‘I’m using the Iron Warrior we fought at Foretrak as a baseline to track the radiant discharge from the power unit on the Heretic Astartes’ power armour, but I’m not finding it,’ Norroll said.

  ‘Keep looking,’ Traxel said, motioning Bissot forward.

  Bissot opened fire a split second later as a team of Stygians rounded a corner. A rapid volley dropped one of the black-armoured troopers, but their return fire forced her back around the corner.

  ‘Thy grace is my shield,’ Bissot said, priming a frag grenade and tossing it around the corner.

  ‘Bissot, wait!’ Durlo called as the Stygians scattered in the second before the grenade burst.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I may need our grenades for breaching.’

  ‘Bit late for that now,’ she said with a shrug before rolling out from behind the corner to rake hotshot fire across the Stygians on the other side. A gap opened in the enemy line, making space for the other Scions to follow Norroll and Akraatumo through the intersection and down the corridor.

  While the Tempestus Scions had arrived at the Stygians’ headquarters with few preconceptions of what they would find, the compound was not at all what they had imagined. Lacking any maps or schematics beforehand, they had only their past experiences to guide them. The obviously recent addition of fortifications and structural hardening they encountered on the roof fit their rough generalisation of those expectations, but in their rawest conceptualisations of the area they would assault, they never imagined their present environs.

  The Stygian headquarters was no fortress – it was an office, more suited to the day-to-day functions of the Administratum than to any military organisation. Sparsely acquitted, the building was even less ostentatious than most Administratum facilities. Illuminated by strip-lumens on the ceiling, the corridors were of simple rockcrete, worn and stained dark by millennia of use and punctuated by occasional alcoves displaying banners and other relics of the Stygians’ most remarkable battles. Though solidly built, as were most structures constructed from the standardised templates for Imperial architecture, it was clearly never intended to withstand an attack. It seemed folly to Norroll that the Stygians would even attempt to do so here. Coupled with his inability to locate the Heretic Astartes, First Eradicant’s attack on the building was starting to look like a setup.

  Las-fire from the pursuing Stygians blasted sooty-edged craters from the rockcrete walls, shredding ancient banners and shattering the vestiges of battle honours.

  ‘This is the least sensible headquarters building I have ever encountered,’ Akraatumo complained. ‘Unfortified, no organic defence systems… Why, in the Emperor’s name, would a Space Marine choose to lair here?’

  ‘Maybe it has access to features he found essential?’ Durlo suggested, returning fire on the Stygians from near the back of the formation.

  ‘Maybe it’s a trap,’ Norroll said, voicing his burgeoning concern.

  A group of five Stygians burst from the stairwell, firing on the move as they hugged the walls of the corridor. A las-beam slammed into Norroll’s left pauldron, spinning him round to crash sprawling onto the floor.

  Daviland pulled him back around the corner, out from the line of the Stygians’ fire. The rest of the Scions gathered around, screening her as she unfastened Norroll’s pauldron and set about emergency surgery on his shoulder. Las-bolts crackled, chewing divots from the walls or hissing overhead.

  ‘Not much cover to speak of,’ Bissot said, lying prone as she fired into the Stygians near the stairwell. One of the black-armoured troopers collapsed face first.

  ‘That’s what I was saying before,’ Akraatumo said, laying down covering fire on the Stygians pursuing from the other direction. ‘Works both ways.’

  Traxel darted around the corner above Akraatumo, took aim and fired, his plasma pistol deadly in such close quarters. His target exploded in a cloud of seething red mist and steaming offal, forcing the pursuing Stygians to seek what little cover they could find.

  ‘How far?’ the Tempestor asked.

  ‘Two floors down. Best estimate,’ Norroll said through clenched teeth as Daviland sutured his wound shut with a dermal stapler. He winced as the medicae-adept cinched his damaged pauldron back down over his shoulder. ‘Is it a good sign that it hurts again?’

  ‘That should mean you’re working the vitalotox out of your system,’ Daviland replied. She shrugged. ‘Circumstantially, the timing might not be ideal.’

  ‘Give me some space,’ Durlo said, removing a shaped charge from a side pouch on his backpack. He configured the explosive on the floor several yards behind the squad, set the detonator cord and returned to the others, ducking before he clicked the detonator.

  The floor exploded downwards in a flash and a cloud of dust as Durlo’s shaped charge punched a hole into the storey below. Without prompting, the Scions dropped down to the lower level, forming a perimeter as they secured their position. Panicked staff menials darted down the dust-choked hallway, unwisely fleeing the rooms they had been sheltering within. The eradicant cut them down.

  The Stygians had yet to respond to the Tempestus Scions’ latest impromptu exit, though Norroll was certain the respite would not last. ‘If you can get us down one more floor, Durlo, we should be almost on top of the target.’

  ‘Have you picked up on his power armour?’ Traxel asked.

  ‘Not sure,’ Norroll admitted. ‘I’m keyed in for the brightest energy signature in the vicinity, so I assume it’s him. Not typically too many mini-reactors in the upper levels of an Administratum complex.’

  ‘Vox has gone haywire, so I can’t corroborate,’ Akraatumo said, muting the feedback screech warbling from his handset. ‘On the other hand, it should make it harder for the Stygians to coordinate.’

  Traxel nodded to Durlo. ‘Do it.’

  Durlo set the charge as the four Stygians from the stairwell above emerged through the hatch at the end of the corridor, calmly emplacing the explosive and detonator as las-fire streaked past him. Around him, the Scions laid down fire, hitting two of the Stygians as they exited the stairwell. The remaining pair dragged their wounded back inside the cover of the hatchway.

  The corridor floor burst downwards, opening to a darkened space below. Without hesitation, the eradicant plunged through into the unknown.

  Norroll rolled to break his fall as the Scions dropped through the ceiling behind him. The eradicant opened fire on the Stygians arrayed around the room, las-fire crackling above the lingering echo of the explosion. Blood exploded in inky blooms as it penetrated black carapace plate.

  ‘Protect Captain Dorran!’ one of the Stygians shouted as he attempted to shield his officer. He caught a hotshot round between the shoulder blades and slumped forward limply, held upright by the one he had attempted to protect.

  His captain, Dorran, lowered the wounded Stygian to the ground, gently setting him down as the rest of her command squad overcame the shock and disorientation of the eradicant’s violent entry.

  ‘Close in and destroy!’ Dorran snarled.

  The Scions were already moving. Deeply indoctrinated combat procedures overrode conscious thought as they drew their blades and pressed forward, dividing to engage the individual Stygians in melee.

  Traxel leapt at the Stygian commander, his snarling chainsword transcribing an upward arc from beneath, aimed at the captain’s torso. Dorran parried with her powerblade, forcing Traxel to ­redirect his strike at the last instant to avoid having his own weapon sundered by the sword’s disruptor field.

  Duelling a power weapon with a chainsword was no simple feat, requiring nearly perfect control of the weapon to ensure it could block oncoming attacks with the flat while managing to avoid being split in half by a direct strike. Traxel had long ago mastered the art – his expertise had enabled him to hold the blows of an enormous powered axe wielded by an Adeptus Astartes headsman at bay on Tecerriot, and it served him against Dorran’s lightning-quick swordsmanship now. Despite her repulsive, mutated pallor, Dorran was no transhuman butcher, and her weapon’s disruptor field was not quite enough to offset the Tempestor’s superior skill with a blade.

  Norroll sidestepped, rolling left to narrowly avoid a heavy combat blade aimed at his throat. The blade scraped across his cuirass and pauldron as Norroll lunged back in with a high feint to the right, following up with a low strike beneath his opponent’s open underarm. His left monoblade sank deep into the Stygian’s right armpit, puncturing a lung. Norroll kicked out with a low, sweeping kick, knocking his opponent from his feet before finishing him with a quick stab between collar and jaw. Blood fountained up his right arm as he noticed the blinking green warning light on his vambrace.

  ‘We’ve got incoming from the hallway!’ he called as Actis’ augur readings scrolled across the face of his slate monitron.

  Traxel ducked a swing from Dorran’s powerblade, following up with a counterstrike the Stygian commander barely avoided. ‘Bar the door!’ he ordered.

  Norroll sprinted to the rear of the room, tearing open the hatchway’s emergency access panel and slamming the override swich. The Stygians outside opened fire, las-fire streaking past Norroll as the hatch slammed shut.

  He heard the traitors pounding on the hatchway, frustrated when they discovered they could not open it. A few moments later, the floor shuddered beneath them as the Stygians detonated something outside.

  ‘That won’t hold them long,’ Norroll said, glancing at the updating streams on his wrist-slate as Actis’ augurs supplied the relevant metallurgical stress data. ‘Whatever that was caused some damage.’

  ‘Krak grenade,’ Durlo said, blocking an elbow strike from the Stygian he fought in close combat. He followed up with a palm strike to his opponent’s chin, forcing the black-armoured trooper back. ‘It’ll take a few more of those for them to breach the door.’

  A series of near-simultaneous detonations on the other side of the doorway shuddered the hatch in its frame.

  ‘Oh,’ Norroll said, glancing at the augurs’ assessment of the blast door’s increasing instability. ‘Good.’

  XIX

  Vytrum’s current state left much to be desired, so far as planetary capitals went. She had been the seat of both the Imperial governor and the Rilisian Grand Senate, a prima facie elected body ostensibly intended to keep the governor’s broad powers in check for the benefit of the Rilisian people, while principally benefitting themselves and their entitled lineages. When the survivors of General Hurdt’s Third Mechanised Division returned from Enth, no expense had been spared in making a considerable show of welcoming them home. There had been great celebrations – homecoming parades, the unveiling of a vast memorial monument celebrating the division’s martial accomplishments, and grand speeches extolling the Rilisian fighting spirit and the virtue of faithful service to the Golden Throne.

  On the third day, during the governor’s scripted address to the senate, Hurdt and his forces massacred the Rilisian government and assembled dignitaries at a stroke. Within three more days, the 139th had crushed the planetary militia and the Stygians had eliminated Vytrum’s contingent of Adeptus Arbites in their own precinct, effectively ending Imperial rule on Rilis.

  That should have been the end of it.

  But in short order, Zheev emerged from retirement and dug in, and Vytrum became the site of the fiercest fighting on Rilis in ten thousand years. While Mawr and his regiment had, until recently, vanished into Foretrak, the Old Dog and the handful of Imperial faithful who had answered his call from off-world had practically burned the city to the ground. Indeed, they proved so destructive that Hurdt had pulled his division out of the city, withdrawing west into the Zholm River valley, to preserve what remained.

  In his absence, with so much of Vytrum already depopulated due to the most recent troop mobilisation, the surviving population who could escape scattered into refugee camps at the city’s edge, picking at the once-great city’s corpse like crows. Though the city’s most critical infrastructure remained largely intact, much of Vytrum still smouldered, her blackened bones bearing mute witness to the civil war.

  Waiting in the capitol building, where it all began, Hurdt could not help but remember. He glanced at Ketch, his adjutant, and Hesturm, his division’s standard bearer, giving each a nod of acknowledgement and a quick smile of reassurance he did not in the least feel.

  He thought about what lay behind the door of the governor’s office at the end of the corridor.

  Not for the first time, he wondered what manner of devil’s bargain Captain Dorran had made for them all back on Enth.

  Sarring jolted as the Chimera thundered over streets of grey brick, shaking as the dozer blade shouldered through debris, burned-out vehicles and even an enemy combatant too arrogant, or too stupid, to get out of the way. On the turret, Troopers Temmet and Rawl had somehow found time to christen the vehicle Bear, after the battalion Sarring had commanded a few hours before. Rawl, an inexplicable polyglot, had written in High Gothic, Virtus, non copia vincit – ‘Courage, not multitude, wins’ – across Bear’s dozer blade.

  She thought it would make a fine epitaph.

  When the Old Dog brought Sarring back into the 139th’s regimental staff during the first battle for the academy, she brought the troopers from her old manpower shop in Cold Steel Battalion with her. Temmet and Rawl, the two who had decorated the command Chimera, had both been with Sarring for years.

  ‘What do they have?’ Sarring called over the transport’s inter-vox, teeth clenched against the steady agony the Chimera’s constant rocking and vibration inflicted on her augmetic interfaces. Ever since the grateful tech-priests had rebuilt her following her conspicuous gallantry and near death during the Defence of Blackforge Gate, she had been in at least minor discomfort at all times, as though her augmetics hadn’t been installed with human comfort in mind. She ground her teeth irritably and tried to ignore a sensation like sandpaper being dragged back and forth, slowly and continuously, across her nerve endings.

  ‘Stub autos, mostly,’ Sergeant Zoldana, the driver, called back, his face bleeding where some spall had cut into it. ‘One’s shooting at us with a stub, but that heavy bolter…’ One of his hands was on the drive stick, the other managing the controls of the turret-mounted multi-laser. He tried to keep a solid sight picture in his targeting reticule while he was driving, before giving up and strafing las-fire across a line of enemy soldiers. Three of them dropped, and the rest ran for cover.

  Trooper Goshtelo mowed them down with a burst from the Chimera’s bow-mounted heavy bolter, the large-calibre mass-reactive shells rendering the turncoats manning their heavy bolter emplacement into meat and sprays of blood. ‘They got nothin’ that’ll stop a tank!’ he said, laughing.

  ‘It’s an infantry fighting vehicle,’ Sarring grumbled. ‘It’s not a tank.’

  Goshtelo kept firing.

  ‘Coming up on the target, ma’am!’ Trooper Diez called. ‘Five hundred yards!’

  ‘Autocannon turret up front!’ Zoldana called. ‘Buttoned up behind a barricade.’

  Sarring sighed. ‘Rawl, kill it.’

  Rawl unfolded a battered topographic map across his lap, struggling to read the chart over the Chimera’s constant sway and bounce as he attempted to orient himself on his surroundings. Failing, he called over to Diez, ‘What’s our position?’

  Reviewing the display on his data-slate, Diez transmitted the coordinates.

  With a nod of thanks, Rawl started talking into his vox-array. ‘Firepower, need Earthshaker at following coordinates…’

  Zoldana sprayed with the multi-laser as Goshtelo opened up with his heavy bolter, striking the barricade in front of the emplacement. Their fire pummelled debris and sandbags ineffectually, drowning out the rest of what Rawl said.

  The autocannon fired, but its aim was low, coming in far to Bear’s front. The cannon’s crew adjusted, stitching a line of tracer and puffs of rockcrete dust from the pavement up over the Chimera’s dozer blade and front glacis. A moment later, a battered promethium regulator station less than sixty yards to the autocannon’s left exploded in a bloom of flame, forcing the autocannon crew to duck.

  ‘Splash, over,’ Rawl called.

  The autocannon crew’s spotter looked up, swatted his companion in the head and pointed emphatically at the oncoming Chimera. The autocannon started up again, heavy rounds chewing into Bear’s front armour. Goshtelo cursed, shielding his eyes as spall cut his face.

  Behind him, Rawl consulted Diez’s tactical display. ‘Gotcha,’ he said with a smile. ‘Firepower, sixty right, fire for effect!’

  Three seconds later, the autocannon’s position ceased to exist as an Earthshaker round landed just behind it and exploded in a fireball. Proximity to the shockwave slewed Bear to the left before Zoldana could regain control of it.

  ‘That was close,’ Sarring said, scowling.

  Rawl grinned at her with impish pride. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘I told you they got nothin’ to stop a tank!’ Goshtelo exclaimed. ‘Or an infantry fighting vehicle,’ he added as an afterthought.

  ‘Brace, stairs!’ Zoldana called.

  The capitol building stood at the top of a quarter-mile-wide square pavilion reached by a low pyramid of stairs surrounding it. Representing the classically enlightened notions Rilis’ leaders claimed to espouse, it was a three-storey edifice, fronted in white marble and classically styled ionic columns and topped with a magnificent rotunda which rose two hundred feet into the air. Papers and ash swirled about, stirred by winds from the sections of Vytrum that yet burned.

  Bear lumbered up the southern steps, followed by the rest of Impetus Company’s five Chimeras. Heavy bolters and multi-lasers strafed the insurgents outside the building as they ran for cover.

  Commissar Fennech’s voice crackled across the battalion vox. ‘Iron Zero, this is Fennech with Impetus. We lost contact with Bellum Company. Have you any communication with them?’ The commissar had attached himself to Impetus Company’s command squad and rode with them in their Chimera.