HUNTER/PREY
Andy Hoare

GASPING FOR BREATH in the darkness, Neme Fortuna stifled a scream.
She felt the beast lunge towards her scant moments before its tremendous weight barrelled into her chest, its claws gripping her wrists and slicing into the flesh as she was slammed into the flagstone paving.
The beast's snarling face was right in her own, its animal breath huffing against her skin, saliva specking her cheek. It wore dull, grey armour, and a glint of light reflected in huge canine teeth as it opened its mouth to roar. She screamed in denial, the beast bellowed in fury, and for an instant her eyes locked with the two dark pits mere centimetres from her face, tiny, malevolent sparks of animal rage glowing crimson in the darkness before her.
She thrashed and wrestled and screamed, but the beast's claws sank into the raw flesh of her wrists, blood seeping through her sleeves and turning the stones beneath slick.
The beast reared, and Neme Fortuna knew with a stark clarity that the events of the previous twenty-four hours would lead to her death, here in the dark, on a cold stone floor on an Emperor-forsaken wasteland at the edge of hell.

INCENSE DRIFTED UPWARDS in a lazy spiral from the ornate censer set on the floor, its cloying scent permeating the room and turning the light from the dim glow-globe a cold blue.
Neme sat cross-legged and still before the censer, her shaven head lowered as she breathed the ritual incantations that would allow her to enter a state of meditation in which she could send her consciousness beyond the confines of her physical body. She breathed deeply, feeling the hot smoke fill her lungs. After a moment of warm lightheadedness she began to perceive the room around her, to sense its dimensions and textures despite the fact that her eyes were closed in deep concentration.
Reaching beyond the boundaries of her chamber, the psyker allowed her spirit-self to drift on the zephyrs of consciousness gusting around the station. Down cramped, darkened corridors, hooded tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus and shuffling acolytes of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica passed. She could sense their unease, for she felt it too, a tangible miasma permeating the very air, circulated by the millennia-old atmosphere conditioners. On instinct, she allowed her spirit-self to coast on the emotional slipstream of a trooper as he marched purposely towards the control centre of the Ormantep Listening Station.
The trooper, a member of the elite Kasrkin company that had been dispatched from Cadia to garrison the post, swung open the heavy blast door of the control centre and stepped into a scene of barely controlled mayhem. Tech-priests and acolytes crowded around cogitators and pict slates, some issuing orders, others hurrying to carry them out. Some debated with fellows while others raised voices in denial. Still more knelt in prayer to the God-Emperor of Mankind, while others sat with head in hands.
Into this scene Neme followed the trooper, who strode calmly amidst the turmoil to stand at attention before a man who was clearly his superior. The trooper saluted, I handed the officer a data-slate, and was dismissed.
The officer surveyed the room, his rugged, noble features showing barely contained disdain at the lack of discipline surrounding him. He lifted the slate, his piercing eyes speed-reading the information displayed on its glowing pict screen. He turned, issuing an order to an acolyte, though Neme's spirit-self could make out no more than a ghostly echo as he spoke.
The acolyte hurried to a cogitator bank, his hands speeding over the dials and levers. A massive display at the centre of the chamber came to life, grainy static splashed across its surface. The image resolved into a view of the barren oxide wastes of Ormantep: low, jagged hills serrated the horizon.
The officer barked an order, and the acolyte adjusted the controls. A crosshair appeared in the centre of the screen, and the scene zoomed in on a patch of sky, a numeric counter set in the corner of the target icon counting up the magnification.
Even at maximum zoom the picture was barely discernable, yet Neme could make out a trio of white contrails streaking across the night sky towards the distant mountains.
She concentrated, allowing her spirit to lift. Up through the vaulted ceiling of the control chamber, through dark access ways and service ducts, through plates of armaplas sheathing and out into the night. The domed form of the control centre squatted on the barren surface below, secondary structures adjoining it at seemingly random points. She drifted higher, imagining herself buffeted by high altitude winds that her spirit-self had no way of perceiving. Turning her sight on the distant horizon, she sped in the direction she had been shown by the pict.
Several kilometres out into the oxide wastes, Neme caught sight of the streaks of fire slashing across the dark sky. The three lights passed across the livid purple stain that was the distant, though still too-close edge of the Ocularis Terribus, the Eye of Terror, the cosmic-scale rent in the fabric of reality through which the most dreaded of humanity's foes had fled ten thousand years before, and through which no sane man should pass. Steeling herself, Neme sped on, until she saw a distant cloud billow up from the base of an ancient crater.
In her chamber, Neme Fortuna gasped as her spirit-self returned to her body. She bent double, dry retching as a wave of nausea hit. She had seen them. Massively armoured warriors in black and gold, disembarking from dread engines of daemon-spawned technology.
Intruders had made planetfall on Ormantep.

'IS THERE ANY danger of you actually finishing today, deacon?'
'Just gimme a sec, will ya? I'm almost done.'
'Shift ended ten minutes ago. Get a move on or we're off without ya.'
Guido Sol hefted the power pack of his drill rig as he exited the mine-shaft. His bulky pressure suit was encrusted with the dust and grime of another fruitless, ten-hour shift at the face. Deacon, his partner in this fool's errand of a contract, emerged a moment later, gloved hand raised to shield his visored face from the glare of the warp-spawned energies of the Ocularis raging in the night sky above.
While Deacon struggled with his power packs and feed-lines, Sol strode over to the ledge of the cliff into which the mine was sunk. The desolate plains stretched for kilometres below him, the rust-coloured deposits of eons tinged a sickly violet by the glow of the Eye of Terror. A low wind swept across the barrens, stirring eddies of dust that skimmed off towards the distant horizon.
'I hate this place.'
Sol and his crew were indentured workers, miners shipped in from off-world to work the mines of Ormantep for what had seemed, at the time they had signed up, a tidy profit. But on their arrival they had found themselves indebted to their Adeptus Mechanicus employers for the cost of the interstellar journey, and that cost had amounted to the equivalent of a lifetime in service to the Adeptus overseers.
Finally, Deacon was ready, and Sol set off towards their crawler where the rest of the miners waited. But the other man had stopped again, and was staring up into the sky, his squinting eyes visible through the plastic shield of his pressure hood.
'For the Emperor's mercy, what now?'
Deacon pointed, and Sol turned. As he did so a superheated mass of screaming metal thundered overhead, throwing both men to the ground with the force of its backwash. Sol felt the rubber of his pressure suit melting into his back and he fought to remain conscious as the mountainside was churned with dust and flying rock.
Sol raised his head, his ears ringing with the force of the object's passage. As the tumult of its passing settled, he could make out the form of his companion rising from the ground and dusting himself off. Standing up, he was afforded a view of a blossoming mushroom cloud at the base of an unnamed crater, not half a kilometre distant.
'Ya reckon we should check it out?' Deacon asked, uncertain.
'Might be a claim in it, Deac. Split two ways we might be able pay off the techs and ship outta here, I guess.'
'Split two ways, Sol?' said Deacon, a wry grin touching his lips as realisation dawned.
'Aye, vox down to the crew. Tell 'em to head back without us.'

THE ADEPTUS ASTRA Telepathica acolyte led Captain Vrorst into the vaulted chamber of the astropathic choir. Neme hurried to keep up with the Kasrkin officer. He halted abruptly in the centre, causing the psyker to stumble as she barely avoided colliding into his back.
The acolyte approached a shadowed niche at the head of the dimly lit chamber, and bowed before his master, Astropath Primus Grenski, who reclined amidst a mass of purity sealed pipes and cables on a spartan couch within. Grenski did not acknowledge the younger adept, as he was deep within the trance that would allow him to transmit his thoughts light years across the gulf of interstellar space, to commune with his peers on a thousand other worlds.
Captain Vrorst surveyed the chamber, obviously impatient with such matters. He preferred to leave this sort of thing to Fortuna, the sanctioned psyker attached to his command. Neme could sense he was ill at ease in the company of those who did not serve the Emperor as he did, with cold logic and cold steel.
'What's the problem, adept? Why have you interrupted my sweep?' Vrorst had been busy overseeing the station's security in the aftermath of the sighting of the intrusion, and Fortuna's subsequent report of her viewing trance.
'My master has been within the auto-seance for three hours now, captain. He should have established contact with another terminus long ago. His life signs indicate he has not, and that he is locked within his trance. Those signs have started to fluctuate wildly.'
'So?' asked Vrorst, his ignorance at the adept's words plain.
'He means,' interrupted Neme, as the acolyte stumbled over an explanation, 'that something out there is blocking him, stopping him from getting the message out that the intruders are here.'
'Well, there's no way to be sure of that.' The acolyte glanced at her lapel. 'Lieutenant.'
Neme scanned the chamber, wrapping her arms around herself against the cold. Another seven niches were arrayed around the room, an astropath reclining within each one. Her breath fogged as she spoke.
'No? Well something isn't right, and we all know that an intrusion this close to the Gate is bad news.'
'I can assure you, lieutenant, that everything is...'
An alarm blared from a brass horn above Adept Grenski's niche, and every astropath in the choir suddenly sat bolt upright before collapsing back down within their couches. A look of horrified disgust crossed the captain's face, but Neme was looking at the reader mounted next to Grenski's niche. A series of green lines crossed the display, each zigzagging wildly.
The adept was clearly on the verge of panic, and Vrorst was barking an order to the Kasrkin in the lobby without, Neme's eyes left the reader and settled on the face of the astropath. She shivered, and realized abruptly that it was not nerves turning her skin to goose flesh, but the temperature. It was falling rapidly.
A drop of blood appeared at Grenski's nostril. Something stabbed into Neme's mind, a spike of indescribable agony at the centre of her brain that withdrew as suddenly as it had appeared, sending her crashing to her knees, clutching her head in her hands.
The acolyte was praying, and Neme opened her watering eyes to see that the astropath's face was covered in a thin skein of ice. She turned her head, seeing the occupants of the other niches were similarly affected. She tried to stand, but her knees were stuck fast to the frost glazing the paved floor.
Two Kasrkin rushed into the room and grabbed Neme under her armpits, dragging her back towards the chamber door.
The acolyte collapsed at his master's feet and let out a piteous wail, the sound Neme imagined a lost soul might voice as it writhed in the flames of purgatory. The last thing she saw as she was pulled from the choir chamber was steady streams of blood from every astropath's nose, freezing, even as they poured, to shatter into a thousand ruby shards as they hit the cold stone floor.

* * *

SOL RAISED HIS head over the rock to get a clear view of the base of the crater. Glimpsing movement below, he ducked back down as Deacon reached the top of the path and collapsed, out of breath, beside him. 'Whadya see, Sol?'
The miner raised his hand to silence him, and edged around the base of the rock. Less than fifty metres below he could make out three towering metal forms, mechanical claws sunk into the hard ground, with strange symbols etched on every surface. Large figures moved around them. Sol had never seen suits the like of which they were wearing. The machines were moving, and Sol's eyes widened in disbelief as he realized their claws were digging down into the earth with an insect-like scurrying motion that he had never seen a machine do before.
'Now that's some rig,' whispered Sol, anger passing over his features at the prospect of another crew working his claim.
'That ain't no rig, Sol. I don't for the life of me know what it is, but I'm tellin' ya, that ain't no rig I ever seen.' Deacon was leaning out over the rock face, and the pair saw the three machines sink entirely beneath the dusty ground as the figures below dispersed.
'Ok, ok. We gotta think this through,' said Sol. The thought that perhaps the intruders were not merely competing prospectors, but something far worse, caused him to reconsider the wisdom of his decision to send the crawler home without them.
'Right, I got a plan...'
A single shot rang out from scant metres behind them. Sol spun, only to be confronted by a giant in black and gold armour standing over him. Edging back against the rock, he glanced to his side at Deacon. The other miner was spread-eagled, the back of his hood a ragged mess and a fan of blood and bone spattered across the boulder.
The black-armoured warrior swung his aim across, and Sol found himself staring down the barrel of the pistol.
'Damn,' cursed Sol. The harsh report of the bolt pistol echoed off the sides of the cliff face and rolled out over the barren wastes as the Black Legionnaire pulled the trigger.

CAPTAIN VRORST STOOD at the centre of the control chamber, hands clasped behind his back. Before him, a bank of pict-screens lined the wall, each manned by a Cadian staff officer. Each viewer relayed the scene from a surveyor; some set atop the armoured towers of the listening station, others mounted on remote pylons several kilometres out into the wastes.
Seven of the viewers had gone off-line in the last twenty-nine minutes.
An ensign, turned and beckoned to his captain. 'Sir, squad three reports Sector Epsilon clear. The surveyor shows no sign of interference.'
Vrorst grunted and the officer returned to his vigil, relaying the order to the squad to move on to Sector Gamma. Picking out surveyor Epsilon Seven from the bank of screens, Vrorst could make out the men of squad three as they prepared to depart. They were deployed in textbook fashion: the perimeter secured and a two-man detail investigating the survey unit. The squad leader was Sergeant Heska, a man who had served under Vrorst for the best part of two years. If they got through whatever was headed their way, thought Vrorst, he was due a promotion.
'Tell Heska to move his men on,' Vrorst ordered, turning as Lieutenant Fortuna appeared at his side.
'Wait,' Neme called, and the staffer turned, looking to his superior for confirmation.
Irritation crossed Vrorst's face as he turned to look down at the psyker. 'Lieutenant Fortuna, either leave my command centre, or hold your tongue!' Silence descended and none dared turn to watch.
Fortuna raised her flushed face to meet the captain's steely glare. She was much shorter than the veteran officer, and her voice trembled as she replied.
'Captain, please listen to me. I'm schooled in these matters. Something's wrong out there, I know it.'
Vrorst turned and gestured at the viewers. 'Of course something's wrong, Fortuna.'
'Surveyor Gamma Twelve has just gone off-line, sir,' the ensign said, confirming Vrorst's statement.
'I can see, ensign. Put me through to Sergeant Heska, right now.'
The ensign's hands moved over a series of dials and switches, and he spoke quietly into his vox set. 'On the vox, sir,' he eventually replied.
Addressing Sergeant Heska, Vrorst spoke clearly, the tone of an experienced leader of men ringing clear in his voice. 'Heska? Listen to me and follow my orders to the letter. Squad nine is holding station at Gamma Three. I want you to fall back and regroup with Klorin's squad. It's only half a kilometre due west of your position. Confirm.'
Static burbled from the vox horn for a moment, before Heska's voice cut through amidst a storm of interference. 'Confirmed, captain, moving out now.'
'Tell him to hurry. Something's close.' Neme stood beside Vrorst, her expression betraying uncertainty warring with the determination to make him appreciate the danger she sensed was near. Vrorst bit back a caustic reply, instead ordering a staffer to call up the view from surveyor Gamma Three.
The picture appeared on the large screen in the centre of a wall. The scene was one of controlled, drill ground efficiency as squad nine took position in what little cover was afforded by the scattered boulders and low defiles out in the wastes. The minutes stretched out, punctuated by a staffer confirming Heska's position and status. Each time a curt, ''no contact'', was the reply.
After thirty-three minutes, the staff officer drew Vrorst's attention to the main screen. A dust blizzard was closing in on squad nine's position, reducing visibility to less than twenty metres. Another five minutes passed, and a silhouette emerged from the storm. The men of squad nine raised their hellguns at the figure, and the challenge came loud over the main vox. 'Identify. Arcadia.'
'Arcadia est,' came the swift and correct reply.
Sergeant Klorin stepped out from cover to shake the hand of his comrade, Sergeant Heska, while the next man followed in. Neme's indrawn gasp caused every head in the chamber to turn towards her.
'Tell him...'
Sergeant Heska tumbled forward against Klorin as his chest exploded. Klorin must have assumed his friend had stumbled, and bent down to lend a hand. The movement saved his life, as a fusillade of bolter fire erupted from the storm, pinning the Kasrkin of squad nine behind cover. Klorin, reading the situation, dragged Heska's limp form into the cover of a low rock, bellowing orders to his men.
Vrorst stepped forward, addressing a tech-priest hovering near the cogitator banks. 'Adept, I need that surveyor set to read the body heat of whoever's assaulting my men. Can you do it?' The tech-priest nodded and began a recitation of the Canticle Machina over the surveyor bank.
Turning to a staff officer, the captain barked his next order. 'Ensign, I want a Valkyrie out there right now. Those men must be evacuated immediately.'
'But, sir,' the staffer began to protest, 'the storm will make-'
'Don't give me excuses, damn it. Just do it!'
The scene on the main screen switched to a kaleidoscopic riot of colour as the tech-priest petitioned the machine's spirit to relay an image based on thermo graphic readings. The colours resolved into solid masses, the cold air of the dust storm visible as swirling, deep blue vortices and the forms of the Kasrkin as distinct, red shapes. The surveyor altered its focus, seeking to penetrate the veil of howling dust that obscured the attackers.
A score of orange forms emerged from the blue, the heat issued from them so intense the surveyor could not resolve their exact shapes beyond this formless mass. Twin stars of bright white sat at the shoulder of each figure, and further strobes of glaring light indicated muzzle flashes as bolters spat high velocity explosive rounds into the Kasrkin position. A clutch of fading red smears indicated that the men of Heska's squad had fallen, cut down from behind before they could reach the dubious safety of squad nine's position.
Vrorst addressed the remaining squad leader with an authoritative calm. 'Klorin. I have a Valkyrie closing on your position, ETA...' He glanced at the tactical reader, 'ETA three minutes thirty. Until then you have some soldiering to do.'
Sergeant Klorin's voice came across the vox, barely audible above the chatter of bolter shells, the crack of hellguns and the howl of the dust storm. 'Confirmed, sir. We'll hold them, pending extraction.'
'You'll do as I say, sergeant, or there will be no extraction. Now listen to me...'
Captain Vrorst relayed a series of instructions to the squad leader, specifying targets that the Kasrkin could not acquire through the dust, but that he could read clearly on the thermographic surveyor. Over the next minute, three of Klorin's men fell to bolter fire, before Vrorst ordered the men to fall back to a small ravine they could defend should the position be attacked frontally. Thirty-eight seconds later one of the attackers fell to the disciplined fire of the remaining defenders, and a brief cheer filled the control chamber before a stern look from Vrorst silenced the staff. Another ten seconds, and the attackers had moved around to outflank the Kasrkin. Vrorst redirected Klorin's squad to fire on the new threat, and another attacker fell.
Another twenty seconds, and only three of the squad remained. Massive forms emerged from the dust, and the Kasrkin were firing at will.
Vrorst turned to a staffer, grim resolution etched across his features. 'Recall the Valkyrie.'
Neme turned on him. 'You can't! You've got to get them out of there. You can't just let them die without...'
Vrorst met her gaze and indicated the screen. The last of the Kasrkin had fallen, and the attackers had taken the position.
Dejected, the psyker made to leave the chamber, but turned once more to speak.
'You knew they didn't have a hope, didn't you?'
'Of course I knew, lieutenant. But those men were Cadians, they were Kasrkin. They deserved nothing less than a warrior's death. And that's what I gave them.'

OVER THE COURSE of the next six hours, Captain Vrorst supervised the preparations for the attack he was now certain would come. Though the base was well defended, he made certain every conceivable eventuality was covered, above and beyond that which the layered defence hardware and the elite of the Cadian military were trained for. Every entrance to the listening post was welded shut, booby trapped with frag grenades and guarded by a squad of Kasrkin. Flak board barricades were erected across every corridor, and heavy weapon positions placed at each intersection. Every last man of the company knew his role in the defence, and manned his post with the determination the Cadians, and in particular, the elite Kasrkin, were famous across the Imperium for.
Plans were laid, fire solutions calculated and rally points identified. If a position should collapse, the defenders would fall back to the next, under covering fire from the men occupying it. The final stand would be made at the central keep, the chamber of the astropathic choir. If that should fall, then there would be no further point in a fighting withdrawal, for all would be lost.
Throughout this period, Neme meditated. She had prayed to the Emperor, so many light years away on distant Terra, that she would not fail in her duty to Him. She had prayed that Astropath Primus Grenski, the sole survivor of the events in the astropathic chamber, would awake from his deathbed and somehow summon the strength to get a warning to Cadia, to anybody, to warn of the attack. She prayed that, should the attack come and Vrorst's defences fall, the Emperor would lend her strength to face her death in the manner the teachings of the Cadian progeniums proscribed: on her feet and with her wounds to the fore.
In the apothacarium, Astropath Primus Grenski awoke from feverish dreams of worlds in flames and the diabolic hordes of the Arch Enemy vomiting from the hellmouth of the Cadian Gate. He was too weak to call out. Sensing his death was near, he attempted once more to broadcast an astrotelepathic plea for aid. But another mind sensed his own, and unleashed the full extent of its powers against his frail, battered psyche. As life ebbed from his ancient frame, Grenski consoled himself that he had tried, though whether he had succeeded, he would never know.

THE FIRST WARNING of the attack came when the power cut out across the complex. The bank of surveyor screens went black in a second, and the consoles died. The omnipresent background vox-chatter fell silent. Standing in the centre of the command chamber, Neme found her world plunged into disorientating darkness.
There was a moment of preternatural still and then a harsh white beam cut through the gloom, dazzling her. An instant later more beams illuminated the chamber. With a sigh of relief, Neme realized that the Kasrkin guards had activated the torches slung under the barrels of their hellguns.
A beam swung across the chamber, to pick out Captain Vrorst. 'Get that light out of my face, trooper!' he ordered testily. 'Adept, where are the back-ups?'
A hooded adept of the Machine God, visible only as a bent form in a shadowed corner of the chamber, began a low chant as he prised open a purity-sealed access panel. He paused in his work long enough to issue a sibilant hiss of annoyance, before striking an illuminated rune he had uncovered amidst the innards of the machinery.
A bass thrum, felt deep in the gut rather than heard with the ear, filled the room. The drone soared painfully up the scale until it was an ultrasonic squeal, beyond the range of human hearing. An instant later, a heavy jolt shook the chamber and a deep red illumination grew in brightness from emergency glow-globes, casting a hellish radiance across the occupants as the reassuring hum of the back-up generator settled into the background.
The surveyor screens spluttered back to life, and the staff officers manning their posts began the rituals necessary to bring their consoles back on-line. Vrorst knew from experience that he would be tactically blind until his command centre was fully operational again, but that was one of the reasons the Cadians, along with other Imperial Guard regiments, employed sanctioned psykers.
'Lieutenant Fortuna, if you'd be so kind?'
Neme started, realizing the captain had addressed her. 'Sir?'
'Lieutenant, you may have noticed that we've just lost all command and control capability short of the squad-level vox. I have no idea what has caused the power shut down, and I have no way of finding out until the security net is back up. If you wouldn't mind, and if you're not too busy, perhaps you could find the time to use those vaunted powers of yours to find out what the hell is going on?'
Neme resolved to rise above Vrorst's sarcasm. Though he was her commanding officer by dint of rank, she answered to the officio psykana back on Cadia, and would no longer be cowed by his bearing. She stood firm, lifted her head in defiance, and faced the captain.
'I'll need absolute silence,' she said.
Vrorst merely nodded and stalked off to the surveyor stations to hurry up their restarting. Neme watched him for a moment, reading the emotions radiating from him in palpable waves. She was a psyker, and well accustomed to the distaste, or outright hostility, most people felt towards her kind. It was often only in the service of the Guard that a sanctioned psyker could earn respite from the distrust of others and find a productive outlet for their powers. Ironically, a life of isolation or persecution was often violently curtailed upon the battlefields of the Cadian Gate, as many a psyker would lay down their lives in defence of those who hated them.
Neme closed her eyes and, taking a deep breath, allowed her extrasensory powers to absorb the emotions of those around her. She filtered out the tension in the command chamber, and cast her psychic net further afield. One sector at a time, she scanned the perimeter of the complex, seeking out thoughts that did not belong to the defenders. At the edge of her inner-hearing, she caught an echoing whisper, like the sound of malicious plotting in the nave of an empty cathedral. Bracing herself, she homed in, a feeling of utter menace welling up inside her. Suddenly she realised the nature of the threat and severed the psychic link.
She broke the contact a moment too late. An explosion of pain erupted behind her eyes, the psychic backlash throwing her several metres across the chamber. She caught a railing and braced herself as a second wave hit, fighting with all her resolve against the white-hot lance of another's psyche. She drew strength from years of conditioning, calling upon deep reserves of her own power. With a tremendous effort of will, she forced the probing claws of agony from her mind, exorcising the other's intrusion with a primal scream of denial.
Gasping for breath, she shouted at Vrorst, 'Sector twelve!' before slumping to the floor in exhaustion.

A THUNDEROUS EXPLOSION rocked the station, shaking the command chamber and setting off wailing alarms.
The squad level vox burst into life and a staff officer called to Vrorst over the din, 'Sir, sector twelve is under fire, reporting unidentified contacts assaulting their position.'
'Command group, with me. That means you too, Fortuna. On your feet. Squads seven and twelve form up, one and two, get this chamber secure and stay alert.' The Kasrkin moved into position without hesitation, and Vrorst's command squad was at his side in an instant. A sergeant ushered Neme forward, along with a vox-operator, a medic and two troopers carrying flamers. The guards stationed at the entrance to the command chamber hauled open the massive blast doors, and Vrorst led his men out into the emergency-lit passage. Jogging down the corridor, the troopers of squad seven took the point, hellguns levelled and covering every angle from which an attacker might appear. The point man reached a bulkhead door that led to the loading bays, and the group covered the trooper as he turned the locking wheel. The door ground aside, revealing a scene of desperate combat. A squad of Kasrkin poured a fusillade of hellgun fire the length of the loading bay from behind a flakboard barricade. At the far end, a score of two and a half metre tall giants were advancing, halting periodically to fire off explosive bolter rounds that tore great chunks from the defenders' cover. Vrorst took position at the barricade, his men following his example. 'On my mark... fire!'
As the attackers advanced, thirty hellguns opened fire as one. Though not individually as powerful as a bolter, massed hellgun fire is capable of overwhelming most foes, no matter how well armoured they may be. The nearest attacker faltered, great chunks of his breast plate disintegrating as the volley hammered home. The armour fused and bubbled, a single bright las-round exploited the weakness opened up, and speared through the figure's torso to erupt from its back in a shower of sparks. The giant fell. It did not bleed, for its wounds were instantly cauterised.
Vrorst ordered a second volley, and this time three more of the armoured behemoths fell. The advance slowed, and one of the attackers sought cover in a side corridor rather than risk another fusillade. The defenders took a collective breath, but kept up their surveillance of the bay.
Vrorst was proud of every one of his men, knowing that a less well-disciplined unit than the Kasrkin would erupt in cheers at this stage, creating a moment of vulnerability an experienced enemy could exploit.
'Sir?' Vrorst's vox-operator crawled to his side, a portable scanner held before him. 'They're moving down corridor delta seven, sir, I think they've overridden the lock-out. They'll be on us in thirty seconds.'
'Fall back by squads, to rally point secondus delta seven. Go!' Vrorst yelled as he ushered the first of the Kasrkin past.
With drilled proficiency, each squad withdrew from the barricade, covering one another as they stepped down. Vrorst was the last to quit the loading bay, and the clang as he slammed the blast door shut rang down the corridor as he jogged after his men.
An explosion tore into the head of the file, ripping apart the point men. The corridor was instantly choked with reeking smoke and the screams of the wounded. A trooper tumbled out of the turmoil, one arm hanging limp and blasted at his side, while the other fired his hellgun into the darkness behind. The medic ran to his side to usher him to safety as more Kasrkin knelt and poured suppressive fire into the roiling smoke. The vox-operator was at Vrorst's side, trying all he could to get a fix on the situation.
'My set's wasted, sir. I can't get a clear reading.'
Vrorst cast his gaze around, and located Neme. 'Can you tell what's going on up there, lieutenant?' Though visibly shaken, the psyker nodded, and after a moment of stillness shook her head.
'I can't, sir, someone's-'
A hail of explosive bolts scythed from the smoke, followed a moment later by the silhouette of a massive, bulky form. The figure was revealed as its passing caused the smoke to part: a giant of a man in baroque power armour, the evil of millennia writ large across his helmeted visage. He stooped and with one hand choked the life from a nearby Kasrkin, whilst putting a bolt round into the throat of another, a fountain of arterial blood, that looked like black tar in the red emergency lighting, sprayed across the wall.
In Vrorst's long career he had never seen such a foe, but there was no doubt in his mind now as to the identity of the attackers: Traitor Marines of the Black Legion, the praetorians of Warmaster Horus himself, the Arch Traitor. Seeing his men being slaughtered where they stood, and judging that they were on the verge of being overwhelmed, he bellowed the order to retreat to the command chamber.
'No, wait,' stammered Neme. 'Not the command centre, there's something... someone... the Star Chamber! We've got to get the astropathic choir.'
Rounding on Neme, the captain was silenced by the certainty in her expression. His command was falling apart and he was expected to trust psyker witchery? Cursing the vagaries of fate, he rescinded his order, instructing the squad leaders to head for the Star Chamber instead.
The Kasrkin fought a fighting withdrawal down the length of corridor and past a bulkhead door that was blown open by a thundering blast almost as soon as it was sealed behind them.
The Black Legion pursued relentlessly, the Kasrkin unable to bring their own weapons to bear in any meaningful way in the confines of the passageways. Men fell screaming, and Vrorst took a bloody wound to the shoulder from a ricocheting bolt as they made for the final junction before the Star Chamber. Rounding a corner, they found themselves running towards a hastily erected barricade across the chamber entrance, and threw themselves over it as reaching arms dragged stragglers to safety.
Vrorst took in his command. Less than a score of men had survived, and his vox-operator and medic were missing. Taking position with the barricade's defenders, the remaining Kasrkin prepared to sell their lives dearly at this, the last rally point.
The Black Legion gave chase, emerging into the junction before the Star Chamber and a dozen, towering men spreading out as they raised their bolters. At their head was a figure from a nightmare, his armour wreathed in arcane sigils, black robes billowing behind him. Cold blue electrical discharges wreathed his hand as he gestured towards the defenders.
None behind the barricade knew the tongue in which the sorcerer spoke, but all felt the meaning behind his dark words deep within themselves. Here was a follower of the Ruinous Powers, and he intended to offer every soul in the complex to his corrupt masters.

NEME FORCED THE sorcerer's incantation from her mind, attempting to gather her strength for one last stand against the impossible odds facing them. But her thoughts were interrupted by a new presence, a shift in the ebb and flow of the powers raging around her. She tilted her head as if straining to discern a single whisper above a thunderous chorus. What was it she could hear?

THE BLACK LEGIONNAIRES opened fire, a storm of bolts punching through the flakboard barricade and cutting men down in bloody swathes. The Kasrkin returned fire, though for every las-blast they unleashed ten bolt rounds were returned.
The Black Legionnaires were almost on the barricade when a piercing sound cut through the din of battle and the haze of gun smoke. A mournful howl, low and feral echoed down the corridors.
The roaring of the Black Legionnaires' bolters fell silent, and the sorcerer's blasphemous utterances caught in his throat. Another howl split the air mere metres behind the Traitor Marines. They paused, casting uncertain glances into the shadows.
Neme raised her head above the barricade in time to see a Black Legionnaire snatched from behind and dragged into the dark. A bestial snarl grew to a savage outburst of rage and the sound of splitting ceramite armour rang from the walls.
The Traitor Marines began firing into the shadows around them, emptying entire magazines at targets none of the defenders could see. Taking advantage of the distraction, Vrorst led his men back into the Star Chamber, and the massive, embossed doors slammed together as the last man stumbled through.
The sounds of battle increased to fever pitch on the other side of the portal, screams of rage and pain muffled by the barrier. Then silence for a moment, broken an instant later by the doors exploding inward.
The Black Legion sorcerer stood framed in the doorway, arcs of blue lightning creeping from his hands and along the bulkhead. He scanned the chamber, his visored gaze sweeping the survivors until it came to rest upon the form of Neme Fortuna. She sensed his recognition, for he knew she was a pysker, the last person with any hope of calling for outside aid. As he strode towards her, Captain Vrorst drew his chainsword and threw himself at the Traitor, only to be batted aside with contemptuous ease with a single back handed stroke. Vrorst flew across the chamber, slamming into the stone wall with a sickening crunch of splintering bone.
The sorcerer advanced on the defenceless psyker, more Black Legionnaires flanking him. The last of the Kasrkin made to intercept them, but were cut down by bolt rounds or hacked apart by screeching chainswords. The reek of gun smoke and freshly spilled blood assaulted Neme's senses, as she pulled herself upright, determined at least to face her death on her feet.
As she straightened, back to the cold wall, a Black Legionnaire screamed in pain and rage, his back arching and his arms spread wide. His bolter clattered to the floor, as a white hot light speared from his eyes and mouth. The point of a sword, afire with pristine energy burst through his chest plate, transfixing him for an instant before it was withdrawn, sending the Traitor's blasted body crashing to the ground.
Another man stepped through the entrance, fully a match for the Black Legionnaires in bulk and height. But in stature the similarity ended, for this mighty warrior wore dark grey armour, adorned with a panoply of pelts, totems and fetishes. Mounted over his bald head was a hood of intricate crystalline nodes that formed a halo of psychic bale-fire around him. Neme was overwhelmed by the power emanating from him, and knew that here was a master of the pysker's craft, infinitely more accomplished than she could possibly aspire to become.
The Black Legion sorcerer turned, a low hiss sounding from the mouthpiece of his helmet. Issuing a guttural incantation, he pointed at the chamber entrance, and a violet-hued barrier of warp-spawned power sealed it so that none could interfere. He took a step back, clearly making room for the clash he knew would ensue. As dulled sounds of battle emanated from beyond the barrier, the warrior stepped forward, the glow from his crackling hood becoming more intense. He raised his sword, the sorcerer raised his staff, and the two lunged at precisely the same instant.
The warrior-mystic was faster, deflecting the Traitor's weapon with a back-handed parry. Stepping inside his opponent's guard, he brought his knee up hard, slamming it into the sorcerer's stomach. The Legionnaire doubled over, but cart-wheeled his staff up behind him as he did so, driving it into the warrior's chest armour. The newcomer staggered as arcane fire flickered across his body, a mighty crack in the ceramite of his breastplate evidence of the sorcerer's strength.
Indistinct shadows appeared at the entrance, mighty claws raking at the mystical barrier.
Putting space between them, both combatants stepped back. Neme could sense the build up of arcane energies.
Pure white light danced across the warrior's blade, while a black nimbus appeared before the Traitor. Both men stood immobile as the energies built, accompanied by a roar of psychic feedback that caused Neme to drop to her knees, her hands clamped over her ears.
As one, both combatants unleashed their pent up energies, which jumped the centre of the chamber in a heart beat and thundered into the other caster. Both were thrown sprawling to the floor, and through the play of sorcerous powers Neme saw that the warrior-mystic was grievously wounded, a terrible gash running along one side of his head and blood seeping from the crack in his chest.
The warp-barrier was assailed by frenzied shapes throwing themselves against it, accompanied by a savage roar of anger and pain.
The Traitor gained his feet and stood, unsteadily at first, but then with an arrogant swagger as he crossed to the fallen warrior. The energies playing around his hood spat and sputtered, the pure light of his force sword fading, to be replaced with the gleam of ordinary steel. The sorcerer raised his staff high above his head with both hands.
Neme saw with absolute clarity that she could not allow this to happen. In the infinite chasm between one moment in time and the next she drew every last shred of energy she possessed, drawing so deep on reserves of psychic power that she could feel the creatures of the warp scratching at her soul as she channelled the very stuff of their realm through her flesh.
She screamed as her body became a vessel for a tidal wave of arcing energies, unleashing it in a mighty, uncontrollable burst at the Black Legion sorcerer. The force of her attack sent him reeling, an upraised hand attempting to repel the lightning that enveloped him. Caught up in the blizzard, the sorcerer never saw the sweeping blow of the warrior-mystic's sword that clove him in two from the crest of his helm to his groin in one mighty downward slash.

* * *

NEME FOUGHT TO hang on to the last shreds of consciousness. Through eyes that refused to focus she saw the warp-barrier blink out of existence, and a creature from nightmare leap through the Star Chamber entrance. It lunged at her, pinning her to the ground, animal jaws snapping in her face as its claws raked the flesh of her forearms.

A SINGLE WORD in an unfamiliar tongue cut through the snarling, and the beast was gone. Neme opened her eyes to see the back of the warrior as he stalked from the chamber, a loping creature with wolf-like features wearing the mangled remains of tarnished dark grey armour, at his side.
'Wait...' she said. He paused, silhouetted in the fires raging in the passage beyond. 'Who are...'
The warrior held up a hand and uttered words Neme could not understand, before reforming the sentence in a tongue he had clearly not used in many years.
'Who I am is immaterial, girl. That I was here is all that matters. We leave now to continue the hunt, for the Great Betrayer is abroad once more.'
A massed, doleful howling echoed down the corpse-strewn passages of the Ormantep Listening Station.
'Wait!' she called again.
But the stranger was gone.