‘This is Pokol Armoury,’ Zheev said. ‘The largest planetary militia resupply facility on the continent and the most mission-critical piece of land we own. Pokol is the sole source of fresh munitions, ordnance and materiel that we still have control of, and the enemy wants it. It’s located thirty-seven miles to the north-east of here, just west of the Foretrak Range.’

  ‘You don’t wish us to accompany the Hundred-and-Thirty-Ninth in your attack on the traitors, colonel?’ Traxel asked.

  ‘Oh, I would,’ Zheev admitted. ‘I wish I had another unit of Tempestus Scions on Rilis. I wish I had ten, but if you wish in one hand and shit in the other, you’ll see which one fills up first every time.

  ‘Intelligence had been monitoring a few enemy raiding parties in the vicinity. They’ve been preying on the local farmers, mostly, but also making probing attacks against the company guarding the facility. We anticipate that it’s too big a prize for them to resist for long, and desperation will force them to commit to attacking the armoury with a large enough force to overwhelm its defenders. I need First Eradicant to shore up the line.’

  ‘And if the enemy doesn’t show up?’ Traxel asked. ‘How reliable is your intelligence that the heretics will attack?’

  ‘It’s just shy of airtight, as far as I’m concerned. The enemy raiders have been getting more brazen, of late, and they seem more willing to risk larger skirmishes. We received reports of enemy artillery moving north from Kiemchek just this morning, so we anticipate–’

  ‘Sir!’ a lieutenant called from behind one of the cogitator stations beneath the command dais.

  ‘Not now, Bartlin,’ Zheev said.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Bartlin said, ‘but the clouds have cleared. We’ve got restored orbital imagery over Sector West.’

  ‘A weather report’s certainly important enough to interrupt me when I’m talking to the Tempestor.’

  ‘The drop pod, sir,’ Bartlin said, hovering over the trooper working the cogitator.

  Traxel’s glare immediately fell upon the lieutenant.

  ‘You’ve got my attention,’ Zheev said.

  The map of Pokol Armoury disintegrated amidst the mumbling of the hololith’s attendant servitors. Lines coalesced from the haze of green light and refined into a three-dimensional terrain map of an area covered in denuded ridges. Boxy structures of unknown use squatted atop the mountains depicted on the western edge of the area. A ring of anti-air platforms sat inside the perimeter walls, dispersed evenly around bare, fortified zones to maximise cover against aerial insertion. The flanks of the easternmost ridges had been stripped of vegetation and planed smooth, all cover replaced with an interior of barricades, redoubts and automated pillboxes. The ridge fortifications appeared designed to funnel any attackers who managed to penetrate the perimeter into the valleys between, where broad, obstacle-laden kill-zones had been established. Square markers punctuated the terrain, representing emplacements of automated sentry guns, configured to permit redundantly overlapping fields of fire for maximum lethality with minimal expenditure of ammunition. The network of battlements and gun-studded bastions meandered between the ridges, broadening and contracting as they first encouraged, then restricted, movement through the area in a never-repeating maze.

  Daviland was hardly an expert in strongholds, but it was immediately apparent that ‘overkill’ seemed an insufficient description for what they saw in the projection. There was an absurdity to the defences, an unconstrained obsessiveness with superfluous fortification and lethality that defied sensibility. No sane mind could design such a labyrinthine stronghold, let alone implement it.

  ‘I don’t see the drop pod,’ Sahn said.

  ‘Wait, sir,’ Bartlin said, shaking the shoulder of the trooper at the cogitator.

  Seated at his terminal, the trooper’s fingers tapped furiously across the cogitator’s runepad. The servitors gabbled as the data refined, zooming in on the image of a boxy three-storey structure brooding atop the tallest ridge. The drop pod sat on a landing platform outside the facility.

  ‘Pull back,’ Zheev said. ‘I don’t recognise where this is.’

  The image shifted, zooming out to allow a view of nearly half the continent, east of the Zholm River.

  ‘Foretrak Gap military facility,’ Zheev breathed. ‘Throne, I couldn’t recognise the place with the forests gone!’

  ‘What is the Foretrak Gap military facility?’ Traxel asked.

  ‘In older times it guarded the only major ground thoroughfare between here and the capital, Vytrum, through the Foretrak Range.’ Zheev shrugged. ‘There are others, of course, but the gap is the most direct route. It wasn’t exactly abandoned, but it was obsolete long before my time. The planetary militia used it for training, sometimes. They still had a garrison there, back when I was a kid. Mostly for show.’

  Like the ridges leading up to it, the area around the Foretrak Gap’s main facility had been stripped of vegetation for hundreds of yards in all directions and fortified with an even greater obsessiveness than the rest of the complex. Short of an air assault, which the region’s overwhelming air defences rendered an effective form of suicide, the chances of an infantry attack making it to the Foretrak Gap’s principal installation were negligible.

  ‘How long ago was this?’ Zheev asked.

  ‘Twenty-three minutes, sir.’

  ‘That is where we need to be, colonel,’ Traxel said, his eyes devouring the hololith’s details.

  ‘No,’ Zheev said. ‘We’ve had an entire regiment, the Three-Hundred-and-Seventeenth Light, working to take the Foretrak Gap almost since the war broke out.’

  ‘What is the status of their siege?’

  Zheev closed his eyes wearily. ‘We don’t know. We’ve heard nothing from them since just before the traitors began their bombardment of the Zholm.’

  ‘Which makes it likely the regiment has been destroyed,’ Traxel said. ‘First Eradicant can infil–’

  ‘I said no,’ Zheev said. ‘Foretrak Gap is not the priority. I need everything available to me so we can hit the Two-Hundred-and-Twelfth while it’s running, before it reaches the Foretrak Gap and slips through to Vytrum. I’ve already given up my sole undamaged line company to defend Pokol. Keeping that armoury out of Oleg Hurdt’s hands is of tantamount importance to our efforts – otherwise, I wouldn’t be ordering you to go there.’

  ‘Colonel, we can cut the head from this apostasy now if we take this–’

  ‘Where does Tempestor-Eradicant fit into the Imperial Munitorum manual’s rank structure?’

  ‘It is the equivalent to major,’ Traxel replied, ‘depending on regimental nomenclature.’

  ‘Precisely. And I’m the equivalent of colonel in damn near any nomenclature you like, Traxel. Is my meaning in any way obscure?’

  ‘No, colonel.’

  Zheev nodded. ‘Look, Traxel,’ he scoffed, rubbing his weary eyes. ‘I’m not trying to break your balls here. First Eradicant’s presence is deeply, deeply appreciated. But I need us to have an understanding. I need your team to reinforce First Company Attack while the rest of the Hundred-and-Thirty-Ninth breaks the Two-Hundred-and-Twelfth. Once both of those objectives are accomplished, we’ll meet at the Foretrak Gap. We need to take it anyway before we move on to Vytrum, so you’ll get your crack at it.’

  Traxel’s expression was unforthcoming. ‘I understand, Colonel Zheev. Our preparations begin immediately. I would like to requi­sition some supplies prior to our departure.’

  ‘Balt,’ Zheev called to Major Raff. ‘Escort First Eradicant to your supply area and give them what they need.’

  ‘Yessir,’ Raff said, already clanging down the stairs.

  ‘Don’t be too generous this time,’ Zheev cautioned.

  Five more Tempestus Scions in the steel-trimmed green carapace of the 36th Xian Tigers joined Fennech just outside the auditorium. They stood in formation behind the commissar, silent and glassy-eyed, their weapons held across their chests.

  Fennech regarded First Eradicant from behind his long, acute nose, his hollow face all cheekbones and creases. He smiled thinly, his scarred lips stretching above his pointed chin in a veneer of polite cordiality which drowned in the sunken depths of his remaining glacial-blue eye.

  ‘Kindly forgive my physical frailties, Tempestor,’ Fennech said. ‘Three months on Rilis left my augmetics badly in need of repair, I’m afraid.’ He tapped both shins, his cane clopping hollowly on the wooden limbs. ‘Even my legs. The tech-priests have assured me that they will have them back to me before the day is out, though, so I’ll be on my feet in no time.’ He sniffed, rolling his eye in momentary introspection. ‘So to speak.’

  Traxel nodded, but remained silent.

  Norroll glanced at the bolt pistol that hung in its well-used, lovingly maintained leather holster on the commissar’s hip. For an instant, he was on Abstinax again, trudging through the black sands of shifting obsidian and breathing the toxic, sulphur-laden air. Blood and pain, wading barefoot through the razor sand…

  ‘And Medicae-Adept Daviland,’ Fennech said, and this time the smile nearly went all the way to his eye. ‘It pleases me to see you again. It has been far longer than I would have liked.’

  Daviland smiled at him – genuinely smiled. Norroll thought it was the first time he had seen her face really light up since he had known her. ‘For me as well, commissar,’ she said, with a respectful dip of her chin.

  ‘May I present Tempest Squad Xi-Three-One?’ Fennech asked. Norroll was beginning to find the commissar’s unflagging formality stultifying.

  The first trooper came forward, extending his hand to Traxel. He had somewhat watery brown eyes and an unfortunately weak chin. He was sunburned from too many days out without a helmet beneath Rilis’ relentless summer skies, and his skin was peeling.

  ‘Dja Quisse, Tempestor Traxel,’ the Scion said. ‘Acting Tempestor, Tempest Squad Xi-Three-One.’

  ‘I know who you are, Trooper Quisse,’ Traxel said without taking the proffered hand. ‘I am familiar with all of you. With the death of Xi-Three-One’s Tempestor, I assume responsibility for you in his stead. Let me be the first to welcome you to First Eradicant. Now fall in.’

  Quisse’s look of unvarnished surprise would not have been out of place had Traxel sucker-punched him. In a way, perhaps he had.

  The Scions formerly belonging to Tempest Squad Xi-3-1 parted to allow the Tempestor to pass. They stood at attention, eyes straight ahead, rifles to chests – Rybak and Akraatumo stood along the left wall, Quisse, Atebe and Phed along the right.

  Norroll and the rest of First Eradicant followed behind the Tempestor. Save Rybak, with whom he had long shared a mutual antipathy, Norroll had never personally met any of the others before.

  Rybak held his active plasma gun over his chest, the weapon’s magnetic accelerator coils rippling with a brilliant blue-white glow. He wore the Decus Iason in gold, the highest award for marksmanship offered by the Departmento Munitorum, inlaid upon his carapace’s left pectoral.

  Akraatumo stood to Rybak’s left. A burly, barrel-chested Scion, Akraatumo was more heavily built than Durlo, but shorter. He stared straight ahead, lasgun held in a light grip, his wide-spaced dark eyes vaguely focused on a trickle of water that dripped down the wall opposite him.

  Across from Akraatumo was Atebe, a sniper by her long-las and the ghillie camo-cloak draped over her carapace armour. Her blonde hair was tightly braided into twelve cornrows, the gold striking against the deep umber of her skin and the dark brown of her eyes. Unlike Rybak, Atebe wore no honour markings – her skill with her long-las was apparent in the almost casual familiarity with which she held it.

  Next to Atebe stood Trooper Phed. Right out of the Scholam Tempestus, Phed’s beret was creased with a fastidiousness that Norroll was certain would make Daviland jealous. His skin was the colour of oiled chestnut, and he had high cheekbones and dark eyes which appeared intently focused upon Akraatumo’s nose. Phed held his lasgun in a grip so rigid it seemed he feared it might escape.

  ‘Durlo,’ Traxel said. ‘Wait for Major Raff and accompany him to the supply area. The rest of you, with me.’

  ‘Tempestor,’ Daviland said, ‘I request to accompany Commissar Fennech to the medicae, to help reinstall his augmetics.’

  Traxel regarded Daviland through heavy, bruised eyelids, his expression as forthcoming as a stone mask’s.

  ‘Do so,’ he said, then turned and strode down the corridor.

  The newest inductees into First Eradicant fell in behind their predecessors, marching through the dripping, ramshackle hallways as they made their way out of the command centre and back to their Taurox Prime.

  ‘It is good to see you again, commissar,’ Daviland said, smiling. She walked on his left, slowly on account of his uncertain, shuffling gait, though she made no offer to assist him.

  ‘And you, Medicae-Adept Daviland,’ Fennech said with a thin smile of his own, albeit one bereft of true warmth. His eye, a striking blue, was the sole spot of colour in the pale, papery skin beneath the visor of his peaked cap.

  ‘I wanted to apologise, commissar,’ she said.

  Fennech raised his remaining eyebrow, though Daviland couldn’t ascertain whether his expression corresponded to raising both brows or cocking one.

  ‘Why would I require your apology?’

  ‘My report on First Eradicant, sir. From the Tecerriot incident.’

  ‘Was there something you failed to include in your account?’

  ‘No, commissar. But six months’ further observation have made it clear that my initial assessment was incomplete.’

  Fennech’s brow furrowed, puckering the scar tissue marring his forehead. ‘Initial reports are always wrong.’

  Daviland felt her face flush at the blunt admonishment and was suddenly glad he was not looking at her.

  ‘What was lacking?’ Fennech asked.

  ‘The Scions of First Eradicant are broken, as is their Tempestor.’

  ‘This is not news.’

  ‘I’ve further reports for your review.’

  ‘I shall do so on our way to Pokol,’ Fennech said. They had finally reached the command centre’s medi-bay, and the commissar shuffled to a free examination table. ‘Give me the long and the short now. Especially concerning Traxel.’

  A hooded genetor, swathed in the black robes of the priesthood of Stygies VIII, approached, attended by a trio of medicae servitors. The glistening, rubberised surface of its hermetically sealed form creaked as it moved.

  Daviland fell silent, unwilling to continue in the tech-priest’s presence.

  ‘Commissar Fennech.’ The tech-priest’s voice rasped through an integrated respirator that obscured its features entirely. ‘Omnissiah be praised, your augmetic components await reinstallation and actuation.’ It looked at Daviland, noting the bar of white decorated with a winged golden helix which bisected the green of her left pauldron, vambrace and gauntlet. ‘And you brought a medicae-adept to assist.’

  Daviland worried that her presence might be construed as an insult.

  ‘That should speed the process,’ the tech-priest said.

  Daviland bowed. ‘I would be honoured, honoured magos…’

  ‘Zerkhan. I do not stand on ceremony, though your designation would simplify our exchange.’

  ‘Daviland.’

  ‘You are familiar with the installation of augmetics, Daviland?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Prepare the insertion sites at the intermedial femoral and tibio­femoral junctions.’

  Assisted by the servitors, the medicae-adept and tech-priest worked in silence for nearly an hour as they rebuilt the commissar. Under their ministrations, Fennech transformed from a one-armed, one-eyed cripple with truncated legs to a partially completed sketch of a man. Though his digestive tract and onboard pulmonary systems had not yet been fully reinstalled, he was looking considerably more complete.

  ‘You have something you wish to say to the commissar, Daviland,’ Zerkhan said as it disconnected Fennech from the temporary external respiratory unit the commissar had been carrying.

  ‘I–’

  ‘The persistent licking of your lips – thirteen times in the last two minutes – coupled with your heightened body temperature and raised respiration rate, indicates pronounced agitation. I do not believe you are nervous about this procedure. Neither do I believe that you have anything relevant to say to me. Speak.’

  ‘I’m not sure…’

  ‘Speak,’ the genetor repeated, not raising its head as it mounted an audio receiver to Fennech’s skull. ‘You may be assured that whatever you say interests me not in the slightest.’

  Fennech, his head held immobile in a servitor’s grip while Zerkhan moved to install his augmetic eye, grunted his assent.

  ‘Tempestor Traxel suffered an episode during the Adeptus Astartes’ attack on Kiemchek,’ Daviland said.

  ‘An episode?’

  ‘One I would describe as a post-traumatic event.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Fennech said. ‘And opportune.’

  Daviland looked up from rethreading the subdermal power cabling to Fennech’s lower augmetics. ‘Opportune, sir?’

  ‘You are familiar with the fancifully named Scholam’s Gift?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Daviland said. ‘Thanks to decades of deep mindscaping, where lesser soldiers might wet themselves from terror, a Tempestus Scion feels anticipation and satisfaction – enjoyment, even. The longer they survive, and the greater the dangers overcome, the more deeply they feel it. Over time, they may even develop a craving for it.’

  ‘I believe this Scholam’s Gift is the genesis of Traxel’s intransi­gence,’ Fennech said. ‘It whispers in the deepest corners of his mind. He cannot stop and has no desire to.’

  ‘After missions,’ Daviland said, ‘Scions are to submit to obligatory re-enlightenment.’