He sprinted. Waving hands at display plinths, throwing code-signals from his palm emitters. Trying to restart shielding and repulsors, to protect his delicate artefacts.

  ‘No, no, no, no, no, no–’

  Trazyn saw the bell.

  Trazyn saw the blood.

  He slowed his chronosense to take in the swinging relic and its sheets of ruby spray. It was far more human vitae than had been splashed on its surface.

  Almost as if the relic itself were bleeding from the pockmarks and scratches where bolt-shells had marked it.

  ‘Sannet,’ Trazyn said, casting his visual senses into the data-stream of Solemnace so his cryptek could run analysis. ‘The stasis field has failed. Hard restart.’

  ‘The field is active,’ Sannet responded. ‘Movement should be impossible.’

  ‘Not impossible, warpcraft.’

  Trazyn watched in fascinated horror as the bell completed its arc, the blood-forged metal swinging high as the hammer inside dropped like the great mace of a warmaster.

  Clang.

  Five.

  Across the galaxy, past burning stars, teeming worlds and cold expanses of nothing, lay the blasted world of Eriad VI. The Ark Mechanicus vessel Iron Revenant hung in its orbit, casting a cruciform shadow on the surface.

  Down, down, through the nuclear-blighted atmosphere and crust overrun with ork ravagers. Down in black tunnels of alien scale and curve, stood Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl.

  ‘Nearly,’ he said, stretching the word. His eyes squeezed tight, optic nerves rerouted through the visual lenses of the skull probe he’d guided into the bore-hole. The on-off strobe of its ultraviolet lamp – used to map the worming tunnels within the blackstone – was the only illumination. He sensed a data-stream connection. ‘Careful, little one. Rise two skull-lengths. Pivot thirty-five degrees right. Ahead four lengths – now, now, now! All ahead steady and open connection! Op–’

  The data flooded in, pasting across his vision, unfamiliar glyphs that slid cold into his mind, chill as the nothing of space.

  The servo-skull’s vision blasted to static, its auditory ports howling in Cawl’s augmented brain.

  ‘Damn it!’ he cursed, yanking the skull-jack free from his temple. ‘Qvo, another probe!’

  No response. His programmable servant – cloned from a long-dead companion – was either not listening, or perhaps had reset due to the flood of data.

  ‘Qvo?’ He turned. ‘Qvo, are you lis–’

  He stopped.

  The aeldari standing behind his right shoulder had not triggered a single alert in his sensorium net.

  She crouched on a cogitator bank, toes together, knees spread wide – an inverted-triangle pose inhuman in its gravity-defying grace.

  ‘The skeins of fate wind tight about the gate,’ Veilwalker said, her egg-like mask nothing but a swirl of smoke. The hues of her motley seemed to blaze in the dark cavern. ‘Again, I plea – does thy mind now see?’

  ‘Your rhymes are impenetrable nonsense,’ he growled. ‘It is a necron world, bombarded by the Despoiler during the Fourth Black Crusade. But why would he bombard an empty planet? I cannot fathom why you insisted I come here.’

  ‘More excavation,’ the xenos answered, cocking her head, ‘will dispel frustration.’

  ‘To hells with your childish rhymes. Just tell me what you want me to know!’

  She shook her head, mask gleaming blue in apology. ‘You must play your role – the bell does toll.’

  ‘And what, by the blessed reactor, is that supposed to mean?’

  Clang.

  Six.

  ‘It started an hour ago, canoness,’ said Sister Navarette. Even with her daily training regimen, Genevieve could hear that her Seraphim Superior was out of breath climbing the bell-tower stairs.

  They should have taken their jump packs.

  The Shrine of St Morrican was a large edifice, and the bell-tower one of the tallest buildings in the Kraf Sector – securing the gateway between Cadia Primus and Cadia Secundus.

  For nigh a hundred days it had served as a linchpin of the defence, ensuring that the Archenemy forces of the Thirteenth Black Crusade – which had overrun Kasr Myrak to the north – did not break loose into the Kraf Plain.

  ‘It’s ringing?’ Genevieve asked. ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Without being touched.’

  Genevieve bolted up the last flight, emerging into the vault of the bell-tower. And saw her own face, tight-lipped, looking back at her.

  ‘Canoness Genevieve,’ said her twin sister, Eleanor, with a formal bend of her head.

  It was every bit like looking in a mirror. Ironic, given how different they were. Twin canonesses in twin suits of armour. Only differing in every other way – and the simple fact that Genevieve’s recent ocular augmetic replaced her left eye rather than the right.

  But when they faced each other, that only enhanced the feeling of looking in a glass.

  ‘I see you are late,’ sneered Arch-Deacon Mendazus. ‘As was ever the case.’

  ‘If you wanted me here, perhaps either of you could have sent word a miracle was occurring.’

  Eleanor opened her mouth to respond.

  Then the Bell of St Morrican sounded.

  Eleanor crouched under the bell, staring up into the dark interior, and reached out a hand to help the frail Mendazus duck underneath.

  The bell moved not, its clapper hung dead at its centre. And yet the great throat reverberated with the thrum of a note struck far away.

  Genevieve joined them, the two canonesses and their overseeing priest standing inside the massive enclosure, flesh shaking from the aural assault.

  Genevieve touched the curving interior surface. ‘It resonates. It trembles.’

  ‘Signs and wonders,’ whispered Eleanor, genuflecting. ‘It rings without human hand, like its sister, the Bell of Gerstahl. The one that rang in warning of the Twelfth Black Crusade, then ascended to avoid capture.’

  ‘A bit late for a warning, isn’t it? We’ve been fighting the Despoiler’s Thirteenth Crusade for nigh three months.’

  ‘It rings in celebration,’ said Arch-Deacon Mendazus.

  ‘Celebration of what?’ she asked.

  He looked at her, scorn on his features. ‘Victory, of course.’

  Clang.

  Seven.

  ‘Cruxis! Cut them down! Do not let the cowards flee!’

  On a mound of dead stood Marshal Amalrich of the Black Templars, sword extended in challenge at the traitor drop-ship. The power field of his blade crackled as it cooked off heretic blood.

  Castellan Mordlied climbed to the Marshal’s side, hoisting the banner of the Cruxis Crusade. Ahead of him, the engines of the traitor transport ignited, washing his armour with a rolling wall of flash-heated air. The engine discharge immolated two hundred Traitor Guardsmen, who had only a moment before been clawing with desperation towards the craft in hopes of evacuating off Cadia. They disappeared into feathery ash clouds that billowed towards the line of black-armoured Astartes converging on the ship.

  Mordlied’s hearts lifted along with the pennant as the artificial wind caught it, the twin-forked banner lashing in the gust like a dragon’s tail. With a two-handed heave, he drove the point of the banner-pole into the top of a wrecked rockcrete bunker and drew his chainsword.

  A Traitor Guardsman, his face scarified with a heathen rune, came at him with a meltagun. Mordlied keyed his chainsword and took him at the shoulder, sectioning the heretic like a side of meat.

  ‘Bring it down!’ Amalrich shouted, pointing at the rising drop-ship. His shaven skull was bare, so the pitiful heretics could see the Templar cross branded on his forehead. A las-bolt flickered off his conversion field. ‘Let none escape!’

  A host of missiles rushed towards the lander, crashing into armour panels and clipping off landing struts. Crimson lascannon beams lanced the bottom of the rising craft, leaving orange trails of superheated metal and exploding an external fuel tank.

  For a moment it appeared to be rising skyward like a sun, slow and drifting on the burn of the lift-nozzles.

  Then the engines stuttered, and the ship – wide as two hab-blocks – dropped back to the surface of Cadia.

  The explosion washed over Mordlied like the Emperor’s grace.

  He took the snapping cloth banner in his armoured fist, raised it to his lips, and kissed it.

  Clang.

  Eight.

  Visibility: Six miles, minimal cloud cover.

  Altitude: 3,500 feet.

  Speed: 1,100 miles per hour.

  And diving.

  1,613 feet per second.

  Captain Hanna Keztral swallowed the Gs. Clenched her teeth against the discomfort. Watched her altimeter spiral like a chrono gone mad. Cut the engines.

  ‘One second,’ warned her armament-operator, Darvus.

  Keztral tried not to look at the green-brown of the Cadian moors rising up in her Avenger’s canopy. The grey skyline disappearing above her helmet lip. She angled the ram-thrust engine upward, ready.

  ‘Two seconds,’ Darvus said, alarm rising faster than the ground. ‘Kez, it’s too…’

  Keztral hauled back on the stick, slammed her foot on the ignition. Felt the ram-thruster jackknife their nose to almost horizon level, forward momentum ripping air past their aerofoils in a glorious sensation of lift.

  Below, a traitor armoured column streaked towards them like a las-bolt. Just a rust-streak on the blurred green of the passing landscape.

  ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’ she ordered, but it was unnecessary, just the drunk head-rush of circulation returning after the dive.

  Under her feet, she could already feel the armament spinning, each black eye of the cylinder firing one after the other.

  ‘Good approach!’ Darvus yelled behind her, eye in his telescopic sight. ‘Keep steady.’

  Enemy fire drilled past. Amber whip-tails of tracer rounds. Red las-beams. Something hard, a heavy bolter round, sparked harmlessly off the armour of the tail assembly.

  Avenger strike fighters were fast craft, and a kite like Keztral’s Deadeye – stripped for speed – was hard to hit without advanced warning.

  Warning that Keztral, diving in steep from fifteen thousand feet, didn’t give them.

  ‘Spools empty!’ yelled Darvus.

  Keztral stamped the right pedal and hauled the stick back, rolling them over into a sunward climb. Leaving the enemy column behind – utterly untouched by fire.

  ‘Good captures!’ crowed Darvus. ‘Analysts back at Kraf Air Command will be thrilled with this film. Rotary picter especially. You hit the approach perfect, Kez.’

  ‘Can you tell where they’re headed?’

  ‘That’s the best part,’ Darvus answered, voice tinny in her helmet vox. ‘They’re retreating.’

  Clang.

  Nine.

  Major Marda Hellsker swallowed and squeezed the grip of her laspistol.

  She had to set an example for her troopers. Show stoicism in the face of the enemy. Not betray her feelings.

  She failed, and the smile spread across her features.

  Her company sergeant, Ravura, caught the look and grinned. Leaned forward so she could hear him over the roar of the Chimera engine.

  ‘We’re going, sir!’ he said. ‘The front, at long last.’

  She looked down the bay at the troopers, swaying in their jump seats with each jostle. Lasguns between their knees. Packs swinging in the overhead netting.

  Despite the shadow of their helmet lips, she could see the sparkle of teeth in every trooper down the bay.

  ‘Let’s hear you roar, Twenty-Four!’ she shouted.

  ‘Twenty-Four, in the war!’ they barked as one, then dissolved into a chorus of hoots, howls and cheers.

  ‘Frekkin’ finally!’ added Corporal Lek.

  ‘Belay that,’ bellowed Ravura, without much force. ‘Someone needed to keep Kasr Kraf secure. And they gave it to us – because they knew the Despoiler wouldn’t dare hit Kraf with the Twenty-Fourth on the gates.’

  More cheers, louder this time. Drowning out a message crackling in Hellsker’s micro-bead. Good on Ravura, flipping the script on Lek’s undermining bullshit.

  Spending the war at Kraf had been hard. Not a shot fired in anger. More killed by commissars than enemy rounds. Discipline fraying with the inability to prove themselves.

  And the 24th Interior Guard wanted, so badly, to prove themselves. To be able to look the other Cadians – those who had deployed to warfronts across the galaxy – in the eye. Show that even though they’d drawn the unlucky lot of remaining on-world as a garrison force, they were still soldiers of Cadia.

  The buzzing in her ear continued, escalated. Hellsker frowned and pushed it deeper with a finger, waving for quiet.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Ravura.

  ‘We’ve stopped,’ said Hellsker. ‘The engine’s cut.’

  She banged on the communication hatch until the driver slid it open. Told her what was coming over the vox.

  Hellsker bit her lips. Took a moment to compose her face before turning to deliver the news. Keep it short, she told herself. Be stoic.

  They were looking at her, expectant, when she turned. Smiles still gleaming under their helmets.

  ‘Message from the front. Enemy is in full retreat. Pulling back to landing fields. The Thirteenth Black Crusade is over. We are victorious. Our orders are to pull back to Kraf. Eject your powercells, make weapons safe.’

  They slumped back into their seats, popped cells and stowed them. Pulled helmets down to cover their eyes and crossed arms over lasrifle barrels. Trooper Keska’s shoulders trembled, and Hellsker knew he was weeping. Corporal Lek dropped his head back against the bulkhead and snorted an ironic laugh. Udza, her vox-operator, dropped any façade of toughness and leaned forward, burying her eyes in the palms of her hands.

  Even Ravura had nothing to say.

  Marda Hellsker focused on her breathing, maintaining her neutral expression. Sat down, buckled herself back in her safety harness, and stared at the rear hatch of the Chimera.

  For a moment, just a moment, she had thought she’d become a real Shock Trooper.

  Through the armour of the hull, she could hear a reverberation.

  She realised it was cheering, and slammed a fist on the armoured bulkhead beside her.

  Clang.

  Ten.

  Trazyn could hear the bell’s echo even within the hyperspace oubliette.

  A thing that should not be possible, but impossibilities seemed to be getting increasingly common.

  ‘I am obliged for the rescue, Huntmaster. But was it quite necessary to drag your planetary overlord?’

  ‘My apologies, lord.’ The Huntmaster released his grip on Trazyn’s clavicle collar. The deathmark’s single ocular gleamed. ‘The bellow of the beast was approaching. It cannot find us in here.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ Trazyn brushed his necrodermis off with his metal hands. The Huntmaster had once been the greatest game warden in the dynasties, but like most necrons, the deathmark was now quite mad. ‘I see you picked up Sannet as well. What is the gallery’s status?’

  ‘Major damage, lord, cascade failures.’

  ‘When the ringing stops, I want that relic out of here – cast it through the webway portal, let it bedevil the aeldari. But before that, prepare the Lord of Antiquity for sail.’

  ‘You,’ stuttered Sannet, ‘you are leaving Solemnace, lord archaeovist? In such a state?’

  ‘If that bell foretells what I think it does, it means a cataclysm of historic proportions – one that would be most fascinating to observe up close.’ He paused, reading damage glyphs. ‘The legions are inactivated, I see. What about the galleries?’

  ‘Only the closed collection remains untouched,’ answered Sannet. ‘Its enfolded dimension seems less affected. The Horus Heresy exhibit, the Terran artefacts, and of course the special acquisition.’

  ‘It will have to do. Get me a complement of mindshackle scarabs. Come, Huntmaster. I daresay there will be game big enough for even you.’

  Clang.

  Eleven.

  ‘That price,’ the captain said, ‘is murder.’

  ‘That price,’ Salvar Ghent responded, mirroring his pause, ‘is final.’

  The captain was a Mordian. Off-worlder. Slab-like features with a sharp little moustache. Ghent didn’t like him, but Ghent didn’t like people in general.

  ‘We have defended this world. You could show some appreciation.’

  ‘I could, I suppose.’ Ghent leaned back in his chair, looking at the equipment of the bomb-shattered manufactorum. The building had no roof, casting the desk he’d ordered dragged onto the factory floor in gauzy sunlight. A flight of Lightning fighters darted by overhead, rattling the autopistol he’d laid on the desk. ‘How about I show my appreciation by selling you the last ten cases of leolac in Kasr Kraf, so your troopers can celebrate?’

  ‘But the price…’

  ‘If you don’t pay it, Cadians will. Leolac is the local favourite. A premium liquor. And a premium liquor demands a premium price.’

  The adjunct standing behind the captain sneered. ‘Don’t play with us, gutter-trash. You’re talking to soldiers, not some grubby ganger boss.’

  ‘Sergeant Jollan, let’s be civil.’

  Ghent, back when he was low enough in the underworld to have such a disrespectful nickname, had occasionally been known as Slide-Eye for the way his gaze seemed to wander like a searchlight, never looking at who he was speaking to. Now, the purple eyes settled on the subaltern.

  ‘So much for Mordian discipline.’

  ‘Keep pushing and I’ll show you Mordian discipline.’ Jollan laid a white-gloved hand on her glossy leather holster.

  ‘Lass, I know the commissars tell you your life’s worth nothing, but don’t throw it away over catering expenses.’