through his shin. He glanced down at the ground. A carpet of cracked and splintered bone cut into the tissue of his leg. Several larger pieces were cast around like morbid tombstones. Nuriel’s gaze settled on a skull. It was badly damaged but there was no mistaking the thickened brow of a Space Marine.

My armour? Nuriel touched a hand reflexively to his chest, feeling the warm elastic of flesh where there should have been the rigid cold of ceramite. He was naked, stripped of both war-plate and carapace. How? Even as the thought formed in his mind, his hands reached for weapons that too were gone.

A faint noise drifted from behind, stirring a breeze that felt like ice against his skin. Nuriel turned around.

‘Sanguinius’s blood…’

Startled, he dropped onto his back and scrambled backwards, ignoring the gashes the bone-riven ground tore across his body. A towering edifice of light loomed large over him. It needled up into the sky, shimmering with impossible brightness, like a star bent and melded by the will of some divine architect. Yet its light was contained within itself: not a single sliver bled off to light the darkness enveloping the world around it.

Nuriel tensed as the sound came again, his eyes searching for its source. It sounded again, clearer this time. A shrill squawking, the hateful scream of an incensed avian creature. He looked to the base of the gleaming needle as a pall of darkness formed. It spread out as the sound intensified, growing larger, speeding towards Nuriel.

Pushing up to a crouch, Nuriel reached down and took up a fragment of bone in each hand. At that moment he would have traded a limb for the reassuring weight of his force blade, but he had killed with less and he would do so again.

The darkness screeched and drove towards him in a final surge.

Nuriel roared.

The pall burst before him like black glass shattered by a hammer blow. The shards spun away, striking the ground to coalesce into blackened humanoids. Nuriel pushed to the balls of his feet, spreading his arms and shifting his gaze from one humanoid to another. There were six of them. Each was head and shoulders taller than he. Crystalline feathers covered their body like armour, and their arms ended in barbed talons. Save for their faces, they were the colour of darkness, a shade of black reserved for the emptiness of the void. Their faces were blank orbs that shone with the same radiance as the tower. Nuriel felt a wave of revulsion ripple through his core; rarely had light heralded so little hope.

The humanoids attacked.

Nuriel charged.

He sprinted towards the one nearest him, knowing his only hope was to break through the cordon, to smash one apart in quick order and turn around in time to face the others.

The humanoid met him head on.

Nuriel drove his fists out in front of his chest, raising his elbows to guard against a counterstrike, and speared the shards of bone into the humanoid’s breast. His attack met no resistance, not the snap of armour or the reluctant yielding of flesh. Nuriel found himself falling, tumbling forwards. He dropped into a roll, rising in time to parry a talon arcing towards his head. Snarling, he pushed up, throwing his weight into a right cross. He connected with the thing’s face with enough force to shatter a bulkhead. The glowing orb sparked and crackled, and the humanoid vanished, reappearing on Nuriel’s flank.

Nuriel cast his gaze around. The others were almost on top of him. Though the effort pierced his skull like a hot iron, Nuriel summoned his gifts, focusing his will into a bolt of energy and releasing it towards the humanoid. It broke apart under the blast, fracturing into dark shards. Nuriel let his head drop, fighting the urge to submit as the shards drifted on the wind, coalescing back into a whole.

‘Die!’ he cried out in frustration, and attacked. Rage was all he had left, all that would see him through. It lent power to his limbs and strength to his blows. He attacked and attacked, fighting in vain until he tired. The humanoids had continued to slip around him, insubstantial as ghosts. Their talons peeled him open, cutting him until his flesh was ragged and hung from his body in torn strips.

Breathless, near death, Nuriel collapsed to the ground.

‘It is the oldest adage, is it not, Librarian? That all warfare is based on deception.’

Nuriel looked up to see the Warrior standing over him, his blade raised defensively. Like Nuriel, the Warrior was devoid of his armour, but his skin was the same blood-red as his war-plate had been, and the slabs of muscle crowding his limbs seemed harder than any ceramite.

‘You…’ was all Nuriel could manage.

The Warrior pivoted, bringing his blade round and down in a wide arc that bisected one of the humanoids. He darted forwards, delivering another cut that tore apart the thing even as it tried to reform.

‘They would have you believe them at your front, only to stab you in the back.’ The Warrior turned, slicing a talon off as it reached for his throat. ‘Yet they are not even behind you. Theirs is a far cleverer deception.’ He pulled a dagger from the hilt of his blade and threw it into the distance. The humanoids closest to him exploded in shrill torment.

Nuriel heard a wet cry and a body slump to the ground. ‘How…?’

‘Do not look with your eyes, Nuriel. You were given gifts for a reason.’

Nuriel clenched his fist against the pain wracking his body and focused his mind, casting his senses around him. The Warrior had been right. The dark humanoids were nothing but projections, psychic apparitions conjured by a coven of humans stood in the near distance. ‘Treacherous curs,’ Nuriel cursed, and got to his feet. They would hide in the darkness of the world no more.

‘Take my blade. It will replenish you.’

He caught the Warrior’s blade in a two-handed grip, feeling its power embolden him, and charged towards the psykers. The humanoids moved to intercept him, and he crashed through them and came face to face with one of the human puppeteers. The man was shrivelled, a shrinking wretch garbed in sodden robes marked by a burning tree. Nuriel killed him with a stroke of his blade, separating his torso from his legs. The sword sang as it tasted blood, and Nuriel grimaced as he felt his wounds knit together.

He killed the second a moment later, cutting his head from his shoulders. The sword sang again, and his muscles felt refreshed, his bones hardened. The third human broke into a run, dying as Nuriel plunged the blade through his spine. His life granted the Librarian his armour. Re-clad in his battleplate, Nuriel drove the sword into the earth and butchered the final two psykers with his hands.

‘It is done.’ The Warrior retrieved his blade, and gestured to the glimmering needle-tower.

Nuriel pulled his hand from a psyker’s gut and glanced up. The tower detonated, exploding in shattering brilliance, erupting in a wave of light that rolled across the land. Nuriel watched as the tide scoured away the darkness and bore down on him like vengeful fire. Closing his eyes, he braced himself.

‘Librarian, do you need aid?’

Nuriel opened his eyes on Brother Sylol, his black gauntlet outstretched.

Defeat stared at Ronja from every viewer, occulus and hololith on the Victus’s bridge. The Flesh Tearers were losing.

The Merciless was dead. Sustained lance fire had torn open its belly, its innards gutted by bombardment fire. The Butcher too had fallen silent, reduced to a drifting hulk. Engine plasma bled from its mortal wounds, seeping into the void to leave a trail of azure in its wake. Close-range fire ravaged the Shield of Baal, cutting deep scars in its flanks. A glancing torpedo strike broke apart the ship’s prow armour, ruining its ablative plating.

‘Wrath of the Throne!’ Ronja cursed as the Victus trembled under another assault. The battle-barge’s shields were moments from failing. Breaches had opened across the ship’s hide in a dozen places. Air roared from barren decks into the void.

She risked a glance at Amit. The Flesh Tearer hadn’t moved throughout the engagement. He’d remained still, his eyes fixed on the occulus, his grip tight on the rail bordering the command platform. She couldn’t imagine what was going through his head, but the twitch at the edge of his eye did not speak of an easy mind.

‘Have we killed any of them?’ Ronja asked, directing the question at no one in particular. She touched a hand to her temple, struggling to quiet the Victus’s machine-spirit. Its frustration was as palpable as the deck shuddering underfoot. Time and again its weapons had locked on to the Zurconian vessels, firing with all the anger the ancient vessel could muster, only to hit nothing. The accursed Zurconians seemed to displace out of harm’s way before reappearing and launching their own, perfectly angled attack.

‘Two of their warships are showing heavy damage. A further warship and four of the smaller craft have been crippled,’ her aide, Bohdan, answered.

Lucky shots, all. Ronja’s face twisted in self-loathing. Luck was the crutch of the weak. It was not how she won wars. They had been forced to fire blind. Unleashing salvo upon salvo into the void in the hope of hitting something, anything. Hope… The sentiment stung her even as it fuelled her. If they could silence another warship, perhaps two, then the battle might yet swing in their favour. ‘Helmsman, put our flank to the nearest moon. Limit their arc of…’ Ronja trailed off as the ident-icon representing the Merciless vanished from the hololith, the escort atomised by Zurconian lance batteries.

‘Mistress,’ Bohdan said before she could continue, ‘the other two Zurconian vessels will be in weapons range in less than one minute.’ He kept his voice low as he tracked the ships that had destroyed the Bleeding Fist and Redeemer.

Ronja sighed in resignation and glanced at the innumerable warning sigils blinking around the bridge. It was hopeless. ‘Disengage.’ She tensed, expecting the crushing cold of Amit’s gauntlet around her neck. Retreat was not a strategy favoured by the lord of the Flesh Tearers. She felt her heart beat once, twice. On its third shudder, she relaxed. ‘Fall back to the system’s edge and make ready for warp transit.’

‘Stop! Wait! Do not disengage.’ Nuriel hurried onto the bridge, shouting in warning even as the doors opened. ‘Do not disengage.’

‘Nuriel.’ Amit threw the Librarian a murderous glare as he strode up the ramp to the command platform. ‘I had you confined to your cell. Why are you here?’

‘Forgive me. I will seek atonement and discipline my flesh against my earlier actions, but now you must listen.’ Nuriel’s voice trembled with exhaustion as he spoke. ‘I know how to defeat the Zurconians.’

Amit regarded the Librarian. He was breathless, his brow slick with sweat, and the skin of his face had taken on a reddish hue, as though all of the blood vessels in it had burst at once.

‘The Zurconians – I know how to kill them,’ Nuriel said strengthening his tone.

‘They have been fooling our sensorium but we will regroup and then look to defeat them.’ Ronja fought to keep the frustration from her voice, steadying herself as the deck shook underfoot.

‘No, you will not.’ Nuriel used his will to soften his voice. He didn’t care if Ronja’s pride was injured – there was no time for such petty considerations – but he needed her to act now, and to make no mistakes as she did so. Better she follow his course out of choice than fear. ‘You are a competent commander, shipmistress, but no tactic will see us triumph this time. It is by unnatural means that they elude us.’

‘Explain, quickly,’ said Amit, his gaze fixed on the Librarian as the Victus convulsed under another barrage of fire.

‘There is a psychic choir on Primus, a group of psykers working in unison to surround us with phantom projections. We cannot lock on to their ships because they do not really exist.’

‘Then who, in the Emperor’s name, is blasting chunks from our hull?’ Ronja sneered, looking up at the Librarian as though intent on striking him.

Nuriel suppressed a smile; he admired her fire. ‘There is a small fleet out there, concealed by the darkness of the void and the will of the choir.’

‘How many?’ asked Amit.

‘I do not know. We won’t know for sure until we destroy the choir.’ Nuriel stepped forwards and tapped a series of digits into one of the command consoles. The image of Primus swelled to fill the tactical hololith, rotating until a small island-continent spun into view. He depressed another series of buttons and the continent drifted up from the planet to hang in the air. ‘Here.’ Nuriel indicated the northernmost part of the continent. A strobing orb marked the location as target coordinates streamed over the hololith. ‘It is our only hope.’

Ronja glowered at the information. ‘Our sensorium show there is nothing there. That area is wasteland, desolate–’

‘Another illusion.’ Nuriel cut her off with a snarl.

‘Even if you are right,’ Ronja retorted, ‘an orbital shot that exacting will require synchronous orbit. We will be easy prey.’

‘As opposed to the position of strength we currently occupy?’ Nuriel’s jaw locked tight with anger as the Victus shuddered under another attack.

‘Forgive me, lord, but you are not listening. Hitting a target as small as a single building from this distance whilst under fire… Even if we match the planet’s rotation, we will be fortunate to land a direct hit with our first salvo, and the longer we wait in orbit, the longer we’ll be at the mercy of the Zurconian guns.’

‘This is possible,’ Nuriel rasped through gritted teeth, his patience gone. ‘I have seen orbital barrages used with near-pinpoint accuracy.’

‘Yes.’ Ronja fought to keep her voice level. ‘With the aid of marker-beacons or ident-tagging it is possible. But we would need someone on the groun–’ Ronja paused.

‘What?’ asked Nuriel.

‘The survivors. The squads from the Bleeding Fist… Comms-man, have we made contact with them?’

‘No, shipmistress, there is too much interference.’

‘The static shrouding this world is not natural. You will need my help to find them.’ Nuriel moved to the comms-man. The Librarian made to clasp a hand over the man’s head, and stopped, turning to Ronja. ‘You have another of these?’

‘I do,’ she said.

‘Good.’ Nuriel closed his eyes and gripped the comms-man’s head.

The man screamed.

Nuriel ignored him, letting his gifts take him inside the man’s mind, inside the disparate noise pouring from the brass cable plugged into the man’s ears. Nuriel grimaced as pain flared along his temples. He tightened his grip on the man’s head, ignoring the crack of bone as he pressed on. The noise was a cacophonous bluster, detail indiscernible, except… There, hidden beneath a wave of buzzing, wrapped in a dim humming, was a silence, a sound not meant to be heard. Nuriel latched on to the silence. He let it drag him through the noise, feeling his consciousness plunge through the cabling, deeper into the wash of sound. He followed the silence, riding the stream of data out through the Victus’s sensoria towers down to the planet. The silence spoke to him.

‘Brother-Sergeant Lior to the Victus, reply.’ Nuriel reached for the words, hoping to follow them to their source. ‘Brother-Sergeant Lior to the Victus, reply.’ Nuriel grimaced in frustration as they drifted from him, echoes snatched by a gale. He cleared his thoughts, thinking not of the words or their meaning, but of their speaker. He found a Flesh Tearer’s mind, saw glimpses of a hurried evacuation, a death-filled planetfall. He could taste the acrid tang of combat, of weapons fire and death. Nuriel felt the Flesh Tearer’s grief, his frustration, his anger. The anger burned within the noise, a simmering beacon that could not be drowned out or cast to the winds. ‘Brother-Sergeant Lior to the Victus, reply.’ The sound came again, a message of hope wrapped in anger. This time, Nuriel grabbed it.

‘Brother-Sergeant Lior to the Victus, reply,’ Lior repeated over the vox.

+Sergeant Lior. I am listening.+ Nuriel pushed his words into the sergeant’s mind. He felt Lior resist, tasted his hesitation. +Do not worry, brother. It is I, Librarian Nuriel.+

‘Brother,’ said Lior, relief elevating his voice. ‘We landed on a small island-continent. We are engaged on all sides. Where are you?’

+I am aboard the Victus. I do not have much time. We need your help.+

‘What are your orders?’

+There is a building north of your location, taller than all of the other structures.+

‘The needle. Yes, I saw a glimpse of it as we made planetfall,’ said Lior, shouting over the roar of weapons fire.

+I need you to mark it for orbital bombardment.+

Lior was silent a moment. Nuriel sensed the turmoil in Lior’s mind as the other Flesh Tearer considered his fate. Lior and his warriors carried only close-range positioning devices, nothing that would allow them to escape the blast zone. To the sergeant’s credit, his hesitation lasted less than a second, the thought dismissed as quickly as it was formed. ‘All we have are teleport homers. Will they suffice?’

+If you activate a number of them, we should be able to detect the signal.+

‘Then by the Blood, it shall be done.’

+Be swift, brother. Sanguinius keep you.+

Nuriel opened his eyes and released his grip on the comms-man. The man slumped from his chatter to land dead on the deck. ‘It is done,’ said Nuriel. ‘Sergeant Lior will mark the target for us. Have your sensoria scan for a teleport homer.’

As the Librarian spoke, another comms-man stepped from one of the many alcoves bordering the bridge to take the dead one’s place.

‘They will not clear the blast site in time,’ said Ronja.

‘Sergeant Lior is aware of his duty. Please get on with yours,’ said Nuriel.

Ronja bit down a retort and looked to Amit as another set of damage klaxons began wailing overhead. ‘This is still far from a good plan.’

The lord of the Flesh Tearers was silent a moment, his gaze fixed on the Librarian. What Nuriel was suggesting was not beyond the realms of possibility, but it would require a cohort of Alpha-level psykers, or worse, a herald of the Dark Gods themselves. He searched Nuriel’s eyes; they bore no sign of deceit or madness. ‘Do it.’

‘Lord.’ Ronja nodded, and exploded into motion. ‘Cease fire, full power to engines. Helmsman, get us to Primus maximum speed, shortest route.’

‘Mistress, there are a number of debris fields between here and there. A direct course–’

‘I am not blind, helmsman. But I’d wager your life that a scree of rocks and space junk is less likely to kill us than the Emperor-forsaken bastards raking our hull with plasma fire.’ Ronja shot the helmsman a murderous glare. ‘Comms-man, send the attack coordinates to the Shield of Baal and have them move to engage.’

‘No, cancel that order.’ Nuriel stepped to the forefront of the command platform.

‘With respect, lord Librarian, this is my bridge.’ Ronja kept her voice low so that it wouldn’t travel down into the crew trenches beneath them. ‘Do not countermand my orders. The Shield is far faster than us. It will reach Primus ahead of us and begin the attack.’

Amit held up a hand. ‘Nuriel is right. The Shield must be in a position to capitalise on our attack before the Zurconians can recover.’ Amit tapped the tactical display indicating an area of space just beyond Primus’s second moon. ‘Have the Shield regroup here and stand ready.’

‘Very well, lord.’ Ronja nodded, struggling to hide her anger. This was her bridge, her ship. They had no right to make such decisions without her counsel. In the back of her mind, she felt the Victus’s machine-spirit growl in agreement.

‘I want a strategic review of the planet and its defences streamed to my helm-display before we hit the atmosphere. We’ll work out an assault plan en route.’

‘Of course,’ said Ronja. ‘Once the psychic choir has been eliminated, we will scan for and identify key targets.’

‘Start with the choir’s location and work out from there,’ said Amit. ‘Despite appearances, Zurcon’s seat of power will be close by.’

‘As you wish, lord,’ said Ronja.

‘Nuriel, go with Barakiel and his squad to the target site once the attack is complete. Ensure there are no survivors.’ Amit turned and made for the bridge’s exit.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Nuriel.

‘To wake an old friend.’

Amit had left the prison an abattoir.

Zophal directed the swabbing stave across the cell floor with slow, deliberate care, its thick white fibres indistinguishable from the bloodied entrails they swept into the waste pit. He knew that many of his brothers saw such menial labour as beneath them. They would have had a serf or servitor do this work for them. He paused a moment in thought. Some sins could not be hidden under the toil of others. No one could be allowed to bear witness to such truths. Even if he had employed serfs to clean up the mess, they would have been executed upon their task’s completion, and he would still have been left with a pool of blood to scrub clean. Zophal sighed. Enough lives had been lost through the Blood’s weakness. He would atone for it where he could. This labour was his penance.

Zophal dunked the stave in cleansing fluid and ground it dry against the wall. It was an old implement, less effective and more inefficient than a tox-scrubber or an acid wash. He dragged the stave through gobbets of brain matter. Haste rarely led to purity. Puddles of blood splashed up onto his boots as he disturbed them. Amit had at least restrained himself, butchering the traitors without drinking them dry.

+Who will wipe away your blood, Chaplain?+

Zophal dropped the stave, his weapons drawn before its wooden haft clattered to the steel of the floor. He panned his pistol around the room, searching for the speaker.

The voice laughed. +I am not without, I am within.+ Its words cut into Zophal’s skull like a fire-warmed knife. +Were the opposite true, you would be dead where you stood.+

‘Astyanax.’ Zophal snarled the traitor’s name and stepped into the corridor. The same, unfathomable gloom he had left there persisted undisturbed. He knew that the Victus was under heavy assault, that even now its outer armour and crenellated battlements were being blasted asunder. It had been so many times before, and now as then, the darkness around him remained unaffected. Here, cradled in the ancient Martian technology, the conflict manifested as little more than a gentle murmur. There was no reason to think that any of the cells had been breached.

+Perhaps I or one of my deranged cousins will see to your end.+ Astyanax’s voice came again.

Zophal took a cautious step towards the traitor’s cell. Like Omari, Astyanax was one of Magnus’s sons, though he had protested no such innocence of embracing his father’s path and turning his back on the Emperor.

+You have been a dutiful caretaker these many years, Zophal. Perhaps once we have torn your flesh asunder and drunk the blood from your still-beating hearts, we will scrape your remains into neat, tidy piles.+

Zophal touched a hand to the wall surrounding the outer door of Astyanax’s cell. A string of data scrolled over his helm as the sensoria in his gauntlet confirmed that the psychic wards were still intact.

+Caution is the watchword of cowards. It is only the weak who let fear slow them.+

Zophal grimaced as the words tore at his mind. Removing a gauntlet, he pressed his hand to the wall panel and waited for the bio-scanner to chime. A series of panels slid away to reveal a pair of leaden deadbolts. He drew them back one by one, until the door released, hissing with pressure as it disappeared into a recess in the ceiling.

+I am waiting, Chaplain.+

Zophal mouthed the catechism of sanctity and stepped to the inner door. Its frame shimmered blue-silver as he approached. The Chaplain nodded, reassured that the second set of wards remained intact. He accessed another bio-reader and pulled back another series of locking bolts. This time the door remained in place, awaiting someone with the strength of an Adeptus Astartes to draw it back. Zophal dismissed the door with a grunt of effort, pulling it back and open.

Still he was not granted entry to Astyanax’s cell. A series of thick adamantium bars blocked his path. Plasma-fused to the deck and ceiling, they could not be opened. Amit. Zophal grinned. When the Chapter Master got around to killing Astyanax, he would first have to cut his way into the cell. Zophal stepped forwards to press his helm to the bars and look in upon the traitor. The floor was etched in runes, wards that echoed the ones found on the cell’s outer wall. At the far end, illuminated by a pillar of light coming from a lumo-lamp in the opposite corner, the traitor hung in chains, suspended from the wall like a joint of meat. Unhelmed, he was still clad in the ruby battleplate of his Legion, his pauldrons and greaves trimmed in war-tarnished gold. What remained of his white tabard was ragged and sodden with filth.

‘How is it that you speak to me?’ Zophal’s voice was little more than a whisper.

Astyanax looked up. His eyes were pools of blood and a wicked smile played across his broken face.

‘You are not Astyanax,’ said Zophal. ‘Who is it that I really speak to?’

Astyanax laughed. +I have many names. For now I wear this flesh and its name shall suffice.+

‘Daemon…’ The word spilled from Zophal’s lips to be met by another cruel smile. ‘How did you come to be he–’ Zophal felt his gut twist in realisation. ‘The Geller field. The breach.’

+A moment’s laxity is all that it takes. Is that not what you preach?+

‘What do you want?’

Astyanax said nothing, content to grin at the Chaplain.

‘Answer me or I will kill your meat puppet and deny you this meeting,’ Zophal demanded.

+And what would your butcher of a lord think?+ Astyanax spoke without moving his lips. +Amit craves the day when his blade will taste this flesh. He reeks of desire. His depraved thirst grows more desperate each time he visits this oubliette of yours. You would kill his most prized of feasts? No, Chaplain, I do not think so.+

‘You think I fear Amit?’ Zophal gripped one of the cell bars. The servos in his gauntlet whined, spitting in protest as he tightened his grip in an effort to throttle the anger rising in his gut.

+Enough.+ Astyanax’s smile widened. +You fear him enough to let him degrade you to this. To leave you cleaning up after his sins like a pious nursemaid.+

‘You will not goad me into the cell.’ Zophal kept his voice flat, bringing his anger in check.

+No?+ Astyanax’s eyes widened to fist-sized saucers of crimson. An unceasing wash of blood streamed from them, so that it seemed as though Astyanax’s face were connected to the floor by two arterial pillars. +But I have much to tell you. Much you must hear, and you must come closer to hear it.+

The daemon’s voice was like a heartbeat in Zophal’s mind, a rhythmic pulse calling to him. It spoke in supplication, asking him to enter and be one with the blood, to drink his fill so that he would never thirst again.

‘No.’ Zophal clenched his teeth. ‘I am not here for your confession.’ He stepped back from the bars and raised his pistol. ‘Amit should have killed Astyanax long ago. A mistake I will now rectify.’ Zophal pulled the trigger. The single round struck the centre of Astyanax’s head, exploding his skull, and spraying fragments of bone and brain matter across the wall. Zophal fired again, sending a two-round burst into the meat of Astyanax’s chest. The traitor’s corpse juddered under the impacts, rattling in its restraints as the bolt shells ravaged it.

Zophal glared at Astyanax, searching for any sign of the daemon. The traitor hung lifeless in his chains, his eyes closed. ‘You were wrong, heretic. I do not fear Amit. I fear the Thirst.’ He lowered his gun. ‘But it is not for myself that I fear, for my will is iron.’ Zophal turned from the cell and walked back into the darkness of the corridor. There was a daemon on board, and he could not face it alone.

‘Firing range of Primus in twenty seconds.’ The single remaining gunnery serf rasped through the update. His peers lay dead around him, gutted by exploding consoles or buried under flaming rubble.

‘Power the bombardment cannons.’ Ronja tightened her grip on the command rail. None of the Zurconian vessels had peeled off to follow the Shield of Baal. The assault on the Victus had remained constant. The death toll had continued to rise.

‘Entering synchronous orbit,’ said one of the helmsmen.

‘The beacon?’ asked Nuriel.

‘We have a signal. It’s faint but we have it,’ said the surveyor.

Ronja felt the Victus slow as it matched the turning of Primus. She winced as a knot of pain flared in her skull. The Victus was railing against the manoeuvre. It was not used to leaving itself so vulnerable. Faith. Ronja soothed the machine-spirit. I will not fail you. We will have our battle soon. She turned to face Nuriel. ‘If you are wrong, we are all of us dead.’

Nuriel stifled a grunt and kept his attention fixed on the hololith.

‘Range.’ The gunnery serf spoke as a targeting icon swelled onto the tactical hololith.

Sanguinius keep you. Nuriel spared a thought for Sergeant Lior and his warriors. ‘Fire,’ he barked.

The Victus shook as its primary weapons discharged.

‘Good hit,’ said the gunnery serf.

‘Did it work?’ Ronja addressed the nearest surveyor.

‘No change in sensorium returns. Enemy positions fixed as before.’

‘Fire again,’ said Nuriel. He closed his eyes and pushed his mind out beyond the bridge, pressing it through the Victus’s hull to look down on the planet. Below them, a dwindling halo of orange fire blinked and went dark. He hardened his will, forging it into a slender blade of thought, and thrust it downwards to spear into the earth. Fire met him. It rolled over the land, a cleansing tide of flame. Nothing stood, save the scorched remains of a single tower. The choir were dead, and yet… Nuriel struggled to maintain focus, to finish seeing. He did not feel as he had expected to. The psychic backlash of the choir’s deaths had not struck him like a hammer. It had not blown over him like an engulfing gale. It coiled around him, spinning into a storm that held him in its eye.

‘Bombardment on target,’ said the gunnery serf.

‘Surveyor, re–’ began Ronja.

‘It worked. They are dead.’ Nuriel snapped open his eyes. They were as red as the blood in his veins.

‘Confirmed.’ The surveyor motioned to the hololith as one by one the Zurconian vessels began to blink out. Moments later the real vessels appeared on the display. Six in all, staggered in line formation. The Shield of Baal was already bearing down on them.

‘Now,’ Nuriel said, putting on his helm. ‘Now you can kill them, shipmistress.’ And with that, he left the bridge.

Ronja watched him go. Her eyes burning at his back. She should have been the one to give the order to fire. The wretched Flesh Tearer had stolen the honour from her. ‘I will kill everyone that stands in our way, lord.’

‘This is taking too long. We should have translated closer in-system.’ Brother-Sergeant Lycus voiced his concern over a private channel. Though he disagreed with his captain, he would not disrespect him in front of the throng of serfs and human attendants manning the bridge.

‘The distress call was broken, scrambled. We have no idea what we’d be leaping into.’ Captain Nikon’s voice was a measured rumble. ‘This was the surest course of action, Lycus.’

‘Will Namolas trouble you forever, brother?’ Lycus’s voice softened. Namolas had been Nikon’s greatest victory, a daring assault that had allowed the Eagle Warriors to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Yet, he knew the captain thought Namolas his greatest failure.

Nikon was silent a moment before answering. It had been almost a century since Namolas, and not a day had gone by where he had not sought penance for his failure. With an artist’s care, he had cut into his flesh, scarring himself once for each of the hundred warriors he had allowed to perish that day. The practice had almost cost him his own life, and he had refused his serf’s request to clean up the blood afterwards. No, it was impossible to wash away the past, no matter how much blood he spilled in the future. The crimson stains on the worn tiles of his cell would act as a permanent reminder that swift victory was never without cost. ‘I hope so.’

‘Sensorium range achieved, liege.’ The surveyor’s report drew Nikon’s attention to the tactical hololith as the ship’s cogitators began populating it with positional and operational information.

‘The distress call came from here.’ Lycus indicated the furthest of the three central planets.

‘Confirmed.’ The ancient comms-serf spoke in machine idiom, his vocal cords long since replaced by a vox-grille. Like the rest of the serfs aboard The Claw, he was a failed aspirant, a broken warrior unable to complete the arduous tests required to become an Eagle Warrior. To his credit, Jaarek, as he had once been known, had come closer than most, passing every mental and physical test asked of him. But in the end, his body had rejected the bio-implants needed to transform him into a Space Marine. Wracked with pain and crippling organ failure, Jaarek should have been left to die. It had been a wasteful and time-consuming process to stabilise him, and though Nikon was sure many of his brothers would have abandoned Jaarek, he was pleased to have even this small solace to ease his conscience.

‘Unknown vessels detected on the far side of the target planet.’ The hololith shivered as the surveyor spoke. One by one a string of orbs resolved across its surface as the sensorium detected and plotted the location of over a dozen other vessels.

‘Class and identification?’ At Nikon’s request a slew of servitors, one for each of the foreign craft, shuffled forwards and stood to his flank. On each of their chests a hololith hummed into life, ready to receive data on the vessels.

‘Scanning for physical markers and ident-tags.’ The servitors began chattering, sounding like vowels were trapped in their throats, as the surveyor updated the hololiths.

‘Flesh Tearers?’ Lycus failed to keep the surprise from his voice as the Bleeding Fist shimmered onto one of the hololiths.

‘Yes, liege,’ the surveyor confirmed. ‘Four Flesh Tearers ships in all. The Victus is among them.’

‘Amit…’ Nikon rose from his command throne. He had never met the lord of the Flesh Tearers, and knew of him through bloody reputation alone. ‘Gunnery, power the bombardment cannons, charge shields and have weapon crews stand ready. Brother Ampelio, transmit a message to Master Heron.’

The hulking Eagle Warrior stood guarding the chamber’s entrance nodded, the heavy footfalls of his Terminator armour echoing around the vaulted bridge space as he exited.

Lycus looked to Nikon but said nothing. There was a time when such distrust among cousins would not have existed. Horus… Lycus felt his gut coil in anger. Horus’s betrayal had eroded the bonds of blood that had existed between all of the Adeptus Astartes, and trust was no longer given as freely as it had once been. Emperor keep us. Lycus stared at the image of the Victus as it pivoted on its axis, rotating on the hololith. He hoped the captain’s caution would prove premature.

‘Open comms, establish a channel with the Victus.’ A sharp hiss of static met Nikon’s order. ‘Comms-man, clean up that signal.’

‘I cannot, liege. Weapons fire and atmospheric conditions are making it impossible to get a clear reading at this distance.’ The serf busied himself adjusting a number of dials. ‘We should be able to establish contact once we crest the second sun.’

Nikon tensed and leant forwards to grip the command rail. The thought of sneaking up on Amit unannounced made him uneasy, but he would not give away their position until the Flesh Tearers intent could be determined. ‘Full speed ahead. Use the solar flaring to mask our approach but get us closer.’ The tales of Amit’s brutality were in no short supply. Nikon only hoped that the Chapter Master’s blade still wrought the Emperor’s work.

Amit stepped over the threshold and waited until the blast doors sealed behind him. He hated the chamber. Death clung to its every orifice. It was a place of resurrection and yet, whenever he set foot there, he saw it only as a tomb. He paced forwards, his breath fogging in the air. Tombs – they had felt little different since man first stopped leaving his brothers to rot under the sun. Rows of thick ferrite slabs, each twice his height and engraved with long-worn lines of High Gothic, shadowed him as he emerged into the chamber proper. Lone lumo-candles flickered from shallow recesses that stretched from shoulder height up to the shadows of the vaulted ceiling. The panelled floor was the cold grey of bare ceramite, featureless save for the subtle indentations worn by time and the passage of booted feet.

‘Chapter Master.’ Apothecary Pursun dipped his head in greeting. He was un-armoured, his white robe stained by splashes of bio-fluid and surgical gel; its folds were marred by lines of fresh viscera, remnants of the rites of internment.

Amit considered the gore. He was not privy to the full details, but he knew that much had to be cut away so that a candidate could survive the rites. It was perhaps the gravest test a Flesh Tearer could ever undergo. His body and mind needed to be proven as strong as the adamantium he would receive. His blood had to be made to accept the machine as easily as it had accepted the flesh. ‘Is it done?’

‘Yes, Techmarine Naamah is finishing the rite of awakening now. He awaits you in the vault.’

‘Good.’ Amit moved past Pursun and stopped. ‘You decided to keep it?’ He turned, indicating the crude bionic replacing Pursun’s right eye. The Apothecary had lost the eye to grenade shrapnel. Barrack rumour held that he’d ripped the bionic from an ork and implanted it into his face whilst under heavy fire. Amit had never sought the truth of the tale. The Apothecary had more than once risked his life to come to his aid. He respected Pursun, and his secrets.

The Apothecary touched a hand to the raw flesh that had been crudely sewn back in place around the device. ‘It will do until I have time to seek an alternative.’

‘That time is not now, brother. Fetch your war-plate and wait for us in the assault bay.’

Pursun grinned. ‘It will be good to spill the blood of our enemies. I have spent too long steeped in that of our brothers.’

Amit left him to his preparations and advanced to another set of blast doors. A burst of crimson light flashed from a servo-skull hovering by the door, enveloping the Flesh Tearer.

‘Ident confirmed. Access granted,’ said the skull, its wretched appearance at odds with the lyrical child’s voice sounding from its brass-gilded mouth. The door rumbled in response, edging open enough for Amit to enter.

Inside, Techmarine Naamah clasped a fist to his breast in salute. ‘Lord Amit.’

The flooring within the vault was badly mauled. Blood and amniotic fluid pooled in deep indentations and lacerations, and it was evident by the discolouration that several of the floor panels had been replaced.

Amit bent to one knee and addressed the towering capsules stood in the corners of the hexagonal chamber. ‘You honour me with your sacrifice. May I never number among you.’

Inside each of the armourglass capsules, held inanimate within a stasis field, was a Dreadnought. Towering war machines of crimson and ash. Armoured giants clad in adamantium and ceramite, fuelled by the rage of a Flesh Tearer. Unleashed, they were terrifying to behold. Yet here, stood in frozen display, they were as relics of an ancient war, trinkets held in an exotic museum.

‘Which one?’

‘There.’ Naamah gestured to Amit’s left.

Amit stepped to the capsule and wiped his hand across the soft ice coating the glass. Though he knew the foolishness of the thought, it surprised him that he did not recognise the Dreadnought within. ‘Leave us,’ Amit said, ushering Naamah away. He pressed his hand to the bio-reader set onto a console next to the capsule.

‘I would suggest you take a step back,’ said Naamah. ‘It takes a moment for their minds to adjust.’

Amit nodded but ignored the Techmarine’s warning, standing in place as the thick cables feeding the pod disengaged and retracted with a wet hiss. Viscous blue-green fluid washed onto the floor as the petals of the capsule parted and the vault door sealed behind Naamah.

Silence hung thick in the chamber for the brief moment it took the stasis field to spark and flicker inactive, before the Dreadnought awoke. Ripped from its slumber, the war machine roared. The harsh metallic sound distorted as it threatened to overload its vox-amplifiers. It stumbled and staggered from the capsule, landing hard on the deck, so that its feet cracked the flooring.

‘Calm yourself, Grigori.’ Amit held his ground, weaving to avoid decapitation as the Dreadnought struggled to control its limbs.

The Dreadnought bunched its adamantium shoulders, tensing as it struggled against the pain of awakening. ‘Who…’ Grigori toppled forwards, thrusting one of the man-sized blades mounted under his arm into the floor to arrest his fall. Gargled static spat through his vox-amplifiers as his frame trembled, and his mind was forced to assimilate all that had happened since his first death. ‘The Legion?’ Grigori roared. Powering up his massive eviscerator, he tore it through the capsule behind him. ‘What happened?’ he snarled, stepping to within a hair’s breadth of Amit. His armoured footsteps sounded like thunderclaps in the confines of the sealed chamber.

Amit reached up and placed a hand on Grigori’s sarcophagus. Dwarfed by the Dreadnought, the Chapter Master was like a child trying to pacify a wrathful god. ‘The Legion is gone. Our father dead. Our mission the same.’

‘No. You should have let me die.’ Grigori turned away.

‘Do not turn your back on me!’ Amit countered, and thrust a finger at Grigori. ‘I let Varl die so that you could live. Do not dishonour his death with cowardice.’

‘I am no coward!’ Grigori rounded on Amit, his weapons poised to kill.

Threatened, it took all of Amit’s restraint not to attack. The muscles in his legs tightened, urging him to drive forwards, to slip behind the Dreadnought and destroy its power core. He clenched his fists in an effort to stop them accessing the melta bomb clamped to his hip. His hearts quickened, rising in his chest until they sounded in his ears like the relentless howl of his eviscerator. He saw himself cut apart the Dreadnought’s shell and rip what remained of Grigori’s mortal form from its sarcophagus. He felt flesh pulp between his fingers and tasted the chemical-rich tang of augmented blood as it sprayed over his face.

On the edge of fury, Amit turned away.

Forcing a series of slow, deep breaths, he quieted the drumming of his hearts. ‘Do you think we will ever know silence, brother?’ He turned back to Grigori, his features softened.

‘What?’ The incongruity of Amit’s question drew Grigori from his rage.

‘Listen.’ Amit gestured up and around them.

Housed at the opposite end of the Victus from the battle-barge’s engines and insulated against the thrum of the main capacitors, the mortorium was devoid of the usual background noise audible throughout most of the rest of the ship. Only the muffled whine of atmo-scrubbers punctuated the silence.

‘I hear nothing,’ said Grigori.

‘You know as well as I do that death is never quiet, brother. Its architects are warriors such as we, soldiers and murderers who revel in the noise of our work. Even those who die in their beds do so rasping for air or choked by the sound of their own heart as it bursts in their chest. And those of us who live on, we are deafened by the screams of the long dead and the roar of our souls as they beg us to kill again. We erect tombs such as this not out of deference for the dead, but to fool ourselves that someday there will be silence for us too.’ Amit paused and turned from Grigori. ‘But there will never be silence.’

‘Perhaps.’ Grigori flexed his eviscerators and strode past him. ‘Perhaps you have yet to shed enough blood to drown out the noise.’

‘Perhaps.’ Amit grinned and fell into step behind the Dreadnought. ‘Let us find out.’

Flame and molten metal dripped from the ceiling to scar the muster deck. The four columns that supported the deck’s weight, holding it aloft over the assault bays below, shuddered as the Victus bucked under another assault. Barakiel ground his teeth impatiently. He was the only Flesh Tearer still on deck, the others having long since secured themselves in drop pods and Thunderhawks ready for deployment. He stood there, statue-still amid the anarchy, waiting. Around him, a throng of serfs worked ceaselessly to prevent a collapse. Strapped and harnessed, the serfs hung from the support columns, welding and reinforcing the cracks that snaked across the plating with lascutters and melta-lamps. On the deck itself, teams of servitors outfitted with water cannons fought to bring the fires under control.

A chorus of screams drew Barakiel’s attention towards the centre of the deck, as a dozen serfs were crushed under a falling beam. A pair of cargo-servitors, with hydraulic forks that sat in place of their arms, trundled forwards to lift away the flaming length of metal. The nearest work crew of serfs followed in their wake, rushing to clear away the bodies and mop the blood from the Flesh Tearers Chapter symbol emblazoned on the deck. Barakiel watched them work, regarding the charred bodies as they were dragged away. His thoughts turned to the frozen serf he’d seen outside Amit’s cell. Serfs died all the time. It was the way of things. They died because duty demanded it. They died because they were weak. And they died because fear kept them from action. Barakiel grunted as he realised the serfs before him now had died for no such reasons. They had died through choice in an effort to maintain the sanctity of the Chapter symbol. Barakiel considered it a moment. It was a pointless, needless task that would not stop the Victus crumbling around them, and yet… Barakiel tightened his jaw and gave a nod of his head in approval. The serfs had given their lives for an ideal larger than they or even he. For the first time, admiration replaced Barakiel’s feeling of pity for the humans.

‘Captain, we are loaded and ready for launch.’ His Stormraven’s pilot’s voice sounded over the comm-link in Barakiel’s helm.

‘Understood. I will be there as soon as I confirm our deployment coordinates.’

‘Captain, we have those. Librarian Nuriel–’

‘I will be there soon.’ Barakiel cut him off, his eyes fixed on the pall of smoke obscuring the doorway opposite him. ‘Where are you?’ Barakiel said to himself. He was tired of waiting.

It was another ten long heartbeats, during which the deck shook twice more, before Amit emerged through the doorway and strode onto the deck. Barakiel moved to meet him.

‘You cannot ask me to accompany Nuriel. My place is with the main assault,’ said Barakiel.

‘We do not have time for this, captain,’ said Amit as the deck reverberated under them. ‘Your place is wherever my orders take you.’ Amit kept walking, moving past Barakiel, down the ramp to the assault bay and the Thunderhawk waiting to carry him to Zurcon Primus.

Barakiel went after him. ‘I am captain of your First Company. You cannot deny me the honour of the attack.’

‘This is not about honour – it is about vengeance. We have lost many of our brothers today and their deaths will not go unanswered.’ Amit stopped walking and turned to face Barakiel. ‘We must ensure every one of the Zurconian psykers has been killed.’

‘They are dead. Nuriel is certain,’ said Barakiel.

‘He cannot be certain until he has seen it with his own eyes, his real eyes.’ Amit’s jaw twitched in irritation.

‘Then let him go. He is capable enough on his own.’

‘Nuriel is not himself. He needs watching,’ said Amit.

‘Have Ismeriel watch him, then. He has more patience than I.’

‘Barakiel,’ Amit growled, his eyes flashing with anger. He took a breath, letting the ire drain from his face. ‘I need your strength, Barakiel. If Nuriel has another outburst like before, he must be put down. Can I trust you with that, brother?’

Barakiel was silent a moment, caught off-guard by Amit’s words. ‘By the Blood, it shall be so,’ he finally said.

Amit nodded. ‘When the area around the target site is secure, look for Lior and any survivors from the Bleeding Fist, then join up with the main force.’

Barakiel nodded and held his arm out towards Amit. ‘I will meet you on the ground.’

Amit clutched Barakiel’s arm, gripping it vambrace to vambrace in a warrior’s salute. ‘Sanguinius go with you.’

Barakiel started towards his Stormraven and stopped, calling back to Amit over his shoulder. ‘You woke Grigori?’

‘I did,’ said Amit.

‘Where is he deploying?’

Amit smiled. ‘Nowhere yet.’

It took three minutes for The Claw to reach the Zurconian System’s second sun, and another to pass through the halo of burning gas surrounding it. Solar flares billowed out in waves of broiling fire as they broke against the strike cruiser’s shields.

Despite himself, Nikon tensed as another tendril of super-heated particles whipped across The Claw’s flank. There was no reason for concern. His course had been exact and the shields remained stalwart, shuddering azure as they repelled the fire’s advance.

‘We are clear, thirty seconds to comms range,’ Lycus reported, his voice rasping in Nikon’s ear.

The captain had left the bridge in the sergeant’s care and was stood on the forward observation deck. A cathedral-like spire, it jutted up from The Claw’s prow, and at its peak was an armourglass pod. At the centre of the glassed chamber, a brass void-scope stood fixed to a bipod. The viewing device was ancient, and though Nikon knew many of his brother-captains thought it a trite indulgence, he never took to war without it. To view space combat through the detached reports of hololiths and data-slates was to forget the thousands who died on his every order. The void-scope’s shifting lenses allowed him to glimpse the space around him in a raw detail that no sensorium could ever provide him with. Nikon adjusted the device’s height until it stood level with his eyes and depressed the activation stud. ‘In the Emperor’s name…’

The space above Primus was alive with fire. A pair of Zurconian warships burned and tumbled from orbit. Three others had been reduced to twisted, drifting wrecks, left to bleed plasma into the void. Amid the carnage, the Flesh Tearers vessels continued to fire, blasting apart transports, refuelling craft and escape pods. The Zurconians were being butchered, eradicated in a halo of exploding magma.

‘Lycus,’ Nikon said as he withdrew from the void-scope and started back towards the bridge.

‘Lord?’

‘Mark targets for firing, closest vessels first. Consider everyone hostile. Have the company assemble for immediate planetary assault. Brace for impact and have the serfs armed.’

Soft static filtered back over the comm before Lycus’s voice sounded in reply, ‘It is done, we are… Lord, the Zurconians are hailing us.’

‘Which ship?’

‘None. The signal is coming from the planet.’

‘Put it through to my helm.’

On Nikon’s command, an image of an ageing man hunched over a console resolved onto his tactical overlay. The man had the rich, creased skin and dark eyes of one used to long summers. He was dressed in a long green robe and wore a thick golden medallion shaped like an eye around his neck. Behind him, toppled pillars and broken stonework littered the remains of what appeared to be a vast hall.

‘This is Governor Syriu Malston of Zurcon…’ The man trailed off, his attention shifting to something behind him as another part of the chamber collapsed. A thick cloud of debris obscured Nikon’s view as the man continued. ‘We are in need of aid and–’

‘Lycus, get him back,’ Nikon snapped as the comm fell silent.

‘I can’t, we’ve lost the originator signal,’ said Lycus. ‘Captain, the Flesh Tearers are hailing us. It’s the Victus.’

Nikon steeled himself, unsure of whom or what he’d be speaking with.

‘This is Shipmistress Ronja Nokkan of the Flesh Tearers battle-barge Victus. State your intentions.’

The woman’s voice crackled in Nikon’s ear as an overlay of her face settled on the left portion of his helm display. He regarded the image of the female. Her eyes were cold, and she bore the Chapter symbol of the Flesh Tearers as a scar on her left cheek.

‘I am Captain Nikon Pelahius of the Eagle Warriors Second Company. We are responding to a distress call from the surface of the near planet. The Zurconians have requested our aid.’

‘When?’ Ronja’s voice hardened, as if by a growing sense of foreboding.

‘We detected the signal months ago,’ said Nikon.

‘You have been taken for a fool, brother-captain. We arrived here no more than an hour ago.’

‘Then who attacked this world?’ asked Nikon.

‘If the Zurconians were under attack, we have seen no sign of it. Their fleet looked to be unmolested when they attacked us,’ Ronja sneered.

‘They attacked first?’

‘They fired upon us the minute we translated in-system.’

Nikon was silent a moment as he considered her answer. ‘If that is true, then your actions are well justified, shipmistress. However, you have crippled their fleet. The Zurconians no longer pose an immediate threat. Cease fire and let us get to the bottom of this together.’

‘With respect, lord captain, until Master Amit gives me the order to disengage, I will persecute the Zurconians until they are removed from my auspexes.’

Nikon suppressed a growl. ‘Where is Master Amit?’

‘He is on the surface.’

‘Confirm.’ Nikon subvocalised the request.

‘Surveyors confirm. Amit’s forces are in the northern hemisphere.’ Lycus’s voice cut across the secure channel.

‘Very well, shipmistress. Let your lord know that I will soon be joining him.’ Nikon cut the feed and addressed Lycus. ‘Where is he?’

‘We’ve detected multiple landing sites. This one is closest to the source of the transmission.’ Details of the landing site appeared on Nikon’s helm display as Lycus spoke.

Nikon made to exit the bridge. ‘Lycus, the ship is yours.’ He quickened his pace. ‘Order squads Aiaxis and Diynor to meet me in assault bay two.’

‘Captain, if–’ Lycus began.

‘If you lose contact, make for Ultramar.’ Nikon’s voice was heavy with the weight of grim possibility. ‘There is much we do not know about this situation. The Flesh Tearers have a murderous reputation, but for now we must hope they are still loyal.’

‘And if they are not?’ asked Lycus.

Nikon stopped walking. ‘My order stands. If the Flesh Tearers have truly turned their backs on the Emperor’s light, if Amit has fallen from grace, then we will need all of the sons of Guilliman to stop them.’

Only in death does duty end.

This is the favoured axiom of the rulers of man and the craven orators who speak on their behalf. For our sins, we too have passed on such falsehoods to our own, instilling in them the notion that death is the end of all things.

We were wrong about the nature of our duty. We were wrong about death’s place in the order of things.

It was only at the edge of madness, drenched in the blood of brother and foe, that we learnt the error of our thinking.

For only in death does duty begin.

It matters not in what colour we daub our armour or which symbol we carve on our pauldrons. Our purpose remains what it was always intended to be. We will kill the enemies of mankind, and with blade and fire protect the Emperor’s domain.

We are harbingers of death, angels of vengeance, tearers of flesh.

– Flesh Tearers Chapter Master Nassir Amit

Three

Assent

Zurcon Primus looked as it had in Nuriel’s vision. The world was blackened, burned to cinders and ruined by the Victus’s onslaught. Deep craters marred the landscape, the smooth planes churned into a pockmarked wasteland of narrow ridges and fractured basins.

Nuriel stepped from the Stormraven, his boots sinking into the ash of the earth, and took a long breath. There was death on
the wind: the stench of seared flesh and scorched bones; the dense musk and acrid tang of magma detonations. Nuriel closed his eyes. Those tangible things were as subtle, background aromas compared to the potent reek of anguish. He could sense the souls drifting around him. Disembodied, they blazed in his mind’s eye, crying out against their fate. He could taste their fear, hear their screams as one by one they vanished, ripped from the mortal realm to be devoured by those that hungered in the warp.

‘Nuriel, maintain formation.’ Barakiel’s voice sounded over the comm.

The inferno of souls faded and Nuriel’s focus snapped back to his shattered surroundings. He turned to look back over his shoulder, surprised to find the Stormraven twenty paces behind him. He had been unaware of taking even a single step in advance of the gunship’s shadow. Nuriel hid his surprise behind a scowl. ‘Despite what Amit believes, I do not need an escort.’

‘It is I, Librarian, who am thankful of your presence,’ said Barakiel, drawing level with Nuriel. ‘If any of the Zurconian psykers have survived, then I will be glad we have come armed with more than bolters. Your gifts will serve us well.’

‘Spare me the kindness of your lies,’ said Nuriel. ‘Amit trusts me no more than he does you, captain.’ Nuriel did not meet Barakiel’s gaze, his eyes fixed on the single structure that still stood amidst the destruction. A crumbling tower. A needle of shattered glass, glistening in spite of the darkness around it.

‘Agla, Sabrael, hold here and cover our advance,’ Barakiel said over the squad channel. ‘Tagas, Morael, sweep wide and secure the flanks.’ A series of acknowledgement runes flashed on Barakiel’s helm display as the four members of his squad moved to carry out their orders. ‘Let’s go,’ said Barakiel, gesturing to the tower.

Nuriel grunted and advanced. The wind picked up around him as he closed on the structure. Wet ash blew against his face, staining his skin. ‘Blood,’ he cursed, screwing his eyes shut in pain.

‘Librarian?’ asked Barakiel.

Nuriel waved away his concern. It was the souls. They were more numerous now, huddled around the tower like carrion circling a fresh corpse. Their screaming was deafening, the weight of their cries threatening to crush his skull. Blood dripped from his nose as he pushed them away, shoring up his mental barriers. The souls recoiled. A twisted smile creased Nuriel’s cheeks. They were afraid of him, of his power.

‘What is it?’ asked Barakiel.

‘You would not understand.’

‘Try me,’ Barakiel snarled.

Nuriel ignored him. Where is he? Nuriel cast his mind through the press of souls in search of an answer. Where? The Librarian was like a hound, barking as it tore forwards, hunting the truth, demanding an answer. The souls stopped screaming and began to speak as one–

‘Nuriel.’ Barakiel grabbed the Librarian by his pauldron.

Nuriel growled, his concentration broken. The soul-voices faded, dissolving back to an indiscernible wail. ‘I am not talking to you. You do not have the answer I seek.’

‘Answer to what?’

Nuriel shook off Barakiel’s grip and retuned his attention to the souls. They coiled around him like a hurricane, their words rushing past his ears. They had much to tell him, but he had only one question. There was only one answer he sought among the throng of voices. Where? Where was the one who had called him here?

‘There is a cost,’ the soul-voices said. ‘A price of knowing. The weak will be tested.’

Nuriel nodded.

‘What is that noise?’ Barakiel stumbled to one knee, clutching his head. A moment later the voices of his squad crackled in his ears, their own cries of agony spilling over the comm. ‘Nuriel…’

‘It is truth,’ said Nuriel. ‘If you are strong enough to hear it, you will be saved. But…’ He turned to look down at Barakiel. ‘There is no salvation for the weak.’

Barakiel found only madness in Nuriel’s eyes. He roared, straining against the oppressive psychic force assailing his mind as he tried to aim his boltgun.

‘Weak!’ Nuriel hammered his fist into Barakiel’s helm. The blow dented the brow and shattered the left optic. Barakiel dropped to the ground. ‘There can be no salvation for the weak.’ Nuriel bent down and lifted Barakiel into the air. ‘The weak have no place here,’ he said. Strengthening himself with his will, Nuriel hurled Barakiel away. The captain vanished amid the wind and the ash.

Nuriel snarled as a stray bolt-round clipped his shoulder guard. He turned on Barakiel’s squad, throwing his arms out to cast them to the winds. Alone, Nuriel listened again for the soul-voices. This time, they let slip the truth. ‘A moment closer,’ they said.

‘Where?’ Nuriel asked aloud as he crossed over the tower’s threshold. He crouched low, scooping up a handful of glass. The fine grains had been blasted to crystalline sand by the heat of the Victus’s guns.

‘Here, now,’ the soul-voices said again.

The familiar roar of a gunship drew his attention skywards. The bulky outline of a Thunderhawk descended towards him, its hull bearing the blue and white livery of the Eagle Warriors.

Nuriel felt a surge of anger course through his veins. ‘Have you not taken enough, sons of Guilliman?’ he asked, crushing the glass in his gauntlet. Rising, he drew his sword and advanced on the craft as it touched down. The pilot kept its engines running, the low burn of its thrusters shimmering in the gloom. Five Eagle Warriors disembarked, their bolters held across their chests. Nuriel quickened his pace, rushing to meet them. ‘You will not deny me my answer,’ he roared over the wind. ‘You will–’

Six. The number stung Nuriel to realisation. Of course. How could he have been so narrow-minded, so blind? His vision back on the Victus had been about more than the choir, more than this world. There had been much more to it. The feathered devils he’d battled had not been facsimiles of the Zurconian psykers but these Eagles Warriors. No, more than that. They had been the Emperor’s twisted angels. Legions of the misguided that would bring ruin and doom upon the galaxy.

Nuriel bared his teeth in a vicious snarl and attacked, thrusting his palm out to send bolts of psychic lightning arcing into the nearest Eagle Warrior’s breastplate. The Space Marine convulsed and toppled, his torso shredded by the eldritch energy.

The remaining Eagle Warriors cried out in hatred, issuing oaths of vengeance as their bolters chattered to life. Nuriel broke into a run, charging towards them, all thought of survival swallowed by his rage. He roared a curse as the lethal volley of explosive rounds shot towards him.

None found their mark.

Nuriel faltered as the bolt-rounds detonated a blade’s width in front of him.

‘Do not stop, son of the Blood. I am with you.’

Nuriel shot a glance to his right. A red-skinned warrior stood by his side, his blade outstretched before him. ‘You…’ Nuriel mouthed. ‘I have been searching for you.’ Armoured now, the Warrior was even more imposing. Bronzed plate guarded his torso. Rune-encrusted vambraces shielded his arms. A helm of brass and crimson hid his face, slick black horns protruding from his temples.

The Warrior nodded and indicated the Eagle Warriors. ‘Blood.’ The single word was like a thunderclap. A summons to battle.

A wolf-grin tore at Nuriel’s face. He attacked, landing among the Eagle Warriors in a single warp-charged bound. His landing scattered them, knocking them to the ground. He stood a moment, letting them regain their feet, letting them draw their knives. ‘With blade alone I shall kill you,’ he sneered, positioning himself in the middle of them. They were like children, scrabbling for hope. ‘I am better than you. Better than all of you.’ The Eagle Warriors attacked. The violence lasted only a heartbeat.

Nuriel cut the head from the shoulders of the first as he lunged, turning low to take the legs from the second. Rising, he bisected the third from groin to neck and cut down the fourth, before pivoting to thrust his blade through the primary heart of the last.

‘It is done.’ Nuriel flicked their blood from his blade and turned to the Warrior, eager for his praise.

‘No. The killing is not over,’ said the Warrior.

Nuriel followed the Warrior’s gaze to the Thunderhawk. The gunship’s engines roared as its pilot fed them power. ‘Cowards!’ Nuriel threw his will behind the word. The psychic shockwave rolled over the Thunderhawk, cracking its armourglass and stripping its ceramite to a lifeless grey. Nuriel advanced on it, focusing on the Eagle Warriors pilot, surveyor and gunner crewing the cockpit. Grinding his teeth in hatred, Nuriel willed them to die.

Wracked by spasms, the Eagle Warriors toppled to the deck in agony. Blood spewed from their orifices as one by one their organs failed. Nuriel tasted their pain, heard their souls cry out against the inevitability of their fate. He grinned in dark satisfaction and ended their torment, pulping each of their twin hearts with a thought.

With no one at the helm, the Thunderhawk yawed, pitching over to crash into the lip of a crater and explode in a ball of fire.

Nuriel turned from the destruction to face the Warrior. ‘Why? Why do you come to me?’

‘Our father in Blood sent me to follow you.’ The Warrior stepped close. ‘You alone have the strength to do what must be done. The will to see the Blood honoured. Where you lead, I follow. My strength is yours to wield. You need but take it.’ The Warrior offered Nuriel his blade, and took a knee. ‘Take it.’ The command rolled through Nuriel’s mind as a sea of fire, cleansing the last of his doubt. ‘Remove my head. Claim my skull.’

Nuriel took the blade.

Amit had not been merciful.

He snarled and threw one final punch, further cracking the flagstones. Rock dust and wet brain matter dripped from his gauntlet. The face of the man pinned beneath him was gone, reduced to a fleshy smear on the grey rockcrete.

Rising, Amit turned his gaze back towards the heart of the city. Fire touched everything. Black smoke drifted up in plumes like overpopulated hab-towers, obscuring the sky. Even at the fringe of the city, standing on the ruins of the wall that had protected the Zurconian palace, he could feel the heat of the flames. He cast his eyes over the wide concourse they’d slaughtered their way up. The remains of Zurconian vehicles littered it like rubble. Green-armoured corpses, the elite of the Zurconian army, their golden helms tarnished and broken, lay stacked upon one another like crumpled leaves. Amidst the detritus, he watched a mewling female as she attempted to drag away one of the corpses. Perhaps it was her husband, her son. Amit grunted, it didn’t matter. He raised his bolt pistol and shot her. He would spare no one.

Kill them all. It had been his only order as the Flesh Tearers roared from their drop pods to crash against the Zurconian army. His warriors had set about their task with unrelenting vigour, eradicating the Zurconians wherever they found them. The Zurconian army had been vast. Legions of men and tanks had met the Flesh Tearers in open combat. Legions. Amit’s mouth curled in disgust at the undeserved epithet. For too long the Zurconians had relied on their psykers for sanctuary. They had grown weak, complacent. His Flesh Tearers had cut them down like stalks of wheat.

It would have been quicker, more efficient, to destroy the capital from orbit. If Zophal had asked him, he would have told him that heresy on such a scale demanded nothing be left to chance. Amit smiled. And like all the other lies, he told himself, Zophal would have seen through it. The Flesh Tearers had not taken to battle in such strength since their formation. They needed this release. Every Zurconian killed was as a soothing raindrop, a momentary salve for the painful inferno that blazed in their blood. Amit’s face twisted into a snarl. It would take an ocean to drown their anguish, but he would start with this.

‘The charges are set,’ Druel called from up ahead.

Amit moved to join his honour guard – Druel, Tilonas, Nudriel and Sigron. Clad in hulking Terminator armour, the four veterans stood head and shoulders over their Chapter Master.

‘According to Ronja’s scans, the Zurconian council are in there.’ Tilonas indicated the sealed blast doors barring their way inside the palace.

Druel laughed, motioning to the city burning behind them. ‘There’s little place else for them to be hiding.’

‘Then let us end this,’ said Amit.

Druel nodded and activated the charge. ‘Three seconds.’

Nudriel and Sigron flexed their arms, readied their storm shields and stepped to within a hand span of the doorway. They would be first into the breach.

The charge detonated, blasting the doors inwards in a pall of fire and broken adamantium. Nudriel and Sigron were over the threshold an instant later, striding through the flame in search of targets.

Tilonas and Druel followed them in, their assault cannons whining at firing speed. Amit came last, holding his eviscerator low so that it tore a furrow in the rockcrete behind him. Breaching the smoke-choked darkness thrown up by the explosion, the Flesh Tearers emerged into a wide, oval chamber. Around its circumference, thick marble pillars, the same green as the Zurconians’ armour, supported an overhanging balcony. Of the Zurconians themselves, there was no sign.

‘That was anticlimactic,’ Druel voxed over the squad channel, as he panned around, searching for targets.

Amit paced to the raised dais set at the chamber’s centre. He turned on the spot to throw his gaze across the rows of empty seating lining the balcony. ‘Know this, filth,’ he snarled, his voice wet with spittle. ‘Whatever horror awaits you after this life, we are worse.’

A cacophony of screeches sounded in answer to Amit’s challenge. A dozen things leapt from concealment on the balcony to engage him. Druel and Tilonas opened fire without pause, shredding the bulk of them before they could land. Only two reached striking distance of Amit. The first he eviscerated, bringing his blade up to tear through its torso. The other lashed out at him, talons raking his pauldron. Amit headbutted it, snapping off its beaked nose, before clamping a hand around its neck. The thing thrashed in his grasp, screeching. Amit grunted, killing it with a twist of his wrist.

‘Defilers. Blasphemers.’ A lumbering brute emerged from behind one of the pillars, its voice the shrill chirp of an avian. Whatever it was, it had once been human, though its limbs had been stretched and distended. Pale skin struggled to contain a misshapen musculature that pulsed with sickening rhythm. Its eyes were pinpricks of malice, darting over the Flesh Tearers with hungry enthusiasm. Eight more of the creatures followed the first into view, stepping from behind the other pillars to surround the Flesh Tearers. Some wielded two-handed blades that curved like crescent moons. Others gripped heavy, tri-barrelled laser cannons. ‘Defilers. Blasphemers,’ they said, echoing the words of the first as they advanced.

‘Will this do?’ Tilonas shot a glance in Druel’s direction as laser blasts scored his armour. He opened fire, pumping a stream of rounds into the nearest brute. The creature exploded in a storm of flesh and dark ichor.

‘It’s a start.’ Druel paced forwards, thrusting the barrel of his weapon into a creature’s chest and gunning the trigger. The thing came apart, its back blown out by the burst of shells, innards churned to mulch by the assault cannon’s spinning barrels.

Nudriel and Sigron bellowed war cries and engaged a foe each, bracing themselves as heavy blades cleaved into their storm shields. Nudriel swung out with his thunder hammer, smashing a brute’s knee. The creature dropped low, roaring in anguish before Nudriel’s reverse stroke caved in its skull. Sigron drove his opponent back against the wall, delivering a series of relentless hammer blows that stripped chunks from its flesh until there was little left to hit.

Amit made straight for the first and largest of the creatures. His hearts hammered, blood and anger coursing through his veins. His mouth widened in a savage grin. There was something else surging through him. Righteousness. He felt righteous. For the first time since entering Zurconian space, he faced a real foe, a thing worthy of his wrath. The brute was the physical manifestation of the insidious sickness infecting the system. It was no inhuman or vat-grown defect. It was a heretic, a traitor. It had allowed its flesh to be violated by the Dark Gods. Cleaving its head from its shoulders was all that mattered.

Amit roared, powering forwards to meet the brute head-on. It sliced its blade down towards his neck. He slipped the blow, raising his shoulder as he drew his eviscerator up into its abdomen. Its blade bit deep into his pauldron. His eviscerator rent its flesh, cutting until its teeth dug into bone. Chained by blade and flesh, they stood a moment, each frozen by hatred for the other.

Amit grunted with effort as the creature pressed down on him, his boots cracking the ground as it forced him backwards. It seemed oblivious to the wound he’d dealt it. He bobbed his head, weaving aside as the brute’s beak snapped at him. He tensed, ignoring the pain as its blade ate into his shoulder, and pressed forwards. He locked eyes with it, staring into the fathomless beads of black. He could hear its blood bubbling in its veins. He thought of the rain. He thought of the ocean. A vast sea of blood that would drown him in ecstasy. ‘Die,’ he roared, shouting until his cry sounded silent, and forced his blade through the thing’s spine. The eviscerator’s teeth shredded the brute’s innards, showering Amit in viscera and putrid fluid. He tore it free, ripping the abomination in half. The bits of its corpse collapsed to the floor. Amit reversed his grip and set about them, plunging his blade into the dismembered meat until there was nothing but bloodied mulch.

‘Lord, they are all dead.’ Druel placed a cautious hand on Amit’s shoulder.

Barakiel opened his eyes to darkness. He blink-clicked, resetting his helm’s optics. His display shuddered as it resolved into an image of his surroundings, flickering in and out of focus. Red warning sigils shivered as they scrolled across his vision. His armour was wrecked, the outer shell cracked and the powercore damaged. Most of his bones were broken and many of his organs showed signs of critical failure. It had only been through his foresight that he still lived. Even as Nuriel had hoisted him up, Barakiel had activated his armour’s pain suppressors, flooding his system with a cocktail of muscle relaxants and nerve deadeners. He’d shot adrenaline into both hearts, something to keep them going as everything else numbed around them.

Not yet. Barakiel clung to the thought and struggled to focus as his implants dried, dragging him into a sus-an coma. He had to warn Amit.

Activating his comm, he winced as a burst of static shot over the feed. He tried another channel, modulating the frequency. Still nothing. A third and…

‘Barakiel! Emperor’s grace, we thought you dead.’ Amit’s voice came through loud and clear.

Barakiel smiled. ‘Not yet, and no thanks to Nuriel.’

‘What happened?’

‘The Librarian has gone mad. He attacked us.’

‘Sanguinius thank you for the warning,’ said Amit. ‘I will deal with Nuriel. Send me your coordinates and I will dispatch aid.’

Barakiel transmitted his coordinates and closed his eyes…

Except his eyes were already long closed, his mind having slipped away to the empty rumble of static in his helm, his body given in to the coma. The captain’s thoughts of glorious duty and vengeance were little more than a healing salve for his mind as his body knitted itself back together.

He had not reached Amit. The Chapter Master had gone unwarned.

Zophal stood still in the darkness, letting the full weight of what he was about to do settle on his shoulders. He growled low, his resolve hardened. He could bear the strain. ‘Sanguinius stand with me,’ Zophal whispered and pressed his palm to the data-pad. He took a step back as it blinked green and waited for the floor panel to recede, revealing a set of stairs. He followed them down, descending into another shrouded corridor. A further series of locking mechanisms greeted him. He disabled them, advancing to the end of the corridor to stand before one final cell. Its door was ringed by the same runes that had kept Astyanax’s power in check. Zophal opened it and entered.

Bound by lengths of barbed chain, a single prisoner hung from the rear wall. He was clad in ruby-red armour trimmed in gold. A white icon stained his pauldron, marking him as a son of Magnus.

‘Omari,’ Zophal barked.

‘It has been a long time, Chaplain,’ the prisoner hissed, ‘since you addressed me by anything other than traitor.’ His voice was obscure, layered over itself as though each word had been thrice repeated. ‘Is it finally my turn?’ He raised his head. ‘Have you come to ki…’ He paused, his eyes drawn to the slender sword held in Zophal’s grasp. ‘My weapon.’ He looked at Zophal. In the Chaplain’s blunt hands, the weapon was unremarkable, its flawless design humbled by the thousand other such blades wielded by the Adeptus Astartes. Yet in Omari’s grip, the psy-reactive alloy would blend with his gifts and the blade would become whole again. It would be a mighty thing. A weapon for slaying worlds. ‘You would dishonour me further? You would murder me with my own blade?’ Omari sneered, anger narrowing his eyes.

‘I have not come to kill you. I have come to offer redemption.’ Zophal’s face was unreadable, the practised disguise of a warrior used to rousing others and leading them to their deaths.

Omari laughed without humour. ‘Only in death, brother.’

‘Perhaps. But not by my hand.’ Zophal struck out with the blade, cutting the chains.

Omari dropped to the floor with a grimace.

‘We have spoken many times, you and I.’ Zophal stood over him as he spoke. ‘You have told me since the beginning that you were pure, that the taint of your Legion was not upon you.’

Omari looked up, his eyes embers of hate. ‘Once again…’ He pushed up into a crouch, resting his chin on the end of the blade. ‘I was on Holy Terra when my father turned from the Emperor. I will tell you no more. Now kill me and end this charade.’ Omari stiffened as Zophal withdrew the blade.

The Chaplain reversed his grip on the weapon and offered it to Omari.

The legionary’s eyes widened. ‘What game is this, Flesh Tearer? Would you rather I was armed when you slay me? Would that satisfy your blood lust?’

‘I have told you once. I am not here to kill you. Let it be enough,’ Zophal snarled.

‘Then what?’

‘There is a daemon on this ship. I need your help to stop it.’

Omari gave an insane smile born of chance circumstance. ‘Free from this cell, my power will be more than a match for you. Had you any Librarians of your own aboard, I doubt you would have stooped to such a desperate measure.’ Omari got to his feet. ‘So tell me, why shouldn’t I just kill you?’

‘You are free to.’ Zophal’s mask slipped a moment, the sorrow in his eyes unmistakable. ‘If you wish to prove Amit right, to be the traitor he thinks you are, then kill me.’ He tossed the blade to the ground.

Omari’s jaw hardened, his eyes darting between Zophal and the weapon.

‘I will not try to stop you, brother.’ said Zophal. ‘It is your soul to forfeit, your life to render a lie.’ Zophal turned and started for the corridor.

Omari retrieved his blade. ‘And afterwards, after we kill this daemon, what then?’

‘I will set you free.’

The last of the Zurconian vessels came apart in a ripple of explosions, slaughtered by a withering broadside. Ronja clenched a fist in triumph, relishing the victory. ‘Surveyor, run a full sweep. Confirm that was the last of them.’

‘Yes, mistress.’

Ronja watched the hololith as the surveyor worked. Information flickered and streamed across the panel of light, resolving and dissolving as the Victus’s sensoria analysed and dismissed threat readings.

‘Negative returns,’ said the surveyor. ‘All Zurconian vessels eliminated, mistress.’

A smile spread across Ronja’s face. She had been tested and she had been found worthy. ‘Helmsman, hail the–’ She faltered, wincing in pain as something stabbed at her mind. It was the Victus. Its machine-spirit was restless. No. Ronja’s eyes widened in panic. It was angry. She clutched her head, toppling from her command throne as the pain swelled to engulf her mind. She screwed her eyes shut, clutching her skull in an effort to blot out the pain. ‘We have won… What more…’ Her mouth stretched in a silent scream as the Victus’s barbed voice tore at her.

Kill, it said. Blood, it roared.

‘Yes… yes.’ Ronja nodded and climbed back into her throne. ‘Yes.’ She shivered, twitching as she fought to quiet the ship’s voice before it broke her mind. ‘You are right… I hear you, I hear you, and I am with you.’ Ronja’s pain eased only to be replaced by self-loathing. Shame burned in her gut like a fresh wound. The Victus was right. There had been no true victory in defeating the Zurconians. The weakling wretches were nothing without their psychic trickery. They lacked the martial strength to stand before her. Even ruined by those early exchanges, the Victus had been more than a match for their cruisers. Tears of shame streaked Ronja’s face, hissing as they evaporated on her cheeks, her skin flushed with anger. She sat forwards, her heart thundering with purpose. ‘Lock on to the Eagle Warriors vessel.’

‘Mistress, are–’

Ronja scowled. The gunnery serf convulsed as a surge of electric current burned out his body from the inside. She licked her lips, savouring the tang of scorched flesh. ‘The Victus will be questioned no more.’ Her voice sounded from the mouthpiece of every servitor toiling below her in the data trenches. It was a canine snarl, a savage bark that rumbled around the chamber to tear at those who would hear it.

‘Mistress, what are you doing?’ Bohdan drew his pistol. Blood trickled from his ears, loosed by Ronja’s voice.

‘You dare?’ Ronja rose from her throne, eyes narrowed in fury. ‘You dare draw your weapon on me? Me?’

Bohdan’s hand shook in terror. ‘Forgive me, shipmistress, but I think you are unwell.’ He gestured to her face.

Ronja touched her skin, drawing her hand away as smoke began to rise from the flesh of her fingertips. ‘Fool. I am the Victus, as it is me. The same inferno boils within us both.’

‘No, mistress. There’s…’ Fear widened Bohdan’s eyes as he shook his head and pointed towards her face. Behind him, a pair of armsmen took a cautious step forwards. He turned. ‘Stay bac–’

The moment’s lapse in concentration was all the time Ronja needed to draw her weapon and shoot him. The laser blast scythed through Bohdan’s arm, severing it at the elbow. He cried out in agony, ignoring his gun as it toppled to the floor in favour of cradling his cauterised stump. Ronja advanced on him, locking a hand around his throat and lifting him from his feet.

‘You will die for turning from us.’

Lost to pained delirium, Bohdan didn’t struggle. ‘The breach… The breach in the field…’ His lips trembled.

Ronja frowned at his incoherent whimpering. ‘Weak.’ She placed her free hand over his chest. His heartbeat was shallow and fast, his voice the pitiful wailing of a child. ‘Weak,’ she snarled. Bohdan went slack, his heart pulped in his chest. Ronja tossed him aside. ‘All of you, weak.’ She turned to face her crew. ‘We need none of you to triumph.’

Across the bridge, serfs, armsmen and servitors died. Some quickly, their bodies consumed by crimson flame, others more slowly, torn to ribbons by unseen claws as a thousand cuts opened their flesh.

‘Only the strongest among you deserve to live.’ Ronja looked past the slaughter out into the void. She had no more need of the tactical hololith or the occulus. The Victus let her see through its eyes. She felt them narrow with malice as they sighted the Eagle Warriors vessel and the Flesh Tearers strike cruiser beyond it. She looked to Zurcon Primus. Targeting coordinates and Flesh Tearers ident-tags scrolled through her mind as the planet turned below her. She grinned as the data fell into synch, merging to become one and the same. ‘If you do not thirst for blood, you cannot thirst for life. Kill or be killed. That is the only command. The only truth.’

Nikon sat glued to the pict viewer as his Thunderhawk banked low over a row of decimated structures. Zurcon Primus was burning, its armies broken and scattered, butchered by the Flesh Tearers, who had set upon the world like violence-starved murderers. Through the eyes of the gunship’s sensoria, Nikon snatched glimpses of Amit’s warriors, their crimson armour caked in blood and viscera, coated in the excesses of savage, close-quarter killing. Nikon felt a twisting sickness in his gut. He was no sinless novitiate; all war was ugly. Yet the Flesh Tearers persecution of Zurcon seemed a far cry from the righteous campaigns Nikon had fought in the name of Emperor and primarch.

The snap-din of small arms fire rang out against the craft’s hull as they soared past a unit of dug-in Zurconians. Nikon watched as a squad of Flesh Tearers advanced on them, their bolters silent. The Zurconians would die on the edge of a blade.

Nikon shook his head and looked away. ‘Do we have a fix on Amit’s location yet?’

‘Yes. He’s headed for the central palace, here,’ Sergeant Erastos said, manipulating the controls of the Thunderhawk’s onboard hololith. In response, the image of a red stone building resolved into view. It was a grand structure, comprising a central building surrounded by four towering annexes. Opulent domes crested the main building’s roof, a stark aesthetic contrast to the angled tips of the annexes. A high wall of reinforced rockcrete ran around its entire perimeter, sheltering the palace from the city beyond. ‘Captain.’ Erastos lowered his voice. ‘The building occupies the same coordinates that we traced the Zurconian council’s distress signal to.’

‘Have we been able to re-establish contact with the council?’

‘No,’ said Erastos. ‘We’ve been unable to detect any communications coming from the structure since we breached the planet’s atmosphere.’

‘Do we have a schematic of the interior? Any clue as to where in the building the council might be?’

Erastos shook his head. ‘Our scans have been unable to penetrate the structure.’

Nikon nodded slowly, his face troubled. ‘Pilot,’ he said over the internal comm. ‘Set us down here.’ Nikon tapped the hololith, indicating a wide avenue just beyond the wall’s perimeter.

‘Understood. Compliance,’ the pilot-servitor’s mechanical voice crackled back over the vox-unit mounted on the ceiling.

‘Sergeant,’ Nikon said to Erastos, ‘have the rest of the company hold positions around the perimeter.’ Nikon drew his finger through the hololith, indicating the cordon he wanted the Eagle Warriors to form around the palace.

Erastos nodded and relayed Nikon’s instructions.

Nikon sat uneasy in his chair. There were too many unknowns, too many questions that needed answers. He took a slow breath and focused on the rumble of the gunship’s engine, letting its familiar wash calm his mind. He was there now, his Eagle Warriors committed to battle. Whatever answers awaited them on the ground, they would face them with honour and courage. They would do their duty.

‘One minute to insertion.’ The pilot’s voice stirred Nikon from his reverie.

As one, he and his honour squad, Aiaxis, deactivated the mag-harnesses holding them in place and rose from their seats to assemble by the assault ramp.

‘In Guilliman’s name, we go forth,’ said Nikon.

‘In Guilliman’s name, we bring justice,’ the five members of Aiaxis said as one, finishing the rite of insertion.

The Thunderhawk juddered as it touched down, the roar of its engines deafening as they arrested its hurried descent.

‘Go,’ cried Erastos, depressing the hatch release.

Nikon crashed his fist against his breastplate and led Aiaxis down the ramp and out onto Zurconian soil. The Eagle Warriors fanned out, their weapons panning for targets.

‘Site secure, captain,’ said Erastos. It was an odd statement, incongruous with the war-scape that greeted the Eagle Warriors. Yet so far, they were the target of none of the violence enveloping the city around them.

Nikon nodded, noting each of his bodyguard as the sergeant and the other four members of Aiaxis formed up around him: reliable Brother Acacius, his armour polished to a parade-sheen; the standard bearer, Ligeia, company banner held aloft in his left hand, a power fist bunched in the other; Apothecary Hilarion; and hulking Galenos, who wielded his heavy bolter as though it were a fraction of its true weight. Erastos made to advance.

‘Wait,’ said Nikon, holding up a hand.

‘What is it?’ asked Erastos.

‘It sounds…’ Nikon paused, struggling to find the word. ‘Wrong.’

The sergeant nodded in agreement, stooping to examine a mutilated corpse. ‘There are no wounded.’

‘What?’

‘Listen,’ said Erastos.

Nikon strained his ears, letting his mind filter out the chatter of weapons fire. Behind it, he heard the roar of the Flesh Tearers, the defiant cries of the Zurconians and the rumble of vehicles. Beyond that, there was nothing. No sobbing. No desperate prayers. No agonised, rasping breaths or the sound of blood filling a man’s throat and lungs as his body shut down. Amit’s warriors were butchering with ruthless efficiency. Nikon scanned the battlefield. Pockets of Flesh Tearers were scattered in every direction. There was no cohesion, no forward momentum. They didn’t seek to take ground or secure positions. They killed. They just killed.

Nikon’s features hardened. ‘All squads, hold position,’ he said over the company-wide channel. ‘Defend yourselves, brothers. But do not engage unless I give the order.’ Nikon tightened his grip on his gladius. It was an order he hoped he would not have to give. The Flesh Tearers outnumbered his warriors almost three to one. His Eagle Warriors would die if pitted against Amit’s butchers.

‘Guilliman grant me the strength to do what I must.’ Nikon whispered the axiom, thankful that, for the moment at least, the Flesh Tearers seemed content to ignore his presence in favour of killing the Zurconians.

A series of confirmations flashed on Nikon’s helm display. ‘Ready, sergeant?’ He turned to Erastos and squad Aiaxis.

‘Aiaxis will not fail you, captain.’ Erastos clamped his fist to his breastplate.

‘Then for Guilliman, and the Emperor, with me.’

Nikon and his honour guard broke into a run towards the palace. There would be no stopping. No snap-shots loosed or enemies engaged. If they were to reach Amit before he finished his bloody work, they had no time to spare. They ran across the embattled avenue, ignorant of the stray shells and laser blasts that scarred their armour. Nikon felt every ounce of his martial honour rail against him as they moved past a huddle of civilians, his nostrils thick with the smell of their deaths as the Flesh Tearers put them to flame. On and on they ran, a fleeting audience to the mayhem and carnage consuming the world.

‘Captain.’ Erastos indicated a pair of Zurconian battle tanks as they rolled from behind the palace wall.

Nikon spat a curse. There was no time to stop, but no other way around – the concourse linking the avenue to the palace was the last intact roadway. He threw his gaze over the bodies and burned-out vehicles strewn in front of them. ‘Stay low but keep moving. Ligeia, ready your…’ Nikon trailed off as a squad of Flesh Tearers descended on jump packs. The Flesh Tearers swarmed over the tank hulls, their power fists sparking with energy as they bludgeoned their way inside.

‘Go!’ Nikon broke into a sprint. ‘Move, push past them.’

‘Let’s hope they don’t finish the Zurconians before we’re clear,’ said Erastos.

Nikon ignored the question inherent in the sergeant’s statement. ‘Keep moving.’

‘Captain, ahead,’ warned Hilarion.

‘What now?’ Nikon struggled to keep his tone level, his ears ringing with the screams of the tank crew as they met their end.

‘In Guilliman’s name.’ Hilarion gestured to a herd of gore-soaked Zurconians running towards them. They had abandoned their weapons, and seemed heedless of the Eagle Warriors.

Galenos braced himself and raised his heavy bolter.

‘No.’ Nikon placed a hand on the weapon’s barrel. ‘We do not yet know if they are friend or foe.’

‘Then let us find out,’ said Galenos.

‘There is no time. We must reach Amit. Go through them.’ Nikon tensed, driving forwards, shouldering his way through the press of bodies.

‘I see no taint upon them,’ Erastos said to Nikon over a private channel as they pushed through the horde.

‘The markings of the Archenemy are not always clear, brother. Keep going – we will have answers soon enough.’ I hope. Nikon kept his doubts to himself.

‘Captain…’

‘We must trust that Amit is still with us. We must–’ Nikon froze as a tortured cry sounded from his left. ‘Ligeia,’ he shouted, driving towards the banner bearer as his ident-tag blinked dark.

‘Aiaxis, form up on the captain,’ Erastos barked, readying his weapons.

‘There,’ said Galenos as the horde of Zurconians thinned out. To their flank, two black-armoured Space Marines stood over Ligeia’s corpse, their chainswords slick with his entrails.

‘Kill them,’ Erastos snapped.

‘Wait!’ Nikon held up a hand. ‘If they are Flesh Tearers, if we open fire on them, we declare war on Amit.’

‘If we do not, we’ll join Ligeia,’ Erastos said as the standard bearer’s killers advanced on them. ‘We must end this.’

Nikon looked again to Ligeia’s corpse. ‘It is too late, already. There is no going back.’ He forced the words through clenched teeth, his hearts heavy with anger and regret. ‘Fire.’

Galenos opened up with his heavy bolter, hammering the black-armoured Space Marines with high-calibre rounds. The explosive shells blasted chunks from their torsos and punched them from their feet. Still, they kept coming, growling as they clawed their way forwards. Galenos fired again, thumbing the trigger until they were still.

Nikon crouched to inspect one of the bodies, running his hand over the Space Marine’s left pauldron. There, hidden beneath a sheen of gore, a serrated blade segmented by a single blood drop glared back at him in accusation. He looked to Erastos, his heart heavy with regret, and opened the company-wide channel. ‘This is Captain Nikon. Engage the Flesh Tearers. Guilliman be with you.’

‘How is it?’ Menadel asked Seraph as the sergeant flexed his damaged arm.

‘Stiff.’ Seraph swung his legs down off the med-slab. ‘Looking for a fight?’ He gestured to Menadel’s weapons. He knew it was a mark of honour that the Company Champion was never without his blade.

Menadel grinned. ‘Perhaps I’ll run into Nuriel.’

‘How are the others?’ asked Seraph.

‘Vaul and Sere are still unconscious. Nuriel barely left them alive.’

Anger hardened the sergeant’s features at the mention of the wretched Librarian. He clenched and unclenched his fist, imagining himself crushing the life from Nuriel. ‘And Manakel?’

‘Apothecary Pursun is waking him now.’ Menadel indicated another med-slab on the other side of the apothecarion. ‘He should be combat ready in another few hours…’ He trailed off, distracted by a battle-servitor as it trundled in through the chamber’s central entrance. It was a front-line unit. All muscle and vat-grown sinew welded atop a pair of armoured tracks. A heavy bolter sat in place of its left arm, its remaining hand cradling the ammo feed.

‘Report, servitor. Have we been boarded?’ Seraph was suddenly aware that he was unarmed and unarmoured.

The servitor said nothing, its head panning from left to right.

‘Answer. Where is the threat?’ Seraph snapped.

The click-clack of a round entering the heavy bolter’s firing chamber was the first and only warning.

‘Down!’ Menadel dived forwards and dragged Seraph behind an examination slab, letting his armoured bulk shelter the tunic-garbed sergeant.

The servitor opened fire.

Explosive rounds tore across the chamber, decimating consoles, shattering bio-tanks and hammering the med-slabs. A second and third servitor joined the first, their own weapons chattering to ruinous life.

‘Manakel,’ Seraph called after his squad mate.

‘He lives,’ Apothecary Pursun shouted in answer.

Menadel risked a glance towards Vaul and Sere, as another storm of rounds detonated around him. The two Flesh Tearers were dead, their bodies riddled with shells, torn into fleshy gobbets. ‘Sanguinius grant me vengeance,’ Menadel snarled and passed Seraph his bolt pistol. ‘Cover me.’

He activated his storm shield, and broke cover. Rushing forwards, he stayed as low as he could, keeping a row of med-slabs between him and the servitors. Targeting lasers tracked him as he moved, heavy bolter rounds churning up the floor around him. He roared in defiance as shrapnel rained against his armour and a stray round clipped his pauldron. He stumbled but kept moving, sprinting towards the servitor circling to his right. The ground between him and it was devoid of cover. ‘Blood take you,’ Menadel growled, and tucked his chin tight to his shoulder, bracing himself behind his storm shield.

The servitor had a clear shot. It fired.

The storm shield shuddered and sparked, assailed by a torrent of direct hits. The jarring impacts reverberated up Menadel’s arm. He roared in anger, fighting to maintain his grip. A round scored his thigh. Another smashed apart his shoulder guard. Heedless of the pain, he ran on. His shield crackled as its powercore overloaded and its adamantium shell began to come apart. Dropping it, Menadel leapt into the air, traversing the last two metres in a single bound. He drew his sword through the air as he descended, bisecting the heavy bolter. The gun coughed and died. Menadel landed in a crouch at the base of the servitor, twisting to drive his blade upwards and through the thing’s skull. Tearing his weapon free, he took a moment to scan and reassess.

Pursun was holding the left flank, firing from behind a resus unit and drawing the fire of the furthest servitor. Menadel called up the Apothecary’s helm feed, overlaying it onto his own. Pursun had only half a magazine of ammo left.

In the centre, Seraph was up and moving, throwing himself behind another med-slab as the one he was sheltering behind finally came apart. The sergeant had stopped firing, his ammunition exhausted.

Menadel broke into a run. Gripping his blade two-handed, he raised it over his head as the servitor turned, its targeting laser stabbing towards his torso. ‘For Sanguinius!’ Menadel roared and threw the blade. The power sword spun end over end, spearing the servitor’s face. He ran a hand over his breastplate, relieved to find no trace of blood, and looked to the servitor as it stuttered and ceased functioning.

Manakel dragged himself forwards. His fingers burned as he dug them into the steel of the floor for purchase. He hadn’t fully recovered from Nuriel’s beating, and had it not been for Pursun, he would have been as dead as Vaul and Sere. As it was, the servitors had shot a chunk from his leg and lower abdomen. Advancing hand over hand, he continued to close on the left-most servitor. Pain threatened to beat him into unconsciousness as he moved over stone fragments and broken glass. He bared his teeth in a grimace. It was little more than a dull ache compared to the roar of anger in his veins. Behind him, he heard the bark of Pursun’s boltgun. Shrapnel rained against his skin as the servitor returned fire, blasting apart the chamber as it sought the Apothecary. Manakel kept moving. If he died, it would not be before he tore the contemptible machines to scrap.

Edging around the servitor’s flank, he closed on its tracks. Unarmed, unarmoured and unable to stand – he had never been more exposed. Yet the servitor seemed content to ignore him. It was either unaware of his presence or didn’t consider him an immediate threat. The thought drew a grunt from Manakel. He would make it regret its laxity and he pulled himself up onto the servitor’s tracks. The man-machine stopped firing, reversing in an effort to buck the Flesh Tearer. Manakel let out a cry of pain as the tracks ripped sheets off his skin. Still, he clung on, pulling his way up the servitor’s body until his arms locked around its neck. ‘Die,’ he said, and wrenched its head off.

The skull clattered as it hit the ground, ruining the harmony of the suddenly still chamber.

‘Took you long enough, brother.’ Pursun emerged from behind cover, a smile warming his features as he stooped to inspect Manakel’s wounds.

‘Who else is still on board?’ Seraph was already making for the exit.

‘High Chaplain Andras remained to sanctify the Reclusiam,’ Menadel answered, flicking a line of blood from his blade.

Seraph stopped walking, his face set in a tight scowl. ‘Then I hope for his sake he did so armoured.’

The savagery of the scene before him shocked Nikon to inaction. Rooted to the spot, he stood just inside the Zurconian palace’s receiving chamber, watching as the Master of the Flesh Tearers was pulled from a corpse by two of his own.

Nikon took a breath and summoned his voice. ‘Master Amit, what have you done here?’

Amit snarled, blood dripping from his face, and rounded on him. ‘The Emperor’s work.’

On reflex, the Eagle Warriors readied their weapons as the hulking Flesh Tearer started towards them. Amit’s war-plate was of brutal artifice. Fastened with thick, serrated rivets that clung tight to torn flesh, and dripped with blood, it was as much a weapon as the oversized eviscerator clutched in his hand. His face was a rough-hewn slab of malice. Restrained fury constricted his brow and kept his jaw in spasm. Had Nikon not known who he addressed, he could have mistaken the Flesh Tearer for a son of Angron.

‘Why are you here, brother?’ asked Amit.

Nikon tensed, tightening his grip on his blade. Amit’s martial prowess was infamous. He knew he could not best him at arms. But if it came to it, he would die with his blade hilt-deep in the Flesh Tearer. ‘The Zurconians sent a request for aid.’ Nikon met Amit’s gaze. ‘Where are the council?’

Amit grunted. ‘Those things were the council.’

Nikon turned his gaze over the vile corpses littering the chamber. ‘What have we been drawn into…’

Amit took a step forwards, leaning down until his face was a hair’s breadth from Nikon’s. ‘You have been made a fool, lured here under false pretences,’ he sneered and shouldered past the Eagle Warrior.

‘Why?’ Nikon raised his voice, his temper fraying. ‘For what purpose?’

‘I do not know, and right now, I do not care.’

‘You have turned this world into a graveyard,’ said Nikon, advancing on Amit. ‘I would know why.’

‘Do not test me, son of Guilliman.’ Amit turned, struggling to keep his temper in check. ‘Look at them,’ he said, gesturing to the corpses littering the chamber. ‘Is that not reason enough? What would you have done?’

Nikon said nothing, his mind racing as it sifted through the actions and reactions, the endless possibilities that had brought them together. ‘Emperor forgive us,’ he said. ‘We must clear this structure and vox our forces.’

‘What?’ Amit’s voice was like the rumble of a chainblade. He touched a hand to his ear, suddenly aware that there was nothing but static sounding over his comm-feed.

‘Whatever dark power brought us here, I believe they intended for us to kill one another.’

Amit read the guilt in Nikon’s eyes. ‘Traitor!’ Amit roared, seizing Nikon’s throat and lifting him from the ground.

‘Release him!’ Sergeant Erastos angled his blade at Amit’s neck as the other Eagle Warriors sighted on the Chapter Master.

‘Lower your weapons or we will kill you all,’ Druel snarled, his assault cannon cycling to firing speed.

‘You dare spill the blood of Sanguinius?’ Amit kept his attention fixed on Nikon.

Nikon struggled to speak. ‘You…attacked… first,’ he managed, bringing his arm up to press his bolt pistol against Amit’s breastplate.

‘I will wrench your head from your shoulders before you can press the trigger,’ Amit said.

‘Please, Chapter Master, I have no wish to spill more loyalist blood. Let us work this out, together.’

‘A shame that is not your call to make, captain.’ Nuriel laughed, his voice a wet growl as he dropped from the balcony to land behind them.

Amit released Nikon.

‘Nuriel?’ asked Tilonas. ‘How is it that you are here?’

‘How long have you worn my brother’s flesh?’ Amit said, already closing on the Librarian.

‘Perceptive for a berserker.’ The thing that had once been Nuriel laughed, its eyes flashing with perverse amusement. ‘You are correct, Nassir. I am not one of your cursed flock.’

‘I should have known.’ Amit’s face contorted in anger. ‘Was that you on the duelling stone?’

The thing wearing Nuriel’s flesh smiled darkly. ‘No, that was Nuriel. Your Librarian was a prideful, vicious being. Even in the warp I could taste his rage, his resentment. They glimmered like twin keys to his soul.’ The thing’s smile widened. ‘Nuriel gave me his flesh and surrendered his soul for the promise of power. I wonder – what will you trade yours for?’

‘When the Emperor has no more use for it, my soul will die with my body, daemon,’ Amit spat, grimacing as the word cut at his tongue.

The thing’s laugh fell to a guttural rumble. ‘Your understanding of that term is too simple, too small for it to represent all that I am. All that I bring with me.’ The skin of Nuriel’s face blistered as it melted and ran away, dripping from his bones to leave behind a face of bloodied muscle and gore-red sinew. ‘I am a true son of murder.’ Sinuous, black lengths tore free from the back of Nuriel’s skull to drape his back like hair. ‘I am your death and the death of your blood.’ The daemon paused, grimacing, as with a wet crack, slick black horns broke free to protrude from either side of Nuriel’s skull. ‘I am a child of Kabanda,’ it said, as the Librarian’s armour crumbled and fell away, leaving behind a suit of rune-encrusted, bronzed war-plate. ‘I am your doom.’

Kabanda. The name of the daemon that had maimed their father tore at the Flesh Tearers, opening the deepest of wounds, burning like a ragged incision in their bones. The Flesh Tearers roared and opened fire. The Eagle Warriors issued their own battle-cries and joined them, all thoughts of rivalry dissolved in the face of a greater foe.

The storm of rounds slowed before it, halting as the air bent and softened, gripping them like some unseen tar pit. The daemon spread its hands, holding up its palms in mock deference. ‘Unlike your withered corpse-god, my patron does not leave me to bleed and die before such cowardly weapons.’ It snatched its fists closed, sending the rounds shooting back the way they had come.

Driven by the daemon’s psychic might, the rounds crashed against the Space Marines. They cried out in pain as their armour fractured, their bones broke and their organs failed. Riddled with wounds, they toppled, bleeding or dead on the ground.

Only Amit still stood, his eviscerator held ready.

‘There will be no quick end for either of us, Flesh Tearer.’ The daemon drew Nuriel’s force sword. ‘If you want to kill me, you will have to do it with a blade.’

‘So be it.’ Amit bared his teeth in a snarl and charged.

High Chaplain Andras turned as the doors to the Reclusiam opened. The unwelcome interruption tore a growl from his throat. Amit had allowed him to forego the assault on Primus that he might better order his thoughts and prepare to receive the dead.

‘You had better have good reason–’ He stopped short, springing to his feet and into a run as a targeting laser danced across his torso. His attacker opened fire, filling the space with the familiar sound of a heavy bolter. A second weapon opened up moments after the first. Then a third and a fourth. Andras continued running, sweeping around the chamber in a wide arc that kept a row of pillars between him and his attackers. Explosive rounds trailed after him, blasting apart the stonework and demolishing the wooden pews. He grimaced as a hail of stone fragments raked his skin; without the protection of his armour, he was at the mercy of the shrapnel as it cut and tore.

Andras risked a glance over his shoulder. ‘Blood,’ he spat, glimpsing the four battle-servitors. He needed a weapon. Any weapon… The Phobos. Andras dropped into a roll, covering the open ground between him and the next set of pillars. On his feet again, he swung around the stone columns and headed back the way he had come, back towards the pulpit and the Phobos-pattern boltgun secured in the relic locker behind it.

Amidst a storm of rounds, Andras rushed up the steps to the dais. He took them three at a time, diving over the sacrament table at the top and pulling it over behind him. The ancient slab of wood shuddered under the attention of the heavy bolters. Its timbers would buy Andras only a moment. He scrambled forwards, reaching up to pull down the relic locker. The armourglass and steel cabinet toppled. Andras pulled it to him, striking the glass with a closed fist. ‘Sanguinius curse you, break,’ he snarled and struck it again. A hair-line crack snaked its way across the glass surface. Under the third blow, the glass broke. Andras snatched the boltgun from its housing and lunged forwards, throwing himself behind the pulpit as the sacrament table came apart.

The cold adamantium was a welcome sensation against his back as he braced against the pulpit and steadied himself, regulating his breathing and slowing his heartbeats so that he could better hear the servitors.

They had stopped firing and fanned out. He listened to the rumble of their tracks as they traversed the stone floor. A pair of them were advancing up the main aisle, while the other two were moving to flank him to the left and right.

He turned the Phobos over in his hands. The ornate gun was a work of the highest craftsmanship, a hero’s weapon. Wielded by Blood Angels Chaplain Varaciel in the final battle for Terra, it had not been fired since. Andras tested its weight and smiled. It was fully loaded. The Chapter’s Techmarines had done more than restore the weapon; they had given it the chance to serve again.

The snapping of wood sharpened his focus. The servitors had crossed over the prayer benches. He had to move.

‘I am His vengeance as He is my shield.’ Andras flanked left, twisting to fire on the two servitors in the centre. The hurried rounds hammered against their bodies, suppressing them for the moment he needed to reach the left-most servitor.

His bold move caught it by surprise, its targeting laser flicking out as it tried to draw a bead on him. He dived into a roll as it opened fire, explosive rounds filling the air above his head as he came to a crouch. He sprung up, driving the butt of his gun into the servitor’s face. Bone broke as it met steel, and the servitor’s eye crumpled in its socket. Disorientated, the machine kept firing, dousing Andras in spent shell cases. Grabbing the heavy bolter in both hands, he pulled it around, guiding it towards the two servitors in the middle of the chamber. Caught in the open, the pair were shredded by the sustained fire, coming apart in a storm of flesh and metal.

The remaining servitor had him in its sights.

Andras leapt from the servitor he was tangling with as its counterpart fired. The damaged unit was caught full on by the attack, blasted apart by a slew of explosive rounds.

He recovered quickly, shouldering his boltgun and putting three rounds into the firing servitor’s face. Its head vanished in bloodied mist.

Alone, Andras dropped to one knee and caught his breath. He was bleeding from dozens of wounds, the worst of which was in his abdomen. He pressed a hand to his side, feeling the sticky wetness of his tunic. A metallic rumble drew his attention as another servitor pushed in through the doors. ‘Emperor,’ Andras sighed, and checked the ammo counter on his boltgun. A single round remained. He grinned, shaking his head and stealing a glance towards the image of Sanguinius worked into the chamber’s ceiling. ‘I had thought you without humour.’ Andras raised his weapon to fire.

The servitor’s head and shoulders slid away, its torso bifurcated by a shimmering power blade. ‘Are you injured, High Chaplain?’ Menadel stepped from behind the servitor’s twitching corpse.

‘I’ll live.’ Andras ejected the magazine from his bolter and took the one Menadel proffered. ‘What in the Emperor’s name is going on?’

‘Ronja has lost her mind. She’s opened fire on our brothers on the surface and activated the Victus’s full complement of battle-servitors.’

Andras snarled. ‘Then we had best go kill her.’

Menadel ducked back behind a bulkhead as another torrent of rounds impacted around him. To his right, Chaplain Andras loosed another salvo at their attackers.

‘We need to find another way,’ Seraph rasped over the din of gunfire. The sergeant was just ahead of him, pressed tight against a protruding support column.

He was right. Corridor by corridor, they had fought their way from the Reclusiam, only to be pinned a hundred strides from their objective. The central corridor leading to the Victus’s bridge was a fortified alley of automated gun turrets and defensible positions. Rank upon rank of servitors stood between the Flesh Tearers and the hulking blast doors, barring access to Ronja and command of the ship.

‘There is no other way.’ Menadel darted forwards, drawing level with Seraph. ‘Every other access way has been sealed. This is it.’

‘Blood. There are more coming from the rear,’ Pursun warned from behind them. ‘If we don’t advance more quickly, we’ll be overrun from both sides.’

‘Then we advance,’ Andras said, activating a refractor field. In response, a shimmering energy field flashed, enveloping him. ‘Get behind me and whatever happens, keep moving. We must reach the door.’ No one acknowledged the order, for they each knew as well as Andras what it meant.

‘We are vengeance!’ Andras broke cover. ‘We are fury!’ The energies of the refractor field rippled and flared as he pushed into the maelstrom of weapons fire. ‘We are wrath!’ He ran forwards, boltgun bucking in his hand as he fired.

Seraph and Menadel roared their own battle-cries and ran out behind him. Seraph drew his pistol, lending its firepower to his bolter, as he targeted the gun turrets studding the ceiling. Menadel focused his attentions on the servitors, killing them with every pull of the trigger and sweep of his blade. Only Pursun held his position, securing their rear against the encroaching servitors, his sacrifice wordlessly acknowledged by the fervour of his brothers’ attack.

Andras pressed forwards. Point-blank detonations blended with the fulgurant flash of his shield to obscure his vision. He fired on instinct, firing and reloading until his ammo was spent. The servitors seemed without number. Their relentless attacks hammered his energy shield until it flared azure and shattered. Within a heartbeat, rounds began impacting against his armour. ‘Cover!’ Andras cried out as he was punched from his feet, a barrage of rounds striking his breastplate.

Seraph and Menadel reacted without pause, throwing themselves against the walls, sheltering behind what little protection they could find.

Andras struggled onto all fours. He was close. The ceramite of his armour was split and cracked. His pauldrons were ruined, pitted and scarred like the surface of a moon. He gasped in pain as something pierced his lung and threw him onto his back. Blood filled his mouth as he rose and edged himself forwards. Rounds tore through his legs, shearing them from his body. His torso toppled. In the seconds it took the servitors to realise he wasn’t dead, he managed to gain another half metre, pulling himself forwards. Agony stole his voice as yet more rounds punched into his flesh. Close enough. He closed his eyes and detonated the melta charge he’d been cradling.

A wave of super-heated air bathed the corridor around him, turning the nearest servitors to molten slag, washing over the others like a broiling tide. Burning. Disfiguring. Ruining.

Menadel and Seraph were among the servitors before they could rally, attacking with all the strength they had left. Rage drove their limbs. It tore their blades through machine and pushed the noses of their boltguns into flesh. Knee-deep in tangled corpses, the Flesh Tearers were barely ten strides from the bridge. Still their cause was a hopeless one.

With their ammunition exhausted, they would be easy prey for the remaining servitors, who were even now sighting their weapons towards them.

‘Sanguinius keep you, brother.’ Seraph turned to Menadel.

‘The Blood redeems.’ Menadel dipped his blade in salute.

The pair bared their teeth in a murderous snarl, defying oblivion to claim them, and charged.

The servitors fired. Dozens upon dozens of high-calibre, explosive rounds zipped through the air towards the Flesh Tearers, more than enough to shred a platoon of men or crack open a light tank.

Seraph and Menadel went unharmed.

Not a round struck the Flesh Tearers. They stopped running, pulling up sharp a hand span before a wall of explosions. The servitors continued to fire, their rounds breaking against an unseen barrier.

‘This is not the hour when your duty ends, brothers.’

They turned to find Chaplain Zophal advancing behind them. The Chaplain’s armour was caked in blood, smeared with lines of viscera. Menadel’s eyes narrowed as he glimpsed the red armour of Zophal’s companion. ‘Chaplain…’ He raised his sword, thrusting it towards the Thousand Sons legionary.

‘Brother Omari is with us,’ said Zophal, gesturing to the force barrier that was still flashing under a barrage of detonations.

Menadel nodded. Zophal’s word was all the reassurance he needed. ‘And Pursun?’

‘He cannot stand but he lives. We will see to his wounds later. We are not done killing,’ Zophal snarled, and nodded to Omari.

Omari stepped forwards and threw his arms out. The force barrier that was the manifestation of his unbending will shuddered, rippling like water, and shot forwards. The wave of charged energy dealt the servitors a hammer blow, stripping away their flesh and dissolving their machine parts. With a crushing snap, the energy barrier convulsed and was gone. Of the servitors, nothing remained.

Omari grimaced and stumbled to one knee. Blood ran from his eyes and mouth.

‘Can you continue?’

‘I am fine,’ Omari snapped at Zophal, and pushed up to his feet.

‘How are we to breach the seal? Andras had our only charge.’ Seraph indicated the thick locking mechanisms sealing the bridge doors.

Omari scoffed and stepped to the doors. ‘How you and your allies ever bested Horus and clung to life, I will never know.’ He ran his palm over the door’s surface and drew his blade. Whispering words that held no meaning to any save him and his weapon, he sent his will shivering along its length. The sword shone brightest azure in response, like a new sky born of clear fire and falling stars. Omari gripped it in two hands, and thrust it into the door.

Fire. There was nothing but fire. Ronja stared through the real space window, mesmerised by the wrathful inferno consuming the Eagle Warriors strike cruiser. Her eyes widened as tendrils of blood-red flame twisted out from the wreck to burn in the blackness of the void. The new fire, she knew, would consume everything. Ship, planets, stars. They would all burn. The fire strobed in time with the beating of her heart, expanding, rolling ever outwards as the Victus showed her what would become of the galaxy. The doom she would bring upon it when they were finished with Amit and his cowards. Her mouth stretched in a wide smile as excited shivers raced down her spine. Caught in the throes of mad glee, she began to drool as the Shield of Baal limped before her guns.

‘Target–’ The gunnery serf’s words died in his throat as a bolt-round slammed into his back and tore him apart.

‘Who dares?’ Ronja roared, spinning to face the bridge’s entrance as more of her crew died, gunned down in short order. ‘Flesh Tearers,’ she sneered, enraged by the desecration of the Victus’s most holy sanctum. ‘Kill them. Kill them now!’ she screeched, her voice the wet spittle of a craven hound.

Her armsmen roared with blood lust and engaged the Flesh Tearers, their shotguns spitting heavy slugs. The men were naked from the waist up, shoulders and sinuous arms rippling with muscle. Gifts from the Victus. A reward for their faith. Ronja smiled at the crude Flesh Tearers Chapter symbol daubed in blood on their chests. They were the true sons of the Victus. By their blood, it would be cleansed.

Zophal cursed as a round impacted on his helm. He returned fire, shooting two of the armsmen through the head. He sighted on a third, denied the kill by the clack of an empty chamber. He tossed the weapon away. ‘Seraph. Menadel. Kill these wretches. Omari and I will deal with the witch.’

The two Flesh Tearers were already moving, charging headlong towards the armsmen. Shotgun rounds hammered their armour, biting chunks from the ceramite. Seraph roared as a round claimed his left eye. Menadel felt teeth break loose in his mouth as buckshot struck his jaw. Neither stopped running. Another cacophonous bark, another hail of shells, and then they were among the armsmen. Seraph and Menadel were as nightmares unleashed. Summoning all their pain and anger, they carved into the armsmen’s flesh. Even driven by unnatural vigour, the armsmen were no match for the enraged Flesh Tearers. War-cries bubbled in their throats as they were hacked down, gutted, eviscerated, torn apart and broken, killed with ugly malice.

Ronja was not as Zophal had last left her. Her eyes were suns burned bloody, her skin a ruddy bronze, stretched taut over muscles that swelled beneath it. Horns, slick and black, grew from either side of her skull, which itself seemed distended, almost canine.

‘You will die for this insult,’ Ronja spat, flexing her arms. Crimson fire leapt from her palms, coalescing into twin, flickering blades, her will made corporeal.

Zophal and Omari swore oaths of vengeance and attacked.

Crozius and force sword slashed out to meet Ronja’s daemon-spawned weapons. Her parries and counters were relentless, her blades cutting and scoring the Space Marines’ armour. A masterful thrust pierced Omari’s abdomen and dropped him to one knee. Ronja kicked him in the face, breaking his nose and dropping him onto his back. Zophal pressed his attack, working his way inside her guard, tangling his arms around hers.

‘Why do you fight me, Flesh Tearer?’ Ronja licked Zophal’s faceplate, her tongue an oil-black snake. ‘This is what the Victus wants.’

‘It is not our ship who whispers to you, wretch. It is a seditious being of the Dark Gods.’ Sweat soaked Zophal’s brow as he fought to maintain a defence.

‘Lies!’ Ronja’s screamed, shouldering Zophal backwards and unleashing a burst of telekinesis that hurled him over the command rail, down towards the servitor pits.

Omari got to his feet as Zophal disappeared over the edge. Leaving the Chaplain to his fate, he re-engaged Ronja. Again and again, she denied him an opening, parrying his blade with a deft skill she had not the centuries to have earned. He grimaced at each clash of their weapons, lances of pain stripping away his resolve as her will leapt from her blade, shooting through his to stab at his mind.

Ronja smiled, mocking him. ‘You are weak, Omari of the Thousand Sons. A traitor even from your own kind. And the weak have no place in this life or any other.’

Omari ignored her words, focusing on the space between them; the emptiness between sounds, between breaths. Hoarfrost sheathed his armour as he channelled his gifts. Pain cut him like a blunt knife as his skin tightened and split, his body withering and ageing as he asked too much of it. Far too much.

Zophal grunted in pained effort. Ronja’s blow had driven the wind from him. Dark, arterial fluid oozed from the crack it had rent in his breastplate. Hanging from one arm, he dangled under the command dais, gripping the steel spar he’d used to arrest his fall. Below him, in cogitator-lined trenches, legions of servitors and serfs tore at each other like rabid animals. Gore stained their mouths as they clamoured to get at him. ‘I free you from the sin of your existence,’ he said. He unhooked a frag grenade from his belt and dropped it into the mass of braying flesh. The explosive detonated, barbed shrapnel tearing through the tightly pressed horde. Secondary explosions rippled along the length of the deck as urns of oil and electro-fluid ignited. The blast-wave showered him in fleshy gobbets as the roar of flame washed over him.

Omari heard the explosion as a whisper. He stood in the still silence of nothingness. Seconds stretched to eternity as he fell between them. He focused, keeping the moment past and the moment to come on the edges of his horizon, careful not to fall too far. Ronja thrust a blade towards him. It was as a leaf caught on a far-off breeze, drifting with lazy intent. He stepped aside, slicing up with his sword to sever her arm above the elbow.

A cruel growl sounded from Ronja’s throat. ‘That will not stop us. You cannot stop us.’ Her words were thick, stretched out like drowning echoes. She lunged again, her blade aimed at Omari’s heart.

He parried the stroke, running his blade down the length of hers before cutting across to rob her of her other arm. Ronja gasped and stumbled forwards into the command rail.

Time returned; a rush of the now that drove a stake of pain into Omari’s skull. Blood streamed from his eyes and his armour began to dissolve, spilling like thick dust onto the deck.

Ronja convulsed, staring in horror at the stumps of her limbs. She twisted awkwardly, using the command rail to help her shuffle around and face Omari. ‘I am but flesh, the Victus is–’ she stammered, the words caught in her throat as Zophal clamped his hand around the back of her skull. The Chaplain pulled himself up, rising until his head was level with Ronja’s. ‘Vengeance,’ he snarled, nodding to Omari. The Thousand Sons legionary cut her in half, slashing his blade through her waist. Pain and defeat filled her eyes as they looked to Zophal’s skull-helm. The Chaplain said nothing, tossing what remained of her down into the fire of the pit.

‘It is done.’ Omari flicked her blood from his blade as Zophal vaulted back onto the platform. ‘You may kill me now.’

Zophal’s jaw hardened, his muscles tensing for a fight.

‘I am not a fool, Chaplain.’ Omari’s eyes bore no malice. ‘I knew the minute you released me from the cell that it would come to this.’ He upturned his blade, and planted it in the deck. ‘The freedom you mentioned could only be the blessed release of death. I thank you anyway. You have at least allowed me to die in the Emperor’s service.’

‘Death may grant you peace, Omari Anat,’ said Zophal. ‘But I need your help bringing the same to another.’

The sorcerer’s eyes widened questioningly.

‘Chaplain…’ Seraph’s face was riddled with concern as he approached. ‘We cannot let this traitor go free.’ Beside him, Menadel raised his sword.

Zophal shook his head. ‘I am not setting him free, and I am not going to kill him.’ He looked to Menadel. ‘And neither are you.’ Zophal’s tone did nothing to hide the threat in his words.

‘You would stand in his defence?’ asked Menadel.

‘I stand in our defence. In Amit’s. He has started down a dark path.’ Zophal’s tone softened. ‘One I alone am not strong enough to pull him back from. I need your help, brothers. And yours, Omari.’

‘I am listening,’ said Omari.

‘Allow me to return you to your cell,’ said Zophal.

Anger twisted Omari’s face into a scowl. ‘I had come to think more of you, Chaplain. I had not expected you to break your word so completely. I would have accepted death, but imprisonment, a slow wait for your master to come butcher me, that will not be my fate.’

‘Wait.’ Zophal held up his hand as Omari reached for his weapon. ‘Do not make a liar of yourself now. Not after you have endured so much.’

Omari stopped.

‘Amit sates his blood-lust with the lives of traitors,’ said Zophal. ‘It is a savage practice but justifiable. Yet, if he takes you, a loyalist by word and deed, then he is lost. It is a line he must never cross, a temptation he must resist.’ Zophal sighed, suddenly tired. ‘It is my hope that one day Amit will free you of his own accord.’

‘Your hope?’

‘Hope is all any of us have left. I hope for salvation as you hope for redemption. Let this be the beginning of hope for both of us. Help me, Omari. Help me save Amit and this Chapter. The Emperor and His sons still need you.’

Omari nodded and released his grip on his blade. ‘Very well.’

Amit was losing. His armour was rent and scarred, wounded by a dozen cuts and thrusts of the daemon’s sword. His own blade had been denied its every endeavour. The daemon had parried and weaved its way around every attack as they circled each other. He shared his weapon’s hunger, its thirst for the daemon’s flesh.

‘I was always stronger than you.’ The daemon’s voice was Nuriel’s again, its face returned to that of the Librarian. ‘You are weak,’ Nuriel snarled, gripping his sword two-handed and slashing it down towards Amit’s head.

Amit brought his blade up in defence, struggling as Nuriel’s unnatural might drove him down onto one knee.

‘Weak,’ Nuriel sneered, and kicked him backwards.

Amit rolled with the blow, shaking the fog from his senses as he rose to his feet. He threw himself into an attack, sending his blade cutting towards Nuriel’s abdomen. The Librarian parried the blow, stepping into the space on Amit’s flank. The Chapter Master let go of his blade, pivoting in a tight circle to smash his elbow into Nuriel’s face. The Librarian’s jaw broke with a wet snap. Amit struck again, connecting with a right cross that crushed his nose and cracked his cheek. Snarling, he grabbed Nuriel’s head, pulling him in for a third blow…

A wave of psychic energy threw Amit backwards. He grimaced as his head slammed into the ground.

‘I see now that I was aiming low, aspiring to the rank of Chief Librarian,’ Nuriel said, pushing his words into Amit’s mind. ‘I should have been Chapter Mas–’ Nuriel rasped in pain, clutching his head as his face twitched and convulsed. ‘No! This is my victory. You swor–’ He stopped short again, his eyes smouldering as they flashed crimson. The daemon returned.

‘He is pathetic, is he not?’ The daemon’s face twisted with contempt as it tossed away Nuriel’s weapon. ‘Small of mind. Driven by selfish ego.’ It paused a moment, its eyes finding Amit’s. ‘But not you. Something far greater drives you, Flesh Tearer.’

Amit pushed himself onto all fours. His head hurt, and one of his eyes refused to open.

‘We have seen your future. We have watched you from the immaterium. Shared in your rapture as you’ve killed.’ The daemon cast its arms around the chamber, sweeping them wide to encompass the broken corpses of the Zurconian council. ‘Yours is a glorious tapestry of murder and death.’

Bile rose in Amit’s stomach as the thing continued its sermon. His skin was slick with sweat. His skull burned with pain. A piercing ache. It was as though a nail were being hammered through it by the daemon’s words.

‘Look how easily you bled this world. You would have killed the Eagle Warriors too, given a push. You cannot deny your true nature, Flesh Tearer. You and the rest of your Legion have belonged to us since before Horus struck down your father.’

The mention of Sanguinius sent anger pulsing through Amit’s limbs. Even against the impossible pain, he got to his feet. ‘I will kill you.’

‘Such anger.’ The daemon nodded in approval. ‘You think many died that day on Terra? You mortals do not know the meaning of many. Sanguinius’s cry for vengeance cut across the fabric of this realm and ours.’ The daemon bunched an outstretched fist in emphasis. ‘His roar of anguish gathered to a great wind of slaughter, a bladed fury that scythed over the blood plains.’

Amit cast his gaze around for his weapon. The eviscerator lay at the daemon’s feet.

The daemon grinned, picking up the weapon. ‘Sanguinius’s cry killed thousands. Hundreds of thousands. And my father… my father was joyous.’ It tossed the blade to Amit. ‘In the angel’s death, Khorne had found himself ten thousand new disciples.’

Amit roared as he snatched the eviscerator from the air. Blood and saliva dripped from his mouth as he attacked, chopping his blade down to bisect the daemon from brow to coccyx. The daemon was immobile till the last instant, its hands flashing up to catch the eviscerator. The weapon’s teeth whined as they tried to chew through the daemon’s gauntlets. Amit threw all of his strength behind the blade, willing it to rip the daemon to tattered gobbets. A curse died in his throat, and he felt the strength bleed from his arms as his eyes met the daemon’s. In the depths of their malicious darkness, he saw only his own.

The daemon smiled and snapped the blade in two. Wielding a piece in its grasp like a club, it smashed it across Amit’s face. The ragged shard tore at the Chapter Master’s flesh. Amit staggered. The daemon struck him again, relishing the backwash of blood as Amit’s face broke and tore. ‘Your blood is thick with the rage. Your blood lust will never be sated.’ The daemon picked Amit up and threw him across the chamber.

Amit spun wild, gasping in pain as he struck one of the pillars, and landed hard.

‘Where your brothers walk the Road of Skulls, you roar along its length. You are at its vanguard, laying its foundations with the skulls you pile around you,’ said the daemon.

The ground shuddered violently, throwing Amit back to the floor as he tried to rise. A second shockwave rumbled through the chamber, dislodging brickwork and cracking the balcony.

The daemon flashed him a wide smile. ‘Nuriel was not the only weakling among your flock.’

‘Ronja,’ Amit snarled.

‘A prideful, ambitious human. I saw in her all that you did and more. She will wipe your pitiful Chapter from the face of this rock.’ The daemon’s eyes narrowed, its voice dropping to a low growl. ‘Join me or I will finish what my brother Kabanda started. I will end the line of Sanguinius.’

Amit lolled onto his back, barely conscious as the shockwave from another orbital assault buffeted him. His armour was as a sheet of fractured ice, flawed by deep cracks. His organs were failing. He could feel his body pulling him into a sus-an coma. ‘No. I am not done yet.’ Amit pulled a fist-sized sphere from his belt, armed it and threw it at the daemon’s feet.

‘Foolish creature. I have already told you,’ the daemon barked, its patience gone, ‘guns and bombs cannot kill me.’

‘It is not a bomb.’

The sphere shivered. Sparks of energy arced from its surface. No. Amit read the thought in the daemon’s eyes as the device burst in a flash of white light. The shockwave threw the daemon to the floor. A web of energy formed in the air where the daemon had stood, arcing tendrils that spun out to rend reality asunder. The web crackled as it cut into the fabric of space. It spread, thickening, growing, until with a sudden jolt, it shattered. The energy web vanished in the same burst of light with which it had formed. In its place stood Grigori. Steam rose from the shoulders of the Dreadnought’s armoured sarcophagus in the same instant that the layer of hoarfrost around his legs cracked. Amit stared at Grigori. In that moment, bristling with the touch of teleportation, his old friend was a nightmare incarnate, a wrathful monster of adamantium and rage.

The daemon got to its feet in time for one of Grigori’s fists to connect with its head. The strike hammered the daemon back onto the floor. Grigori allowed it no respite, battering the daemon with blow after blow, the Dreadnought’s power fists sparking as they clashed against the daemon’s armour.

Amit dragged himself up against the nearest pillar as the pair fought. He heard them as though through a memory. The trading of blows. The daemon’s snarl. Grigori’s metallic roar. Distant sounds filtered by time. His mind was elsewhere.

Amit stood with Sanguinius and Azkaellon. Beneath his feet was a duelling stone. Above him, the sky of holy Baal. He remembered the day as though it were a moment ago. He remembered what Sanguinius had said to him during the Tempest of Angels.

You fight because it brings you peace. But there will come a time when the cries of those you have led to death will drown out the roar in your veins. There will come a time when you must lay down your sword to defend what little we have left.

Amit got to his feet. His eyes found Nuriel’s blade in the rubble. ‘By his Blood am I made.’ Forcing his limbs forwards step by agonising step, he moved towards the discarded sword.

A heavy crash resounded from his right. He turned to see Grigori on his back. The daemon stood over him, its hands incandescent with heat.

‘By his Blood am I armoured.’ Amit kept going, stumbling towards the sword. The daemon ignored him, its attentions fixed on Grigori as it ripped open the Dreadnought’s sarcophagus. ‘By his Blood shall I triumph.’ Amit finished the catechism, stooping to retrieve the blade.

Only then did the daemon turn to regard him.

‘If we are to die cursed, then so be it,’ said Amit. ‘We will not die damned.’

‘You cannot kill me–’

‘Your boast,’ Amit snarled. ‘Not a blade. This blade.’ Amit clasped Nuriel’s sword by hilt and point.

The daemon’s eyes widened in anger. ‘I will see you again, Flesh Tearer. We will bleed together before the end.’ It grinned, a dark smile that never left its face even as Amit snapped the sword across his knee.

‘How many of the wrong lives can you take before you are damned?’ Zophal whispered. ‘How many sins can one bear and still claim to be righteous?’

The Chaplain knelt in the wreckage of the Reclusiam. He had barred the servitors and menial serfs from reconstructing it until his vigil was complete. Still, the irony of the Chapter’s spiritual home lying in waste and ruin was not lost on him. Zurcon had scarred them all.

How many?

He looked to the painting of the Emperor adorning the chamber’s ceiling in search of an answer. If there was one hidden in the eyes of mankind’s saviour, he failed to find it. Zophal sighed, and closed his eyes, hoping for solace in the darkness. It only made the truth clearer, his memory sharper. He saw himself stood on the bridge of the Victus. The tactical hololith bathing his armour in light.

Zophal laughed without humour and opened his eyes to gather up a handful of rock dust from the Reclusiam floor. He was surrounded by cruel satire.

What of the Eagle Warriors? Amit had asked him.

Zophal shook his head. The Chapter Master was a warrior born and so his was not a question. It was a command. Zophal gripped his rosarius and coiled it slowly around his fist. Questions were not a warrior’s burden. They were his. Questions and their answers. His true curse.

The Eagle Warriors Thunderhawks were blinking ident-codes on the tactical hololith. Their strike cruiser destroyed, they had swarmed up from Zurcon to dock with the Victus, and receive the passage Zophal had promised them.

How many survived?

Zophal coiled the rosarius tighter, grimacing as the barbed beads cut into the bare flesh of his hand. Blood dripped from his palm to strike the floor in steady rhythm, the crimson droplets staining the ground like targets painted on a hololith.

Captain Nikon had been right. The Flesh Tearers had attacked first. The curse had overtaken brothers Daael and Aciel. Dozens more had succumbed once the fighting intensified, and they were gauntlet-deep in the entrails of the Eagle Warriors. The rich taste of Space Marine blood was a trial too far.

How many survived? Amit had asked him again.

In the wake of Horus’s treachery, the galaxy was unstable. The realm of man was as a pane of glass cast among rocks. It was a time when the line between brother and enemy had been lost among the darkness of the void. Were the Eagle Warriors allowed to return home and report all that had transpired…

Zophal saw himself again on the Victus’s bridge, a single word on his lips. Fire.

If word of their actions reached Guilliman, the Flesh Tearers would be cast out. Hunted. Killed. There was no longer any room for doubt. No path to redemption. Zophal bowed his head, stopping short of asking the Emperor for forgiveness. He deserved none.

How many survived? Amit had asked.

None, he had answered.

‘Enter,’ Amit said in reply to the third knock on his cell door.

Techmarine Naamah entered, carrying a ridged blade.

‘Have you come to kill me, brother?’ Amit joked, though the sentiment did nothing to unfurl the crease in his brow or lighten the darkness of his eyes.

Naamah looked guiltily at the blade. ‘No, lord. Your armour. It is beyond even my skill to repair.’ Naamah spoke with the slow solemnity of a priest confirming a death. ‘I forged this knife from its remains.’

Amit took the blade and tested its weight. ‘A worthy relic blade. I am honoured to receive it.’ The weapon brought Amit a measure of comfort, staying his anger at his armour’s destruction. ‘It is a blessing that even beyond destruction we will find ways to inflict harm on our enemies. We…’ Amit paused a moment. ‘Grigori.’ His face hardened. ‘Does he live?’

‘He lives.’ Naamah nodded. ‘Apothecary Pursun and I are beginning to doubt there is a monster capable of killing our colossal brother.’

Amit grinned. ‘Let us hope so. And Barakiel?’

‘Alive. He is still in a coma and will need several weeks in the sarcophagus, but he will live.’

Amit nodded. The sarcophagus was a healing tank, a bath of bio-fluids and nutrients. He had spent a week there himself after his fight with the daemon.

The Techmarine dipped his head in salute and made to leave the cell. ‘Master Amit.’ He stopped in the doorway. ‘I can refinish the armour.’ Naamah gestured behind Amit, indicating the suit of Terminator plate that hung in stasis against the rear wall. ‘Embellish it with salvaged pieces from your pauldron so that it may still stand with you in battle.’

Amit turned back to face the rear of the cell and regarded the ancient war-plate. ‘No, we have enough of the past haunting us, brother.’

Naamah went to speak but found himself lost for words and left the cell with a courteous nod.

Alone again, Amit stepped close to the stasis field. The suit of Terminator armour glared back at him in challenge, its rugged design every bit the equal of his own rough-hewn features. He had studied every rivet and groove of its surface and yet it was as unfamiliar to him as the rank he now held.

Guilliman. For the first time, the name did not come with a jolt of anger. How long, I wonder, did you stare at your own future before taking the knife to the Legions? Was it easier for you? Amit let out the breath he had been holding. We have killed your sons as you have cut away our past. Does the same coldness now sit in your breast as it sits in mine? I no longer believe us to be angels. Yet we are more than butchers – we must be.

‘Let us find out who we are,’ said Amit.

With angry purpose fuelling every beat of his twin hearts, the Master of the Flesh Tearers deactivated the stasis field.

Acknowledgments

Without my friends, this book would have undoubtedly been written faster. They’ve done nothing but distract me with conversation and fun. Having said that, some of them at least had the good decency to keep me in beverages. Thanks to: George ‘Assam’ Mann, Eddie ‘extra-shot’ Eccles, Pete ‘Mojito’ Foley and John ‘Tea-time’ French.

Others had me make my own drinks but kindly read all the drafts. Thanks to: Stuart Black, Nikki Loftus, Greg Smith and Aaron Dembski-Bowden, for reading my random scrawling without ever once requesting I stop sending them stuff in crayon.

About the Author

Andy Smillie is best known for his visceral Flesh Tearers novellas, Sons of Wrath and Flesh of Cretacia, and the novel Trial by Blood. He has also written a host of short stories starring this brutal Chapter of Space Marines and a number of audio dramas including The Kauyon, Blood in the Machine, Deathwolf and From the Blood.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Kai Lim from Imaginary Friends Studios.
Internal art by Hardy Fowler, John Michelbach, Kornel Kozak, Milan Nikolic, Alex Boyd and Mike Daarken Lim.

© Games Workshop Limited 2014, 2015. All rights reserved.

Black Library, the Black Library logo, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy logo, The Horus Heresy eye device, Space Marine Battles, the Space Marine Battles logo, Warhammer 40,000, the Warhammer 40,000 logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated brands, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2015, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78251-893-8

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.