The prospect of testing his design against a seemingly more competent force, and the improvements that would follow, electrified him. Blodt intended to watch the progress of these newcomers quite closely.

  ‘Numus,’ his brother called over the vox.

  ‘Not now, Shomael,’ Blodt said irritably. How typical of Zelazko to interrupt him at a time like this.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Assembling fresh data.’

  ‘You have missed your deadline again,’ Zelazko said. ‘What delays your transmission of the plans for the Fortress of Iron and Lead?’

  ‘Refinement, brother,’ Blodt replied, smiling as a distant explosion stilled another of his turrets. ‘A new force has penetrated the eastern perimeter and nearly taken the first ridge. I will need to refine the particulars before my plans are ready for transmission to the Warsmith.’

  Zelazko’s silence was indication enough of his displeasure.

  ‘Alert the garrison,’ Zelazko said after a pettish pause, ‘and return to Vytrum. This obsession of yours disrupts our timetable.’

  ‘As you will, consul,’ Blodt said with a chiding formality. ‘On the morrow, then.’

  ‘On the morrow, brother,’ Zelazko said. ‘No further delays.’

  Blodt savoured the sound of renewed gunfire as Zelazko cut the link. His auto-senses flashed an alert indicating the intruders had crested the first ridge.

  ‘Perhaps I focused too heavily upon larger-scale engagement?’ he mused. ‘Bogged down by their own casualties, it took nearly three days for the Three-Hundred-and-Seventeenth to get that far. This smaller unit seems to fare far better. Curious.’

  The Iron Warrior smiled. He had no intention of alerting the garrison at the top of the next ridge – he would play this game out as he would in absentia and test the strength of his design on its own merit. If the intruders somehow managed to breach the Fortress of Iron and Lead itself, he would deal with them personally.

  Blodt hummed to himself as he climbed back down the ladder. In his hearts, he hoped they might make it that far.

  First Eradicant trudged up another ridge, dispersed between the trees across a hundred-yard front. The emplacement of Tarantula turrets had increased steadily, and in variety, as they continued to push east through the mountains. Night and camouflage netting obscured the sentry guns – a nearly disastrous early encounter with a multi-melta turret saw them abandon their Taurox at the edge of the fortified zone in favour of continuing on foot. Concealing their vehicle in a defile, they had divided into two fire teams of four Scions each, one under Traxel and the second under Fennech, with Norroll and Durlo scouting ahead and Atebe providing mobile, long-range support. The low-light optics of their omnishield helms cast aside the night, allowing the Scions to see their surroundings clearly – despite this, the turrets had been emplaced and concealed with great skill and cunning, making them difficult to spot.

  Dragons’ teeth tank traps studded the ground between the Scions and the next ridge, combining with a network of reinforced plascrete barricades to create channels for any vehicle that had managed to make it this far. The narrow paths created by this hazard-striped network of barricades bent at ninety-degree angles before switching back in the opposite direction. No tank in the Imperial arsenal could take such a corner at speed, and any armoured vehicle making the turn would need to stop, back up, adjust position, and turn again, considerably slowing ingress. Lascannon and multi-melta turrets had been emplaced at minimum stand-off beyond the barricades, ensuring those that risked slowing enough to make the turn would be vulnerable to the turrets’ anti-armour fire. Any infantry who survived would then have to brave the heavy bolters.

  Unencumbered by a vehicle, the eradicant clambered over the barricades, avoiding the multi-meltas and slipping past the heavy bolter emplacements. The Tarantulas were readily fooled by loud, visible distractions, which allowed the Scions to creep past. They only destroyed the turrets when there was no other way forward – though bypassing the Tarantula guns was time-consuming, it was more efficient, and less dangerous, than reducing them individually as they came upon them. The eastern sky was already beginning to lighten as the Scions cleared the second valley, their entire night spent picking their way through the fortified labyrinth.

  They found the burned-out hulks of five Chimeras clogging the switchback choke points, the gaping wounds that had killed them edged in a fringe of resolidified metal droplets. Their crews had fled into the complex, seeking cover from the heavy bolters and assault cannons that rose in staggered positions on either side of the route, above the barricades. These unlucky souls remained where they had been cut down, their mostly skeletal corpses cratered by mass-reactive fire and shredded by storms of solid shot. As the column of vehicles had penetrated this far into the complex, it stood to reason that the vehicles closest to the rear were the first destroyed, leaving the foremost to press onwards. The lead Chimera had made it considerably further than the others, as the multiple anti-armour strikes riven into its armour attested.

  There was a creatively vindictive cruelty behind the defensive network’s design, the strange artistry of a perverse genius that had stepped far beyond simple security and wandered into fertile fields of mania. Each turn teased the enemy forward, baiting them with tantalising morsels of success, daring them to risk another advance and cheat death again. There was no going backwards once committed, and at every turn the only chance for survival was to continue – the entire maze was built on weaponised hope.

  He was unsure what manner of troops they were, but they were well equipped, determined and resourceful.

  A pair of them, accompanied by a servo-skull, crawled along the edge of a reinforced embankment. They picked their way around an ambush kill-zone he had been particularly proud of, one scouting for traps and the other marking them as they found a way through. Signalling their fellows, they crept beneath fields of enfilading fire with a spider’s patience.

  A sniper, rendered nearly invisible by her cameleoline cloak, provided overwatch from the canopy of trees above, distracting and destroying the automated defences as the others moved forward. He had not even noticed her at first.

  He rubbed the dent in his helm’s forehead and chuckled. He remembered her.

  Movement on the eastern edge of the kill-zone caught Atebe’s attention, but by the time she had reacted to it, it was gone.

  ‘Something moving to your east, Norroll,’ she voxed. ‘Outer edge of the engagement area.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gone now. Just stay aware. Might be something else out there.’

  Norroll scoffed. ‘At this point, I’d be more surprised if there weren’t.’

  Durlo accompanied Norroll forward once again, searching for booby traps as the recon trooper scouted and marked the sentry turrets’ positions using his wrist-slate. Atebe remained cut loose from the main formations to scout about the eradicant’s rear and flanks. Concealed beneath the folds of her cameleoline ghillie cloak, the sniper provided overwatch for her fellows, twice eliminating sentry turrets that had been too baffled beneath auspex-scattering camo netting to appear on Norroll’s augurs. She stalked back and forth behind the fire teams like a ghost, slinking to the right flank to screen one team, then left to screen the other, bringing the improved range and sight capabilities of her long-las to bear wherever needed.

  Atebe slung her weapon as she clambered up into a daekki tree. The forests became increasingly sparse as they approached the main facility, the mountainsides and valleys between them increasingly stripped of cover. Even given the number of Tarantulas they had been forced to destroy as they progressed, the enemy made no indication that it had detected them. They encountered no patrols as they went, and neither manned guard towers nor emplacements barred their path. The Scions still cleared the defences when they were unable to divert around them, but it seemed the eradicant could have established a base here and no one would have been any the wiser for quite some time.

  Taking the near ridge posed little problem for the Scions – the area defence provided a relatively clear route of ascent, broken by broadly spaced automated turrets and barricades which beckoned them forward, seemingly inviting them to the top. They had managed to make the climb without serious injury, reducing any sentry guns they encountered thanks to Durlo’s sabotage and Atebe’s precision fire. The eradicant diverted around the narrow switchback pathway of vehicle kill-zones whenever possible, avoiding the armour-reducing turrets above and enfilading fire of the heavy bolter and assault cannon turrets within, sticking to individual heavy bolter turrets when available.

  The second ridge had proved murderous.

  It was night when they began their advance, and it was night now – though it seemed that there had been at least one period of daylight in between. Fighting for their lives through fields layered with automated turrets, choke points, lethally equipped cul-de-sacs and all variety of minefields and traps made any attempt to tell time impossible.

  The labyrinth channelled intruders along a pre-set course, pulling any who sought to cross it from task to task and from pitfall to pitfall, each subsequent leg of the journey more perilous than the last. Yet in each section there lay a chance at salvation, an apparent flaw in the design providing an ever-narrowing opportunity for victory. Each such deficiency carried the maddeningly tantalising promise of certain victory, if the attacker could simply conquer the next stage. The Foretrak Gap’s defences were no simple lure, however – they were a marriage of lethal skill and design, consummated by an inhuman sadism.

  Despite their avoidance of the vehicle routes lining the way, the Scions sheltered within one now, barely a hundred yards beneath the complex that lay atop the ridge. They rested between the avenue of barricades, taking advantage of the opportunity to recover for the next push. Searchlumens swept the hillside beneath the complex, their powerful beams illuminating the bare earth that surrounded it.

  Although they had avoided death, none of them had escaped unscathed. Daviland sealed wounds and braced injuries as she prepared to fortify the Scions with a cocktail of anti-inflammatory compounds and chemical stimulants. This elixir, vitalotox, accelerated their healing processes while banishing all notion of pain or exhaustion. But though the infusions would keep the Scions functional, alert and combat ready, the medicae-adept’s balms and tinctures were not without cost.

  ‘I have my reservations about administering this so early on,’ Daviland said, filling a syringe with the murky, peach-coloured compound. She knelt next to Bissot, cleaning the injection site on the gunner’s neck. Bissot’s armour was pockmarked with battle damage, armaplas and ceramite ablatives cracked down to the plasteel frame beneath in some places. Blood seeped through her flakweave fatigues.

  Daviland hesitated as she prepared to administer the injection. ‘We risk serious metabolic and psychological side effects, which will compound with each subsequent dose I administer. Vitalotox should only ever be used as a last resort.’

  ‘When will it start to adversely affect mission capabilities?’ Traxel asked.

  ‘One dose is manageable. After three doses, maybe four, depending on the Scion, you risk permanent debilitation or death.’

  ‘Per day?’

  ‘Per mission. Without access to a full medicae, there is no way I can hope to counteract the systemic damage.’

  ‘Noted,’ Traxel said. ‘Every one of us was hit by turret fire or shrapnel during our ascent, more than once. The battering we’ve sustained is slowing us down.’

  ‘Our armour took the brunt of it,’ Daviland said. ‘I’ve patched up the worst of our injuries, and I have sufficient stimms on hand. We can push through the pain and–’

  ‘We must maintain our momentum if we are to confront this compound’s master,’ Fennech said. Of all of them, the commissar appeared the least worse for wear – somehow, his boots still gleamed in the moonlight. ‘That we have survived thus far is a testament to the training and skill of the Emperor’s Scions. We need every advantage if we are to have any hope of prevailing. Victory in the Emperor’s name is purchased with injury and death. It is worth the risk.’

  ‘My greatest concern,’ Daviland continued, ‘is the sense of invulnerability and subsequent rash behaviour these compounds can produce, even after one dose.’

  ‘Trust to discipline, medicae-adept,’ Fennech said. ‘Such temptations are as naught before the might of indefatigable will.’

  Daviland kept any remaining reservations to herself as she administered the compound to her squadmates. This was the second time she had found herself at odds with both the Tempestor and the commissar since their departure.

  ‘Could you stop chewing for three seconds?’ she asked Norroll as she prepared to inject the vitalotox. ‘Hard to hit the mark with your jaw moving so much.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Norroll mumbled, his mouth full of a sweetly musty brick of cake Durlo had acquired from the Rilisians. ‘This isn’t actually too bad.’ He offered her a wedge of it. ‘Tastes like… I don’t know what, but it tastes like something. It’s a nice change.’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Daviland jabbed the syringe into his neck.

  Daviland moved on to Quisse, the final Scion to receive the injection. His head was tightly wrapped in bandages, and blood had already stained through the gauze covering his missing right eye. He stared ahead vacantly in a hypnotic trance, pushing aside shock and pain with mental rotes. He accepted the vitalotox without comment, though he flexed his neck and released a shuddering breath afterwards.

  Daviland crept back over towards Traxel, where the Tempestor conferred with Norroll, Durlo and Fennech.

  ‘It’s a barracks facility,’ Norroll was saying. ‘It appears to pre-date the rest of the defences here. Minimally manned, possibly home to the garrison Colonel Zheev mentioned.’

  ‘It is hardly a weak point,’ Fennech said.

  ‘If it’s a barracks, it means that it houses people, commissar,’ Durlo said. ‘Its interior defences should be negligible compared to what we’ve encountered so far, especially if it’s minimally manned, as Norroll’s augurs indicate.’

  ‘If,’ Fennech said. ‘Augurs are hardly infallible and can suffer from all manner of interference.’

  ‘There are four manned sentry towers with two guards each,’ Norroll said. ‘Plus an interior guardhouse with a quick-reaction force, likely around one squad. The fence is heavy-gauge steel mesh, but it’s unpowered. Should pose no problem to cut through.’

  ‘The guards in those towers have likely been watching us progress since we left the previous ridge,’ Fennech said. ‘They know we’re here.’

  ‘They’ve not sent the guard force to investigate,’ Traxel noted.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘They don’t like braving the defences any more than we do.’

  ‘Likely not. They could be hoping we opt for a glorious frontal assault, which means they can pick us off from the safety of their fortifications. Regardless, their inaction is our advantage.’

  ‘According to Actis, the group in the guardhouse is sleeping,’ Durlo added. ‘Norroll could likely enough sneak in and slit the throats of the entire force there without anyone being the wiser. At any rate, we found the flaw in this length of the defences. Every two minutes, the searchlumens’ sweep pattern leaves a fifteen-second gap. Watch.’ He pointed to the central area before the perimeter fence and held up his hand, waiting.

  The searchlumens swept across the installation’s frontage, four beams slowly panning over the hard-packed, lifeless soil. The ones situated on the towers at the far ends of the fence slid across the ground, outwards to inwards, their beams merging and separating with the light of another pair of lamps located closer to the fence’s centre as they moved in the opposite direction.

  ‘There,’ Durlo said as the central lumens began to roll outwards once more, leaving a darkened patch of ground five yards wide. ‘We breach, silence the towers and slip out the other side.’

  The pronounced downturn of the commissar’s mouth spoke to his dissatisfaction.

  ‘Simple as that?’ Fennech asked incredulously.

  Durlo nodded.

  Traxel looked at Durlo and Norroll, then jerked his head at the perimeter fence. The two Scions clambered over the barricades and slipped off towards their objective without another word.

  Traxel rallied First Eradicant in the shadow of the fortifications. ‘Fire teams as before. Slip through the blind spot in teams of two – gunners point, team leads trail.’ He pointed at a sentry tower where a Tarantula turret still smouldered. ‘Atebe, you’re our eyes above. Stay in that sentry tower and await my call before moving forward. Do not engage unless I say otherwise.’

  ‘Tempestor, aye,’ Atebe acknowledged before melting into the shadows. Within a few paces, the folds of her cloak had rendered her all but invisible.

  ‘Breach team in position,’ Durlo voxed.

  Bissot, Daviland and Akraatumo – the latter carrying the eradicant’s clarion-vox – formed up around Traxel and slung their weapons. They clambered over the barricades, then low-crawled through any available cover as they crept towards the blind spot.

  Bissot and Daviland stopped at the outer edge of the search­­­-lumen-illuminated zone, muscles primed as they waited for their opportunity. The inner lumens swept out towards the guard towers, opening a hole in the curtain of light. They rushed the gap, Bissot leading, Daviland trailing, as they sprinted to the perimeter fence, diving to the ground five yards from Norroll and Durlo’s position.

  Norroll gave a brisk thumbs-up without turning towards them. Two minutes later Akraatumo and Traxel followed, then Rybak and Phed, and finally Quisse and Fennech.

  The demolitions trooper clipped the fence links in quick succession, opening a gap nearly three feet high. On either side of the breach, Bissot and Daviland spread the edges, peeling an opening wide for the eradicant to slip through one by one before climbing through themselves and closing the wire.