Jonn Brezik clutched his lasgun, muttered prayers under his breath, and hunkered further into the ditch in which he and seven others were crouching as the world shook around them. The weapon in his slightly trembling hands was an M35 M-Galaxy Short: solid, reliable and well maintained, with a fully charged clip, and a scrimshaw he had carved himself hanging off the barrel. He had another four ammo clips on his belt, along with the long, single-edged combat knife that had been his father’s. He was not wearing the old man’s flak vest – not a lot of point, given the state it had ended up in – and as enemy fire streaked overhead again, Jonn began to do the mental arithmetic of whether, right now, he would prefer to be in possession of a gun or functional body armour. The gun could kill the people shooting at him, that was for sure, but he would have to be accurate for that to work, and there didn’t seem to be any shortage of the bastards. On the other hand, even the best armour would give out eventually, if he lacked any way of dissuading the other side from shooting at him–

‘Brezik, you with us?’

Jonn jerked and blinked, then focused on the woman who had spoken. Suran Teeler, sixty years old at least, with a face that looked like a particularly hard rock had been hit repeatedly with another rock. She was staring at him with eyes like dark flint, and he forced himself to nod.

‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.’

‘You sure? Because you seem a bit distracted right now,’ Teeler said. ‘Which, given we’re in the middle of a bastard warzone, is something of a feat.’

‘I’ll be fine, sarge,’ Jonn replied. He closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed. ‘It’s just the dreams again. Feels like I haven’t slept properly for a month.’

‘You’ve been having them too?’ Kanzad asked. He was a big man with a beard like a bush. ‘The sky ripping open?’

Jonn looked over at him. He and Kanzad did not really get on – there was no enmity as such, no blood feud; they just rubbed each other the wrong way – but there was no mockery on the hairy face turned in his direction.

‘Yeah,’ he said slowly. ‘The sky ripping open. Well, not just our sky. All the skies. What does that mean, if we’re both having the same dream?’

‘It means absolute jack-dung until we get out of here alive,’ Teeler snapped. ‘You want to compare dream notes after we’re done, that’s fine. Right now, I want your attention on the matter in hand! And Brezik?’

‘Yes, sarge?’ Jonn replied, clutching his lasgun a little tighter.

‘Stop calling me “sarge”.’

‘Sorry, s– Sorry. Force of habit.’

A throaty drone grew in the air behind them, and Jonn looked up to see lights in the night sky, closing the distance at a tremendous speed. The drone grew into a whine, and then into a roar as the aircraft shot overhead: two Lightnings flanking an Avenger, all three heading further into the combat zone.

‘That’s the signal!’ Teeler yelled, scrambling to her feet with a swiftness that belied her years. ‘Go, go, go!’

Jonn leaped up and followed her, clambering out of the ditch and charging across the chewed-up ground beyond. He desperately tried to keep up some sort of speed without twisting an ankle in the great ruts and gouts torn into the earth by bombardments, and the repeated traversing of wheeled and tracked vehicles. He could see other groups just like his on either side, screaming their battle cries as they advanced on the enemy that were being savaged by aerial gunfire from their fighters. Jonn raised his voice to join in, adrenaline and fear squeezing his words until they came out as little more than a feral scream:

‘FOR THE EMPEROR!’

Streams of fire began spewing skywards as the enemy finally got their anti-aircraft batteries online. Jonn heard the thump-thump-thump of Hydra quad autocannons, and one of the fighters – a Lightning, he thought, although it was hard to tell at this distance, and in the dark – came apart in a flower of flame, and scattered itself over the defenders below.

‘Keep moving!’ Teeler yelled as one or two in their group slowed slightly. ‘We’ve got one shot at this!’

Jonn pressed on, despite the temptation to hang back and let others take the brunt of the enemy gunfire. Presenting the defenders with targets one at a time would only ensure they all died: this massed rush, so there were simply too many of them to kill in time, was the only way to close the distance and get into the enemy lines. Once there, the odds became far more even.

They passed through a line of metal posts, some no more than girders driven upright into the mud, and the fortifications ahead began to sparkle with ruby-red bolts of super-focused light. They had entered the kill-zone, the functional range of a lasgun, and the defenders now knew that their shots would not be wasted.

Kanzad jerked, then jerked again, then fell on his face. Jonn did not stop for him. He would not have stopped for anyone. Stopping meant dying. He charged onwards, his face contorted into a rictus of fear and hatred, daring the galaxy to come and take him.

The galaxy obliged.

The first las-bolt struck him in the right shoulder and burned straight through. It was a sharp pain, but a clean pain, and he staggered but kept moving. It was his trigger arm, and his lasgun was supported by a strap. So long as his left arm could aim the barrel and his right could pull the trigger, he was still in this fight.

The next shot hit him in the gut, puncturing the muscle wall of his stomach and doubling him over. He managed to retain his feet, just, but his momentum was gone. He began to curl up around the pain, and the stench of his own flash-cooked flesh. Eyes screwed up, face towards the ground, Jonn Brezik did not even see the last shot. It struck the top of his head, and killed him instantly.

‘Die, heretic!’ Stevaz Tai yelled, as his third las-bolt finally put the man down. He whooped, partly in excitement and partly in relief, but anxiety was still scrabbling at the back of his throat. Throne, there were just so many of them! Even as he shifted his aim and fired again, he thought he saw something off to the left, closing in fast on the Pendata Fourth’s defensive line. He blinked and squinted in that direction, but some of the great floodlights had been taken out by that accursed aerial attack, and the shapes refused to resolve for him.

‘Eyes front, trooper, and keep firing!’ Sergeant Cade ordered, suiting actions to words with his laspistol. It was more for show than anything else, Stevaz assumed, since the heretics were probably still out of pistol range, but it would only be a matter of seconds until that was no longer the case. And those seconds could be important.

‘Something to the left, sarge!’ he shouted, although he snapped off another shot as he spoke. ‘I didn’t get a good look, but whatever it was, it was moving fast!’

‘Was it in our sector?’ Cade demanded.

‘No, sarge!’

‘Then it’s Fifth Squad’s responsibility, or Seventh’s – not ours! We’ve got enemies enough in front of us,’ Cade snapped, and Stevaz could not argue with that. He jerked backwards as an enemy las-bolt struck the dirt in front of him, and wiped his eyes to clear them of the mud that had spattered across his face.

‘Full-auto!’ Cade bellowed. ‘Let ’em have it!’

Stevaz obediently flicked the selector on his lasgun and joined its voice to the whining chorus that sprang up along the trench. It would drain their power packs rapidly, but the sheer volume of fire should put paid to this latest assault before they needed to reload–

Something exploded off to his left, and it was all he could do not to whip around, lasrifle still blazing. It was immediately followed by screaming: high, desperate screams born not just of pain, but of utter terror.

‘Sarge?!’

‘Eyes front, trooper, or you’ll be the one screaming!’ Cade yelled, but there was a note of uncertainty in the sergeant’s voice as he fired at the onrushing cultists. ‘One problem at a time, or–’

Something large and dark flew into their midst from their left, and landed heavily on the trench floor. It clipped the back of Kanner’s leg and she tripped backwards, and her cycle of full-auto shots tracked along Dannick’s head and blew his skull to smithereens, then took Jusker in the shoulder. They both fell, and Cade roared in anger and frustration, and not a little fear, as his squad’s output reduced drastically. Someone moved to help Jusker. Someone else fell backwards as a lucky shot from the onrushing enemy found the gap between helmet and trench top. Stevaz could not help himself: he turned and looked down at what had caused all this commotion.

It was a headless body, bearing the insignia of Fifth Squad.

Fear paralysed him. What had broken into their lines? What had decapitated this trooper, and hurled their body so easily into Fourth Squad’s ranks? It couldn’t have been the explosion he heard: what explosion would take someone’s head off so neatly, but hurl their body this far?

Cade was shouting at him.

‘Tai, get your arse back on the–’

The sergeant never got the chance to finish his sentence, because something came screaming over the top of the trench, and landed on him. The buzzing whine of a chainsword filled the air, along with a mist of blood, and then Sergeant Cade was bisected. His murderer turned towards Stevaz as the rest of the heretics’ assault piled into the trench, rapidly overwhelming Fourth Squad.

Stevaz saw a snarl of fury on the face of a woman probably old enough to be his grandmother, and the light of bloodlust in her eyes. He raised his lasrifle, but her howling weapon batted it aside, and the rotating teeth tore it from his grip. He turned and ran, fumbling at his belt for the laspistol and combat knife that rested there, hoping he could at least outpace her until he had his secondary weapons drawn.

Too late, he realised he was running towards where Fifth Squad had been stationed.

He rounded a corner of the trench before he could stop himself, and collided with something enormous and very, very hard. He fell backwards into the mud, and looked up to see what he had run into.

Two glowing red eyes stared balefully down at him, and Stevaz nearly lost control of his bladder until he recognised them for what they were. The eye-lenses of a Space Marine helmet! The promised help had arrived! The lords of war were here on Pendata!

Then, despite the darkness, he took in the colour of the armour plate. It was not silver, but blue-green, and the pauldron did not display a black blade flanked by lightning strikes on a yellow background, but a three-headed serpent. His heart shrivelled inside his chest, because he suddenly realised what he must have seen, moving so fast towards Fifth Squad’s lines.

‘You’re not Silver Templars,’ he managed shakily.

The helmet tilted slightly, as though curious.

‘No.’

A weapon with a muzzle as large as Stevaz’s head was raised, and the bolt-shell it discharged detonated so forcefully that his entire upper body disintegrated.

Derqan Tel turned away from the dead Pendata trooper, and followed the rest of his team into the culvert that ran back from the front lines. No more defenders were coming from that direction: the Legion’s human allies had breached the trenchlines now, and could be relied upon to make a mess of this first line of resistance.

‘What is a Silver Templar?’ he asked the legionnaire in front of him.

‘No idea,’ Sakran Morv replied. ‘Why?’ Morv was big even for an Astartes, and carried the squad’s ancient autocannon.

‘That mortal seemed to think I should be one,’ Tel said. He searched his memory, but drew a blank. ‘I cannot think of a loyalist Chapter called the Silver Templars. You?’

‘Perhaps he meant Black Templars,’ Morv suggested. ‘Although I think Va’kai would have recognised their insignia.’

Something wasn’t sitting right in Tel’s gut. Three loyalist strike cruisers had emerged from the warp since the Legion had made planetfall, and were now engaged in void combat overhead with the Whisper, the flagship of the Serpent’s Teeth. Morv was correct: Krozier Va’kai, the Whisper’s captain, would know a Black Templars ship if he was shooting at it.

He activated his vox. ‘Trayvar, have you heard of Silver Templars?’

‘Is this really the time, Tel?’ came the voice of Trayvar Thrice-Burned in reply. He was at the head of the advance, farther down the trench. He had also been the first into the defensive lines when Eighth Fang made their assault rush across the ground left dark by the destroyed floodlights; it was that sort of full-throated aggressiveness that had won him the renown he enjoyed, and also seen him doused in burning promethium no less than three times in one particularly brutal assault against a position held by the Salamanders Chapter.

‘The mortal I just killed appeared to be expecting them,’ Tel informed him. ‘It could be a new Chapter. Or, as Morv pointed out,’ he continued, ‘a misremembering of the Black Templars.’

‘Silver Templars, Black Templars,’ the Thrice-Burned muttered. ‘You’d think they would have some imagination, wouldn’t you?’

‘The Imperium, endlessly repeating minor variations of the same tired routines?’ Morv laughed. ‘Surely not.’

‘I’ll vox it in,’ Trayvar said. ‘The Harrowmaster might know something.’

‘Acknowledged,’ Tel replied. Harrowmaster Drazus Jate led the Serpent’s Teeth, and it was his tactical genius that had led to Pendata’s fall. Once they broke this last loyalist bastion then the resistance would be shattered, and the raw materials the Serpent’s Teeth so desperately needed – promethium, metal, plasteel, perhaps even ceramite – would be theirs for the taking. There would be no sharing of the spoils with other Legions, either: the Teeth were not part of the Warmaster’s 13th Black Crusade, and there was no one here but them to claim the winnings. Abaddon would surely fail, as he always did, for all that he was closing on Terra and had ripped the very fabric of reality asunder across the galaxy. If there was one thing the Black Legion could be relied upon to do, it was to fail, and Drazus Jate knew better than to get caught up in that.

Trayvar’s bolter opened up with a roar, and Tel heard screams as the defenders realised that not only had their lines been breached, but also heavily armoured transhuman killers were now amongst them. The desperate stabs of las-fire cast shadows, but in the narrow confines of the trench Pendata’s mortal troops could only bring a couple of weapons to bear at once: nowhere near enough to stop Trayvar. Tel broke into a run as Eighth Fang accelerated ahead of him, stealth abandoned in favour of shock.

‘Over the top, and east!’ Trayvar barked over the vox, and Tel sprang upwards without thinking about it. The trench through which they were running was still deep enough here that a mortal would think twice before jumping down into it, let alone trying to climb out, but Tel’s superhuman muscles were boosted by the servos and mechanical sinews of his power armour, and he cleared the lip with little effort.

A scene of chaos met his eyes.

What had at one point presumably been a highly ordered Imperial camp was now in turmoil. Blazing fires showed where the aerial assault had hit vehicles or fuel dumps, and the burning wreckage of a Lightning had landed on a prefabricated building which, to Tel’s eyes, bore the hallmarks of a command centre. Imperial troops – a mix of Astra Militarum forces and the Pendata Bluecoats, the local militia – swarmed like colonial insects attempting to defend their mound, but unlike those minuscule creatures, they had little unity of purpose.

‘Let’s make some noise,’ Trayvar declared, and Eighth Fang opened up.

Their remit was simply to cause as much damage as possible: a simple purpose, and perhaps a crude one, but necessary nonetheless. Eighth Fang would draw the defenders’ attention, since eight Traitor Astartes unleashing a fusillade of gunfire could hardly achieve anything else, and during the commotion, the warband’s Headhunter teams and the Harrowmaster himself would execute their priority targets.

‘Do you think we are being a bit obvious?’ Tel asked, gunning down a squad of troopers before they had time to lift their lasguns.

‘What are they going to do, ignore us?’ Morv snorted. His autocannon coughed heavily as it stitched a line of holes down the side of a Chimera, and the armoured transport exploded. A las-bolt splashed across his pauldron, but he took no notice. ‘If they suspect we are not the real threat, and do not engage us fully, we become the real threat. Tank crew,’ he added, ‘seventy degrees right.’

Tel turned. Sure enough, a ragged group of six Pendatii were running towards a Leman Russ, trying to stay low and avoid notice. The war machine was capable of giving Eighth Fang problems, since its armour was thick enough to potentially turn aside even Morv’s autocannon.

‘No, I think not,’ Tel murmured, sighting along his bolter. The darkness was no barrier to his visor’s thermal sensors, and his weapon barked as he picked the crew off, one after another.

‘Move on my mark,’ Trayvar ordered. ‘We do not want to get pinned down, even by this rabble. Three, two, one… Mark.’

The Thrice-Burned went from a standstill to a sprint in under a second, and Eighth Fang followed him. The Imperial resistance, which had just begun to coalesce around them like dark blood clotting over a wound, found that the nature of the threat it faced had abruptly changed. Regular mortals could not adjust their mindsets in time to mount any meaningful resistance, and a ragged firing line of lasgunners splintered as Eighth Fang plunged into them.

Tel did not even draw his power knife. There was no need. He simply stomped and kicked, punched and bludgeoned. Broken bodies flew away from him into their fellows, or went down into crumpled, bleeding heaps. One desperate trooper managed to land a lunge with a bayonet, but the gleaming tip simply scraped harmlessly across Tel’s chestplate, and Tel elbowed him in the face hard enough to break both his jaw and his neck.

It was all going exactly as anticipated, until his vox crackled into life with a broadcast on the warband’s general frequency.

‘All ground units, be aware that the loyalist strike cruisers have made it past us and are launching gunships,’ Captain Va’kai announced. There was a background thunder as the captured Lunar-class cruiser’s guns spoke again. ‘Well, two of them are,’ Va’kai added, in a satisfied tone. ‘The third one is coming down in pieces.’

‘That’s still going to be a lot of company for us,’ Morv observed. His autocannon spoke once, detonating an ammo dump that briefly lit the sky as though the sun had thought better of being below the horizon. The shockwave of the explosion was powerful enough for Tel to feel it.

‘Eighth and Ninth Fangs, seize control of the Hydras,’ Harrowmaster Jate’s voice declared over the vox. ‘Since we have such appropriately named tools to hand, let us see how our erstwhile brothers like the taste of our teeth.’

Tel made sure he was speaking only on his Fang’s private vox-channel. ‘Brothers, does this seem sound? Even two strike cruisers can hold a lot of gunships – more than we can easily shoot down in the window we will have.’

‘You would have us disobey a direct order from the Harrowmaster?’ Trayvar demanded. ‘We have no easy way off this planet without Jate’s approval. Besides, if we abandon our brothers now then we make it less likely that they will be able to repel this assault, and we will be easy meat for the loyalists once they have finished with Jate!’

Tel grimaced inside his helm, but the logic of the Thrice-Burned’s words was hard to argue against. ‘Very well, brother – let us make the best of this.’

It was only a couple of minutes later that they located the Hydra batteries, but those were minutes that clawed at Derqan Tel’s mind with poisoned talons. It took time for gunships to punch through atmospheres – he had ridden inside one often enough, wishing for a swift flight so he could face his enemies with weapon in hand rather than waiting to be blown apart in mid-air – but not so long as he would have preferred, in these circumstances. To make matters worse, the defenders had either second-guessed them for once, or had simply decided upon the anti-aircraft guns as a rallying point, because what looked like a veritable company of Astra Militarum was clustered around the looming, quad-barrelled weapons.

‘That is a lot of lasguns,’ Forval Junai said with feeling, as the air virtually turned red with panicked snap-firing when he poked his helmet out from cover.

‘Blind grenades and flanking,’ Trayvar ordered. ‘Go.’

Each of them hurled one of the sensor-obscuring grenades, which belched out black smoke that would not only render mortal eyes useless, but also confound gunsights and photo-goggles. It did nothing to stop gunfire, however, and the assembled troopers opened up with a volley of las-bolts so concentrated that even power armour would have struggled to stand up to it, yet with such wide coverage that their inability to pick out individual targets would have little effect.

Which was why as soon as they hurled their grenades, Eighth Fang moved laterally, flanking the defenders around prefabricated buildings. It was no better an angle for approach than the original had been in terms of cover or the number of loyalists awaiting them, but with the majority of attention – and critically, gunfire – directed ninety degrees to the side, it had immediately become the safest option.

‘Break them,’ Trayvar ordered, and sprinted forward with his traditional boldness. Eighth Fang followed, firing their bolters from the hip, yet picking out their targets with a precision and rapidity that a human sharpshooter could not have achieved while standing still. Tel only paused his firing to hurl a frag grenade in the direction of the troops closest to the blind grenade cloud, and was rewarded with another blossom of flame, and more screams.

Pentaq Wray fell, his armour pierced either by a lucky shot, or perhaps simple weight of fire. The rest of them ran on, but even the reaction times of the loyalist troops had caught up to their reappearance now, and although some were breaking and fleeing, it would not be enough. A new volley of las-fire punched into Tel’s side and he staggered, his armour flashing up warning signs.

It would have gone badly for them, had Ninth Fang not hit the other side of the makeshift emplacement at virtually the same time.

Suddenly the defenders were struck on two fronts, and while either attack might have been repelled on its own, albeit with grievous losses, the two together were more than the loyalists could handle. It took a mere handful of seconds for desperate, grim-faced resistance to morph into panic and rout. The Guardsmen broke apart like water splashed out of a puddle by the impact of a boot, and bolter shells chewed into their backs as they fled.

‘Morv, with me to hold the loyalists off,’ Trayvar instructed. ‘The rest of you, get on the guns, and look to the skies!’

‘I hope this works, Thrice-Burned.’ That was Kerrig Thrax, leader of Ninth Fang, speaking over the vox.

‘You and me both, Thrax,’ Trayvar replied grimly. Tel mag-clamped his bolter to his thigh and took up station behind the nearest of the anti-aircraft weapons, kicking the mangled body of its previous operator out of the way. The machine-spirit appeared subservient: it did not flicker or power down as he took control and experimentally traversed the barrels back and forth.

‘Ready,’ he announced.

‘Good,’ Trayvar said, craning his helmet back as far as he was able. ‘Because we’ve got incoming contacts.’

Tel looked up and saw them too. They might have been mistaken for stars, at least at first, but the motes of light were actually Space Marine gunships thundering through the atmosphere behind a pressure wave of superheated air. He cranked back the barrels to their highest elevation and tapped the targeting auspex.

‘Very well, Silver Templars, or whoever in the warp you are,’ he muttered. ‘Let us see how your equipment fares.’

The auspex’s crosshair turned green, and he squeezed the triggers.

A barrage of fire screamed skywards, and even the audio dampeners in Tel’s helmet could not prevent him from being buffeted by the concussive thunder of the guns. He checked the auspex, but the target continued to descend unharmed. He had missed.

System inaccuracies? A treacherous machine-spirit recognising its Imperial kin, and deliberately misleading him? Tel aimed again and fired, and this time he kept firing, strafing back and forth across the night sky. It was an alien sensation to a warrior so used to precision operation, but attrition sometimes had its merits. Besides, he had no need to conserve ammunition for a protracted firefight: once those gunships hit the ground, the Hydras would be too cumbersome to be turned on foot troops. It was now or never.

Spent shell casings rattled away on either side of him as the guns thundered their fury into the sky. Tel saw the gunship wink out of existence on his auspex, and he experienced a brief rush of fierce delight that he quickly fought down as he turned to his next target. He had never wanted a weapon other than his bolter, but the sheer power of this array certainly had its own appeal. He had just killed a dozen Imperial Space Marines in a matter of seconds – how many other warriors could make such a boast?

It seemed he was not alone in his appreciation of the ordnance. ‘Can we take these with us?’ Junai yelled, with a bellowing laugh. Tel saw another point of light wink out as Junai’s guns found their target, but the remainder were getting larger by the moment.

‘Shoot them down, damn you!’ Trayvar roared. ‘Shoot them down, or we’re ruined!’

Tel’s guns found another, blowing it apart in mid-air. Not even a Space Marine could survive a fall from that height, so he did not waste time shooting at the debris. He hit his next target, but only clipped it, and it swung wildly out of his line of fire. The angles were decreasing now, and their window of opportunity was about to slam shut. Tel did not try to chase down the ship he clipped, trusting that a bad landing would put paid to its cargo, and found another. He let rip once more, but the ­vehicle’s sheer velocity meant his shots passed harmlessly above it. He tried to track downwards in pursuit, but it was too late.

THUMP.

THUMP.

THUMP.

In the blink of an eye, they went from burning points of light in the sky to superheated silver craft landing in the mud. Even their retro rockets had barely slowed them, but the hull-mounted hurricane bolters opened up to shred their surroundings. Tel ducked behind his Hydra and attempted once more to depress the barrel: he might get a chance for just one shot before–

The doors slammed down and silver-armoured Space Marines poured out, twelve from each ship. Even knowing what was coming, having been on the other side of it so many times in the past, Eighth and Ninth Fangs still could not mount an effective resistance. Three of their number were killed by the hurricane bolter barrage, either too slow to take cover or risking death for the chance at a shot as soon as the doors opened. Now they were surrounded, and outnumbered.

The Imperials split apart as soon as they exited, to avoid giving the Hydras a target, and their boltguns began speaking. Tel cursed as explosive rounds battered the weapon behind which he sheltered, but he was an experienced warrior. His bolter might not have the power of a quad-autocannon, but he knew just where to land a shot to trouble even Astartes battleplate.

He leaned out of cover just enough and fired. The shell took its target in the knee, exactly as intended.

Tel’s transhuman senses immediately noticed two things. Firstly, the armour worn by these Space Marines was not like any he had seen before.

Secondly, the one he had shot, in a place that had incapacitated scores of Imperial warriors in the past, was still standing. And seemed taller than Tel would have expected.

‘What in–’

When Derqan Tel’s helmet was struck by a bolt-shell, he did not remain standing.

Sergeant Bedaris Hyrus felt a small wash of satisfaction as the Traitor Marine went down. The relic boltgun he carried lacked some of the range of his brothers’ bolt rifles, but its lineage stretched back through millennia of service in the Ultramarines. Hyrus had been presented with it by Marneus Calgar himself in the aftermath of the Liberation of Novaris, and he was glad that he could once more present it with heretics to kill. However, he lacked any further immediate options; his Intercessor battle-brothers had already eradicated the rest with a combination of overlapping firing solutions and pinpoint accuracy.

‘That traitor was mine, brother-sergeant,’ Kilus Jesar said testily from beside him. ‘He shot me in the knee!’

‘Then you should have reacted more quickly,’ Hyrus replied. ‘Had I delayed, he might have fired again. Is your armour damaged?’

‘It is weakened, but will not degrade my effectiveness,’ Jesar said, testing the joint.

‘Whom are we facing?’ Vastus asked. Hyrus investigated the closest corpse, and a thrill that was part excitement, part trepidation ran through him as he took in the blue-green armour, the patterning reminiscent of reptile scales, and the sundry other details known to be linked to this most mysterious of humanity’s enemies.

‘Alpha Legion,’ Hyrus reported grimly. Their adversaries were no mere renegades, but one of the original Traitor Legions themselves, and a Legion that had plagued the sons of his primarch for millennia. Now Hyrus and his Primaris brothers were here, as the battlefront of Roboute Guilliman’s Indomitus Crusade rolled out across the galaxy, and were perfectly placed to wreak vengeance.

‘Move out in combat squads!’ he barked. ‘There are more traitors here, but we’ll flush them out. Let the Astra Militarum and the Bluecoats repel the cultists unless they are being overrun – our priority is the Alpha Legion. And stay alert, they’re Astartes-killers.’

‘They might know how to kill Firstborn, brother-sergeant,’ Vastus said, as they split into five-man fire-teams, ‘but they have not yet faced our like. Brother Jesar’s knee will testify to that!’

Some of his squad brothers laughed, but Hyrus did not.

‘Never assume the enemy will not learn quickly, Brother Vastus! The Alpha Legion are not to be taken lightly. We may have already lost our advantage of surprise.’ He unsheathed his power sword, and led the way as they moved out at speed.

‘Do you suppose the traitors we just killed were part of the Heresy?’ Jesar asked as they ran. ‘That they actually took part in it?’

‘It is hard to countenance,’ Hyrus replied, choosing to ignore Jesar’s use of ‘we’ when he had in fact contributed nothing more than being shot in the knee. ‘Yet we know the Despoiler still lives, if his existence can be called that. It is possible we just struck a blow of vengeance reaching back ten thousand years. And now we have a chance to strike another,’ he added. ‘Prepare to engage.’

Ahead of them were two Alpha Legionnaires, hunkering down in cover behind the blazing wreck of a Chimera and delivering punishing fire into the loose mob of loyalist defenders trying to engage them. It would have been suicide for mortal soldiers to try to flush even one Traitor Astartes out of such a holdfast, let alone two.

For Primaris, though, it was a far more feasible prospect.

‘Blades!’ Hyrus ordered, and the rest of the squad drew their combat knives: silver, to match their armour.

‘I want one of them,’ Jesar growled.

‘If you can reach them in time, brother,’ Vastus chuckled.

They raised their weapons and fired as one, a barrage of shells that threw up sparks and tore chunks from what remained of the Chimera’s armoured hide. The two Alpha Legionnaires ducked with preternatural speed, but the volley had only been intended to get their heads down as Hyrus’ squad closed the distance on them. Genhanced muscles and reinforced sinews combined with the finest powered armour ever created by humanity to propel them forwards at speeds of which mortals could barely dream. Hyrus caught a glimpse in his peripheral vision of one of the Astra Militarum troopers – a lieutenant, his mind flashed up, recognising the rank insignia – waving and shouting, but the noise of the man’s voice was lost in the thunder of the ongoing combat. Hyrus would speak to him afterwards and find out what it was he had wanted, if indeed it was anything more than a redundant plea for aid, or perhaps him simply hailing his saviours.

However, despite the enhancements they all shared, Primaris Astartes were no more identical than their Firstborn brethren. In spite of Hyrus’ best efforts, he and Jesar were being left behind by their fractionally swifter battle-brothers. Vastus was still firing with his left hand as he ran, while his right spun the combat blade with which he was so skilled.

The ground erupted in fiery death, and three of Hyrus’ squad were instantly melted into slag from the waist down. Hyrus, half a second behind, threw himself desperately up and over the explosion: his armour’s systems screamed at him, and red warning icons flashed up in his vision, but although he was scorched, he was in one piece. So too was Jesar, who landed beside him a moment later.

Contact-activated melta bombs, dug into the ground. Had this pair of legionnaires known the Silver Templars were coming, and set this ambush in an incredibly short space of time, or had they merely blundered into a trap intended for the Astra Militarum?

Hyrus blink-muted the agonised, vox-borne screams of his battle-brothers. A moment’s consideration told him that two Alpha Legionnaires would have no need of such a ruse to deal with the Astra Militarum. This had been a trap.

Very well. Two Silver Templars had escaped the trap’s treacherous jaws, and two Primaris Astartes were more than a match for two Firstborn, traitors or no. He and Jesar bellowed their Chapter’s war cry, and moved to attack.

‘Focus and fury!’

The Alpha Legion came to meet them.

They both wore the blue-green colours of their treacherous kind, but whereas the legionnaires killed at the landing site had been more or less uniform in appearance, the wargear of these warriors bore marks of individuality. One, who sported an odd-looking bionic left arm, was protected by a Mark VI suit complete with the pointed ‘Corvus’ helm, covered with shimmering, darkly iridescent scales. The other’s armour looked to be based on the ancient Mark IV design, and showed signs of artisan crafting, with a scale pattern etched into the plate itself, and a coiling, three-headed serpent where the aquila would have normally sat.

Hyrus’ bolter shot flew true to strike the hydra symbol, but the flare of a power field negated the impact, and the legionnaire came on undeterred. The spiked circlet of an iron halo glinted behind the traitor’s head, and Hyrus’ anger flared at the notion of such a valued relic being tainted by the likes of the heretic in front of him. No matter; he would avenge its former owner. He swayed aside from a blast of ravening heat emanating from an arcane-looking energy weapon, and unleashed a cut with his power sword.

He aimed for the Alpha Legionnaire’s head, seeking to cleave the ceramite helm in two, but found his blow blocked by a considerably shorter blade which also crackled with the contained energy of a power field. The legionnaire backed off a step, mag-clamping his energy weapon to his thigh, and drew an identical blade in his other hand, then advanced with his twin power knives held in alternate grips. Hyrus stowed his bolter in the same fashion, and attacked double-handed.

He was taller, faster, stronger, and more durable than his opponent: he knew this to be true. He also had the advantage of reach, both with the length of his blade and through the simple fact that his arms were longer, albeit only slightly.

He was also, he realised in under three seconds, losing.

The Alpha Legionnaire was simply never where he should have been. No matter how forcefully Hyrus cut, no matter how swiftly he thrust, the edge of his blade always fell an inch short. In contrast, the Alpha Legionnaire’s twin knives found their mark again and again: never doing critical damage, never striking an incapacitating blow, but jabbing into joints, cutting at power cabling, and weakening protective plates.

‘Damned warpcraft!’ Hyrus bellowed, pulling one cut and switching seamlessly into a different one, which was guided expertly away from his opponent’s chest by a power knife. ‘What manner of abomination are you?’

‘I could ask you the same question,’ his adversary hissed through his vox-grille, feinting a backstep, then stepping in to lash out with the tip of his blade at Hyrus’ gorget when he pursued. Hyrus swatted the blow desperately aside, but could do nothing about the other knifepoint that caught him in the left elbow as his foe pirouetted past him. He turned to keep his enemy in view, raising the sword again.

The sound of shearing ceramite was immediately eclipsed by Jesar screaming, as some foul weapon penetrated the defences of Hyrus’ battle-brother. He gritted his teeth and stepped forward, blade held overhead like the statue of some vengeful heathen god. He was leaving himself open to a fatal counter­stroke, but if he could slay his enemy at the same moment, he would count his death as a good one. Better to die in single combat than give the other traitor the chance to bring him down from behind–

Multiple bolt-shell detonations struck him. Mark X Tacticus armour was durable beyond all versions that had preceded it – save for the venerable Tactical Dreadnought armour – but even it could not stand up to repeated bolter fire at point-blank range. The shells ripped through his power pack, tore apart his backplate, and pierced his body. The pain was excruciating, but he was a Primaris Astartes, and he was built to withstand it. It was not that which brought him to his knees, but the abrupt cessation of his armour’s functions, and the leaden weight that settled into his arms and legs as his nervous system was irreparably damaged.

The Alpha Legionnaire in front of him stepped back and looked past Hyrus, towards the coward who had struck him from behind.

‘He was mine, Solomon,’ the knife-armed traitor hissed.

‘You were toying with him,’ the other heretic replied, from behind Hyrus’ left shoulder, ‘and we lack time. Kill him now, or I will.’

Hyrus had dropped his sword, but he managed to creep his hand towards his holstered bolt pistol. All he needed was one shot…

The Alpha Legionnaire stepped forward and plunged one power knife into each side of Bedaris Hyrus’ head.

‘“We lack time”?’ Harrowmaster Drazus Jate repeated, withdrawing his knives from the loyalist’s helm and letting the body slump bonelessly forward into the mud. ‘Did you have somewhere you needed to be, Akurra?’

‘Off this planet would be a good start,’ Solomon Akurra replied, as his left arm flowed back into its customary shape. The minor daemon bound inside it had briefly forged the limb into a blade with the strength and sharpness to decapitate his opponent, but it always returned to its normal form after its owner no longer required such a tool.

Jate growled in his throat. ‘Off the planet? We are so close to success!’

‘And it is about to be snatched from us!’ Solomon snapped, ­kicking the Space Marine at his feet. ‘What are these, Jate? Our Legion has fought the whelps of the Golden Throne for ten thousand years, yet do you recall seeing anything like this in the records?’

‘You know as well as I do that the records are far from complete,’ Jate replied, scanning the vox for information. He had to admit that it did not paint a promising picture, but the spoils of war were nearly within their grasp.

‘This is something new,’ Akurra insisted. He raised his bolter, and almost absent-mindedly shot a hotshot-armed loyalist who had sufficiently overcome the fear of seeing five Space Marines slaughtered by two traitors to begin drawing a bead on them from sixty yards away. ‘We cannot press on with the attack in these circumstances! Eighth and Ninth Fangs are already dead. We risk being overwhelmed and destroyed by a foe we do not understand.’

Jate plucked his volkite charger from its mag-clamped position on his thigh. He did not intend it as a threat – having his weapon ready was only prudent – but he nonetheless injected a little more force into his voice.

‘Do you forget who is the Harrowmaster of the Serpent’s Teeth, Akurra?’

‘You are,’ Akurra replied instantly. ‘But do you forget that you hold that position not through any appointment by higher authority, or by might of arms or right of conquest, but through the voice of your peers? What was given can be taken away, Drazus. I implore you, let us withdraw. There will be other theatres from which we can take what we need, when we have a better grasp of the opposition we face. Otherwise, even if we survive, I doubt you will remain Harrowmaster.’

‘Nor will I if I order the retreat now,’ Jate snarled. Akurra was a noted commander in his own right, and a valuable asset, but the Harrowmaster thought he could see the thrust of his supposed ally’s hidden blade. ‘To give up a prize like this will surely see me accused of timidity, and deposed. No, Solomon, we will do as the Legion has always done – we will adapt to the situation, and turn it to our advantage.’ He activated his vox. ‘Captain Va’kai, what is your situation?’

‘Tenable, Harrowmaster,’ came Va’kai’s response immediately. Krozier Va’kai was no mortal starship captain, but a legionnaire whose true genius only revealed itself in the fires of void combat. He was as reliable with a bolter and a power knife as any other, but it was when combat was measured in thousands of miles, and when decisions taken now would influence impacts in ten minutes’ time, that he was in his element. ‘The strike cruisers galvanised the loyalist ships into making a fight of it, but they only evened the odds, not turned them against us. They’re either virtually new or refitted to as near as damn it. Their weapons hit hard and their reactions are as fast as you would expect, but they have no subtlety to them – we have taken one down already. What’s more, I think each one wants us for themselves, instead of them working together. It’s like they’ve never seen an actual fight before.’

‘That sounds familiar,’ Jate grunted, looking down at the silver-armoured corpses. ‘Keep doing what you do best, Va’kai.’ He cut the vox-link. ‘We press on. Va’kai can hold them in orbit, we will take what we came here for and withdraw as plan–’

His iron halo – the spoils of a knife fight with a Genesis Chapter captain – sparked into action, deflecting a ballistic hit. Jate spun, firing his volkite charger at the point from which his instincts told him the attack had originated. His eyes caught up with the shot a moment later, as the silver-armoured figure he hit was still being punched backwards off its feet.

‘More of them!’ he snarled, backing towards the cover of the Chimera. Akurra’s bolter, the use of which he stubbornly clung to despite his general preference for more exotic wargear – including that warp-cursed bionic arm, which Jate did not trust in the slightest – barked out its defiance as well, but there were still four Silver Templars left, flanked by a gaggle of human defenders, and this time the Alpha Legion had no cunning melta bomb line to thin out the numbers.

‘Where is your witch?’ Jate demanded. ‘We need to get through them!’

‘We need to withdraw!’ Akurra said desperately. ‘By the primarchs, Jate, you are going to get us killed!’

‘We are going through them!’ Jate roared. He risked a look to his left, searching for Akurra’s pet sorceress, who had been cowering behind the Chimera the last time he saw her. ‘Dyne! Where are–’

Harrowmaster Drazus Jate’s iron halo had served him well over the years, but it did not stop everything, and he never saw the shot that struck his helmet and blew his head apart.

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