KOVOS FALLS Mark Latham ‘There are countless thousands of regiments of the Imperial Guard. There are untold millions of Imperial Guardsmen, all of whom provide grist for the mill in the eternal war for mankind’s deliverance. Yet there is but one regiment of storm troopers, who stand head and shoulders above the common soldier. Would that the schola progenium could provide more of them.’ – Commissar Dmitri Antonov addressing the McIntyre Assembly, 977.M41 The wind whipped furiously across the cavernous mouth of Hangar 11, its howl drowning out the screech of las-fire. Three men fell to the first salvo, as the storm troopers swooped into the vast opening on glowing grav-chutes. The hive scum scrambled in disarray, trying in vain to mount an effective counter-assault, but managing only to make a din as they fired high-calibre stub guns in blind panic. All fifteen of the foe lay dead or dying before the final trooper made planetfall, and the Hell’s Rejects unhitched their grav-chutes and took up defensive positions. ‘Valdimar, Kraster – take point,’ hissed Sergeant Godric. The two storm troopers darted to cover, hellguns readied against any further threats. Trooper Sorokin kicked at one of the fresh corpses on the hangar deck. ‘Renegades,’ he spat. Turning the body over, the dead man’s bared chest revealed a pattern of scars, carved into his torso in a series of blasphemous sigils. ‘Heretics! This gets better and better.’ ‘All who turn from the Emperor’s light are heretics, Sorokin. How far they have fallen matters not to us.’ Godric was taciturn as always, and Sorokin only nodded in response. ‘The only things I hate more than greenskins is heretics,’ muttered Trooper Kraster, who had seen more than his fair share of fighting against both. The orbital drop had been treacherous. The storm was fierce, and the only safe landing point on the principal hive was three miles up. It was a testament to the storm troopers’ skill that they had found their landing site, avoiding the auto-defence weapons in the process. This was Kovos Rising, a black, cyclopean spear thrusting from the surface of the world amidst a cluster of smaller hives. With the hangar secured, the storm troopers quickly took stock of their equipment and muttered thanks to the Emperor for a safe drop, before heading across the landing bay. Godric led the way, his bionic eye cutting through the darkness. When they reached the far side of the hangar, Godric led his squad through obfuscating shadows until they reached a large bulkhead set in a plasteel wall some fifteen metres high. The coast seemingly clear, the troopers flicked their visors up and stood easy. Godric looked at his men. ‘We’re close to the spire, but we have to expect stiff resistance from hostiles. We’ll have to do this the hard way.’ ‘What’s new, sergeant?’ grinned Valdimar. He was a giant of a man, who looked as though he could wrestle a Catachan devil into submission. ‘Remember your objectives, and take no unnecessary risks,’ Godric said, sternly. ‘Yes sir!’ The response came as one from the assembled troopers. ‘Okay, McLeod, get this door open. We’re going in – and remember, all of you; the scum behind these doors have turned from the Emperor’s light. If they get in our way, show no mercy.’ ‘Mercy is weakness!’ came the refrain, accompanied a moment later by the grinding of hydraulics as the heavy bulkhead swung open, revealing a narrow corridor ahead. The passage was bathed in blood-red light; the only sound the steady whirring of filtration pumps and the clunking of vast, antiquated steam pipes. ‘Two-by-two formation,’ said Godric. ‘Sorokin, you’re with me. Tarek, Joachim, take the rear. Let’s go.’ The route to the Wall had been perilous, but not as dangerous as Godric had feared. Using access tunnels from the manufactorum, the storm troopers had managed to locate the most isolated group of sentries, and Kraster and Sorokin had made short work of them before beckoning the others down onto the main gantry. Now the Wall was before them – plasteel panels, coated in ceramite, standing sixty metres high and at least six metres thick, with a perimeter stretching for miles around. Bulkheads permeated its exterior at regular intervals, each crowned by auto-defence units. The Wall was a physical barrier between the noble dwellings of the upper spire and the squalid manufactora, celerions and hab-blocks of the rest of the hive, and now it stood between the Hell’s Rejects and their mission. With barely a word, the Hell’s Rejects took up defensive postures around one of the bulkheads, claiming cover where they could. The wind whipped up around them, billowing from the vast void between the outer railings and an unfathomable drop beyond. McLeod took up a position next to the control panel of the bulkhead, nervously operating the controls under the watchful eye of the sentry gun. He thrice intoned a blessing to the Omnissiah, before patching his Imperial identi-chit into the dormant servo-skull behind the panel. A red eye blinked into life. ‘Imperial Guard Storm Trooper Squad Identified. Authorisation?’ Godric stepped forward, and spoke to the servo-skull as loudly and clearly as he dared given the hostile environs. ‘Squad Godric. sixty-sixth storm trooper company. Imperial Override Alpha 11759.’ The inner workings of the grim automaton whirred and clicked. ‘Welcome to Kovos Spire.’ The door swung open with a loud clunk. Even before the first storm trooper had stepped beyond the threshold, footsteps and shouts could be heard close by as gangers were alerted by the noise. The most treasured prize of all for these heretics lay within the spire, and they would stop at nothing to gain access. Godric ushered the last man through the door, and only just had time to see it closed as the first rounds ricocheted off the armoured bulkhead. Before long, the storm troopers were stepping into what seemed like another world. Despite the hardships and unrest beyond the Wall, in the spire those noble lords and ladies who had not managed to flee the hive still existed within airy halls, with as much food, drink and finery as they could desire. Well-dressed administrators and lordlings stepped aside for the storm troopers, looks of distaste upon their faces at the appearance of the Hell’s Rejects. Godric was saluted by a captain of the Kovosian household guard, a man who looked a little past his peak. ‘Captain Tarvin, sir, at your service,’ he said. ‘I am to escort you to Governor Marchinus.’ Tarvin led the way through the brightly-lit halls, past domiciles, offices and rec-rooms, and up several flowing staircases. ‘How many men do you have, Tarvin?’ asked Godric. ‘A few days ago I had a hundred, sir. Now I have twenty-two.’ Godric nodded grimly. The fighting across the planet had been fierce and retribution swift, as hive after hive had fallen to open rebellion. ‘You know why we are here?’ Godric’s question was a leading one – this was not a mercy mission, and he would brook no requests for rescue. ‘We picked up the same signal, sir. Adeptus Mechanicus emergency protocols. We couldn’t decipher it, but we know where it came from.’ ‘Good. And the governor? He’ll cooperate in the fulfilment of our mission?’ Tarvin checked himself before replying. ‘Governor Marchinus is… He will do his duty, sir.’ Through twisting corridors they strode, before reaching the command centre of the spire. Tarvin announced the Hell’s Rejects as ‘Storm Trooper Squad Godric,’ and took his position by the door. Before Godric’s men was a well-equipped control room, with a massive viewport on one side looking out over the other hives, and the turmoil of a world at war. The governor stood with his back to them, gazing upon his shattered domain. ‘I have spent a lifetime building this world, as did my father and grandfather before me,’ said the governor. His high-pitched voice was quavering. ‘And now look at it… all in ruin. Irrecoverable, they say… such a pity.’ He turned to face Godric. The man was broken. His brow was heavily lined, and his eyes were wild, darting about like Torvelid swamptoads in their holes. ‘You’ve come to save me from my own world? A world that has turned on me like a wayward son?’ ‘We have come to find the source of the Adeptus Mechanicus emergency transmission, located somewhere in Kovos Rising,’ replied Godric in a measured tone. ‘Fine, fine,’ said the governor, evidently misunderstanding or wilfully ignoring Godric. ‘But you must realise there is still much to do before I can leave. Why don’t you go and make sure the hangar is secure, and I shall prepare my people.’ Godric chanced an impatient look over his shoulder at Tarvin, who returned his gaze, shaking his head. ‘You do that, Lord Marchinus,’ said Godric, stepping back towards the door. ‘Do I have your permission to employ your household guard in the operation?’ Marchinus was already beckoning in half a dozen attendants and bureaucrats, each more exotically attired than the last, and all wearing quite vacant expressions. ‘Hmm? Oh, yes, yes. Go and talk to Tarquin. Or was it Tarvin? Go, go – and report to me the moment my shuttle is ready. You will be rewarded for this, Godwyn, mark my words. I have friends on Terra, you know.’ Godric left hastily, and pulled Tarvin to one side as soon as the door was closed. ‘The governor is mad, Tarvin. You should have told me.’ Tarvin shrugged. ‘It is not my place to judge my Lord Governor. Protocol demands that you seek an audience. Duty demands that I protect him to the end.’ ‘Let him pomp and preen with his courtiers. Marchinus is no longer in control. I will allow him to die on his own world, in the service of the Emperor – others would not be so merciful. Your duty now lies in serving me; the Emperor’s will is more important than all of the inhabitants of this spire, understood?’ Tarvin could only nod sullenly. ‘I will do my duty, sir.’ ‘As do we all, for only in death does duty end. Now, show me where this transmission came from.’ Tarvin and four hand-picked men accompanied the storm trooper squad. Any more and their numbers would be impossible to conceal, even in the labyrinthine passageways of the hive. Their mission would lead them to the underhive, a perilous journey into the bowels of Kovos Rising; outside the spire’s artificial environment of tranquillity and high culture was a vast city ravaged by corruption, suffering and violence. Tarvin had revealed that a delegation from Mars had been labouring over excavations at the hive’s foundations since before the rebellion, and had lost contact with the spire shortly after the fighting had begun. The household soldiers guided the squad through endless corridors, machine shops, storied warehouses and boiling-hot forges. Through almost every bulkhead and in every other corridor, pockets of resistance were met with extreme prejudice. Hive gangers and once-loyal soldiers hunkered behind shabby barricades, launching furious assaults upon the Hell’s Rejects whenever they were encountered. The storm troopers went about their business with grim efficiency, taking down a heretic with every shot from their supercharged lasguns, and standing unflinching as stubber fire rattled against their carapace armour. The deeper they delved, the bolder the hive scum seemed to grow, and the more outlandish their appearance. Tattoos and scarification seemed to be commonplace, confirming that Kovos Rising had indeed succumbed to heresy. They shouted curses against the immortal Emperor, which served only to make Sergeant Godric deliver his wrath with greater alacrity. After the first few encounters, Trooper Siegfried advanced to the head of the squad, his flamer laying waste to dozens of renegades in the tight confines of the hive’s corridors. Siegfried had always favoured the flamer as a weapon, and was marked by his permanently blackened face and armour – scorch-marks that he insisted could not be washed off ‘for luck’. The Hell’s Rejects advanced in this way for what seemed like an eternity. When they reached Manufactorum Sixty, in a district Tarvin told them was called Forge Landing, Godric gave the order to halt. ‘If we carry on this path it’ll take us an hour or more to fight through more of these corridors. We’ve been lucky so far, but we need to reach the underhive soon or our time – not to mention our luck – might just run out. Captain Tarvin says we can cut through this factory and continue through one of the old extraction tunnels. If we meet resistance, it’s las-fire only – this manufactorum houses fuel tanks, and if they ignite they could blow us to the Emperor’s mercy and back.’ Trooper ‘Lucky’ Ishmael looked sullen at this instruction and slung his plasma gun over his shoulder forlornly, as though parting with his first-born child. Siegfried was similarly sullen as he unloaded the promethium canisters from his flamer, just in case.. The doors to the manufactorum were large enough to drive a Shadowsword through, and the storm troopers parted them but a fraction. Beyond lay a dark, cavernous workshop. Conveyor belts and pulleys reached up high into the gloom. Emergency lumen flickered and showers of sparks from broken machinery flashed intermittently. Stairs and walkways encircled the factory, spiralling around the vast tanks of volatile fuel. With the factory workers dead or rioting, and so many of the containment systems down, the silos represented a serious threat to the stability of the hive’s upper levels. Trooper Thyrus whistled in awe, and Godric silenced him with a glower from his good eye.. Soundlessly, the squad skirted the vast chamber towards the steel-shod stairway. ‘Tarek, scout ahead and report back if there’s trouble. Everyone else, proceed with caution,’ said Godric. Tarek scurried down the stairs, silent as a cat. He was an expert tracker and stealthy scout, and he took no more than a dozen steps before he had melded into the shadows and disappeared from view. Progress was arduous. The stairs were littered with detritus and corpses, and many steps were missing, damaged, or slick with blood, making the footing treacherous. On the seventeenth level they were forced to duck beneath suspended bodies of factory workers, hanging from long chains. On the sixteenth they had to deploy rappel lines to cross a missing section of steel walkway. When they arrived at level fifteen, they were met at the top of the stairway by Tarek. ‘Guard station, directly below,’ Tarek said, his voice hushed. ‘Five men, all armed. There’s only one way in.’ ‘Must’ve been the old foreman’s post,’ said Godric. ‘We do this quick and quiet – hand-to-hand. Tarek, you lead, I’ll follow. Valdimar, Sorokin and Joachim, you know what to do. The rest of you, pistols ready. Tarvin, same goes for your men. If we fail, then our only hope of keeping this quiet is light arms fire. Understand?’ The Hell’s Rejects muttered obeisance, and Godric drew his power sword. ‘The Emperor protects.’ The five chosen men crouched on the threshold of the guard station. A double door, one side hanging off its hinges, stood between them and their quarry. Shrieking voices could be heard from within – gangers who had given themselves over to some kind of dark cult, and were now debauched and high on stimms. Tarek held up a hand to ready the advance party, waiting for an opening. When it came, he jerked his hand forwards and, as one, the five Hell’s Rejects dashed into the guardroom. Tarek, the smallest and nimblest of the group, made it all the way to the comms panel before the drunken gangers knew what was happening. A tall, scarred ganger with outrageous spiked hair idled by an intercom. Tarek slit his throat and shut down the comm-unit before his target even knew he was there. Two more moved towards him clumsily, while the other two scrambled for their stubbers. Between the gangers and their weapons stood Valdimar and Joachim ‘the Fist’. Valdimar fended off the clumsy knife slashes of the nearest assailant, reached down with his massive hands, and lifted the ganger from the ground by his head, breaking his neck with one violent wrench before tossing him aside like a broken doll. Joachim needed no assistance either – the plasteel knuckle-studs on his gauntlets glinted in the flickering torchlight as he delivered a rough death to the cultist before him. Joachim had earned his nickname at the Jones Crispin insurrection, where he had held off a crowd of rebels bare-fisted until reinforcements arrived. He needed little encouragement to use his talents. The two that had turned on Tarek had barely registered the deaths of their compatriots. One of them was gnashing his teeth and slashing at the Tallarn-born trooper with a crude pick. The other was fumbling at his holster for a pistol. Tarek backed away, drawing them on – too late, the gangers realised why Tarek did not attack them himself. A tempered blade was thrust through the neck of the first ganger, whilst the second’s hand was removed by another blade before his holster was unfastened. Sorokin stood between them, and spun around with the grace of a consummate duellist to decapitate both foes. Sorokin was Godric’s right-hand man and the most flamboyant member of the squad. His father had been a colonel of the Vostroyan Firstborn and Sorokin carried a pair of adamantine blades in honour of the progenitor he never knew. Godric strode towards the comms panel, scanning the room with his bionic eye for any signs of enemy surveillance or traps. Satisfied, he sheathed his unused sword and beckoned the rest of the squad into the guard station. Kraster stayed crouched by the door, keeping watch on the gantry. ‘Good work,’ said Godric. ‘Now secure the room. Tarek, see if there’s anything worth scavenging from these scum. McLeod – take a look at that comms unit. If you can patch in and take out the enemy relays for a while, it might buy us some more time.’ ‘Sir, if I may?’ It was Tarvin, stepping over the body of a dead ganger, and taking pains to avoid the pool of blood that crawled slowly across the floor. ‘If I have my bearings right, we’re near to a derelict sector, sealed long ago. I don’t think anyone even knows it exists any more. If I can find the old panoptical station and access the maintenance shafts, we can clear at least three or four levels without enemy contact.’ Godric weighed up his options – he knew his men hadn’t seen the worst of the fighting yet, and their progress had been too slow so far. ‘Okay, Tarvin – take Tarek with you, and find the way.’ The Hell’s Rejects kept themselves mainly to long-abandoned service tunnels, lifts used only by tech-servitors, and reactivated sections of derelict hab-blocks known only to the hive’s administrators. Once, these vast chambers and winding tunnels had teemed with life, but as the metropolis had grown ever upwards, entire districts had been abandoned due to poverty, disease or simple undesirability. Forgotten for generations and sealed off from gang intrusion, they now provided relatively safe passage for Godric’s men as they descended hundreds of levels to the underhive. Days passed in this manner, the storm troopers meeting scattered resistance along the way, before they reached level thirteen. The very air emanating from the darkness beneath them seemed stale and cloying. Tarvin told the storm troopers that there would be no more secret paths from this point on, and the way ahead would be dangerous. The Adeptus Mechanicus signal originated from a mining platform that sat above the sump on the lowest level. ‘So what’s on level one?’ laughed Thyrus. ‘Don’t tell me some poor sops live in the sump?’ ‘Level one is quarantined,’ replied Tarvin, with utmost seriousness. ‘It has long been forbidden to access that level. If anything does live below it, in the foundations of the hive… well, let’s just say we don’t want it getting out.’ ‘What are we waiting for?’ interjected Valdimar. ‘We’ve been sneaking around like sewer rats for days. I want to crack the heads of some underhive scum!’ You’ll get your chance sooner that you think,’ interrupted McLeod. ‘Five blips heading our way – foot of the stairway.’ The Hell’s Rejects needed no instruction. Silently, they spread out across the gantry, melding into the shadows. Valdimar, remarkably stealthy for a big man, padded down the stairs, the steel treads making barely sounds beneath his feet. Tarek peered over the rail, eying up his prey. As soon as the team heard the unmistakeable sounds of Valdimar engaging the enemy, Tarek clipped a rappel line to the metal handrail and leapt over the edge. The sounds of combat were over in seconds, and the remainder of the squad began their descent down the long flight of stairs. At the bottom, Tarvin’s men gaped in awe at the sight of Valdimar and Tarek, and the five bodies at their feet. Valdimar dragged the gangers into the shadows where they would remain undiscovered for a while, and wiped the blood from his gloves. He looked content. The way through the red zone was dangerous indeed. Every cavernous promenade, cramped shanty town and network of tiny engineering tunnels was awash with rebels. Underhive gangers roamed in packs, or cavorted around trash fires. The bodies of Kovosian household soldiers littered the route, and more than once the storm troopers were forced to change direction to avoid detection. Where the enemy were concentrated, there seemed to be great carnivals of heresy, orgies of violence and depravity as half-naked cultists leapt and writhed to the beat of distant drums. Shouts of ecstasy mingled with screams of terror as loyalist prisoners were tortured and roasted over hellish fires. And from the deepest shadows, Godric’s men were forced to watch, too few in number to face such rebellion head-on. They saw thousands of heretics from all walks of life, and who knew how many more danced and cavorted on the lower levels. Godric’s face was sepulchral, and he bade Tarvin to lead his men onwards, deeper into the belly of the beast. The same story could be found throughout the underhive, but the darkness within the souls of the revellers seemed to grow as the storm troopers got closer to the lower reaches. There was a madness eating away at the denizens of Kovos Rising, and Godric began to believe that flattening the planet through orbital bombardment was the only way of sanctifying this place of evil. Even the structure of the underhive seemed to twist and change as the Hell’s Rejects ventured deeper – warped effigies and blasphemous scrawlings marked every tunnel; great metal spikes jutted from walls at impossible heights, adorned with chains from which hung flayed bodies. ‘If we truly are the Hell’s Rejects,’ muttered Thyrus, ‘then it can’t be long before this place spits us out.’ At the entrance to a deserted cargo hangar, Captain Tarvin signalled the storm troopers to stop. ‘This is level five. To get lower, there’s only one route, and it leads through the old sector house. Unfortunately, it has long been taken over by criminals from the biggest gangs in the underhive. It was a no-go area before the rebellion, so now…’ Godric growled, conveying his impatience more clearly than any words. ‘If we get to the hangar bay doors, we can reach a skywalk,’ said Tarvin, nervously. ‘We can get to the mining levels from outside the hive, and we’ll only have to get past a few isolated outposts. I reckon it’s a better option than fighting our way through these corridors.’ ‘Aye,’ said Godric, ‘but there’s a battle raging out there. We’ll be exposed to fire from all sides.’ ‘Possibly,’ nodded Tarvin. ‘We also have to hope that the enemy aren’t watching from the viewing stations and outer platforms – we’ll be out in the open if we’re spotted.’ Godric conferred with Sorokin, before turning back to Tarvin. ‘The Emperor protects,’ he said. The air was awash with bullets and las-fire. Valdimar dragged Tarvin bodily across the gantry and into cover as gangers peppered the storm troopers with autogun fire. The rappel descent had already claimed its first victim – Lavalis, one of Tarvin’s men, had misjudged the distance and broken both of his legs as he crashed into a plasteel railing. His pain had been short-lived as a stray stub round took him through the eye. From the moment they had leapt from the old hangar, the Hell’s Rejects had met opposition from the elements and the natives alike. The wind had threatened to blow them over the edge of the platform into the sulphur pits below, while a large patrol of cult gangers had spotted them almost as soon as they had touched down on the walkway. Trooper Ishmael advanced as far forwards as he dared and found a vantage point amid a pile of scrap barricades. As soon as the solid slugs of the gangers had stopped ricocheting off his cover, he unleashed a fusillade of searing plasma at the enemy. The gangers flinched from the onslaught, unused to such ferocious opposition, and their pause for thought allowed the remainder of the storm troopers to advance in good order, picking off foes with every shot. When finally the two sides closed, it looked as though the gangers may attempt to engage the Imperial trespassers in hand-to-hand combat, but any such notion was quashed when Siegfried stepped to the front of his unit, flamer in hand, and engulfed the gangers’ makeshift defences with blazing promethium. With the enemy routed, the Hell’s Rejects regrouped. Captain Tarvin looked out across the landscape he called home. The walls of the kilometres-high Kovos Rising loomed at their backs, whilst ahead of them the planet burned beneath a crimson sky. Some ten kilometres away, a second hive lay in ruins, its top quarter struck from its body, fires burning from every crack and crevice. Beyond that, bombs fell, troops fought and men sold their lives dearly. ‘That’s Spiridov Hive,’ said Tarvin, ruefully, almost to himself. ‘I was born there.’ Tarvin was afforded no time to grieve as Godric gave the order to move on. The skywalk split into two further ones, with one fork looping around back to the hive, and the other descending to ground level via stairways and maintenance lifts. It was this path the storm troopers took, finding themselves on the outskirts of a huge refinery on the planet’s surface. ‘No sign of the workers,’ said Tarvin, his voice raised against the incessant thundering of explosions and the thrumming of automated industrial machinery. ‘Looks like the path is clear.’ ‘Can you get us back inside?’ asked Godric. ‘Yes, but we need to find the maintenance entrance. From there we should be able to reach the mines unhindered.’ The search was brief, and finally Tarvin hooked up a security cipher to the access panel of a ceramite-plated bulkhead. It felt strange being at ground level outside a hive – most of the millions who dwelt within Kovos Rising had never set foot outside, nor even beyond the limitations of their own hab-zones. Yet the Hell’s Rejects had traversed the length and breadth of the cyclopean city, and now sought to re-enter the bowels of the soaring structure. Once inside, Tarvin led the troopers in single file through a maze of dark, cramped access tunnels. Their progress was monitored by the glassy, lifeless eyes of engineering servitors, which stood silently, plugged into service niches in the walls. These cybernetic workers awaited the return of their overseers, most of whom were undoubtedly dead. The route twisted and turned, dipped and ascended, and gradually the environs began to alter. The Imperial icons, devotional shrines and industrial fixings that adorned every inch of wall became less prominent, until the walls were smooth. Though corroded with age, the rooms and passages that the troopers traversed seemed no longer to be of Imperial design. Finally, they descended yet another level in a rickety service lift, and emerged into a large, low-ceilinged chamber with carved stone walls and a flagged floor. ‘What is this place?’ asked Sorokin. ‘The threshold to the Forbidden Deeps,’ replied Tarvin. ‘Few have ever looked upon these chambers. I myself believed them to be the stuff of stories until recently.’ ‘Are they xenos-built?’ asked Tarek, suspiciously. ‘No. I am told they were built by the first Terran colonists, in the time of the Great Crusade. Some of our most powerful geothermic processors are ported into archeotech down here – even the tech-adepts have no idea how they work, but we thank the Emperor that they do.’ ‘No time for history lessons,’ Godric said. ‘Lead on, captain.’ ‘I’ll do my best, sir, but from here on I know as much as you.’ ‘Very well,’ Godric said. With two simple hand gestures, Godric gave the Hell’s Rejects their orders – the squad fanned out into a reconnaissance formation, and stepped fearlessly into the gloom. The chamber was vast. Excavations were evident from the unearthed rubble that lined the hewn pit in the centre of the cavern, piled high around tall columns of polished stone. From that dig-site, large tendrils of pipes and power cables seemed to grow organically, grasping at the farthest reaches of the chamber. Beyond them, vague silhouettes of digging machinery served to emphasise the size of the room. Portable lumens still stood within and about the gaping hole, providing scant light in the gloomy cavern, but illuminating the object of the storm troopers’ mission. Between the compact generators and crates of tools was a bulkhead of strange design, partially uncovered by a now-absent workforce. Tiny blinking lights flickered around it, and a dormant screen was recessed into its frame, above three partially opened panels. The troopers spread out around the platform by which they had entered, and crept down to ground level. Only when McLeod signalled that there were no readings on his bio-scanner did the troopers relax, and approach the ancient portal with awe. ‘McLeod, I want this examined immediately. See if you can get it open.’ McLeod nodded in response, and set to work with his equipment. As he worked, his bio-scanner began to glow faintly. Godric took the device from McLeod. ‘Keep at it. I’ll see to this,’ he told the young trooper. Godric studied the scanner intently. ‘One blip detected, two hundred metres – it’s slow, but it’s heading this way. Men, take up defensive positions – I want a secure perimeter. And move those lumens. I want to see what we’re up against.’ Within the vast excavation pit, the storm troopers scurried like insects, too few in number to defend such a large area effectively against a determined foe. Now they were approached by a single enemy, and thus went about their business confidently. That confidence, however, was shattered as soon as the lumens were moved to cast their light around the chamber. As the shadows shrank back from the illumination, humanoid forms were revealed standing all around the edges of the cavernous room. Light gleamed off metal, and the storm troopers stared at hundreds of servitors, of all classes and designations. Some carried fearsome weapons in place of arms, whilst most were equipped with grappling arms, rock drills and buzz-saws. Not one of them moved, instead standing sentry, dormant and silent as the grave. The storm troopers clenched their guns and took up firing positions. That the servitors could be hostile did not bear thinking about, and the blip on the bio-scanner was still moving towards them. The eerie silence in the room was broken by Trooper McLeod, who had carried on working, oblivious to the danger. ‘Got it!’ he said. And his words were accompanied by an electronic thrum and a faint glow of light from the bulkhead’s access panel. Godric hushed him immediately, and McLeod looked momentarily sheepish. ‘Why isn’t it open?’ Godric whispered. ‘Sir, that will take some time. I don’t understand the tech… but we’ve got power at least.’ ‘Step away from that panel, trooper!’ A metallic voice rang out from the darkness. The Hell’s Rejects readied their weapons, trusting to their targeting reticules to pick up any sign of movement. ‘And lower your weapons.’ This time the command was accompanied by movement. As one, six of the Rejects trained their weapons on the target, which shuffled towards the crater with an awkward gait. The lumen revealed the deep-red robes of a tech-priest of Mars, but the storm troopers relaxed only slightly. The figure that approached them was not the most reassuring one. The red robes hid something both more than and less than human. Metallic tendrils snaked from beneath the hunchbacked creature’s hood and sleeves, and its one bionic hand held a long-hafted power axe, upon which it leaned heavily as it traversed the sloping sides of the crater. Even from a distance, the tech-priests breathing apparatus was audible as a regular hiss-click. ‘Halt!’ barked Godric. ‘My men will open fire unless you identify yourself.’ The tech-priest checked his advance, and paused momentarily before responding. ‘I am Magos Explorator Korech,’ he said. As he spoke, a small servo-skull flitted out of the shadows behind him and approached Godric, its anti-gravitic drive purring. It stopped a metre away from the sergeant, and projected a holographic display in the air before him. Godric’s bionic eye translated the coded identification readout for him, and he nodded. ‘Approach, magos. We meet at last.’ The storm troopers had never seen anything like it. The thought that their forebears, tens of thousands of years ago, could have wrought such a flawless technological wonder was astounding. The door had led to an underground complex, evidently built to withstand the most ardent assault. Korech led the storm troopers through twisting corridors and room after room, flanked by his ominous gun-servitor bodyguard. When eventually they reached the central chamber, they could barely comprehend what they beheld. ‘This is the reason we are here,’ said the magos. ‘This is – was – a standard template construct system. It is barely functioning, but I have been able to piece together fragments of data for perhaps several dozen templates.’ ‘Throne of the Emperor…’ muttered Godric. ‘Are you saying there are new templates here?’ ‘Impossible to confirm. The data is largely encoded. The templates may be new, or may be already known to us. My equipment here is insufficient for the task. The data must be restored and returned to the explorator fleet for further study. It will take many years to translate this material, damaged as it is.’ Godric nodded, and looked around the chamber. Trails of power cables spilled from every console like guts from a dying soldier. The magos had patched every data port and power conduit with his ancient and thrice-blessed equipment, and was running data sequences constantly, with logis-skulls and calculus servitors overseeing the most tedious work. It was hard to take in – this room had once been a marvel of technology, from a time when anything was possible. Now, it was in such disrepair that perhaps it would never yield its secrets. The magos would search like a zealot for even partial confirmation of a new design hidden away within the corrupted data – should he find it, his contribution to the glory of the Imperium would be assured, whether the design was for a star-destroying las-weapon or a new type of prosthetic limb. So avaricious were the tech-priests in their pursuit of STC technology that a deep longing for technological discovery was , for many, their only remaining human trait. Godric noticed that Tarvin and his men were close by. One of the soldiers looked like he was about to pass out from the wonder of it all. ‘You, private. What’s your name? Vilkas?’ The private nodded. ‘Make yourself useful and stand watch by the main entrance. I want to know if there’s any movement out there.’ The private saluted and scurried off. Better to give men like that something to do, Godric knew. ‘How are we going to get this off-world?’ asked Captain Tarvin. ‘Surely we can’t risk transmitting such information to the fleet?’ ‘No, captain, we cannot. And besides, this console long ago lost the ability to send such transmissions. To think, it was the ignorance of men that wrought such damage. How could they deliberately harm such treasure? And then to bury it beneath a million tonnes of rockcrete… it is inconceivable.’ ‘From what I understand, they had their reasons,’ growled Godric, already tiring of this mechanical man and his obsession. ‘The answer to the captain’s question,’ continued Korech, ‘is that we must record as much data as possible in a physical form, and take it off-world ourselves.’ ‘And how much of it is there?’ asked Godric. ‘Come, I will show you.’ The magos led the way to a side chamber, where CAT units scuttered about the troopers’ feet and servo-scribes slaved away transcribing data that was meaningless to the uninformed observer. The magos waved a metallic arm at a pile of hard-copy material – thick ledgers, holo-crystals, data-slates and porta-drives galore, lying in crates and cupboards. The scribes worked ceaselessly on more reams of parchment, ready to be threaded into further books. If the storm troopers had all filled their packs with this material, they would still have to make dozens of trips. ‘There is more, of course. I expect to have three times this amount before I am done.’ ‘Emperor’s teeth!’ snapped Godric. ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on? Every inch of this hive is crawling with heretic scum. Even if they don’t find us down here, we have to get past them to find an extraction point. There has to be another way.’ ‘Negative, sergeant. You have seen my servitors – they will form a guard of honour for our labours. In three days’ time we will take our work to the abandoned factory outside the walls of the hive, where my servitors will secure a perimeter and we can await extraction. Given the nature of the cargo, I am sure no effort will be spared.’ The magos’s logic was sound, if a little hopeful – Godric had no faith in the servitors’ ability to hold off a determined foe for long. ‘Any vox-cast we send to the fleet will be intercepted, so we only get one shot. That means three days is too long, magos. If we wait that long, the war will be over and the fleet will have abandoned us to our fate. We may be the best, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t expendable.’ The magos’s working audibly whirred and clicked as he considered this. ‘Then you will take what you can, and we will hold off the enemy until you return. There are Adeptus Astartes present, yes? They will surely suffice…’ He trailed off, distracted by the arrival of the two gun servitors that had been left in the control room. ‘You were not summoned. Return to your posts.’ The emergency lumens flickered and went out, and the room was lit by the muzzle flash from the servitors’ heavy bolters. The storm troopers scattered, flicking down their visors to activate the night-fighting settings, and returning fire before Godric could even give the order. The servitors proved difficult to take down with their armoured bodies, but a salvo from Ishmael’s plasma gun ended the fracas. Alarms sounded and blood-red lights flickered to life. Godric quickly surveyed the scene. One of Tarvin’s soldiers was dead. The magos was injured, but was already heaving himself to his feet. Kraster had taken a glancing hit as a heavy round had exploded near to his head, and his visor was smashed apart. He indicated that he was all right – a few more scars wouldn’t hurt that face. Most importantly of all, some of the template material had been damaged. At least one thick ledger burned, and the contents of the crates were scattered across the floor. The servo-scribes lay lifeless, as if deactivated. ‘What’s going on? Is this what your “army” can do?’ roared Godric. ‘Negative. We are under attack. I must reach the control room. You must protect the STC!’ Godric barked an order to his men to join Vilkas at the complex entrance, and helped the magos back to the control room. In the half-light the magos worked to bring one of the ancient consoles to life. No sooner had he done so, than a scream of amplified feedback echoed through the corridors, as defunct communication devices seemed to activate of their own accord. The screech was replaced by a static hiss, followed by a sinister, booming voice that everyone in the complex could here. ‘Worms. Insects. Lapdogs of the False Emperor. Did you think you were safe? Did you think we would not find you? I see you. I see your doom!’ Something in the voice set Godric’s teeth on edge. Never had he heard such malice. It made him angry. If anyone was going to make threats, it would be him. ‘Magos, where’s that signal coming from?’ ‘Unclear. But whatever it is, it also has control of my servitors. My devices are not responding. My blessed machines are corrupted and… No!’ If the magos’s mechanical voice was capable of sounding afraid, it would have done at that moment. Godric saw the dials and screens that the magos had been working on flickering and oscillating uncontrollably. ‘The enemy is activating the STC through my equipment. No, no, no! Omnissiah, preserve us!’ ‘Magos, take hold of yourself. Use your skill and fight back. I’ll get my men to take every hard copy we have and get to the extraction point. Seal this place behind us and hold out until we return.’ ‘Negative. This malign interference… It is too powerful. There is only once course of action, though I may be cursed forevermore.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘There is evil here. An ancient evil, that seeks to corrupt the STC to its own ends. I must activate the power core and destroy the complex. Logic dictates that there is no other recourse.’ Godric was at a loss. To be party to the destruction of an STC system, even one as damaged and infirm as this, was tantamount to heresy. But on the other hand, to let such a system fall into enemy hands would be worse. He knew what he had to do. In minutes he had gathered his men together, and had them stowing every hard copy they could lay their hands on into packs and pouches. They would have to discard valuable ammunition to make room for data-crystals and loose parchments, but each of those objects had the potential to be worth their lives a hundred times over. As they made for the exit of the chamber that had provided safe haven for such a short time, Godric turned back to Magos Korech once more. The tech-priest worked furiously, the mechadendrites that had once made him look like a hunchback now free and whipping around him, turning dials and interfacing with a machine of unfathomable complexity. The magos did not acknowledge Godric – his course of action was set, and he would see the complex destroyed. Outside the complex, the Hell’s Rejects had expected enemy forces to be waiting for them, but instead they were met by ominous silence and pitch darkness. They manned the lumens once more – the dormant servitors still stood around the cavern, waiting for an order from their master that would never come. But with the threat of outside manipulation of these mechanical workers looming, the storm troopers were edgy. ‘How proud you must be to have served your Emperor so well.’ The voice came suddenly; it reverberated around the cavern, deep and ominous. The storm troopers shone lights around them, but could see no signs of movement. ‘Show yourself!’ Godric barked. ‘Gladly,’ said the voice. ‘But first, Sergeant Godric, why don’t you and your men lower your weapons? I am alone, after all. I only want the opportunity to parley.’ ‘If you know me, then you must have access to restricted information. I must assume you are an enemy until proven otherwise. Show yourself.’ How did the enemy know his name? ‘You leave me little choice, it seems.’ No sooner had the voice fallen silent than the clanking of heavy machinery and the whirring of gyros filled the air. The cacophony was sudden and violent, and the storm troopers recoiled, weapons at the ready. Then, from the shadows, the black shapes of the servitors began to slope and shuffle forwards, as though the darkness itself had come alive. Glowing red eyes flickered into life, fixing the Guardsmen with impassive gazes. The servitors advanced, mechanical arms grasping for the nearest storm troopers. As the first gun-servitor levelled a heavy stubber at the squad, Trooper Joachim opened fire. The reactionary shot sparked a fire-frenzy. The storm troopers unleashed volley after volley. Some broke through the Guardsmen’s defensive line and were met by Valdimar, who set about three servitors with a metal bar almost as tall as himself, knocking them backwards with great sweeping blows. Tarek and Kraster cleared a path for Siegfried, who levelled his flamer and washed a swathe of servitors with cleansing fire, melting flesh from metal skeletons. Despite these efforts, a servitor with a huge grasping claw took hold of McLeod, yanking him backwards towards the shadows. Godric stepped forward this time, lopping off its metal claw at the elbow with his power sword. He pulled McLeod behind cover. ‘Regroup!’ he yelled. ‘We have what we came for – fighting withdrawal!’ The storm troopers formed a loose line, edging back towards the higher ground from where they had entered, firing at the servitors with well-placed shots. Just as soon as they reached the edge of the excavation pit, the servitors stopped their advance. Joachim was the last to fire a shot, and looked apologetically at his sergeant. ‘Keep going, stop for nothing!’ roared Godric. ‘Why the hurry?’ The voice again; and accompanying it, the thrum of a generator signalled the activation of low-level emergency lighting. The servitors stood outlined in the dull orange light. There were more of them than the storm troopers had first thought – at least thirty now stood in and around the pit, a dozen lying prone or destroyed in the cold earth, and scores more standing behind, sluggishly awakening, ready to join the fight. As one, the storm troopers turned, realising that the voice had come from behind them. Godric’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword. The stranger stood between them and the exit ramp. He was a towering figure, clad in archaic power armour. A ragged cowl was pulled over his face, but could not disguise the glint of metal beneath and the bionic eye that glowed like a hot coal. He brandished a massive chainsword in his right hand, and a bolt pistol was holstered at his hip. His deep blue armour was battered and worn, covered in studs, grime and gruesome trophies – yet the insignia emblazoned on his shoulder pad was plain to see – a many-headed snake in bright green. ‘It is sad, is it not, when one’s best-laid plans do not bear fruit?’ said the Space Marine. ‘If this world is to be lost, I will at least take the STC. The damnation of this planet and the capture of such a prize will be some small consolation to me. Hand them over, and I may yet grant you an easy death.’ For a moment, no one spoke, and no one moved. But defiance swelled from the pit of Godric’s stomach. His faith in the Emperor overwhelmed his fear, and his indignation at the presence of such a blasphemy fuelled his rage. ‘Traitor Space Marine!’ he cried. ‘Hell’s Rejects – take him down!’ The hail of las-fire lit the cavern like sheets of lightning, and yet the enemy advanced, shielding his face with a power-armoured gauntlet and powering up his chainsword. As he stepped forward, so too did the growing crowd of servitors – the storm troopers were trapped. ‘Siegfried, Valdimar, hold those servitors off. Everyone else, kill the traitor! Protect the STC!’ The two troopers peeled off from the line and turned on the servitors. Great gouts of flame issued from Siegfried’s flamer, while Valdimar laid down relentless salvos of las-fire. The others focused on the Chaos Space Marine, but their desperation grew as their weapons barely slowed their hulking adversary. Even when a round seemed to pierce his power armour, he kept coming like a juggernaut of destruction. Suddenly he was amidst the storm troopers, hacking with his massive chainsword. Joachim was the first to fall. As viscera sprayed the earth, the Hell’s Rejects scattered. Kraster tried to level his lasgun at the back of the Space Marine’s head at point-blank range, but the foe had preternatural instincts and the trooper was decapitated by a backwards swing of the chainsword before he could pull the trigger. The bolt pistol was in the Space Marine’s other hand now, and even as Thyrus shouted a string of obscenities at the enemy, an explosive round buried itself into his chest and opened his ribcage. With desperation verging on madness, Godric took up his power sword and launched himself at the foe. His powerful strike was met by an even more powerful riposte. The energy of Godric’s weapon could not best the Astartes-pattern chainsword, and the force of the blow jarred Godric’s arm. As seasoned a veteran as he was, the sergeant knew he could not win this fight. Even as he contemplated defeat, the Space Marine’s right foot slammed into his chest, knocking him to the ground and driving the breath out of him. Godric looked around, his bionic eye overcoming his blurred vision and shattered visor. The Space Marine was already over him, ignoring the attentions of the remaining Hell’s Rejects, and raising his chainsword for the killing blow. The weapon arced through the air towards him – to Godric it seemed to be in slow motion. Then salvation came. Sorokin had drawn his own blades, and his adamantine sword interjected the arc of the Space Marine’s chainsword, diverting the blow harmlessly to the ground beside Godric. The traitor Space Marine thought for an instant of ignoring this new annoyance, but Sorokin’s shorter blade followed through with a strike that found a weak spot in the Space Marine’s armour where a hot-shot blast had struck home. The Chaos Space Marine roared with pain and fury as the blade pierced his side, and spun around to swipe at his assailant, but Sorokin darted aside, and held up his swords in salute. This was the moment he had been born for. This son of Vostroya had waited his whole life to live up to his late father’s legacy. ‘Go,’ he shouted to Godric. ‘Go now.’ Then he turned to the traitor, and screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘For the Emperor!’ ‘My sentiments exactly,’ replied the traitor, his booming voice thick with irony. The traitor took the bait. And yet even Sorokin, with his immense skill at arms, could not hope to withstand the power of a Space Marine. Godric was pulled to his feet by Ishmael and McLeod, and in that instant Sorokin was already flagging. The speed of the giant was inconceivable, and Sorokin dared not trade blows with his adversary directly for fear of his prodigious strength. ‘Come on, sir, we have to go!’ cried McLeod. Ishmael shouted for Valdimar and Siegfried to follow. Tarvin and his men were nowhere to be seen. Godric could not blame them for running from the Traitor Space Marine. He knew that he should have done the same. Siegfried heeded the call to retreat. His flamer was out of promethium and had been discarded – he now fired his laspistol at anything that moved, and clubbed at nearby servitors with its grip when they came to close. Valdimar also came running. The big man was wounded, but alive. As Godric’s orders died in the din of the fighting, Valdimar made for the exit, but as he did so he was caught in the grip of a gyro-strengthened arm. A servitor had him in its grasp, and even as Valdimar struggled to shake free, others came. Soon Valdimar was buried beneath four servitors, then five, then six. For a moment it looked as though his lauded strength would see him break loose, as he staggered to his feet, knocking two of the servitors aside; but before any of the remaining Hell’s Rejects could reach him, he was brought low again by more of the mindless cyborgs, and didn’t rise again. Godric ordered McLeod to make for the exit, with Ishmael in support. He chanced one last look back at Sorokin, who had fought valiantly against a foe that was beyond him, and was now paying the price. Sorokin had been clipped by the whirring blades of the traitor’s chainsword, and in a split second his arm was cleaved from his body. Sorokin went down on his knees with a cry of pain. Godric was consumed by rage, but was powerless in the face of the foe. The sergeant knew Sorokin was lost, but his bionic eye showed him the hidden facts – the grenades on Sorokin’s belt were primed and ready to detonate. Godric saw the tide of blood-soaked servitors scrabbling towards him, and duty to the Imperium had to come first. With a heavy heart he bundled Siegfried, McLeod and Ishmael through the exit. They raced through the cramped engineering tunnels once more. Servitors awoke from their long slumber and grasped at them from the walls, whilst the tunnels reverberated to the sounds of Sorokin’s final screams, followed by the deafening report of three krak grenades exploding. The four Hell’s Rejects crashed through the exit, and were back on the surface. The bombs still dropped, albeit closer now. The bulkhead behind them reverberated to the sound of hammer-blows from thwarted servitors. ‘McLeod, I want a vox-cast now! Locate us an extraction point.’ ‘Godric…’ came another voice nearby. Godric looked around for a new enemy, and saw only Tarvin and one of his men, shot to pieces. Tarvin still lived, just barely. ‘What happened?’ asked Godric, stooping down to speak to the dying soldier. ‘A-Ambush,’ he said, coughing on his own blood. ‘Private Vilkas… he went with them. He went with the renegades. We… we refused to betray the Emperor.’ Godric shook his head. He had been so confident of victory, and now all around him was death and treachery. ‘You have done your duty, captain. Be strong.’ ‘No… No, sir. I have kept something from you. I must repent…’ said Tarvin, almost whispering now. ‘We knew something was wrong. We… we suspected Marchinus was… was in contact with an unknown enemy. The men… they began to talk of defection. Some went into… into the wastes. The corruption runs deep, sergeant. I let my duty to my lord cloud my judgement.’ ‘You should have told me, Tarvin.’ ‘The Alpha Legion told us that it would come to this; that the Imperium would reject us and destroy our world. But even though… my hive lies… sundered, my family dead, I will not believe that they are right. But by my inaction, I… I failed the Emperor.’ ‘The enemy’s words are twisted,’ said Godric. ‘I-I am sorry.’ With that, the life left Tarvin’s body. ‘Come on sir, the vox-cast is sent,’ said McLeod. ‘The enemy will have heard it too – we have to get out of here.’ The ramp to landing pad was only yards away. The sound of the explosions from the orbital bombardment was deafening. Godric, Ishmael, Siegfried and McLeod had made it to the extraction point, harried all the way by hive cultists. They were two miles from the hive now, amidst a vast field of towering processing units. Kovos Rising still dominated the skyline behind them, but now it was aflame. Thick smoke obscured the sky above them, creating a ceiling of black, undulating coils that blotted the sun. The remaining Hell’s Rejects had climbed to the cargo pad, and were now on the final sky-gantry between them and salvation. The vox-cast sent by McLeod had ended with one simple message: Data recovered. Evidence of heretical influence overwhelming. Corruption of officials impossible to rule out. Extraction requested. Recommend purge of Kovos Rising. Cultists followed them still, skirting the edge of the long walkway, just out of range. The Hell’s Rejects were down to sidearms now, and their ammo was low. Their legs, burning with the pain of the day’s exertions, almost failed them, but they could not afford to stop now. The smoke above them parted as an Aquila shuttle dropped towards the landing pad. Godric urged McLeod to go ahead while he and the others covered his escape. The young trooper obeyed eagerly, and made for the pad as fast as his weary legs would carry him. The cultists’ autogun-fire was ineffectual at this range, and shots pinged around the Hell’s Rejects. Unflinching, they stood sentry to ensure the data was taken to safety; yet no sooner had complacency set in than their worst fears were realised. Three dark shapes moved on the edges of the gantry, and were moving closer. As they emerged from the drifting smoke, the Hell’s Rejects looked in horror upon not one, but three traitor Space Marines. Sorokin’s killer yet lived, and he led two of his foul kin, who looked every bit as formidable. Before the storm troopers could react to the new threat, one of the traitors’ boltguns roared, felling Siegfried in an instant. Godric looked over his shoulder – McLeod was almost at the landing pad, but the shuttle was unsteady in the gale, and had still not touched down. Out of desperation, he lobbed a frag grenade towards the Space Marines, which he knew would only slow them down at best. ‘We must hold them off, whatever the cost,’ said Godric. Ishmael tried his best to hide his dismay. Then he took his trusty plasma gun from its sling. ‘I’ve been saving the last of the plasma core’s charge sir. I reckon this’ll see to ‘em.’ ‘Good man. Let’s do this!’ When they emerged from their ramshackle cover, the Space Marines were almost upon them. Lucky Ishmael’s plasma gun fizzed, and a ball of blinding blue energy found its mark, tearing through power armour and slaying one of the monsters outright. The cultists behind had found their courage with the arrival of their masters, and were also charging towards the landing pad, but checked themselves when the Chaos Space Marine fell. Ishmael blazed away with wild abandon, felling three cultists and winging Sorokin’s killer before the plasma core expired. Then his luck ran out as a bolter round pierced his helmet and his head exploded in a mist of blood and shattered armaplas. Godric stepped back, firing his laspistol to the bitter end until he too ran out of ammunition. He threw the pistol at the nearest Space Marine in sheer defiance. The traitor was on him in a heartbeat and grabbed him by the throat. The sergeant pulled his combat knife from its scabbard and tried in vain to stab at the traitor, who disarmed him with ease and plunged the knife into Godric’s own shoulder, before hoisting the storm trooper into the air by his throat. ‘It is over, Imperial dog. This planet is doomed to Exterminatus by your own hand, and we claim the souls of its billion souls for the dark gods. As you die, know that I am going to destroy the STC data and make your last soldier suffer like no other.’ Godric’s good eye rolled back into his head as he was choked, and he saw the other Chaos Space Marine stride past them towards the landing pad. Then he started to laugh. The sound gurgled in his throat at first, then erupted into a snort of defiance and jubilation. ‘What is funny, you maggot?’ asked the traitor. But his question was cut short as both he and Godric were knocked to the floor by a tremendous impact. The cultists scattered, some thrown over the edge of the sky-gantry to their doom. Godric managed to roll away from his tormentor and looked around for a weapon. But it was hardly necessary. He had seen the tiny crimson specks burst through the smoke clouds like drops of blood rain, and had watched as they had plummeted closer and closer, until the unmistakeable forms of Adeptus Astartes Assault Marines could be discerned. He had held out long enough – the Blood Angels strike force had finally arrived, dropping from the sky on their jump packs and crashing into the traitors with the fury of angels. The Chaos Space Marines were defiant to the end, but against such odds it was fruitless. Godric picked himself up and peered over the railing at the processing plant far below where traitors clashed with Blood Angels as the very ground beneath them was sundered by the ferocity of the bombardment. The sons of Sanguinius did not need to engage, for the planet was doomed by the orbital strikes, but they fought all the same – for honour, revenge, or perhaps something deeper. Godric was yanked to his feet by a massive, red-gloved hand. ‘Sergeant Godric? You have fought well – the honour of returning the data to the fleet is yours.’ With no further word, the angelic Space Marine jetted off the sky-gantry, his jump pack belching flame as he dropped to the ground to join the battle. His four battle-brothers followed, leaving Godric saluting his saviours dumbly. As the Aquila reached orbit, Godric took one last look at the monitor to see the planet below burning. It looked like hell. He chuckled mirthlessly at the irony. When would it ever end? Sergeant Godric had earned the nickname ‘Hell’s Reject’ twenty years ago on Armageddon, when he had been the only surviving trooper of his squad in the defence of Hades Hive. Since then he had fought countless missions, with over a hundred troopers passing through his command. Every time he sold them the lie, that they were the Hell’s Rejects, that they could survive anything, because hell itself would spit them out. But in truth, he knew that surviving massacre after bloody massacre was his curse, and that few, if any, of his men would live long following him. He looked at McLeod next to him – little more than a boy, really. Would he survive their next mission? Would he be as successful as Sorokin, and stay alive long enough to be counted as Godric’s friend? The sergeant almost hoped not – he did not want to see another friend die. He leaned back and closed his good eye. Whatever purpose the Emperor had for him, he hoped it would become evident soon. He was the Hell’s Reject, and he was paying for his destiny in the blood of his men.