Las-beams erupted from the doorway as Lieutenant Morlitz opened fire, accompanied by at least one other squad.

  By the time Sarring had recovered from the fall, the giant had already slaughtered a path through her troopers in the doorway. His chainsword snarled, limbs spinning and offal spilling in his wake as he thundered down the corridor, a blur of lustrous iron streaked in blood.

  Unable to respond to a threat which struck them down with the fury of a thunderbolt, the Rilisians ran, tripping over one another in their haste to flee. Those who retained the presence of mind to fight fired upon a target seemingly invulnerable to their las-fire, who rewarded their bravery with death.

  Picking herself up, Sarring pursued, her body responding to a half-formed impulse to halt the armoured juggernaut’s rampage through her men. She bounded down the corridor at an awkward limp, stumbling forward as her bionic leg far outstripped the capabilities of the organic one, half tripping over the mauled corpses of her troopers lining her path.

  Always, the Space Marine was just slightly ahead, his butchery so efficient that it barely slowed him as he pushed through the Guardsmen. He seemed to kill with each step, the act as mundane to him as simply running down the hallway might be to a normal man. Chainsword revving, bolt pistol firing and servo-arm bludgeoning, he delivered death with a practised economy of movement that ensured he could continue forward at pace – a consequence of his retreat, rather than the objective.

  The Heretic Astartes cut down any who stood in his way as he made his escape. Most of the Guardsmen were unable to even react to the colossus carving through their comrades. The more fortunate collapsed against the walls, blood-spattered and shuddering, unable to process how they had been spared. Mere happenstance separated the living from the dead.

  Sarring had nearly caught up to him as the Space Marine smashed into a narthex at the end of the corridor, opening fire on the far wall with his lascannon and shouldering through it to burst out into open space beyond. Momentum carried her after him through the breach, power sword extended to strike as the two plummeted towards the ground.

  Armoured boots hammered into the pavement three storeys below, shattering it with a resounding crack. The Space Marine’s power armour absorbed the fall, and he was on the move again, sprinting eastward.

  Sarring struck the ground behind him. Her innards lurched, jarred by the fall – though her augmetic leg took much of the impact, the human body was not intended to experience such force. Tumbling sideways, she collapsed, struggling for breath.

  ‘Hold it together, Eurydice,’ Sarring hissed to herself as she scrambled to her feet. Her breath sawed in and out of lungs that were still only human as she continued after the Space Marine, power sword sparking. She stumbled – the fall had damaged her augmetic leg, and the searing pain in her chest and abdomen suggested she had broken something vital internally. Her heart hammered behind her ribcage, throbbing so rapidly it felt it might burst at any instant. Sweat sheeted down her face, stinging her eyes. ‘Just get the bastard.’

  The Space Marine’s lascannon pivoted on its servo-arm, opening fire on the move. An incandescent streak of focused energy sizzled through the air, close enough for her to feel its charge prickling the skin on the left side of her face.

  Sarring flinched but continued forward, desperation and anger rendering her heedless of the danger. Her sole focus was given to catching up to the Heretic Astartes and meting out whatever small measure of vengeance she could – for her family, her world and her Emperor – before he slew her. He owed her at least that satisfaction. Sparks licked eagerly across the blade of the power sword clutched in her steel fingers.

  He was only a few yards ahead of her now, lining up another shot with his lascannon.

  Sarring felt the blow in her chest. Her left arm continued forward, spinning end over end, still grasping her power sword. Carried onwards by her momentum, she collapsed face first into the pavement.

  ‘No,’ she mouthed through numbed lips. ‘No no no.’

  Sarring writhed in agony, right hand clutching at the smoking hole bored cleanly through the augmetic left half of her upper torso. She couldn’t breathe. She could barely see through tears and sweat.

  Straining to keep her eyes open, she realised the ironclad giant stood above her.

  He had holstered his bolt pistol and lowered his chainsword, silent as he regarded Sarring where she lay. He looked her over slowly, his gaze lingering on the smouldering crater punched through her torso before appraising the augmetics which replaced nearly the entire left half of her body. The thick, shallow-V wedge of his skull faceplate dipped slightly.

  ‘See what they make of us,’ he said, his voice soft despite the distortion of his helm’s voxmitter. ‘The zenith of mankind’s art. They manufacture gods, then use us as nothing more than weapons. How perverse our species is.’

  He turned and walked away, his thudding footfalls fading gradually, until Sarring could not hear them any more. Her vision faded with them, darkness encroaching from the edges until only a small, bright spark at the centre remained.

  Then nothing.

  XXII

  ‘Standing by, First Eradicant.’

  Sandeborn’s announcement prickled in Daviland’s ears as the Scions rappelled onto the Devourer drop-ship. The Valkyrie had approached the landing craft from behind, matching speed to effectively hover between the twin lascannon turrets mounted just below the vessel’s bridge.

  Norroll was first out, as usual, followed by Bissot, Durlo and Traxel. Daviland and Atebe were last, sliding down the relatively short distance to the ship head first. By the time they reached the top hull, Durlo had already finished emplacing his final breaching charge. They had all employed the Rote of Flame to raise their body temperatures before the Valkyrie opened its doors.

  The rote had been one of the earliest and most vital lessons they learned at the scholam – a harsh lesson that claimed many young aspirants during the first days. While the Scions’ omnishield helms and specially crafted carapace armour could be hermetically sealed to withstand many hostile environments, including even the hard vacuum of the void for brief periods of time, their armour was far too damaged to do so. More than forty thousand feet above Vytrum, the air was practically unbreathable, even with their armour’s oxygen feeds. Beyond the very real risk of hypoxia, the Scions were fully exposed to low pressure and cold, enduring temperatures driven far below freezing by altitude and windshear.

  The Valkyrie rose, ensuring it was safe from potential debris ejected by the breaching detonation, though it remained in the same position relative to the drop-ship. When the Scions were safely behind the cover of the Devourer’s lascannon turrets, Durlo detonated the charge. It exploded with a brief flash, its smoke rapidly swallowed by the howling wind, leaving only a small hole punched through the fuselage. Through this hole the Scions dropped, one by one.

  The interior was dark, illuminated only by red emergency lighting and the cyclic amber pulse of rotating signal lights. Servitors tromped lethargically between columns of Leman Russ battle tanks and Chimera armoured transports, packed bumper to bumper through the cavernous hold. There were no visible tech-priests, or even Militarum escorts, as the Scions crept low around the armoured vehicles. Drop-ships of the Devourer class had two decks for the rapid deployment of an entire regiment’s worth of personnel and equipment from orbit. In a Munitorum-standard loadout, the upper deck of the craft held the infantry, while their vehicles were parked below, ready for occupation and rollout the moment the vessel landed.

  The interior of the vessel was far too densely packed with vehicles and supply crates to hold any infantry, and Daviland had to assume that the entire space had been given over to vehicle and ammunition transport. If a standard Devourer was large enough to carry a fully manned and equipped regiment from orbit, it stood to reason that this one carried enough vehicles and materiel to equip a small division. Battered and broken as the traitorous Rilisian forces were, this drop of fresh vehicles and supplies would give them the edge to finally break their long-running stalemate with the loyalists.

  Atebe said what Daviland was thinking. ‘Tempestor, would it not be better for us to take this ship for the loyalists?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Traxel replied.

  Atebe’s next question lingered unspoken for several long seconds. ‘So, why don’t we?’

  ‘Who would pilot it?’ Traxel asked. ‘You? Durlo? He is quite technologically proficient, after all.’

  ‘I’ve no idea how to pilot a drop-ship,’ Durlo admitted.

  ‘It’s the reason the Militarum Tempestus relies upon the Navy to ferry us about,’ Bissot said, pointing up to the Valkyrie above.

  ‘Who is piloting it now?’ Atebe asked.

  ‘Servitors, judging by the way it’s flying.’ Norroll shrugged. ‘I can’t imagine any pilot worth his salt would dream of letting a Valkyrie park above his ship.’

  Traxel motioned Norroll forward with a nod of his head.

  A few minutes later, the recon trooper reported back. ‘This is unusual.’

  ‘What do you see?’ Traxel asked.

  ‘More what I don’t see,’ Norroll said. ‘This is a ghost ship. No crew, no security, no tech-adepts. Just servitors. Menial type – not even gun servitors. I’ve been giving them a pretty wide berth, but I practically just ran into one. Didn’t even look at me. Just stepped aside and kept going like I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Lower level, heading back towards engine maintenance. Hatch to the bridge is welded shut. Keep your wits about you, just in case, but I think you can safely pick up the pace.’

  The eradicant crept forward, keeping low as they filed through the narrow corridors between armoured vehicles and military bulk shipping containers. Norroll’s assessment seemed accurate enough – the only other biological entities on the drop-ship beyond the Scions themselves appeared to be the complement of servitors. Graceless on their metal-shod feet or clanking, industrial-grade augmetics, the monotasked cyborgs executed their preprogrammed functions, checking each vehicle they passed and utterly ignoring the Tempestus Scions.

  ‘Where are the tech-priests?’ Atebe wondered as she slipped between a pair of tandem fuelling servitors.

  ‘Here,’ Norroll said over the vox. ‘There’s one here, just outside the engine room. Some assembly required.’

  The recon trooper waited outside the engine compartment, kneeling above black-robed, piecemeal remains soaked through with blood and unguents. It had been a tech-adept of Stygies VIII, judging by its robes and the badges adorning them – Ganspur’s relations with the secretive forge world were long and oftentimes fractious, largely due to the occult, acquisitive nature of the world’s tech-priests.

  ‘Grace of the Throne, protect those worthy of your light,’ Bissot whispered, the rest of her prayer muted by her respirator as she shielded her eyes from the unholy binharic scripts scrawled across the bulkhead outside the enginarium.

  ‘Don’t look at the symbols on the walls,’ Norroll warned belatedly. Sigils daubed upon the bulkheads and decking in blood and oil distorted the Scions’ perceptions with the hallucinogenic blight of warpcraft. The visual assists of their optics stuttered, and the sibilant static that hissed in the audio speakers of their omnishield helms seemed to bear an almost sentient malevolence.

  There was a maliciously calculated methodology to the cruelty inflicted upon the carcass. Nearly all the unfortunate tech-priest’s augmetic systems had been forcibly removed from its organic base and sorted around it, though the logic used in the sorting was lost upon the Scions. The only bionic components which remained still anchored to the mutilated remains were the optical and audial systems, indicating that whoever or whatever killed the adept had wanted it to witness and understand its suffering.

  Daviland and Bissot approached from the narrow avenue between vehicles as Durlo whispered prayers to the God-Emperor and Omnissiah both. Given the sacrilegious desecration of the tech-priest, Daviland wasn’t certain prayers would be enough.

  ‘Is this the only tech-adept aboard?’ Traxel asked.

  ‘Only one I’ve found,’ Norroll replied.

  ‘No tech-priests, no pilots, everything servitor-run and automated,’ Durlo mused. ‘Reduces the risk of outside interference. Factor in the desecration of this adept, and it could indicate Ganspur is not allied with the traitors. Perhaps they thought this was business-as-usual production, until it was too late?’

  ‘Leave such questions to the Inquisition,’ Traxel said. ‘Move.’

  The eradicant deployed as ordered, though they discovered only more servitors occupying the engine compartment. The lack of hostility aboard the drop-ship was deeply unsettling. The creaking of the vessel, the bass rumble of the engines, even the leaden tread and periodic mumbling of the servitors set them all on edge. It felt as if unseen foes must surely lie in wait, about to strike from an unexpected quarter at any moment, yet none did.

  The sole exception to this hyper-alert state was Durlo, who seemed perfectly relaxed. Entering the engine compartment, the demolitions trooper set to work preparing the detonation site for the Godshaker Type-238 with a number of tools he had likely found on-site.

  Durlo nestled the bomb within the network of pipes forming the engine’s central fuel feeding system and adjusted the flow of several critical promethium arteries around the compartment. The golden thronepiece played across the knuckles of his left hand as he worked, pinging into the air and slapping back into his palm at regular intervals before resuming its dance, back and forth.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Daviland asked, the disagreeable combination of monotony and acute watchfulness finally wearing down her behavioural barriers.

  ‘Re-routing and pressurising the fuel feed,’ Durlo answered. He had removed his helmet and was thoughtfully chewing on his lower lip as he regarded a fitting he had just changed out. ‘An atomic bomb can do a lot of damage, but I want to make sure there’s nothing salvageable when this ship hits the ground.’

  ‘Where did you learn how to do this?’ Like his coin juggling and other sleights of hand, Durlo’s gift for destruction had always fascinated Daviland.

  ‘Reading, watching, doing,’ Durlo said, loosening an elbow fitting with a heavy spanner. ‘Some of it’s just innate, I suppose – hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone. This goes to that.’ The coin pinged into the air, and he snatched it without looking. ‘Mostly, though, I just like blowing things up.’

  Durlo chuckled as he twisted the ends of a wire together. ‘Me and my silly coin. Favae and Gry always arguing. Actis always trying to be smart. And you, coming from outside of the Xian Tigers with your different ideas and Ultramarian sensibilities. Courage and honour, and other such things that the Thirty-Sixth knows nothing about.’

  Daviland grinned, though she knew Durlo was unable to see it for her mask. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Favae, can you hand me the–’ Durlo began. Before he could finish, Bissot handed him a soldering iron. ‘Oh, thanks.’

  ‘How long?’ Traxel asked.

  Durlo looked over his work. The Godshaker was tied into a cage of jury-rigged pipes and linked to the ship’s power systems through a network of pressurising valves feeding from the main fuel lines. ‘Skipping over the technical bits, I’d say this should be sufficient to knock this ship out of the air.’

  ‘Not destroy it?’

  Durlo scoffed. ‘And then some.’

  Traxel nodded and gave Durlo’s left pauldron a heavy clap. ‘Good man,’ he said. ‘God-Emperor speed you.’

  ‘Thank you, Tempestor.’

  Atebe gave Durlo a nod and followed Traxel out of the engin­arium.

  Norroll approached Durlo, helm tucked under his left arm. Between his broken nose, heavily bruised face and unwashed ginger beard and hair, which had grown out to nearly an inch long, he was scarcely recognisable from when the deployment to Rilis began. Norroll’s tawny eyes glittered as he headbutted the demolition trooper – not hard, but there was a noticeable knock when their foreheads collided. Norroll turned and departed without a word, leaving Durlo with Bissot and Daviland.

  Bissot hugged Durlo tightly, then followed it up with a headbutt of her own.

  ‘What?’ Durlo asked.

  ‘I’m jealous,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be.’ Durlo smiled. ‘See you at the Throne.’

  Bissot clenched her fists and gave a sharp nod.

  ‘Emperor’s light shine on you, Favae.’

  ‘What in the hells is going on?’ Daviland demanded.

  ‘Valkyrie’s waiting,’ Durlo said. ‘You should get going.’

  ‘You’re not coming with us?’

  ‘Oh, for the love of Terra, Salenna!’ Bissot exclaimed. ‘You’re just figuring this out?’

  ‘No remote detonators,’ Durlo said. ‘One of us has to make sure this works properly. No offence, but that’s out of everyone’s field but mine.’

  He was correct, of course. Short of beatification, martyrdom in the line of duty was all any Tempestus Scion could hope for. Though she might wish otherwise, there was nothing Daviland would do to stand in the way of Durlo’s duty.

  Bissot departed, leaving Daviland and Durlo alone.

  Daviland slung her lasgun and crossed her hands over her chest in the sign of the aquila. She reverently declined her head.

  ‘Courage and honour, daughter of Macragge.’ Durlo smiled, returning the salute.