CHAPTER SEVEN

Cradle of Darkness

I

‘Mighty good to see you, sir,’ Golliant rasped, his boot steps echoing around the deck elevator as he helped a tender Commissar Krieg into a fresh greatcoat. Krieg didn’t hide his relief and slapped the aide on the shoulder.

‘It’s good to be back onboard,’ he told the hulking Volscian. It also felt good to have the wrestler by his side after events down on the deathworld moon.

As the elevator doors parted, the major stepped confidently out onto the bridge. Krieg followed with more caution, realising that this was actually the first time that he’d been up there. Golliant hovered steadfastly by the elevator doors as the cadet limped across the deck.

The bridge was quiet and bathed in a harsh cerulean glow. Mortensen silently joined the silhouettes of the bandaged Rask and Sass as they stood before the great screen, below the captain’s pulpit. Lieutenant Commander Waldemar climbed out of his throne and stood gripping the balustrade rail. He caught the cadet-commissar’s eye as he entered, but Krieg’s line of sight was swiftly drawn to what everyone else was gazing at on the screen.

Before him blazed the cold sheen of the Spetzghastian mesosphere, but something was impossibly wrong. The mercantile giant’s spectacular ring system was in complete disarray. Instead of a neat dust belt of spinning rock and ice fragments, chaperoned by shepherd moons like the verdant Tancred’s World and the pockmarked Wormwood, the girdle was fragmented: irregular asteroids were peeling off in different directions, many falling planetward with building velocity. Ishtar was fairly far out for one of the Spetzghastian moons and they could see everything. It was as though gravity had simply failed and the ring system was breaking up.

Krieg stepped forward, rubbing his tired eyes with forefinger and thumb, making sure that he wasn’t hallucinating. A closer inspection revealed the reason for the unusual phenomenon: titanic engines and bulbous propellant tanks grew out of the natural rock of the jagged asteroids. Primitive boosters span the gargantuan bodies on their axis before the main stage engines rocketed them towards the planet surface, Spetzghast’s potent gravitational pull doing the rest.

The bridge was shell-shocked; Krieg had never seen such a spectacle. An apocalyptic blitz of ready-made planet-smashers, plunging towards the heavily populated mercantile world, like thunderbolts from an angry god. Both the workmanship and tactics were greenskin by design: headlong suicide runs of crushing effectiveness. The system had clearly been infiltrated for a long time and the asteroids mined out and modified to create an armada of kamikaze roks and bouldered hulks. It was clear to everyone on the bridge that Spetzghast would be pounded to dust.

As they tumbled sickeningly towards the planet, the ork roks rolled to present previously hidden batteries of superguns and cannons, laying effortless waste to the anchored fluyts and bulk cruisers in high orbit. Swarms of luggers and freight barges impacted on the rocky surface, their pathetic detonations giving the impression of sparks and ricochets. A sleek sprint trader broke orbit, crashing through several sister vessels before soaring narrowly between the two converging behemoths. A rogue trader freighter attempted the same manoeuvre, only to end up a blazing wreck, tangled across the rockface.

Krieg watched as adamanticlads and monitors bore down bravely on a jagged giant as it flipped and span wildly through the spindly appendage docks of the Exchequer orbital tradestation. The rok left a field of spinning debris in its wake, sending a ripple of explosions up through the crippled station. The system ships were soon joined by one of the convoy escorts, the frigate Orpheus. Pooling their firepower, the Firestorm-class frigate met the ork craft head on, cutting deep into the rock with its raging prow lance. Incredibly one of the heavily-armed monitors made an impression on the rok’s swollen engine column, a lucky shot setting off a chain reaction that blasted the greenskin vessel unexpectedly to starboard. The rok’s craggy surface lightly brushed along the side of the Orpheus, tearing up the frigate’s armour and exposing thousands of Navy crewmen to the searing cold of space.

The ancient and impressive garrison ship Stang Draak was smashed free in the ensuing chaos and perfectly placed to rake the length of the rok with its obsolete guns. The grand cruiser’s much younger crew had only ever fired the weapons on exercise or to salute the arrival of dignitaries and touring port admirals. Their response was slow and sloppy, many of the shots wide and misranged, which was incredible bearing in mind the size of the target.

A jolt of shock and disbelief swept the bridge as the grand cruiser died before their eyes. Something beautiful was there one moment and then suddenly wasn’t, replaced by a breathtaking display of power and destruction, which seconds later also vanished.

A promontory prow thrust forth, out of the nothing where the garrison ship had been. Behind it, incalculable tons of extraterrestrial rock and scavwelded salvage thundered through the silence of space. The space hulk was like a mountain range, imposing and impossible: an unstoppable monster, smashing roks and Imperial vessels aside with equal, crushing indifference. A grotesque flagship hewn from pure hate.

The Vatividad, the Algonquin Royale, the Morningstar, the Countess of Scarbra… The fat troopships careered and coursed full thrust for safety, but the behemoth overreached them, drawing parallel with its magna-bore artillery, consuming all in a growing bank of flame and fury. Krieg stared on in disbelief as the lives aboard the transports were snuffed out like a row of candles in a sudden breeze. The commissar felt sick to the bottom of his stomach. Sicker, if that were possible.

His heart lifted for a moment, no doubt foolish pride in the futile gestures of his compatriots. The hulk’s underside was suddenly bathed in flashes as a stream of torpedoes found their mark. The successive glare of the hits faded, however, to reveal the greenskin ship unscathed. The Purgatorio surged up, its baroque beakhead breaking free of the black depths like some rising leviathan. The Dictator-class blasted uselessly at the impervious giant, the passing salvo a disciplined and worthy pattern of fire for the flagship. The space hulk rocketed on through the barrage and slammed into the vessel’s mid-section.

Krieg’s fists tightened and his knuckles cracked. Like a tug tearing an uncooperative giga-tanker round in a system dock, the broken flagship tried to roll the hulk planetward. The cruiser’s towers and flank arrays tangled with the hulk’s own irregular structures, grappling with the beast and forcing it into a slight turn. The Purgatorio’s dorsal finally snared the cosmic predator, a dying push from the plasma drives doing the rest. Like a featherweight throwing a much heavier opponent in a scud wrestling ring the Dictator played to what centre of gravity it had left and sent both the hulk and itself spinning towards the upper atmosphere of the besieged mercantile world.

It was Mortensen that broke the solemn silence that blanketed the bridge and paralysed all those who were witness to the murder of a world.

‘How could we have not known… about this?’ he managed.

Waldemar, his patrician accent a little softer and less grating than usual, told him, ‘Communication black-out. We lost all feeds. I assumed it was a technical problem and had my engineers run the appropriate diagnostics and litanies.’

‘What about astropathic lines of communication?’ Rask offered. ‘Surely Spetzghast or the other ships–’

‘Total black-out,’ the austere Waldemar assured him. ‘My psykers received nothing and nothing they sent got through.’

‘How is that possible?’ the major asked grimly.

‘The teleporters,’ Krieg threw in. It was more of a flat statement than the victorious solution to a problem.

‘That kind of greenskin technology would play havoc with our comms,’ Sass confirmed.

‘Especially if it was being engaged across many points in the ring system,’ the commissar added. ‘We have every reason to believe that the system is completely compromised. A large number of troops would have to be moved to prepare for as bold an advance as this.’

The major’s adjutant shook his head – unhappy with the conclusion: ‘The astropaths would still be able to get through.’

Krieg gave them the benefit of his Inquisitorial training. ‘The greenskins generate a collective psychic field in such circumstances. Perhaps that was enough to block astropathic communication. Psychic static, if you will.’

‘It’s never been enough to disrupt communications before,’ Waldemar informed him, unconvinced.

Mortensen nodded slowly: ‘He’s right,’ the major growled. ‘I’ve fought this scum on dozens of worlds and it’s the first time I’ve come across that.’

Krieg juggled the concepts crackling inside his head. He thought of the rebels on Illium, the formerly loyalist abhuman populations of Ishtar and the cultists he’d hunted on Spetzghast. How the Sisters of the Immaculate Flame had failed to find a psyker among them, only a psychic blankness that seemed to link them all.

‘Then it’s something else,’ Krieg insisted. He couldn’t formulate a web of relationships that linked all the elements and explained all the factors. All he kept coming up with was half-digested hunches and ghostly, paranoid suggestions.

Mortensen turned back to the battle, feasting his eyes on the annihilation. An idea was eating away at his soul and he finally he found the words to express its brutal simplicity.

‘How long to get us on the planet’s surface?’

Waldmar called his amazement across the bridge: ‘You can’t be serious?’

‘I’m always serious,’ Mortensen updated the officer, turning away from the screen, catching Rask’s unsettled expression as he did. ‘Except when I’m not.’

‘It’s over,’ the lieutenant commander told him. ‘What do you think you can do: save the planet?’

‘No,’ Mortensen said, clearly lost in thoughts of his own home world’s demise. ‘I can’t do that. But we can pull the flagship crash survivors offworld before those ork roks pulverise it. I can’t stand those mungers: on any other day Brigadier Voskov and his tight-ass Shadow Brigade commanders can go to hell. Today, a greenskin battlefront is opening up right on top of us and we’re going to need some of that Volscian methodology to formulate a response to this mess. It could be months before a tactical command structure is back in place otherwise, and think how far these greenskins could have rushed us by then.’

Waldemar was no coward, but he looked like one as his eyes moved from the major’s stony glare to the destruction beyond and then around the bridge at his own officers. His eyes lingered for a moment on Krieg. It was common knowledge that he and the major were at each other’s throats. Krieg returned his gaze. At heart Waldemar was a sound and inventive officer and had one final play to make before committing to a potentially disastrous course of action, one way or the other.

‘Major, I think that you are overestimating the capabilities of this ship. Deliverance is a small carrier. She won’t last ten seconds against that kind of firepower. You would have me risk every soul aboard, including every single one of your storm-troopers, in one foolishly bold and futile manoeuvre?’

Krieg watched the major mull it over.

‘As one of the only combat operative vessels in the system,’ the captain continued, ‘isn’t it protocol to make for Aurelius and warn other nearby systems, so that they might prepare for the eventuality of war?’

Mortensen glared around the silent bridge.

‘You just don’t get it, do you? Redemption Corps don’t run. Aurelius? Warning the fleet? Leave that to some freighter,’ Mortensen spat. ‘This is a military vessel: I say we stay and we do what we can. And what we can do right now is get my men and the remaining 364th into any and every available sub-atmospheric craft you have, and get them down on the surface so they can do their job.’

Waldemar’s eyes narrowed and the coin-shaped scar on his cheek flared. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do that.’

‘You think you can stop us?’ the major seared. Both corpsmen and naval security both tensed, their side arms but the flick of a wrist away.

The commander’s own trembling hand went down to his Patrician hanger: ‘Try it, you mutinous dog…’

Krieg’s hellpistol was already clear of its fresh holster. A burst of super-charged las-fire drummed into the deck, bringing the attention of all squarely to his feet. Both Waldemar, proud and uncertain, and the major, feral and fearsome, turned at the sound of automatic fire on the bridge. Only a newly-promoted security ensign in a spanking uniform and creaking, new boots was foolish enough to point his weapon at the Imperial commissar.

‘Think that prudent do you, boy?’ Krieg put to the ensign, without looking at him. The young officer stared at Krieg and then his pistol before slowly drifting the muzzle to the floor. The ensign suddenly became aware of a presence, turning to find the hulking Golliant immediately behind him. Wide-eyed, the ensign dropped the pistol on the deck and turned, backing to the cognition banks adorning the wall.

Krieg took in the bridge with one sweeping glance. Waldemar wasn’t wrong. They were seconds from actual mutiny: storm-troopers exchanging fire with Navy grunts on the bridge of one of his Beneficient Majesty’s hallowed warships. There was only one authority on the ship that superseded both the lieutenant commander and the Redemption Corps major and it sat snug on his finger. He presented the ring and his fist to both men, letting the hypnotic power of the winged-skull signet take effect.

With Regimental Commissar Udeskee below decks and out of reach and the ship’s commissar, a firebreather called Locke – well, dead – Krieg was the only one who could legitimately act in this situation.

‘Back to this, huh?’ Mortensen shot sardonically across the bridge. It was a dare. As it was, on this particular occasion, Krieg didn’t actually disagree with the major.

‘Captain Waldemar, can you actually get through that?’ the cadet-commissar asked, nodding his cap at the screen. ‘Can you get us to Spetzghast?’

‘This is madness,’ the captain settled upon. ‘And I should have you all thrown in the damned brig.’

‘Can you do it, captain?’ Krieg insisted.

The officer bridled, professional pride prevailing.

‘Yes,’ was the simple answer. ‘But Commissar Krieg, that is not–’

‘Oh, but unfortunately it is,’ Krieg cut in with regret. ‘At present velocity, I’d say we have three or four hours, at most, to get on and off the surface before those roks hit.’

‘Three hours, forty-two minutes to first impact,’ Sass interjected, soaking up data from the bridge picts and rune screens like a sponge.

‘If we’re not knee deep in Spetzghastian sand within two, captain, I’ll have you escorted to the brig for cowardice, dereliction of duty and negligent conduct. I’m sure the ship’s commissar would agree if he had the misfortune of still being with us.’

‘You imperious cub,’ Waldemar snapped back, ‘You can’t…’

‘I speak for Udeskee; I speak for the Commissariat; I speak for the Emperor, in this matter,’ Krieg told him with searing certainty.

A stunned bridge continued to hold a bated breath.

‘And if I refuse?’ Waldemar asked, his scar burning bright.

‘Your actions will be judged by your superiors in light of your witnessed refusal to save Imperial lives, your refusal to at least attempt a rescue of Commodore van den Groot and the Volscian High Command and your seeming preference for conduct unbecoming an officer of one of his beneficient majesty’s warships.’

Waldemar went to retort but Krieg hadn’t finished.

‘But that’s irrelevant because long before that, Captain Waldemar, I’ll have you shot,’ the commissar informed him plainly, ‘and empower Major Mortensen’s men to take command of this vessel, by force if necessary. And we are all too ready to face the Emperor’s judgement in that. Believe me, captain, we are martyrs all. There’s a reason we’re called Redemption Corps.’ The commissar let his words sink in, and since it seemed that he had overplayed his hand regardless, added: ‘Who is the executive officer of this crate, anyhow?’

A lieutenant with a shiny head and thoughtful brown eyes stepped forward hesitantly.

‘Name?’ Krieg requested. The first lieutenant went to speak, getting as far as opening his lips, but the voice that came across the bridge was not his.

‘Mister Caviezel,’ Waldemar supplied. ‘Be so good as to plot an evasion course through the Quirini Division. Calculate the location of the Purgatorio’s crash site and establish a low entry orbit around Spetzghast. Best possible speed: there’s a good fellow.’

Krieg nodded and reholstered his hellpistol. Walking for the elevator he was joined by Mortensen and his men at the doors. Golliant was already holding them open with his brawny arms, allowing the commissar and the storm-troopers to walk in underneath. As the doors closed and the car began its descent, an awkward silence prevailed.

‘You realise this is suicide?’ Krieg eventually piped up.

The major grunted.

‘You know,’ he told the cadet-commissar, ‘I like to think that anything is possible.’

‘Yes,’ Krieg returned. ‘I’ve heard that about you.’

II

Vertigo was a wreck.

The Spectre was smashed up and running like a junker after her deathworld encounter, but Rosenkrantz would be damned before being relegated to an Arvus or humpshuttle.

Clearly the major felt much the same way, stamping up the ramp with his men, all with hastily donned carapace and hellpacks. Mortensen had given Rask the unenviable duty of coordinating the mass ground retrieval from one of the available Valkyries. Other aircraft laden with naval security contingents and the 364th’s Second Platoon were lifting off the deck. Despite Meeks’s men being cut to shreds, the sergeant had no qualms about kitting up and heading straight back out on the coat tails of Mortensen and the Redemption Corps. Mortensen shouldn’t have been surprised. Vertigo was to carry Mortensen and his storm-troopers, leaving the rest of the hold empty in expectation of the recovered flagship’s senior officer corps.

Somehow Captain Waldemar had negotiated the swarm of roks and hulks closing in on the unsuspecting Spetzghast and held precarious station in a low orbit above the Purgatorio’s last known trajectory, but below the descending asteroid storm front. He’d met Commissar Krieg’s well-advertised deadline of two hours but what worried Rosenkrantz more was the length of time he’d be able to hold that position.

With Sigma Scorpii throwing the bronze glow of a new half-day over the horizon, Vertigo plunged through the cobalt clouds. Gunships, carriers and shuttles plummeted before them like a flock of birds evading a predator, banking and swirling into a vortex that spiralled for the surface. A squadron of Marauders thundered overhead, ghosting the rescue operation. Mortensen had insisted on bringing along Wharmby’s bomber group for extra muscle, despite Waldemar’s objections, just in case the greenskin hulk still needed softening up from the ground.

The major came up behind the co-pilot’s station expecting to see Benedict. Rosenkrantz had been sorry to see him go, especially after saving her life down on the deathworld, but the servitor had to be taken off to wherever such things were taken when damaged or injured. The Jopallian shuddered to think: medicae-hall or repair shop, Rosenkrantz couldn’t tell. Instead an unusually grave Leland Hoyt sat in the chair, transferred from White Thunder. Hoyt, normally a fount of bright optimism, had returned from Illium a changed man. Gone was that boyish smile and playful good humour. Now the co-pilot looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Rosenkrantz sighed. Perhaps it was the view. Staring up through the cockpit plas she could spot the sinister silhouettes of the first mighty ork roks to kiss upper atmosphere.

‘Major,’ Hoyt said quietly, offering Mortensen a headset. ‘Crow Road – Captain Rask.’

Mortensen slipped on the set. ‘Well?’

Rosenkrantz could hear the captain’s craggy voice across her own vox-set: ‘Zane, it’s a hell of a mess down here. Looks like both vessels went down grappling but the impact was shallow: the crash site must stretch a good ten or twelve kilometres. Equatorial desert, so little in the way of local casualties – thank the Emperor.’

A brief respite, Rosenkrantz pondered, considering the hailstorm of colossal asteroids heading their way. Vertigo cut through the lower cloud layers, getting a glimpse of dawn reaching across the red barren wastes for the first time.

‘Major,’ Rosenkrantz called, drawing Mortensen’s attention to the canopy.

‘Yes, I can see it,’ Mortensen declared. The Purgatorio’s plasma drive and the hulk’s sheer mass had propelled the two vessels in a dance of death towards the planet much faster than the stately pace of the converging ork roks. The crash site itself was now clear but for kilometres around a tsunami of dust and sand obscured surface detail.

Angular outcrops of rock and toxic metals had torn up both vessels badly, smashing up the Purgatorio and leaving flaming sections of the Dictator-class the length of the crash landing. The space hulk, robust as it was, had also suffered, breaking up on planetary impact: individual pieces of rock and scavenged alien craft, tumbling and scoring a wide tract of depth and destruction into the Spetzghastian surface.

‘The command decks and bridge separated from the main body of the vessel in the crash,’ Rask told them. ‘They came down with a section of the hulk just off the main landing site. Transmitting the coordinates, now.’

Hoyt scanned his rune screens for the new information.

‘Point two-five. Roll thirty degrees port-yaw.’

Rosenkrantz responded.

‘I had Prayerstalker do a fly-by,’ the captain continued. ‘Not much left. St. Scimitar picked up a small group of survivors from the dunes nearby. Among them is the Purgatorio’s third lieutenant. He says the command decks were the site of an overwhelming boarding action – even before the crash. Says he couldn’t see much because of the smoke, but what he did witness was all hand-to-hand, with prisoners snatched and taken back to the hulk section close by.’

‘Taken back?’ Rosenkrantz questioned. ‘That’s a lot of self-control for orks.’

‘Nothing about these green-skinned bastards surprises me anymore,’ Mortensen enlightened her. ‘They’re a breed apart.’

‘Major, the bombers,’ she reminded him, the thought only just occurring to her.

‘Tyberius, call off Wharmby’s Marauder group. With friendlies being transported across the open space between sections we can’t afford bombing runs. Send them back to Deliverance immediately.’

‘Confirmed.’

‘Okay, listen and listen good,’ Mortensen said, pushing the vox-receiver close to his strained lips. ‘Commit all aircraft to make one touchdown – as soon as is humanly possible. Order them to fill their holds and everywhere else for that matter, with as many crash survivors as they can. Then, back to the carrier. One trip only. Make sure they understand.’

‘What about you?’ Rask sent back.

‘We’ll raid the hulk section for the captured officer corps.’

‘There’s no time for that,’ the officer insisted tightly.

‘Make sure they understand, captain,’ the major repeated, ‘One trip and then back to the ship. Commander Waldemar will then get his trip to Aurelius. Vertigo out.’

Rosenkrantz craned her flight helmet around to see the storm-trooper. He gave her his grim, determined eyes.

‘Take us to hell.’

The pilot complied.

III

Mortensen had Vertigo close with the shattered hulk section. Even as just a piece of detached wreckage its dimensions were impressive. Rosenkrantz had found a gargantuan rent where the cratered rock face met time-burnished alloy and the crash had done its worst. Dropping the Spectre expertly in through the opening she was descending as fast as she dared, searching for a landing zone somewhere in the alien darkness.

The major stood helmetless on the tip of the aircraft’s lowered ramp, hellgun humming.

‘Ready?’ he called casually over his shoulder.

Corporal Vedette and a hangdog Conklin joined him on the ramp, a gaggle of corpsmen huddled behind, going through final weapons prep. The doom-laden gloom of their surroundings did little to dampen the Mordian’s spirits.

‘I’m surprised you still ask, sir.’

Vertigo’s ghostly hull lamps slipped down the cavernous wall of the enormous chamber they were traversing, passing across spectacular mineral deposits in the dull and dusty rock before glinting off rust-eaten hull and finally something distinctly biological.

‘By all the saints and their bastard children,’ Preed cursed. ‘Where the hell are we?’

Mortensen turned. The barrel-bellied priest stood beside Krieg and his Volscian shadow, dwarfing both the cadet-commissar and even his aide with his immense girth. Golliant had snatched a snub-nosed Volscian-pattern autocannon from Deliverance’s armoury and cradled the monster protectively above his charge’s gleaming cap.

‘Expect anything…’ Mortensen told them. He scowled as he realised the only weapon Krieg was packing was his trusty hellpistol.

‘I see a platform,’ Vedette announced, peering off the edge of the ramp into the pit below. She hooked the tip of her boot under a coil of rope and kicked it over the side. Greco limped up the other side and did the same with his good foot.

Mortensen thumbed the troop bay vox. ‘Vertigo, hold position. Squad disembarking.’

Shouldering his hellgun and snapping his harness and descender to the line, Mortensen kicked off the aircraft and rappelled the deep, dark, distance between the Spectre and the platform. The soles of the major’s boots touched down on the unnatural metal of the platform, his steps echoing eerily around the chasmal chamber. These became a hammer of footfalls as the storm-troopers gathered, establishing a holdpoint around the dangling ropes of their escape route.

Sarakota and a second almond-faced sniper crossed in front of Mortensen. They moved either side of him before going down on one knee and sweeping the inky murk of the hulk with the long, chunky barrels of their anti-materiel rifles. The snipers had detached their scopes, which would be all but useless in the cavernous confines of the spacecraft, but retained their Hellshots, more out of sentimentality than practicality.

‘Should we fan out, sir?’ Vedette checked. Mortensen’s nose wrinkled. He didn’t like the idea of splitting his firepower in here, but time wasn’t on his side. He needed to locate the Imperial officers fast.

‘Best guess?’ Mortensen asked after giving the snipers a few moments to orient themselves. The tribesmen had grown up in a maze of cavern-systems and had the most finely-tuned senses of the squad.

‘Between all the crotch scratching and boot shuffling it’s a wonder we can hear anything,’ the hot-headed Opech complained. He was fresh out of the infirmary and the pain of his wounds had made him cranky enough even to gripe at the major.

‘Just give me the short version, corpsman,’ Mortensen bit back.

‘Difficult,’ Sarakota murmured, embarrassed at his kinsman’s hasty words. The Khongkotan tribesman had also been in the infirmary, but Mortensen hadn’t heard anything other than a rib-fractured wince out of the sniper in complaint. ‘The different materials and custom structure of the vessel make the vibrations hard to read.’

‘Kota,’ the major hushed. ‘Where are my targets?’

The sniper turned his head this way and that and then sighed, settling. Taking the weight of his heavy rifle he got up off his knee, turned and headed off behind them. Mortensen stared after the disappearing Sarakota and then back to the remaining sniper. ‘You?’

Opech similarly lifted his weapon and nodded. ‘The walls still throb with recent activity to the north-east. Large numbers, moving fast.’

Mortensen looked at Conklin, Vedette and then Krieg.

The commissar shrugged, ‘What are we waiting for?’

The Redemption Corps swept through the black cavities and passages of the hulk, hugging the walls and throwing the barrels of their weapons around lopsided corners. Conduits, hangars, vents, gangways: all alien and ancient. And upside down. From what the major could make out, and he was no expert, craft after bizarre craft had been melded together into some kind of amorphous whole: some without care for orientation or natural gravity.

‘Incredible,’ Preed mumbled every so often, soaking up the foreign grandeur of the place. Greco was less enthused, hobbling up unnatural inclines and maintaining an almost constant stream of reasons why they should probably be heading back: the officers were probably dead, the hulk was so massive they could easily miss them, I think we’re being watched. He began a cautionary tale about the time he broke into the Sultana Babooshka’s tower villa, but Mortensen stopped him, telling him to stick to what he was actually good at, which was shutting the vrek up.

Every so often the progenium runaway and arch-larcenist would be called upon to run a bypass on a security bulkhead or some other fused and ancient egress, and when that didn’t work Uncle had to create an artificial opening with his cordite charges and melta bombs.

Sarakota and Opech pushed on ahead with their hefty anti-materiel Hellshots primed, swinging the heavy rifles crisply around dark corners like they had done this kind of thing before. Eszcobar fiddled with the regulator on his flame unit, the Autegan favouring the incinerator over his trusty grenade launcher in the confines of the hulk. Krieg was strangely quiet, hellpistol in one hand and a chunky arc lamp in the other, aiming both experimentally up a narrow, twisted stairwell: expecting trouble. In the tight corridors and labyrinthine shafts of the massive hulk, the commissar clearly favoured the side arm/lamp combo, more so that he didn’t fall to his death down some hidden duct or pipe.

Mortensen merely stabbed at the shadows with the muzzle of his hellgun, ready to blast to oblivion anything stupid enough to stick its ugly face out of the darkness at him. He was getting impatient, their distance from the bird growing at the same time the minutes were ticking away in the back of his skull. Despite the immediate threat of his surroundings he couldn’t quite get the vision of thousands of heavily-armed asteroids falling out of the Spetzghastian sky out of his mind. He wanted those officers, though. Organised Imperial resistance in the system might depend on them being alive and Mortensen sure as hell didn’t want to end up as ranking officer on the precipice of an opening greenskin warzone.

Climbing through a warped, open bulkhead, the major was hit by the powerful stench of fumes from the chamber beyond. Flashing his rifle lamp around he found his boots smeared with a brown oily substance that had seemed to cover the entire floor of the chamber. Sass’s occasional chant of ‘Commodore van den Groot’, ‘Brigadier Voskov’ or ‘Lord Commissar Verhoeven’ boomed in the new chamber. It seemed to stretch for hundreds of metres.

‘Sir, I think you should look at this,’ Sarakota called gently. Krieg and the adjutant had pushed on. Loping up behind them, the group gathered around. They had found the commodore. Greco jerked back, hand over his mouth like he had been physically struck. The others just looked blankly at the pile of entrails and the bloodied naval cloak that had once been the fleet commander. Vedette plucked the commodore’s ridiculously flamboyant hat from the mess, shaking the gore from the feathers and wiping clean the leather around the emblazoned aquila. She handed it to the major. It was definitely van den Groot.

‘Greenskins did this?’ asked Preed.

‘Maybe,’ Mortensen replied.

‘Come on,’ Greco broke in, ‘the fat bastard’s been turned inside out.’ The trooper was seriously starting to lose his cool. Mortensen grunted. He’d fought greenskins across the galaxy. They did not kill like this.

‘Movement…’ Sarakota called, strangely without a hint of panic. The effect on the others was instantaneous: weapons came up and lamp beams were thrown around the darkness. The sniper knelt down, sinking his knee into the oily brown residue and touching the deck with his fingertips.

It all happened fast. Kynt span around, simultaneously bringing up his hellgun. As the twitchy comms-officer fired, Mortensen kicked the barrel aside, sending the blasts thudding harmlessly into the blackness. In the illumination of Eszcobar’s lamp, Brigadier Voskov of the Volscian Shadow Brigade stumbled forward holding a broken arm. He looked like a cadaver in the harsh light. His immaculate if dour uniform was gore splashed and torn and his gun-metal grey crew-cut matted with blood from a gash on his head. His craggy face was etched with more than just years and the expression of martial fanaticism that never usually left his face had gone. Only a blankness remained.

He fell against Krieg, who half caught him. Holstering his weapon, he cradled the spireborn to the deck. The brigadier looked like he had been to hell and back. He tried to say something but choked and descended into a coughing fit. Sergeant Minghella knelt in and gave him a sip of water from his canteen. Voskov’s eyes rolled over and bulged. Once again he tried to say something.

‘Easy,’ the medic told him.

‘Redemption Corps,’ he managed to the major, through an agonised smile. Mortensen didn’t think he’d ever seen the Volscian commander smile before.

‘Don’t try and talk, Gil. We’ll get you and your officers out of here,’ Mortensen pledged solemnly.

‘Rescue…’ the brigadier croaked, before seeming to relax for a moment. A throttled chuckle escaped his torn lips. His throat was swollen and his neck violently bruised. ‘No…’ he hissed.

‘Rhen?’ Mortensen prompted his medic.

‘Head wound,’ Minghella found in the Volscian’s wiry hair. The sergeant would know: he sported a fresh one himself from their crash on Ishtar. ‘Looks like he’s been out for a while. Severe trauma to the neck and throat: beyond that superficial cuts and bruises, most likely from the crash. We need to get him out of here and on some oxygen.’

Voskov shook his head violently, froth bubbling up around the edges of his mouth. He said something but Mortensen couldn’t make it out and leaned in closer.

‘Sir, what is it?’

Again, a rasping emptiness.

‘Gil?’

‘Leave here!’ the Volscian managed finally.

Suddenly the deck was lit up by a las blast. Voskov’s head fell back and his hand clattered to the floor. In it Krieg found his own hellpistol, slipped out of his holster. While the storm-troopers had fussed over their commanding officer, he’d taken the weapon from Krieg’s person and got the muzzle to his temple.

The Redemption Corps stared at each other in disbelief.

‘I…’ Krieg began, but there wasn’t time for explanations or regrets. Mortensen shook his head at the commissar.

‘Trap,’ he said with conviction. He didn’t have to wait long for confirmation of his suspicions.

‘Footsteps. Large number this time: closing with caution,’ Sarakota announced.

Mortensen span around, taking a fleeting three-hundred and sixty degree glance at the surrounding darkness. He re-primed the hellgun. ‘Remember we’re looking for friendlies in here.’

‘I see ’em!’ Greco cried out, demonstrating none of Sarakota’s self control. The muzzle of his hellgun flashed as he let off a stream of fire into the empty gloom. Conklin, Kynt and several others joined in, the master sergeant’s bolter in particular, puncturing holes in the darkness.

When nothing appeared Mortensen ordered, ‘Stand fast!’ The automatic fire died but Greco’s hellgun was still dribbling short bursts at the shadows and Uncle had to thump him in the shoulder to get him to stop. ‘What’d you see?’ the major demanded as soon as the corpsman had finished.

‘S-S-Skins, I think,’ the spire breaker told him.

‘You think?’ Vedette marvelled.

‘They were vrekkin’ green. I don’t know.’

‘Kota?’

‘Still closing.’

Krieg was still on the floor with the dead Volscian commander, flashing his lamp in the direction of the sighting. Mortensen snatched the fat arc lamp straight out of Krieg’s outstretched hand and falling into a crouch himself, skimmed the lamp across the chamber. The light travelled far, carried along by the viscous brown tar coating the walls and floor. Suddenly it struck something and flipped, bathing the area in a moment of radiance.

Damn.

The chamber was full of creatures. Armoured and huge, they were all claws and tusks, arms outstretched like fast-moving crustaceans. And green.

Mortensen’s mind shot back to his encounter in the darkness of the Mortis Maximus. What he’d glimpsed for merely a second on the artillery deck of the Titan was staring him in the face now, intent on ripping it off with tooth and claw. Long experience had prepared the major for first contact with many heinous alien races, but these creatures seemed neither one thing nor another. They were brawny and muscular like orks, but moved with an alien dexterity and grace that shot fear into the heart of every man and woman in the chamber.

‘Flamer! Now!’ Mortensen roared.

When the blast didn’t come, the major turned, half expecting Eszcobar to have fled. He wouldn’t have blamed him. The sketch the lamp had painted in the deep darkness of the chamber was enough to strike cold fear into the chests of all who had witnessed it.

As it was, he was still having difficulty priming the gas reservoir and setting the regulator. The deathworlder had been so preoccupied with the drama on the deck that he hadn’t noticed the pilot flame flicker and die in the unimpeded draught of the chamber. As the storm-trooper fingered the flamer furiously, it let out an angry chugging sound, followed by a whining hiss.

Rounds ricocheted off green carapace as Vedette and her master sergeant attempted to lay down suppressing fire. The creatures came forth in a wave and seemed completely undeterred by the Redemption Corps assault.

‘Get that weapon operational, trooper!’ Krieg yelled at the stunned Eszcobar, but the weapon merely churned promethium. Mortensen hammered the advancing line of monsters with everything his hellgun had to offer before hastily adjusting the power setting and giving them some more.

Kynt shot past him, eyepatch askew, squinting with his good eye and peppering the green horde with automatic fire from his pistol. Mortensen grabbed the back of his master-vox and tore the comms-officer back, burying a salvo of fire in the encroaching left flank.

The cadet-commissar was suddenly beside him, the steaming barrel of his hellpistol resting across one shoulder and lancing the mob with bolts.

‘We’re not going to find anyone in this,’ he managed between blasts, giving the major the moments he needed to re-orient his weapon. Mortensen nodded bitterly and went back to work with the angry hellgun.

‘Fall back!’ he bellowed. ‘Back to the bulkhead.’ Between them, Krieg, Mortensen and Conklin pushed the storm-troopers back. Vedette and Minghella were already supporting a gutted Uncle between them, one of the creatures having bounded impossibly at them, ripping into the demolitions man with its dagger-like claws. Golliant messed the beast up with a close-range hammering from the autocannon, leaving the blasted creature twitching on the deck as the hulking adjutant retreated.

The autocannon was singing over the storm-troopers now, keeping the worst of the swarm at bay with the two snipers adding to the mayhem with crashing fire from their Hellshots.

Sweeping the darkness with his rifle the major turned and pushed Sass and a pistol-reloading Kynt into the retreat, only for all three of them to come face to face with more monsters, who’d scuttled up behind them. ‘Close quarters!’ Mortensen bawled, but before he knew it one of the barbed bastards was among them, slicing through armour and slashing Sass across the face as the adjutant swung his rifle around to bear. It snapped wildly at Kynt as the comms-officer struggled to wedge in a new clip in his autopistol. Mortensen swung his rifle at the creature like a bat, but the stock simply bounced off the alien’s plated skull. A ribbed hand found its way to the makeshift club and snatched it free of the major’s grip. Before he could blink the green fiend had slashed it in half with the sabre claws on another limb, the one piece falling uselessly to the deck – the other sparking and trailing from his hellpack powerline.

The major kicked the heel of one booted foot at the beast but it merely retreated, sweeping its jaws past the still struggling Kynt, ripping out the trooper’s throat. Mortensen’s furious face was sprayed with warm blood from the fountaining wound.

Demonstrating a stone cold understanding that Kynt was finished, the armoured, puce-green thing was coming at him again, without the comms officer’s body even having chance to reach the slick floor. Mortensen was ready for the beast also, having sloughed off his hellpack and pitching it at the monster with both hands.

The alien menace shrugged off the impact, talons flashing forward, but the pack had provided Mortensen with the opportunity to slip a storm blade from his thigh-sheath and he batted the wicked claw aside. Another came and Mortensen span into the creature’s embrace, grabbing its outstretched wrist with his gauntleted hand and lopping its appendage off at the trunk.

Again the monster retracted, retreating behind its barbed grapplers. Light and brains suddenly erupted from its forehead, the green monstrosity shuddering and falling. Commissar Krieg was standing behind, the shimmering muzzle of his hellpistol aimed along the length of his tensed arm. Krieg seemed to notice something, squinting into the darkness, and shot off through the mayhem. There was little time for celebration.

Golliant’s arc of explosive death swept by, driving back the closing gauntlet of alien bodies. Several determined slayers braved the shower of slugs and sparks, vaulting at the throng of storm-troopers, instinctively exploiting opportunities and holes in the fire pattern.

Uncle’s high-pitched shrieks echoed around the ancient vastness of the chamber, the demolitions man dragged off into the darkness and run through with razor-sharp claws. Clutching his own gushing belly wound Eszcobar was now dragging Greco: one of the creatures had done something terrible to his back and the trooper could no longer walk unaided. Green carapace was suddenly all over them, monsters leaping above the autocannon’s hailstorm and landing on top of the unfortunate corpsmen.

Vedette and Conklin had been carrying a mauled Sass but had been forced to lay both hands on their weapons during the unrelenting assault. The two of them beat the armoured forms with the protrusion mags and grips of their autopistols but as the malformed faces emerged from the armoured shell of torsos swamping Opech, it was clear the tribesman had been savaged and was dead.

‘Back!’ Vedette ordered.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Greco agreed, grimacing at the agony lancing through his back. But there was nowhere to go. The aliens were all around them and around the aliens was cold, harsh darkness. The shadows just kept spawning wave upon concentric wave of monsters.

Mortensen buried his storm blade in the armoured skull of a passing alien, but the thing barely seemed fazed, shaking the survival knife free. Reaching for his autopistol Mortensen brought the fat side arm level with the creature’s disturbing face. The weapon bucked as it disgorged its explosive package, taking the alien’s head with it into the darkness. Feverishly plugging green bodies left and right, Mortensen blasted a path through to Pontiff Preed.

Unarmed, the gargantuan priest had been able to contribute little to the suppression fire that had so far kept the full weight of the mob from swamping them. Up close and personal the huge ecclesiarch came into his own. A red mist had descended on Preed’s contorted features. Charging like a cannonball he blasted into a throng of the vicious creatures intent on overwhelming a withdrawing Minghella on a pistol reload.

The green tide parted, alien bodies and limbs flying this way and that. Several went down under the priest’s pummelling fists as he thundered into the enemy line. Sarakota redirected his merciless fire to re-establish the distance and capitalise on Preed’s insane assault. Golliant would have joined them but the steaming autocannon had feed-jammed and the aide was forced to use the ungainly weapon as a club, swinging it in a wide arc and keeping the monsters away from the open bulkhead they’d used to enter the fuel chamber. Krieg was already there, holding the exit with blinding fire from his hellpistol and directing blank and bloody corpsmen through the opening.

One savage beast sailed over Mortensen in one impressive bound, landing squarely on Preed’s fleshy back. His white robes tore and streaked red as the monster dug in with its talons and brought its horrific maw in for the kill. The snaggle-toothed alien opened its jaws and shot an ovipositor at his face. The ecclesiarch strained, desperate that the muscular, eel-like appendage not reach his bloodied lips. Rage burned in his eyes and the priest finally opened his own mouth and chomped on the length of the alien thing with his own teeth. Snapping the horrible appendage free of the monstrous mouth from which it came, Preed spat out the ovipositor and wrenched the creature over one shoulder, bouncing its thick skull twice off the deck before flinging the thing up into the air.

Mortensen had been slamming a fresh magazine into the grip of his chunky pistol when the thing landed in an untidy heap in front of him. Snapping back the autoslide, he blew the thing off its feet as the monster tried to scramble up off the oily deck. Two further storms of shot peeled another pair of green gargoyles from the ecclesiarch’s limbs.

‘Pontiff!’ the major yelled, slapping the priest on one sliced-up shoulder. The giant turned on him, his teeth clenched and his eyes unthinking. ‘Preed!’ Mortensen tried again, before breaking off to blow a hole through the shoulder plate of another monster attempting to scale the man-mountain before him. The alien went somersaulting back into the bloodthirsty crowd. The priest barely noticed. Mortensen leaned in close: ‘Father, we have to leave. Now!’

Grabbing a fistful of bloody robes Mortensen tugged at the giant, leading him towards the bulkhead and the hands and gaunt faces picked out in the shadow of the opening, gesturing wildly at them to hurry. Sarakota had only just abandoned his post and was manhandling his long Hellshot through the doorway, leaving Krieg and Golliant either side of the heavy maintenance duct entrance, the commissar cutting into the hordes with supercharged las-bolts, his aide pounding into the deck anything that got past with the jammed autocannon.

Preed followed, gradually returning to his senses, and even picking up the pace a little to get there ahead of the major, providing enough time to cram his corpulent bulk through. Golliant and Krieg followed, leaving the major alone in the chamber with the bulbous hordes. Mortensen turned for the final few metres, emptying the pistol as fast as he could into the converging masses.

‘Ready?’ he called to the corpsmen waiting in the entrance.

‘Ready,’ Conklin bawled back and Golliant’s tree trunk arms shot out of the bulkhead opening and latched onto the back of the major’s carapace suit. Mortensen shot backwards through doorway and found himself in the cramped passage surrounded by shocked and shivering storm-troopers. Conklin had Greco on the door controls, the spire breaker somehow managing to re-route power and breathe new life into the door mechanism. The bulkhead shot across on its rail and sealed the encroaching army of savage creatures on the other side.

The entire squad went limp, the relief visible on every man and woman’s face. Minghella quickly went to work on a quietly groaning Sass and Vedette secured the passage ahead with her blood-splattered hellgun.

Mortensen expected the hammer of blows on the maintenance bulkhead, but they never came. His eyes flickered around the dim compartment before resting his sweat-beaded brow on the cool metal of the door.

From behind came a strange whoosh and the sigh of lock clearance. Mortensen lifted his head slightly, straining to hear. Suddenly the metal in front of him rolled aside revealing the full horror of alien jaws. Panic swept the passage with Preed and Golliant lending their weight to the rapidly opening door.

‘Greco…’ Conklin began.

The spire breaker swore. ‘They must have severed the hydraulics,’ he blurted in amazement.

The creature’s head vaulted out of the darkness and through the growing opening, snapping at the stunned major. Mortensen brought up his autopistol with a growl and yanked on the trigger. The unsatisfactory click of an empty firing mechanism filled the compartment. With sudden urgency the major re-worked the slide and tried again but the pistol was spent.

Claws and fingers from the chamber beyond filled the aperture, intent on forcing the door open. Mortensen pounded on the alien digits with the grip of his weapon but made little impression on the armoured knuckles. Conklin and Greco – who was fading fast and slumped against the wall – were arguing about the door mechanism, the corpsman professing that there was nothing he could do with it now. Meanwhile it took all of the strength of the huge pontiff and Krieg’s aide combined just to hold the bulkhead where it was.

A sudden hiss at the back of the compartment grabbed the major’s attention. As Krieg and Sarakota parted he saw Eszcobar with his back to the wall of the compartment, the pilot flame burning victoriously at the end of the deathworlder’s flamer. Pushing Conklin back away from the door and shielding his face, Mortensen told him: ‘Burn it.’

The Autegan came forward, sticking the barrel in through a space between the gnashing alien jaws and grasping claws and bathed the bodies beyond in a raging stream of thick flame.

The response was instantaneous. Claws and faces disappeared, as did the weight on the door. Pulling back the deathworlder allowed Preed and Golliant to slam the bulkhead shut once again. Beyond the inferno raged.

Heavy breathing and involuntary smiles filled the passage.

Greco put into words what everyone else was thinking: ‘What the vrekkin’ hell were they?’

‘They’re genestealers,’ Krieg answered coldly.

It took a moment for the corpsmen to soak up the concept with their adrenaline-addled brains.

Mortensen nodded: ‘Hybrids.’

‘Ork-genestealer hybrids?’ Greco echoed, racing to catch up. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Unfortunately not, my son,’ Preed rumbled from the back, back to his old bookish self. ‘Why, we’ve known for a long time that genestealer races use human hosts to pass on genetic material. Why not other races? Orks are amongst the most widespread races in the galaxy.’

‘The genestealers could have already been on board the hulk, when it came out of warpspace in a greenskin system,’ Krieg hypothesised. ‘A greenskin salvage team were probably infected when they tried to get the ship operational again. It’s not that hard to imagine.’

‘It explains everything,’ Mortensen admitted grimly. ‘System infiltration. The cultists on Illium. The roks and teleporters… Greenskin tech is notoriously unreliable – but imagine the brute hordes guided by the cold logic and singular purpose of genestealers. You’d have the best – or very worst – of both voidspawn species.’

‘And Spetzghast,’ the cadet-commissar added. ‘Cross-species infection. The psionic fields produced by the different races would play havoc with one another. Add humans to the mix and well, no wonder you’ve got spree murders and general mayhem across the system.’ Krieg shook his head. ‘The orks and their allies have been importing reproductive pods with common agricultural freight. Even without the orbital bombardment, this system’s doomed.’

‘Not just this system,’ Preed interjected. ‘This isn’t a greenskin warlord on a roll here. The cold alien discipline of the ‘stealers combined with greenskin resilience and numbers. Think of the systems that could already have been infiltrated.’

‘Sir,’ Vedette addressed the major; the Mordian, as always focused on the mission and less on the trivia. ‘What about the targets?’

Mortensen bit at his bottom lip. He was thinking of Voskov and what they must have done to him and the mind-aching discipline it must have taken to do what he did.

Decided, Mortensen announced: ‘We’re leaving them.’

‘Sir,’ the Mordian continued with undying professionalism. ‘The commodore wasn’t far–’

‘You can’t help them,’ Krieg told her.

‘With all due respect–’

‘They’ll be infected, my child,’ Preed assured her with paternal benevolence.

‘Boss,’ Conklin said with his ear to the compartment wall. Mortensen joined him at the door. More strange noises were emanating from beyond, this time something bigger than a clearing door mechanism. Eszcobar’s flamer had driven the monsters back and hopefully had fried a couple in the process. What Mortensen was hearing, on the other hand, equated to hundreds of mournful alien shrieks swallowed in the boom of a full-scale inferno. There was also some thrashing.

Mortensen pulled away from the tarnished metal, hawked and spat on the bulkhead. Anxiously he rubbed at the spot with the bottom of his fist, revealing an ancient designation plaque: ‘Maintenance Duct C – Reserve Fuel Tank.’

Mortensen could barely imagine what it must have been like in there: monsters having their shadows burnt into the walls and floor as the fuel vapour erupted around them. The Redemption Corps had more urgent problems. The bulkhead began to grow hot to the touch and tremble on its rails.

‘Go, go, go, go!’ the major urged, pushing the storm-troopers out of the compartment and away from the door. Moments later the bulkhead was blasted out of its seals, blue flame fanning out across the ceiling. The corpsmen hit the deck, shielding themselves from the intense heat. Only Mortensen could stand the unbearable temperature, feeling nothing as he did, and pulled the last of his men through a second bulkhead. Gritting his teeth, the soot-stained officer slammed his shoulder against the hatch and manually rolled it aside.

As the air in the corridor cooled, the troopers staggered tentatively to their feet cursing and complaining.

‘Quiet!’ Sarakota suddenly cried putting his hand up and twisting his head left and right.

‘What can you hear?’ Mortensen demanded.

The sniper was about to reply but the words died in his throat. He merely looked up in horror. A pair of grapnel-like claws shot out of a ceiling vent behind them, hooking themselves under Eszcobar’s jaw and tearing him up off his feet. The hybrid had problems getting the death-worlder up through the opening at first, with the Autegan refusing to let go of his bulky flamer. The corpsmen were largely back on the floor but Preed and Sarakota were near enough to grab for the trooper’s flailing boots. Eszcobar’s spasming trigger finger caused his flamer to chug sporadic puffs of flame wildly around the room, forcing both men to duck.

Krieg was better placed from behind and leapt for the corpsman’s rapidly disappearing legs. The creature wasn’t going to release its prize that easily, however. Eszcobar let out an awful roar of pain and frustration that echoed horribly around the vent system. There was a crack and a gush from above. It looked like Krieg had had a bucket of blood poured over him. The deathworlder’s arms went limp and the ungainly flame unit fell to the floor. With this the Autegan’s body was tugged upwards, taking Krieg’s head and right arm up into the vent. Now Krieg’s Commissariat trousers were flailing, his left hand patting furiously for his hellpistol.

This time it was Golliant who got to the vent, grabbing one of the commissar’s leather boots, preventing Krieg ascending any further. Mortensen dived for the second, swinging from the commissar’s calf, hoping the extra weight and momentum would drag him down. A similarly horrific roar was building in the cadet-commissar’s chest as the two soldiers wrestled him down.

Something gave and all three men tumbled to the floor. As Mortensen pushed himself off the deck he was stunned to realise that Krieg had lost his right arm at the shoulder: the slashed leather greatcoat hid the worst of the gushing stump, torn flesh and sheared bone. Sarakota swooped under the vent, pushing the business end of his rifle up through the opening, plugging round after explosive round up at the creature. Finally the rifle ran dry and the hybrid’s strange, alien screeching died away, the commissar’s amputated limb falling back out of the vent with a light thud.

‘Vrek that!’ Greco declared shaking his head and hugging his hellgun to his chest. Keeping his injured back to the wall he sidled along the corridor away from the gaping vent. Ordinarily Mortensen would order him back but had to admit that the corpsman had the right idea. They had to get back to Vertigo.

‘Sergeant, get ’em up,’ Mortensen ordered, looking at Krieg’s vacant and mangled face. ‘Back to the bird, double time it.’

Minghella was already up to his elbows in the commissar’s gore.

‘Rhen, we’ve got to go,’ Mortensen insisted firmly.

‘Got to clamp this artery or he’ll bleed out well before we reach the bird,’ grumbled Minghella, half to himself.

‘Better him than us, sergeant,’ Mortensen barked.

‘Got it!’ Minghella announced, precious moments later.

Vedette and Sergeant Conklin started barking orders and encouragement, pulling the injured Sass and Greco to their feet. Minghella took the arm of the dazed and bleeding Necromundan over his shoulders. Conklin did the same with the spire-breaker.

‘Vedette, we lost the master-vox. See if you can raise Rosenkrantz on the bead,’ the major continued. ‘Inform the flight lieutenant that we will be requiring an immediate evacuation.’

‘Roger that, sir,’ the Mordian returned with bleak enthusiasm.

Mortensen watched a stone-faced Golliant scoop Krieg’s trembling body up from the blood-drenched floor and throw him carefully across one shoulder, the commissar’s detached limb in his other hand. Nodding, Mortensen watched the solemn aide stride up the corridor before turning his attention back to Sarakota who was still pointing his rifle at the ceiling.

Mortensen snatched up Eszcobar’s blood-drenched weapon and handed it to the sniper who abandoned his own spent rifle.

‘Kota, get up front and find me a way back out of this deathtrap.’ Holding the flame unit out in front of him with both hands the corpsman ran from the room. Casting his eyes up at the vent with a shudder, Mortensen did the same.

What was left of the troop hurtled along the foreign passages and oddly-orientated corridors of the alien hulk. The horrific denizens of the place were not the only reason for their hustle. A chain reaction of explosions was now wracking the warped vessel, undoubtedly initiated by their unintentional ignition of the reserve tank fuel vapour. Most of the time the dull detonations seemed to be tearing up the craft in the sections behind the escaping corpsmen, but occasionally they sounded like they were ahead of the fleeing column of soldiers, no doubt down to the vessel’s insane design and construction. The second and even more pressing concern was the fact that a gathering horde of hybrids not far behind them, crawling literally out of the metalwork and flooding the passages with danger and death.

Mortensen had never been so glad to see the Vertigo – and she was always a welcome sight. Rosenkrantz had brought the bird down further into the cavernous chamber and hovered above the platform still trailing their ropes. Then the damnedest thing happened. Vertigo opened fire.

At first the major thought the pilot was offering cover fire as usual: he expected the vicious hybrids to be on their backs at any moment. The Spectre’s autocannons were shredding the deck in front of their toecaps however, driving the corpsmen back across the platform and into the embrace of their pursuers.

‘Vedette!’ the major bellowed. She hadn’t reached Rosenkrantz and now he was beginning to realise why.

Black-armoured shapes began to appear on the ramp and rappel down the dangling ropes. For the first time Mortensen noticed the damage in the troop bay: the shredded conduits hanging from the ceiling, the faint smoke still escaping from the crew compartment. It looked like the Spectre had been rushed: taken by force with grenades and merciless determination. As the autocannons fell silent it became apparent that Flight Lieutenant Rosenkrantz was no longer in command of the craft, forced down to the edge of the ramp as she was, hands bound behind her back and pushed down onto her knees. Her captor was a slender figure in obsidian armour and a ribbed cape, sporting a crown of twinkling metal pins that were inserted over her entire skull. She was holding a bolt pistol to the pilot’s temple.

If that were not plain enough, two Inquisitorial Valkyries dropped down out of the roof, flanking the captured Spectre and fixing the storm-troopers in their sights. The first wave of battle-sisters down off the ropes were now advancing towards them, helmets on and bolters raised. A Celestian with a skull face-plate came boldly forward, the barrel of her bolt pistol never straying from the major’s chest.

‘Drop your weapons!’ she ordered simply.

The corpsmen looked around at each other, the prospect of abandoning even an empty weapon daunting. Conklin hugged his beloved bolter and threw the gathering one of his replacement fingers. Mortensen pulled the master sergeant’s arm down. Enough of his men had died today for what amounted now to little more than a half-baked idea. The major wouldn’t sacrifice any more just for him and it was clear from what Krieg had told him that was what they were here for.

‘Do as she says,’ the major told them unequivocally; slowly unbuckling his belt and letting it fall to the floor. Vedette hesitated and Mortensen could feel her eyes around the chamber, looking for an opportunity, a chink in the armour. ‘While we still have time, corporal,’ the major added softly.

Slipping out of her hellpack, the Mordian allowed the weapon system to topple to the platform. One by one the Redemption Corps emulated their officer, reluctantly abandoning their weapons and raising their palms, including Golliant, who had to dump Krieg’s beloved hellpistol on the deck.

As one of the sisters came up behind the major and began to bind his wrists behind his back, the skull-faced Celestian drifted forward, resting the muzzle of her ivory inlaid bolt pistol on his chest.

‘Your mistress is going to wish that she’d never met me,’ Mortensen told the sister with menace.

‘On the contrary,’ the Celestian came back confidently. ‘She’s been looking forward to this for a very long time.’

IV

The Incarcetorium was in chaos: fleeing security staff; escaping corpsmen; a full-scale prison riot and battle-sisters fighting for their lives.

The only route through the complex that Krieg’s time locks had left secure was the maximum-security subway, leading between the oubliette sub-section that held the incarcetorium’s most dangerous criminals and the compound landing strip.

Sidling along the subway wall, his right arm still strapped to his chest where Crayne had re-attached and bound it and the ivory-inlaid bolt pistol gripped firmly in his left, Krieg waited and listened behind a sharp corner. He was finally rewarded by the march of boots on the rockcrete and the sound of something being scraped along the floor.

Krieg waited. And waited.

+Koulick Krieg…+ Like a jackhammer inside his mind. The inquisitor was inside his head again. Not this again, the commissar thought. Not now.

+…Kriiiiieg+

Blood fell from his nose in a brief, thick stream, striking the rockcrete floor with a splat. The hand around the pistol began to shake, but not in the way he’d come to expect. His whole arm felt pumped for action: the adrenaline burning through his veins. Instead of the disorientation and sickness that overwhelmed him before, he felt completely in tune with his surroundings: like he was capable of anything, despite his pitiable physical condition. His heart flooded with the desire to kill. The pistol felt like it was going to explode in his hand if he didn’t sate its desire to end lives with it. The commissar’s eyes narrowed. This wasn’t common bloodlust or battle fury. Only one life would do.

Finally two sisters rounded the corner, dragging something between them. The first couldn’t have even seen him. His bolt pistol simply slid forward along the wall and spat several rounds of explosive-tip straight through her temple. The second had a millisecond to come to terms with the very definite fact that she was going to die. Instead she decided to go for something on her belt, dropping the load she was carrying with her compatriot. It didn’t make any difference to Krieg. He still spread the contents of her devout little mind across the subway wall.

It was only then the commissar realised that they had in fact been carrying the major and that he’d come very close to blowing the Gomorrian’s head off. At first he thought he had, Mortensen’s body lying as it had fallen in a naked heap. He wasn’t moving.

Stepping out fully from behind the corner, Krieg presented himself to the remaining battle-sisters. Diamanta Santhonax stood there, a vision in her obsidian armour and dramatic cloak, the pins adorning her shaven head glimmering in the dim light of the corridor. Her thin lips curled unreadably. Krieg brought up the bolt pistol. It was her life he needed.

The canoness’s bodyguard stepped out from behind her. As usual the odd-looking fourteen year old was clutching the adamantium relic of their order – the crusader shield of St. Valeria the Younger. Her eyes, always seeming to Krieg just a little too far apart, flashed with a feline intelligence but the rest of her face was just a lifeless mask. She was nimble, even in her ancient armour, and broke into a run, darting up the subway at the commissar, her ermine-lined cloak flowing behind her.

Instead Krieg was forced to turn the wrath of his side arm on the henchwoman, but she had a well-practiced fashion of hiding her agile little form fully behind the shield as she rocketed up the passage towards him. Krieg hammered the relic time and again, hoping age had weakened the ancient shield, but the adamantium soaked up the punishment. Sparks flared off the metal, the bolts not even leaving the hint of a blemish on the gleaming surface.

In seconds the ammunition was spent and the Celestian leapt the final few metres, using the shield to batter Krieg into the wall. She was light, but the artefact wasn’t and the impact made the cadet-commissar cry out as the shield pressed his strapped arm into his chest and his chest into the wall.

Krieg had no time to get over the burning throb rattling up and down the delicate, re-attached limb. The subway was echoing with the chugging bleat of the short chainsabre the henchwoman had drawn from behind the shield. The sister gunned the sabre and flew at Krieg, swinging the blur of wicked barbs in well-practiced manoeuvres. As Krieg ducked and weaved like a drunkard, the sister span and swung, carving up the wall in plumes of dust-shredded rockcrete. Krieg realised that he couldn’t keep up with the furious assault when the chainblade came in low and wide and ripped across the flesh of his thigh. He clutched the deep wound with his good hand and staggered into a clumsy evasion.

The sabre came straight at him, the intended target his solar plexus. His awkward turn managed to grant him the precious centimetres he needed and the force intended to take the sword through his body actually put the sabre deep into the wall by his hip. Krieg knew he couldn’t waste the opportunity and snatched at the sister’s face with his bloodied hand. For his trouble the henchwoman brought the adamantium edge of her shield across his jaw, slamming the back of his skull into the wall. She brought it back and forth in this way, sloshing the commissar’s head around like a toy until he released his grip and crumbled to the floor.

Putting one boot up against the wall she gunned the sabre handle once more and heaved the struggling chainblade out of its rockcrete scabbard. Krieg heard the blade slow to an idle chug as the sister held it over him. Looking up Krieg saw her glance at Santhonax for approval to kill him. Santhonax stepped over the still, naked body of Zane Mortensen and clapped her gauntlets together in cruel appreciation.

‘Cadet-Commissar Krieg,’ she grinned nastily. ‘I gave you a simple task: I asked you to kill one man. I gave you the authority and opportunity and you failed miserably. Please forgive me if I don’t seem a little more concerned.’

‘Any thug can kill,’ Krieg echoed from their earlier conversation.

‘And yet you seem to have trouble doing it.’

‘I’m happy to disappoint you,’ the commissar croaked. ‘But tell that to your battle-sisters and the pilots of your carriers. I didn’t have too much trouble with them.’

The canoness’s grin waned: ‘If that’s the truth then they’re even more pathetic than you are and therefore don’t deserve to live.’ She nodded coldly at the henchwoman. ‘End this fool’s feeble existence.’

The chainsabre roared. The commissar steeled himself for the furious blade. He flashed his eyes once more at the prone major, surprised to find him not so prone anymore. Swinging his legs around for momentum and his lower back off the floor, Mortensen brutally hamstrung the canoness, sweeping her boots clean out from under her. He’d picked the moment perfectly. So unexpected was the attack that Santhonax fell straight back, unable to break the fall with her gauntlets, and smacked the back of her head sickeningly against the rockcrete. The adamantium pins found their mark, hammering straight through the skull and into the brain.

The chainsabre died in the henchwoman’s fingers as she watched her mistress fit and spasm on the floor, with blood frothing and dribbling out of the corner of her mouth. Mortensen squirmed around, holding his meaty elbow above her nose in an open threat. One move from the Celestian and the storm-trooper would drive his arm through the battle-sister’s face and drive the pins in flush to the bone, killing Santhonax instantly.

‘You have your orders,’ Santhonax coughed with fanatical determination at the henchwoman.

Bolstered by the canoness’s insane certainty, the battle-sister brought the hungry blade back to life above the cadet-commissar. Once again, Krieg prepared himself for the buzzing caress of weapon’s serrated teeth. For the second time in as many moments, Mortensen saved his life.

Tearing the canoness’s tapered pistol out of its belt holster, the major blasted at the henchwoman, the las-bolts slashing at the side of her face and forcing her to bring up the crusader shield. The final few impacted uselessly on the artefact, but as the shield lowered Krieg could see the major had caught her several times on the cheek and once in the eye. Instead of the usual cauterised holes the commissar had come to expect from a laspistol, the wounds were merely light burns, although the one in her eye had clearly ruptured something.

The chainsabre clattered to the floor and the heavy adamantium shield came down, dragging the svelte body of the henchwoman down with it like an anchor. Her one good panic-stricken eye jumped around the room, but her body lay awkward and motionless as though she were paralysed.

Mortensen turned back to the canoness, his elbow still hovering above her face. She gritted her perfect teeth and willed him on.

‘You said you’d kill me.’

‘What, and prove your sick fanatical fantasies true: whatever fails to destroy us makes us stronger?’ The major hawked and spat at the wall. ‘Well, I rather think to let you live.’

The major got up and walked unsteadily towards the henchwoman and ripped the ermine-lined cloak from her back and began to fashion an improvised sarong.

‘I watched your world burn!’ Santhonax screeched.

Mortensen nodded at the ceiling; at the tonnes of spinning rock freefalling towards the doomed Spetzghast.

‘Don’t worry,’ the Gomorrian told her. ‘You’ll burn all right. But not by my hand.’ He went to walk away.

Krieg picked up the chainsabre and limped over to the shaking body of the canoness, using the wall for support. He fired the blade mechanism and let the weapon kick over in his good hand. The desire to slay still ached inside him. He stood astride the battle-sister’s heaving chest, her livid eyes boring into him.

‘I, of course,’ the cadet-commissar informed her, ‘cannot offer any such reassurances.’ And with one fluid flourish of the buzzing blade, her head came away from her shoulders and rolled across the floor. The intention was his: the canoness had betrayed him and was clearly a dangerous heretic. The action was not, however. He’d never swung a sword like that before. It was as if someone else had guided his movements – a puppeteer willing on his puppet. Clearly Aurek Herrenvolk concurred with Krieg’s judgement and had deemed, in his own unsettling way and in his own disturbing fashion, that Diamanta Santhonax no longer deserved to live.

Even though he knew in his heart that the Emperor’s work had been done, Krieg was horrified at the alien entity that had reached into the deepest recesses of his mind and had so easily influenced it. Something still did not feel quite right but there was little the commissar could do to ease his troubled mind and so he took refuge in the hot simplicity of casual revenge.

As the commissar closed on the paralysed henchwoman, the major called up the passage at him: ‘She’s just a child, Krieg.’

The commissar shrugged. ‘I very much doubt that,’ he told Mortensen, mulling it over, before finally bringing the savage chainsabre to a full stop. He tossed the blade at the Celestian’s feet with the beloved shield of her order.

Dragging Krieg’s good arm across his powerful shoulders Mortensen helped the commissar limp and lurch down to the elevator at the bottom. Throwing Krieg inside, Mortensen stabbed at the button with his finger.

‘Think we can still get off this dustball?’ the cadet-commissar asked.

‘No,’ Mortensen told him honestly. ‘But it’s never stopped me trying before.’

V

The sky was black and oppressive. Colossal ork roks were everywhere, breaching the cloud cover and sapping the air of light and possibility. A cataclysm was unfolding before their eyes: decimation of such magnitude that it was sure not to leave a soul alive on the planet surface.

Rosenkrantz had heard the thunder of distant impacts roll across the murderous horizon and watched the mushroom plumes of ash, dirt and incinerated humanity rocket back at the doom-laden heavens. Purity Control hovered above the incarcetorium landing strip, with what remained of the Redemption Corps safely strapped into the troop bay, waiting for the pilot’s decision to surge skyward.

‘Just give them a few more minutes,’ Vedette urged across the vox. She was down on the open ramp with a bruised and beaten Conklin, watching for any signs of life on the strip.

‘I don’t even know if Deliverance will still be there,’ Rosenkrantz returned. ‘In all likelihood Captain Waldemar has broken orbit. Can you really see a carrier negotiating this?’

‘We stay,’ came the storm-trooper’s unequivocal reply.

‘I’ve held on this long haven’t I?’ the pilot insisted. Her mind was made up. ‘But every moment we wait brings that gamble closer to a certainty. I appreciate your loyalty, but we can’t risk everyone just for two men.’ Rosenkrantz’s finger moved across a nearby stud. ‘Ramp closing.’

‘I see them!’ Vedette cut in, with more emotion in her voice than Rosenkrantz had ever heard from her.

The pilot looked down over the Valkyrie’s nose and at the open elevator doors. Two figures stumbled out amongst the wreckage of the landing pad: Krieg looked like hell in his ragged greatcoat and Mortensen, naked as the day he was born, bar some makeshift loincloth that flapped around his thighs, stomped with grim determination towards the bird. She swooped in as close as she dared to allow both men to clamber on.

‘They’re on board,’ Conklin confirmed across the vox, closing the ramp.

‘Strap in,’ Rosenkrantz warned them.

‘Let me guess,’ Mortensen crackled across the vox. It was surprisingly good to hear his voice. ‘We’ll be experiencing some turbulence.’

Rosenkrantz stared up through the canopy at the gathering gloom and nodded to herself. The pilot wrenched the stick towards her and vaulted for the boiling firmament.

The lively little Inquisitorial carrier answered well, rocketing away from the ill-fated planet. Like an iceberg emerging from a fog bank a gargantuan asteroid plummeted towards them. Clouds rolled away from the beast, electrostatic charges leaping between the ork rok and the churning atmosphere. It was like a mountain falling out of the sky, with its own geography and of more concern, its own heavy weapons batteries.

The airspace around the asteroid shook as a thousand exploding shells ripped the sky to pieces. Gentle course corrections became violent tugs on the stick, throwing Purity Control to port and then to starboard, diving and weaving around the artillery blastwaves.

Reasoning that it would only take a single hit to cripple them, if not blow them out of the heavens, Rosenkrantz turned the Valkyrie on its side and threw it at the ork rok. Closing the distance made it even harder for the guns on the plunging craft to acquire the carrier. As the pilot took the aircraft closer still, deeper into the natural canyons and craters of the asteroid, the passing cannons fell silent. The Jopallian allowed herself a little smirk. That was clever.

Suddenly the rock face fell away and the Valkyrie was in the darkness of the open sky. What the pilot hadn’t allowed for was the exhaust vortex created by the rok’s mainstage engine. Purity Control shook violently, sparks flying from the cockpit instrumentation. The engines choked and like an insect batted aside by a giant invisible hand, the aircraft span away. Fighting for breath and control of her senses, Rosenkrantz pulled the aircraft out of the sickening rotation. Allowing the Valkyrie to fall she swiftly shut down the cockpit’s overloaded instrumentation and sat there for as long as she dared, listening to the atmospheric howl of the aircraft falling tail-first back through the tumultuous cloud.

Rapidly re-activating the systems, she heard the alarmed calls of the storm-troopers across the vox. As the engines screamed back online, so the panicked shouting subsided. As she blasted skyward two more behemoths hove into view. One of the ork roks was rolling across the firmament, coming in much shallower than its neighbour. Rosenkrantz banked but the inevitable happened and she didn’t have the moments or manoeuvrability to do anything about it. The two asteroids crashed, setting in motion a series of explosions in and around the greenskin roks. Shafts and splinters of rock fell towards the Valkyrie in a deadly shower, the fragments gaining in velocity and lethality.

The pilot had to think fast. Flicking the safety off the stick weapons controls, Rosenkrantz feverishly fingered the firing stud, launching salvo after salvo of rockets from each wing. The barrage tore away from the Valkyrie, striking the first of the fragments and initiating a column of explosions through the cascade. Surging for the blasts, the pilot put the nose of the aircraft through the dissipating epicentre of the column, the flaming vapour washing over the canopy armaplas.

Things were no better on the other side. The two asteroids were in full collision now, the smaller irregular companion rolling across its larger compatriot, smashing the violent rocky landscape inbetween and threatening to steamroller Purity Control in the process. This, Rosenkrantz could not allow. Her response was simple. Weaponry and manoeuvres could not help her here. All she had left was the greasy, raw speed of the aircraft. Hammering the velocity controls she pushed the Valkyrie to its limits, streaking up the length of the colossal ork rok, with the craggy tidal wave of destruction cascading towards them.

‘Come on, come on, come on…’ she repeated therapeutically, squeezing every bit of power from the thundering engines. For a moment Rosenkrantz allowed herself the fantasy that they were going to make it, but her heart turned to stone as another dark shape appeared above, creating an artificial ceiling and a very definite end to the Valkyrie’s dramatic run.

The cockpit suddenly lit up with blinding white light. Cannons were firing somewhere and fat beams of unbearable energy were cutting across Purity Control’s flight path.

A shaft of natural gloom struck the canopy as the two roks parted, the smaller trailing a smouldering path of wreckage, the victim of the intense attack. Rosenkrantz was about to hit the airbrakes and bank towards the opening chasm when something struck her about the silhouette above. The angular lines and wedge-like prow, the lance batteries and carrier decks. Deliverance. The tiny carrier was down there in all the cosmic turmoil of the upper atmosphere, a sitting duck: its feeble armament and propulsion systems working double time to keep the thousands of Guardsmen and Navy crew out of harm’s way.

Something cool caressed her face and blotted her helmet visor. Overwhelmed by their excruciatingly narrow escape or simply glad to see the ship, the pilot couldn’t tell, but she was crying: something she hadn’t done since leaving Jopall. Transmitting their clearance codes and coasting the Valkyrie onto the flight deck approach vector, Rosenkrantz loosened her grip on the controls. She felt the circulation return to her fingers and hit the vox-stud. The troop bay was silent. Expectant.

‘We’re home,’ she announced simply. And allowed the rest of the relief to roll down her cheeks.

VI

The observation deck was empty.

At first it had been crammed with off-duty Navy crew and Patricians eager to get a morbid glimpse: to see a world die before their glassy, uncomprehending eyes. The Redemption Corps had had their fill of apocalyptic visions, however, and were not to be found on the observation deck. Most of them were restricted to the Orlop where Minghella fussed over their numerous wounds and incapacities, patching them up for the demands of their next mission – it was the Redemption Corps way. A virgin Guardsman might expect a mercifully swift death in the ranks of the Emperor’s bastion, but the invaluable skills and experience of a veteran storm-trooper were always in demand.

Mortensen didn’t spare himself the pain of the observation deck, though. In fact, he found himself indulging in long, lonely walks there, drinking it all in. Seeing Spetzghast but dreaming of Gomorrah: spinning through the frozen, empty void. In those long hours he relived the fate of his home world and the nightmare of what he now understood to be not some random cosmological accident, but a cold and calculating attack on the human race: an opening salvo in the war that was to come, with first blood going to the enemies of the Imperium.

Spetzghast was a broiling, black ball spinning around a dying star, with a thin girdle of equally doomed moons for company. The major could barely imagine the hell down there. The air, choking and heavy – a black smog of soot and dust; the geological chaos of earthquakes and flooding; blazing cities and rotting corpses, the plagues of scavenging coot imps, picking the flesh off the dead and the dying. And everywhere the alien intruder, infecting and enslaving.

He had survived, however. Again, he’d walked out of the apocalypse. Given men like Lijah Meeks more excuses to fan the fires of their faith. Lived to fight another day. He thought long on Santhonax and her insanity: her Istvaanian beliefs and her desire to do good by ill. He couldn’t bring himself to think of her as part of the alien conspiracy – her own particular brand of lunacy had testified to that. She had undoubtedly been played by someone or something whose desire to test humanity to the limit surpassed even hers. To not just craft heroes from the raw stuff of adversity but to eradicate the very Imperium from the face of the galaxy.

Ultimately his survival and that of his men had rested little on his shoulders. Rosenkrantz and Krieg had facilitated their escape on the doomed world below and the good commissar had been wise enough to ensure their escape route had remained open for as long as possible.

Mortensen couldn’t be sure that with so many of his men off the carrier that Commander Waldemar wouldn’t try to press his advantage, up anchor and leave them there to die. In all the chaos and confusion of the greenskin assault, who would know? Krieg must have thought the same thing because before boarding Vertigo he had orderlies relocate Regimental Commissar Udeskee’s oxygen tent to Waldemar’s bridge. Deliverance was going nowhere. Try arguing the merits of mortal danger with a man accelerating towards decrepitude and death. Undoubtedly Waldemar would have tried.

The flotilla and the spindly Exchequer space station were gone, smashed into oblivion in the descending turmoil of the colossal greenskin bombardment. All that was left now made up the dismal numbers of their fleeing convoy. A ragged train of bleeding fluyts and crippled sprint traders were shepherded along by the bloated troopship Argus and the superheavy transport the Demiarch Dante. Without frigates and torpedo boats, the Guard transports – by virtue of the fact that they were armed – had been promoted from escortees to escorts. Their only true frigate, the remaining Firestorm-class Frigate Cape Wrath, led from the front under the command of Port Admiral Gordian Ferenc – who by a twist of fate had actually been on a citation hearing aboard the decrepit passenger liner the Witch of Shandor when the Exchequer and the Stang Draak had been destroyed. The Witch was now part of the pitiable procession, limping alongside a battle-scarred rogue trader. Deliverance brought up the rear, her lances watching over the convoy’s sluggish exodus. The greenskins took little interest in them, however. They had wanted to decimate a world and they had done it.

As predicted, the Port Admiral had decided on Aurelius as their destination. There had been favour, especially among the Volscians, to make for Field Marshal Rygotzk at Scythia, but Aurelius was eventually deemed the better bet. The Viper Legion Space Marine Chapter was based there and the system had been the departure point for Enceladus. Now that the crusade was over it was possible that a fairly large contingent of troops and vessels were still hung over there, waiting for despatch orders and reassignment.

Thank the Emperor for Imperial bureaucracy, Mortensen had thought: he’d always been a fan. With the comms blackout still in play and the strange but potent web of psychic interference – undoubtedly an unforeseen boon of the stealer-greenskin interbreeding experiment – making astropathic communication impossible, all the convoy could do was trawl up the Kintessa Gauntlet, under the weight of their precious intelligence. Pushing on, hoping to reach beyond the limits of this strange effect and warn Aurelius in advance, as well as other systems in the Kaligari Cradle deemed at high strategic risk of similar treatment.

The only combat-effective vessel not to remain with the convoy on this long and lonely journey was Krieg’s old ship, the Inquisitorial corvette Dread Sovereign. The vessel had some other dark purpose and with little warning had disappeared, leaving a stranded Krieg on board Deliverance. Port Admiral Ferenc was hardly going to disagree with a member of one of the Ordos and deemed it best to simply let the Dread Sovereign slip away with its much needed weaponry and troops.

The whisper of leather sauntered slowly up behind the major.

‘Commissar,’ Mortensen acknowledged.

Krieg stepped up to the thick plas in silence, his arm still strapped to his chest, lost in the spectacle of loss. ‘Hard to believe we were just down there,’ he murmured finally.

‘Believe it,’ the major told him. ‘It’s gone.’ The storm-trooper sighed. ‘What about you then? Aurelius, then back to the Pontificals?’

The cadet raised a singed eyebrow, clearly surprised that the major knew of his origins. Mortensen grunted. ‘I read a file. Let’s not make a big thing out of it.’

Krieg managed a bleak smile and put his hand against the plas, almost touching the void outside. ‘Thought I’d stay. Complete my rotation.’

‘Might take a long time, out here,’ the major warned. ‘If that battle-sister spoke even a word of truth, Gomorrah and Spetzghast are only the beginning. Bellona, Scythia and Calydon Prime are already hit. If the Kintessa Gauntlet is compromised, then the Segmentum floodgates won’t have been opened, they’ll have been blown off their hinges.’

‘I’m in no hurry,’ Krieg stated, pulling down the brim of his cap to his eyes. ‘After all – the Emperor expects.’

‘He does rather, doesn’t he,’ Mortensen echoed before leaving the observation deck and the young cadet-commissar, framed in the raging apocalypse beyond.