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  She stumbled through to the transmission room, tripping on cables snaking across the floor, and the lights blew again. Cursing, she felt her way forward, running her hands over the equipment ahead of her. She traced the outlines of the central console and hurried around it towards the transmission room doorway. Guessing she’d come far enough, she edged out into the dark, her arms outstretched. Her fingers brushed against the door-frame, and she clung on tight.

  Too late, she realised that no door-frame was that smooth.

  With a lurch of horror, she tried to jerk away from it. A slender fist clasped tightly around her wrist, hauling her back. Two jewelled eyes, slanted like a snake’s, glowed in the dark before her.

  How long had it been there? Had it been waiting for her the whole time? Or could they even slip through locked doors?

  She saw a blade flicker up towards her in the cold blue light of the glowing eye-lenses, and a soft, alien breath from behind a twisted metal vox-grille. It was taking its time.

  Tallia hauled with all her might, yanking her arm free with a sudden burst of strength that surprised even her. She managed to scramble away from the creature, falling on to all fours and scrabbling away in panic. Somehow she found the inner doorway in the dark, and scampered through it. Behind her, she could hear a delighted hiss of pleasure and a soft swish as the xenos followed her in.

  The emergency lights snapped on again, for just a split-second, showing up the interior of the transmission room. One of the equipment lockers stood open, a black gulf in the otherwise uniform walls.

  Then the darkness returned, and she felt the cold grip of an alien hand around her ankle.

  She screamed. Terror lodged deep in her psyche ripped the sound from her throat, and though she thrashed again, this time the grip was secure.

  For some reason, though, the expected dagger-strike never came. She kept on screaming long after the vice at her ankle relaxed. She would have screamed further, had a metal gauntlet not been clamped over her mouth.

  ‘Be silent,’ came a grinding, vox-deepened voice close to her face.

  Tallia opened her eyes. A black helm loomed over her, different from the one the xenos had worn. It was far larger, built with the angular bulkiness that marked all Imperial construction. Even in the almost complete darkness, broken only by the faint glow of the lenses above her, she knew what that helm represented.

  She could have wept. If it had not been for the crushing sense of awe, she could have grabbed hold of the monster crouching over her and hugged him. As it was, it took all of her scant remaining wits not to move and to do as he had told her.

  ‘We must transmit,’ she urged, whispering as she gestured towards the comms mechanism.

  The Space Marine rose, activating his armour-lumens so she could see, and shook his head. ‘Negative. They believe they are undisturbed.’

  He stowed the shortsword he’d used to gut the xenos warrior, and drew his bolter from its holster. As he did so, Tallia noticed the blue-and-white pauldron on his otherwise perfectly black armour. The Space Marine reached into the open equipment locker, located a lasgun, checked the charge and threw it over to her.

  ‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘Do not activate the comms. If they come back, defend yourself with this.’

  Tallia nodded mutely. The aura of command possessed by the Space Marine was absolute – if he had ordered her to charge back into the living hell of the assembly area, she would have complied.

  ‘By the Emperor,’ she managed to stammer, ‘thank you.’

  He looked down at her strangely, as if he didn’t quite understand. Then he turned and stalked through the outer doors, already searching for the next target.

  The empty ore storage hoppers were lined with 50 millimetre-thick adamantium. No light or sound penetrated their interior, and even augur readings were subject to interference. Remaining stationary for six weeks inside those coffin-like spaces had required the partial use of sus-an immersion to shut down peripheral bodily functions, but they had mostly remained conscious, mentally reciting battle-litanies and tactical outlines to remain sharp.

  Ingvar had found it harder than the others. He was closeted with Leonides and Prion, neither of whom were troubled by the long inactivity. Prion was complete in himself, perfectly content to slip into the long trance knowing that it would be followed by explosive action. He was a siege specialist, used to boarding actions in the genestealer-infested Aymar Belt, and had spent literally years cooped up in the creaking holds of immense space hulks. Leonides, by contrast, simply enjoyed the subterfuge. Like all Blood Angels, he had a deep-grained appreciation for intrigue, birthed from Baal’s complex and radiation-soured culture. Perhaps the hopper reminded him of the coffin-capsule he had once emerged from.

  For Ingvar, though, it was torment. He was unable to fully lapse into complete immersion and spent long days waiting fruitlessly for the call to arms. At times he felt close to ripping the locks free and blasting out of the ignominious hiding place, roaring out his defiance before the startled looks of the menials around him.

  But that would only have reinforced the verdict his brothers had already formed of him: rash, barbaric and insular.

  When the order came, though, flashed across his helm display, he could have screamed with relief.

  Operation commences. Enact retrieval action.

  Prion stirred instantly, coughing slightly as he swam to full consciousness. Leonides took a moment longer, struggling against the deep trance before snapping back into focus. Ingvar’s helm quickly lit up with Xatasch and Vhorr’s locator-signals, just a few metres away.

  ‘At last,’ he growled, reaching for the locks and slamming them free. The hopper’s shell cracked open and cantilevered clear. Ingvar was the first out, grabbing the hopper’s edge and swinging himself over. He landed heavily, his muscles sluggish after weeks of inactivity.

  Leonides landed next to him more expertly. ‘Rusty?’ the Blood Angel asked.

  Ingvar ignored him and pulled his bolter from his belt. Six of Onyx squad were in a mined-out section of the installation’s underbelly, at least three hundred metres above the main workings but a long way below the inhabited sections. Insertion into the unused cavern had been easy enough, given the station’s meagre defences and the sloppy guard-rotation, and there had not been a sniff of disturbance since.

  From the far side of the cavern, the other two emerged, their black armour glistening from helm-lumens. Ingvar had already learned to identify his battle-brothers solely from the way they carried themselves – Vhorr strutting, Prion heavy, Leonides lithe, Xatasch like a liquid shadow. All of them carried stalker bolters with attached silencers and Deathwatch-issue rounds that would explode with no more noise than a fist crunching into flesh.

  They ran their checks and final weapon-rites efficiently, in moments, ensuring the mechanisms were free of defect. Ingvar was still getting used to the sheer perfection of Deathwatch wargear – he had been shocked to discover just how far it outmatched his old Fenrisian battleplate. In it, his senses were sharper, his movements smoother, his reactions even quicker.

  ‘All done?’ asked Vhorr, blunt as ever, eager to be going. Ingvar liked Vhorr.

  Leonides ran an augur sweep of the levels above. In Callimachus’s absence, he was in command. ‘Objective located,’ he reported calmly. ‘Multiple targets, moving out from ingress point. Shade incoming. Suffer not the xenos to live.’

  They repeated the mantra, then broke out into the dark, heading for the heavy ore-lifts that would take them up into the heart of hell.

  Callimachus sped through the dark corridors, the way ahead lit up with his helm’s false-colour images. There were no mortals out in the open now. Those who had bolted for the sanctuary of the main assembly hall were already dead or rounded up; the rest were being culled at the xenos’ leisure. The squad had precious little time: the entire assault would be
over in minutes, after which no ship in the Imperium would be able to catch the fleeing xenos landing craft.

  He reached an intersection and crouched against the nearside wall, listening. Standard power armour was audible even to mortal human ears, but his was as quiet as the tech-adepts of the ordo could make it, and if used with care might just fool even a xenos’ hearing for the necessary microseconds.

  Proximity scans revealed nothing, so his slipped around the corner and ran towards the main dorm-unit antechambers. The volume of screaming was decreasing, which was bad news – the xenos were getting through their prey quickly.

  The corridor turned sharply. Beyond the corner, fifty metres ahead of him, he saw the first of them – a slender figure, two metres tall in armour, its helm splattered with gore and skulls of different sizes clattering from chains at its belt. Three humans trailed behind it, blind in the dark, their wrists manacled and spikes driven between their bleeding lips. The eldar warrior had just disabled another and was stooping to shackle its prey for delivery.

  Callimachus aimed and fired in one movement, striking the eldar in the chest and hurling it back against the wall. The bolt-round punched through the creature’s breastplate, exploding with a wet pop and cracking the shell from within.

  A second later and Callimachus was standing over it. He placed the bolter-muzzle against the creature’s forehead and fired again. The xenos’s head exploded, throwing black brain-matter across the floor.

  Two of its human prey stretched their chained hands out to him, moaning weakly as they tried to part bloody lips. Callimachus glanced down at them, just for a fraction of a heartbeat.

  That was enough. Another xenos warrior opened fire as it raced down the corridor towards him, moving in a blur of speed, leaping from wall to wall as it came. Callimachus’s armour took hits, showered with projectiles that scythed through the upper layer of ceramite.

  He fired back one-handed, reaching for his blade, but the xenos closed too quickly, bounding into him and lashing out with a flickering sword. Callimachus missed with his shot and only just managed to parry with his blade. Up close, the eldar’s movements were astonishing – like a snake striking, it punched out with its own hooked blade, gouging deep into his pauldron, before loosing a second flurry of shard-projectiles at point-blank range.

  One of Callimachus’s helm-lenses shattered, and he felt the hiss of cabling rupturing. He swung hard, using his greater bulk in place of speed, and managed to smash the barrels of the xenos’ rifle. That didn’t slow his enemy, who slashed across Callimachus’s breastplate, driving him back with a whirl of ink-dark steel. Callimachus, off-balance, crunched into the corridor’s near wall, just managing to block a swipe at his throat. The defence left him exposed, and the xenos whipped a blade-strike into his chest.

  The edge never cut. The eldar was blown sideways, limbs bent like a crushed spider. More bolt-rounds slammed into it, pulverising what remained of the brittle armour-shell.

  Callimachus looked up to see Ingvar and Vhorr crouched down at the far end of the corridor, both bolters still trained on the eldar’s twitching body. He pushed clear of the wall, bent down and cut the xenos’s neck.

  That had been too close. He would have to learn from it.

  ‘Shade incoming?’ he asked calmly, noting the interference from his damaged armour-augurs.

  Vhorr nodded, as Ingvar, bristling with palpable battle-anger, swept his bolter muzzle back down the other direction. The two of them backed up towards him.

  ‘Two minutes,’ said Vhorr.

  ‘They have mustered in the assembly hall,’ said Callimachus, setting off. As he did so, the shackled humans on the floor started moaning again.

  If there had been time Callimachus would have helped them, but there was none and he kept going. As he did so, Ingvar pushed past him.

  ‘Space Wolf...’ warned Callimachus, but it was too late. Ingvar broke the mortals’ bonds with his own hands, twisting the metal shackles into pieces. Then he stood up again and looked at Callimachus defiantly.

  Callimachus felt the old frustrations flare up instantly. The Space Wolf was impossible to command, chafing against every imposition of authority like a caged beast pacing the bars. He did it to provoke, to challenge and demonstrate his superiority to the orders that bound them.

  Savage.

  ‘We move now,’ he ordered again, setting off, filing away the slight for another day. ‘No more delays.’

  Kaivon couldn’t stop weeping. As he crawled along the air-duct passages, scraping against the hot metal in the dark, the tears streamed down his face.

  The things he’d seen. The things he’d heard. It was burned into his mind now, flash-frames of horror he would never be able to erase. There just shouldn’t have been that much cruelty in the universe – and for what? Why did they do it?

  He’d seen dead men before, and he’d seen some bad things in the lower hive-levels, but nothing, nothing, compared with what he’d witnessed back in the hab-units. Even when he screwed his eyes closed he still couldn’t shift the images of torn skin, the sutures being pulled tight, the extractions, the incisions, the long gouges...

  Enough. He had to find a way to get out. He tried to fix his mind on Janna, the family, the old friends back on Tertius, anything to keep his limbs moving and his mind from seizing up.

  He’d somehow managed to break free of the central hub, though he was one of only a handful that had done so. There were only a few dozen of the xenos, but they appeared to be everywhere at once, throwing bolas and spiked netting and hauling dozens of human prey at a time.

  Right at the end, just before he’d managed to break into the cramped network of air-ducts, he’d seen the worst one of them all, hovering over the entire flesh-carnival like a corrupted saint in a devotional picter. That one had been more twisted than the rest, clad in a cloak of skins and draped with chain-length hooks. Kaivon had seen a withered face, as dry as ash, and eyes that radiated such chilling ennui that his heart had almost stopped beating. The monster had been gazing over the slaughter with a kind of dull-eyed, scientific curiosity, deaf to the horrific tide of screaming.

  After that, Kaivon had just run, and run, and run. He knew the ducts wouldn’t keep them out for long, but there was nowhere else left to go. He had no idea where he’d crawled to – perhaps over the comms station? Or the chapel units?

  He stopped, listening hard. His own heartbeat thudded in his ears, hard and erratic.

  For a moment, he thought he’d managed to get away. Then, with a lurch that made him want to gag, he heard the scratching from further down the duct. It was already close, and getting closer. He imagined his pursuer – scrabbling like a spider up the narrow twists, the needles held ready and a collar to drag him back with.

  Kaivon pressed on doggedly, fighting against the raw panic that threatened to freeze him up completely. He saw a break ahead, a maintenance panel that he could lift up and drop through. He scurried over to it, fumbling as he tried to lift the security catch.

  From behind, the scrabbling got closer, echoing up the shaft, surely no more than a few metres behind him now. His fingers shook, and he slipped on the catch, expecting at any minute to feel the touch of cold fingers on his ankles.

  He heard a thin chuckle just as the last catch broke free. There was a thin whine, like a weapon powering up, and the panel broke open.

  Kaivon dropped through the duct’s floor, carried down by the panel’s fall. As he fell, an intense heat passed over him, and he detected the stink of melting metal.

  Then he hit the floor, hard. It was a four metre drop, and it nearly stunned him. He reeled, tasting blood in his mouth, knowing his pursuer was right on his heels. He tried to twist onto his back, to at least see what was coming after him, but then agonising pain spiked through his left shoulder. Something thin and metallic had speared him, pinning him to the metal floor. He craned his h
ead, and saw something black, almost insectoid, crouching in the gap in the ceiling. It was going to leap, to follow him down. It was already reaching for something that looked like a cluster of hypodermics.

  As he screamed out his terror, he barely noticed the las-beams whipping up from floor-level, one after the other, all aimed with unerring precision. The xenos’s armour deflected some of them, but the volume of fire was too much, and it tumbled from the gap, crashing to the floor next to Kaivon.

  Kaivon pushed himself away, crying out in pain as his shoulder ripped free from the barbed spear, and shuffled away from the xenos’s corpse. In his bewilderment, he had no idea where the las-shots had come from – the chamber was dark, lit only by flickering emergency lumens, and all he saw were more shadows.

  ‘Get away from it,’ hissed a woman’s voice from floor-level, over by the wall.

  Kaivon did as he was told. The woman edged gingerly over to the downed xenos, aimed her weapon carefully at its head, and send another four las-blasts into it. Soon the stench of burning flesh, subtly different to human aromas, filled the chamber.

  The woman turned to him. Kaivon was trembling so badly by then it was hard to even focus on her. He was in shock, and couldn’t kick himself out of it.

  ‘Any others?’ she demanded.

  Kaivon could only shake his head. He had no idea.

  Tallia hefted her lasgun, unclipping the charge pack and slamming in another. ‘Stay down. If any more try to follow, they’ll get the same.’