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Soul Drinker – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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CHAPTER ONE

In the silence of the vacuum the corvus assault pod tumbled towards the star fort, the curved metal of its hull studded with directional jets that fired once, steadying the descent. The pod had been fired on a trajectory that took it halfway across the orbit of the planet Lakonia, which hung bright and cold below. The battle cruiser which had housed it, along with the half-dozen other pods glinting against the blackness of space, was on the other side of the planet. No one in the star fort would have any idea they were coming. And that was just how the Soul Drinkers preferred it.

Inside the drop-pod, Sarpedon could hear only the soft song of the servitor choir and the gentle hum of armour. The battle-brothers were quiet, contemplating the fight to come and the many years of warfare that had forged them into the pinnacle of humanity.

They were thinking of Primarch Rogal Dorn, the father of their Chapter literally as well as figuratively, and his noble example they strove to follow. They thought of the favour the Emperor had bestowed upon them, that they might travel the stars and play their part in a grand plan that was too fragile and vital to place in the hands of lesser men. They had thought such things a thousand times or more, readying their minds for the sharp intensity of combat, banishing the doubt that afflicted soldiers falling below the standard of the Space Marines; of the Soul Drinkers.

Sarpedon knew this, for he felt the same. And yet this time it was different. This time the weight of history, which refined the Soul Drinkers’ conduct into a paragon of honour and dignity, was a little heavier. For there was more at stake than a battle won or lost. Soon, when the fight was over, they would have reserved a place in the legends that were taught to novices and recited on feasting nights.

The choir’s delicate faces, mounted on brass armatures, turned to the ceiling of the corvus pod as the note from their once-human vocal chords rose. The Soul Drinkers Chapter used the mindless, partly-human servitors for all menial and non-skilled labour – those making up the choir were little more than faces and vox-projectors hardwired to the pod. Their presence was a tradition of the Chapter, and helped focus the thoughts of the battle-brothers on the battle to come.

They were close. They were ready. Sarpedon could feel the brothers’ eagerness for battle, their concern for proper conduct and their scorn for cowardice, mixed and tempered into a warrior’s soul. It shone at the back of his mind, so strong and unifying that he could receive it without trying.

The pod juddered as it encountered the first wisps of Lakonia’s atmosphere, but the thirty battle-brothers – two tactical and one assault squad strapped into grav-ram seats, resplendent in their dark purple power armour and with weapons gleaming – did not allow their reverie to waver.

His brothers. The select band that lay between mankind’s destiny and its destruction. The tune of the choir changed as the pod entered the final phase, almost drowning out the hiss of the braking jets. Sarpedon took his helmet from beside his seat and put it on, feeling the seal snaking shut around his throat. New runes on his retinal display confirmed the vacuum integrity of his massive armour. Every Space Marine had spent many hours on the strike cruiser observing the strictest wargear discipline, for they could be fighting in a near-vacuum before entry points were secured. He activated a rune on the retinal-projected display and his aegis hood thrummed into life. Handed down the line of senior Librarians of the Soul Drinkers, its lost technology warmed up to protect Sarpedon as he led his brother Space Marines into Chapter history.

Close. Closer. Even if the choir and the corvus pod’s alert systems had not told him, he could have felt it. He could feel the star fort’s bulk rearing out of the darkness, its bloated shape creeping across Lakonia’s green-brown disk as they approached. The braking jets entered second phase, and the grav-rams flexed to cushion the Marines’ weight against the deceleration.

‘Soul Drinkers,’ came Commander Caeon’s voice over the vox-channel, clear and proud. ‘I need not tell you why you are here, or what is expected of you, or how you will fight. These are things you will never doubt.

‘But know now that when the youngest novices or the most scarred of veterans ask you how you spent your time serving this Chapter, it will be enough to tell them that you were there the day your Chapter proved it never forgets a matter of honour. The day the Soulspear was returned.’

Good words. Caeon could tap into the hearts of his men, use the power of those traditions they held sacred to will them on to superhuman feats.

Lights flashed inside the corvus pod. The noise grew, the servitor choir matching its harmonies, a wall of sound growing, inspiring. The metallic slamming that rippled through the hull was the sound of the docking clamps forced out of their cowlings, ceramite-edged claws primed to rip through metal. Sarpedon could see the star fort fresh in his mind, planted there by the repeated mission briefings – it was ugly and misshapen, probably once spherical but now deformed. Docking corridors would be stabbing out from its tarnished surface, but the attack had been carefully timed.

There was no cargo on the star fort and no ships docked – no way out for defenders. The Van Skorvold cartel and its rumoured private army believed their star fort to be a bastion of defence, its weapon systems and labyrinthine interior protecting them from any attack. It was the Soul Drinkers’ intent to turn the place into a deathtrap.

Long-range scans had only penetrated through the first few layers of the star fort. It had been difficult to plan an assault route when there could only be guesswork about what form the inside of the fort might take, so the mission was simple in principle. Go in, eliminate any opposition, and find the objectives. Where the objectives were, or what that opposition might be, would be discovered as the mission unfolded by the leaders of the individual assault teams. In the case of Sarpedon’s squads, that was Sarpedon himself.

There were three objectives. Primary objectives one and two were means to an end – that end was Objective Ultima, and its recovery would emblazon the names of every Space Marine here on the pages of Chapter history.

Sarpedon checked his bolter one last time, and clasped a hand round the grip of his force staff, the psyk-attuned arunwood haft warm to the touch. Faint energy crackled over its surface. The other Space Marines were making a last symbolic check of their wargear, too – helmet and joint seals, bolters. The plasma gun of Givrillian’s squad was primed, its power coils glowing. Sergeant Tellos’s assault squad, stripped of their jump packs for the star fort environment, unsheathed their chainswords as one. Sarpedon could feel Tellos’s face behind his snarl-nosed helmet, calm and untroubled, with a hint of a smile. All Soul Drinkers were born to fight – Tellos was born to do so with the enemy surrounding him at sword-thrust range, daring to take up arms against the Emperor’s chosen. Tellos was marked for great things, the upper echelons of Chapter command had said. Sarpedon agreed.

The choir suddenly fell silent, and there was nothing in the Space Marines’ minds but battle. The docking charges roared in unison, and they hit.

The corvus pod’s doors blew open and the air rushed out with a scream. The flesh on the servitor choir’s faces blistered and cracked with the sudden cold. There was silence all around, save for the hum of the power plant in his armour’s backpack and the almost-real sound of his brothers’ minds, washing back and forth like a tide as they snapped through the orientation/comprehension routines that had been implanted on their minds during psycho-doctrination.

Sight – the swirling smoke through the blast doors, fragments of ice and metal spinning. Sound – nothing, no air. Movement – none.

The Space Marines unbuckled their harnesses, ready to rush the breach. Tellos would lead them in, his men’s chainswords primed to rip through the first line of defenders. Sarpedon would be in the middle of the tactical squads on their heels, ready to unleash the weapon that boiled within his mind.

Sarpedon only had to nod, and Tellos bolted through the breach.

‘Go! Go! With me!’ Tellos’s young, eager voice broke the silence like a gunshot as his squad followed. Then the sergeant’s breath was the only sound. Every Space Marine listened with augmented ears for the first contact with the enemy.

The tactical squads were unbuckled.

‘Clear!’ called Tellos.

The Tactical Marines plunged into the smoky breach, their power armoured bulks dropping through into the darkness. Givrillian was in the lead, Brother Thax with the plasma gun at his shoulder. Sarpedon followed, bolter ready, force staff holstered behind his armour’s backpack. As he ducked into the breach he caught sight of Lakonia, a glowing sliver of a world framed in the gap between the pod’s docking gear and the star fort’s hull. The pod had come in aslant and the docking seal had not adhered, the atmosphere within the pod and immediate environment beyond venting out into the thin near-void.

An assault craft of lesser forces would have been forced to disengage then and there, its blast doors clamped shut, to drift vulnerable and impotent until second wave craft picked it up. But the Soul Drinkers cared nothing for such things – power armour’s sealable environment made a mockery of the dangers of vacuum. And there would be no second wave.

The smoke cleared and Sarpedon got his first look at the star fort’s interior. It was low-ceilinged to a warrior of his superhuman height, dirty and ill-maintained – they had hit a derelict section, of which there were probably a great many in the fort. Oil and sludge had frozen on the pipes that snaked the ceilings and walls. They were at the junction of two corridors – one way was blocked by a lump of rusting machinery, but there were still three exits to cover or exploit. Two curved away into the dimness and one ended in a solid bulkhead door, guarded by half of Tellos’s assault squad, ready to blow it with melta-bombs.

The lack of immediate resistance was explained by the two bodies. Probably maintenance workers, they were unprotected when the local atmosphere blew out. One had been thrown against a stanchion by the explosive decompression and had burst like a ripe seed pod, his blood bright like jewels of red ice on the floor and walls. The other was stretched pathetically along the corridor floor, mouth frozen mid-gasp, staring madly up at the breach with eyes red from burst blood vessels. Sarpedon’s keen eyes caught the glint of an insignia badge on the body’s grease-streaked grey overalls, a retinal rune flashing as the image zoomed in.

Stylised human figures, twins, flanking a golden planet.

The Van Skorvold crest.

The Tactical Marines fanned out around him, bolters ready, enhanced senses scanning for movement.

‘Breach the bulkhead, sir?’ Tellos voxed.

‘Not yet. Flight crew, get that seal intact. I don’t want any decompressions throwing our aim.’

‘Acknowledged,’ came the serf-pilot’s metallic voice from within the corvus cockpit. Vibrations ran through the dull metal grating of the floor as the clamps edged the docking seal true to the breached hull.

Sarpedon contracted a throat muscle to broaden the frequency of his vox-bead. ‘This is Sarpedon. Squads Tellos, Givrillian and Dreo deployed. Nil contact.’

‘Received, Sarpedon. Confirm location and move on mark.’ The voice was Commander Caeon’s from his position some way across the bloated bulk of the star fort. Along with Caeon, Sarpedon and their squads, six more corvus ship-to-orbital assault pods had impacted on the spaceward side of the star fort and disgorged their elite Soul Drinkers complements. Three more were following carrying the remaining apothecaries and Tech-Marines, along with a platoon of serf-labourers kitted out for combat construction duty, ready to support their brethren and consolidate the landing site bridgeheads.

Three whole companies of Soul Drinkers. A battlezone’s worth of the Emperor’s chosen soldiers, enough to face any threat the galaxy might throw at them. But for the prize that shone deep within the star fort, it was worth it.

Sarpedon pulled a holoslate from a waist pouch and flicked it on. A sketchy green image of the corridors immediately surrounding his position flickered above the slate, with lines of data circling it. The star fort was based on a very old orbital defence platform, and the platform’s schematics had been supplied in case any of the assault pods hit a section of the original platform.

‘Subsection delta thirty-nine,’ he voxed. ‘Redundant cargo and personnel route.’

‘Received. Consolidate.’

Sarpedon’s fingers, dextrous even within the gauntlet of purple ceramite, touched runes along the holoslate’s side and the corridor system was divided into blocks of colour, marking the different routes out of their position. Crosshairs centred on a point that flashed red, indicating the convergence of the three routes two hundred metres further into the fort. Barring enemy concentrations elsewhere, their immediate objective was the primary environmental shaft head, a grainy green curve at the edge of the display. Once taken, it gave the Marines an option for a larger thrust into the oxygen pumps and recycling turbines, and then through the mid-level habs into the armoured core that surrounded primary objective two. A messenger rune flickered on his retinal display, indicating the docking seal had achieved integrity.

‘By sections!’ he ordered on the squad-level frequency, indicating the holo to his squad sergeants. ‘Tellos, the bulkhead. Dreo, left, Givrillian right, with me. Cold and fast, Soul Drinkers!’

The squads peeled off into the darkness, leaving two Space Marines from each of the tactical squads to hold the bridgehead and cover the arriving specialists assigned to Sarpedon’s cordon. There was the thud of melta-bomb detonations and the whump of air re-entering the area as the bulkhead fell.

Sarpedon led Givrillian’s unit through the side corridor into a cargo duct, broad and square, with a heavy rail running down the centre for crate-carts or worker transports. Thax swept beyond the entrance.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Unsurprising,’ said Sarpedon. ‘They weren’t expecting us.’

No one ever did. That was how the Soul Drinkers worked. Cold and fast.

They felt the faint report of bolter-shots in the thinned air. ‘Contact!’ came Dreo’s voice.

Sarpedon waited, just a moment.

‘Enemy down,’ said Dreo. ‘Half-dozen, security patrol. Autoguns and flak armour, uniforms.’

‘Received, Sergeant Dreo. Proceed to rendezvous junction.’

‘Mutants, sir.’

Sarpedon’s skin crawled at the mere concept, and he could feel the disgust of his brothers. The evidence of illegal mutant dealing had been damning enough, but there had been stories that the Van Skorvold cartel had skimmed off the most useful of their illicit cargo and formed them into a private army. Now it was certain.

‘Move the flamer to the rear and burn them. Squads, be aware, mutations include enhanced sensory organs. Some of those things might see as well as you. And there will be more.’

Degenerate, dangerous individuals but cowardly at heart. His powers would work well on such foes. But first they had to find them.

‘Heavy contact, cargo hub seven!’ Luko’s callsign flickered. Luko’s squad was part of the strikeforce from another corvus pod, one which had come down nearby and just before Sarpedon’s. Sarpedon knew Luko would be itching to tear into some miscreant flesh with his power claws, and it was right that he should the first into the bulk of the enemy.

‘Sarpedon here, do you request support?’

‘Greetings, Librarian! Come on over, the hunting is good!’ Luko always had a laugh in his voice, never more so than when the foe dared show its face.

Givrillian led them down a side-duct, cutting across the unassigned sectors delta thirty-eight and thirty-seven. A flash of the holoplate showed Luko’s auspex data – red triangles, unknown signals, skittering across the edge of delta thirty-five.

‘Dozens, sir,’ said Givrillian.

‘I can see that, sergeant. Suggestion?’

‘Tellos’ll be there first, so their first line will be engaged. We go in with light engagement fire pattern, get in right amongst them. Don’t let them get dug in.’

‘Good. Do it.’

They all heard Tellos as he called upon his brother assault troopers to slay for the Emperor and for Dorn, and the familiar sound of chainblade into flesh. The bolter-fire from Luko’s squad stitched a pattern of sound into the air every Marine had heard a million times before. Givrillian burst through an open hatchway into the cargo hub that made up sector delta thirty-five, picked a target and loosed off a handful of shots from his bolter. Thax was a footstep behind and a pulse of liquid plasma-fire burst white hot from the muzzle of his gun, power coils shimmering.

Sarpedon cocked his bolter and followed, and saw the enemy for the first time.

The hub had once been dominated by the tracks at ceiling-level, which moved huge crates of cargo around the immense room between the duct entrances and pneumo-lifters. The forest of uprights which had held up the system had mostly collapsed or fallen askew with age and poor maintenance, and it was these that the mutants were using for cover.

In that split-second Sarpedon picked out a hundred unclean deformities – hands that were claws, facial features missing or multiplied or rearranged, spines cruelly twisted out of shape, scales and feathers and skin sheened with ooze. They had autoguns, some las weapons, crude shotguns. There were implanted industrial cutters and saws, and some with just brute strength, all in ragged stained coveralls in the uniform dark green bearing the Van Skorvold crest.

There must have been a thousand of them in there, crowds of baying mutants behind their makeshift defences. Their leaders – those with the most horrific mutations, some with massive chitinous talons or vast muscle growth – had either communicators or slits at their throats that indicated crude vox-bead implants. This was an organised foe.

Tellos’s men were vaulting the first barricades and laying in with chainswords – limbs lopped off, heads falling. The sergeant himself was duelling with something hulking and ugly that wielded a recycler unit’s harvester blade like a longsword. If it wasn’t the leader the creature would at least form a lynchpin of morale for the degenerates that crowded around it – Tellos was good, seeking out the target that would damage the enemy most if eliminated, using his duelling skill to the maximum. If he took a fine trophy from the beast, Sarpedon would put in a word for him to keep it.

It took Sarpedon half a second to appreciate the situation and decide on his plan of action. The enemy had overwhelming strength and the Soul Drinkers had to neutralise the threat before a proper line of defence could form. Therefore they would attack the enemy’s prime weaknesses relentlessly until they broke.

He loosed a couple of shots into a crowd of mutants and workers that were sheltering behind mouldering cargo crates from Luko’s pinning fire. The bolter’s kick in his hand felt good and heavy, and somewhere in the heart of the enemy two red blooms burst – a stream of autogun fire crackled towards him and he ducked back into cover.

First blood. Sarpedon had made his mark on the battle and could join with his brothers in pride at its execution, according to the Chapter traditions.

‘Givrillian, sweep forward and engage. Watch for Luko’s crossfire. I will follow.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Sarpedon could hear the smile in the sergeant’s voice. He knew what was coming.

Sarpedon slammed back-first against an upright stanchion for cover while he focused. The enemy’s weakness was moral – there might be many hundreds of them but they were degenerates and weak in mind, not least those untainted by mutation’s stain but who nevertheless stooped to associate themselves with the unclean. His augmented hearing picked out the grind of chainblade against bone above the gunfire, as Tellos wore down the mutant he had sought out. The beast’s death would weaken the enemy’s capacity to fight. Sarpedon would finish it off.

Givrillian’s squad flowed around him and he heard the plasma gun belch a wave of ultraheated liquid into the enemy flank, skin crackling, limbs melting.

What did they fear? They would fear authority, power, punishment. That was enough. He shifted the grip on his bolter so he had a hand free to draw the arunwood force staff from its leather scabbard. Its eagle-icon tip glowed as its thaumocapacitor core flooded with psychic energy. He concentrated, forming the images in his mind, piling them up behind a mental dam that would burst and send them flooding out into reality. He removed his helmet and set it on a clasp at his waist, taking a breath of the air – greasy, sour, recycled.

He stepped out into the battlezone. Givrillian’s squad had torn the first rank of mutants apart, and they were now crouched in firepoints slick with deviant blood as return fire sheeted over their heads. Mutant gangs were scuttling and slithering through the debris, moving to outflank and surround them. Tellos had the beast-mutant on its knees, one horn gone, huge blade chipped and scarred by the assault sergeant’s lightning-quick chainsword parries.

Sarpedon strode through it all, ignoring the autoshells and las-blasts spattering across the shadowy interior of the hub.

He spread his arms, and felt the coil of the aegis circuits light up and flow around his armoured body. He forced the images in his head to screaming intensity – and let them go.

The Hell began.

The closest mutants, at least two hundred strong, were thirty metres away, firefighting with Givrillian’s Marines. Their firing stopped as they stared around them as tall shrouded figures rose from the floor, carrying swords of justice and great gleaming scythes to reap the guilty. Some bolted, to see hands clawing from the shadows, hungry for sinners to crush.

Bat-winged things swooped down at them and the mutants ran screaming, knowing their doom had come to punish their corruption at last. They heard a deep, sonorous laughter boom from somewhere high above, mocking their attempts to flee. The waves of fire broke as the mutants fled back through their own ranks, sowing disruption amongst their own for a few fatal seconds.

Sarpedon leapt the barricade with the nearest of Givrillian’s Marines and stormed across to the mutant strongpoint. Most of the enemy still gawped at the apparitions boiling out of the darkness. A swing of his force staff clove through the closest two at shoulder height – he could feel their feeble lifeforces driven out of their bodies even as the staff tore through their upper bodies with a flash of discharging energy. The burst of psychic power knocked three more off their feet and they landed hard, weapons dropped.

The Hell. A weapon subtle but devastating, striking at the minds of his enemies while his brother Marines struck their bodies. In the swift storming actions that the Soul Drinkers had made their own, it bought the seconds essential to press home the assault. It worked up-close, in the guts of the fight, where a Soul Drinker delighted to serve his Emperor.

Three of Givrillian’s Marines, more than used to Sarpedon’s conjurations after years of training and live exercises, pointed bolter muzzles over the mutants’ makeshift barricade and pumped shells into the fallen, blasting fist-sized holes in torsos. Several more Space Marines knelt to draw beads on the hordes of mutants thrown into confusion by the sudden collapse of their front line. Shots barked out, bodies dropped.

A tentacle flailed as its owner fell. Something with skeletal wings jutting from its back was flipped into a somersault as a shell blew its upper chest apart.

Sarpedon stepped over the defences and swung again, swiping a worker/soldier in two at the waist as he tried to scramble away. Givrillian appeared at Sarpedon’s shoulder, his bolter cracking shots into the backs of fleeing enemies. Assault Marines leapt past them and sprinted towards the mutants ranged towards the back of the hub. Tellos’s armour was slick with black-red gore.

A hand clapped Givrillian’s shoulder pad – it was Luko. In an instant the two tactical squads had joined up to form a fire line and chains of white-hot bolter fire raked around the Assault Marines, covering them as they did their brutal work. Some mutants survived to flee – most died beneath the blades of Tellos and his squad, or hammered by the fire from Givrillian and Luko. Their screams filled the hub with the echoes of the dying.

The enemy had broken completely and the spectres of the Hell strode amongst the panicking mutants as the Marines slaughtered them in their hundreds.

It was how the Soul Drinkers always won. Break an enemy utterly, rob him of his ability to fight, and the rest was just discipline and righteous brutality.

Givrillian caught Luko’s hand in a warrior’s handshake. ‘Well met,’ he said. ‘I trust your men are blooded?’

Givrillian removed his helmet, glancing around. ‘Every one, Luko. A good day.’ Givrillian had lost half his jaw to shell fragments covering the advance on the walls of Oderic, and he scratched at the swathe of scar tissue from cheek to chin. ‘A good day.’ He looked out to where Tellos’s Marines were picking their way across the heaps of mangled dead. The kill had been immense. But now, of course, the whole star fort would know they were here.

‘Sergeants, your men have done well thus far,’ said Sarpedon. ‘We must not give the enemy pause to recover. How are we for an advance on objective two?’

‘The cargo ducts to port look better-maintained,’ replied Luko, gesturing with his clawed hand. ‘Enemy forces will be using them soon. If we bear to starboard we’ll avoid contact and give them less time to form a defence around the shell.’

Sarpedon nodded, and consulted the holoslate on the speediest route to the sphere. As the other Soul Drinker units thrust deeper into the star fort their hand-held auspex scanners were piping information about the environment to one another, so each leader had a gradually sharpening picture of the star fort’s interior. The holoslate display now showed a wider slice of the star fort, and several paths through the tangle of corridors and ducts were tagged as potential assault routes towards primary objective two.

Intelligence on the objective was slim. Its most likely location was a shell, an armoured sphere suspended in the heart of the station, two kilometres from their position. The star fort had once been an orbital defence platform, and the shell had protected its command centre – barely large enough for one man, the Van Skorvolds were probably using it as an emergency shelter.

Primary objective one was being dealt with by forces under Commander Caeon himself – responsibility for objective two fell to Sarpedon. This was to enable him to make command decisions regarding the use of his psychic powers, which were considered essential in an environment such as the star fort. Sarpedon absolutely would not countenance a failure to take objective two, not when the prize was so great. Nor when Commander Caeon had given the responsibility to the Librarian when he could easily have picked a company captain or Chaplain for the role.

Once the two primary objectives had been taken, the information gleaned from them should be enough to allow for the final thrust on to the Objective Ultima.

And if it was Sarpedon who took the prize… He fought here for the Chapter, for the grand plan of the Emperor of Mankind, and not for himself. But he would be lying if he told himself that he did not relish the chance to see the true object of their attack first, to take off his gauntlet and hold it as Primarch Dorn had done.

The Soulspear. For the moment, it was everything.

‘We pull Dreo’s squad back from the environment shaft,’ he began, red lines indicating paths of movement on the holoslate’s projection. ‘They are our rearguard. Tellos takes the lead into the starboard ducts and through the habs.’ The holoslate indicated a series of jerry-built partitions, possibly quarters for lower-grade workers, possibly workshops. ‘There’s a channel leading further in, probably for a mag-lev personnel train.’

‘We could take it on foot if we blow the motive systems,’ added Givrillian.

‘Indeed. There’s a terminus a kilometre and a half in. Our data thins out there, so we’ll meet up with the rest of the secondary force and work out a route from there. Questions?’

‘Any more of those?’ asked Tellos, jerking a thumb at the steaming, bleeding hulk that he had left of the mutant-beast.

‘With luck,’ said Sarpedon. ‘Move out.’

The secondary elements – an apothecary, Tech-Marine and dozen-strong serf-labour squad – were already arriving at the beachhead near the hull. Sarpedon voxed the Space Marines left stationed there to join up with Dreo at the rendezvous point and follow his advance.

The Space Marine spearhead moved out of the cargo hub at a jog, leaving thousands of mutant corpses gradually bleeding a lake of blood across the floor. It had been slightly over eight minutes since the attack began.

Neither the Soul Drinkers’ Chapter command nor the Marines in the assault itself knew anything of the Van Skorvolds save intelligence relevant to the strength and composition of any likely resistance. Everything else was beneath their notice. The Guard units transported by the battlefleet knew even less about their opponents, knowing only that they were part of a hastily-gathered strike force readied to act against a space station. But there were those who had been watching the Van Skorvolds very closely indeed, and through a number of clandestine investigations and carefully pointed questionings, the truth had gradually emerged.

Diego Van Skorvold died of a wasting disease twelve years before the Soul Drinkers’ attack on the star fort. His great-grandfather had purchased the star fort orbital defence platform at a discount from Lakonia’s cash-starved Planetary Defence Force, and proceeded to sink most of the Van Skorvold family coffers into converting it to a hub for mercantile activity in the Geryon sub-sector. Succeeding generations gradually added to the star fort as the manner of business the Van Skorvold family conducted became more and more specialised. Eventually, there was only cargo of one type flooding through its cargo ducts and docking complexes.

Human traffic. For all the lofty technological heights of the Adeptus Mechanicus and vast engineered muscle of the battlefleets, it was human sweat and suffering that fuelled the Imperium. The Van Skorvolds had long known this, and the star fort was perfectly placed to capitalise on it. From the savage meat-grinder crusades to the galactic east came great influxes of refugees, deserters and captured rebels. From the hive-hells of Stratix, the benighted worlds of the Diemos cluster and a dozen other pits of suffering and outrage came a steady stream of prisoners – heretics, killers, secessionists, condemned to grim fates by Imperial law.

Carried in prison ships and castigation transports, these unfortunates and malefactors arrived at the Van Skorvold star fort. Their prison ships would be docked and the human cargo marched through the ducts to other waiting ships. There were dark red forge world ships destined for the servitor manufactoria of the Mechanicus, where the cargo would be mindwiped and converted into living machines. There were Departmento Munitorium craft under orders to find fresh meat for the penal legions being bled dry in a hundred different warzones. There were towering battleships of the Imperial Navy, eager to take on new lowlives for the gun gangs and engine shifts to replace crew who were at the end of their short lifespans.

And for every pair of shackled feet that shuffled onto such craft, the Van Skorvolds would take their cut. Business was good – in an ever-shifting galaxy human toil was one of the few commodities that was always much sought after.

And then Diego Van Skorvold died, leaving his two children to inherit the star fort.

Truth be told, there had been rumours about old Diego, too, and one or two of his predecessors, but they had never come to anything. The new siblings were different. The tales were more consistent and hinted at transgressions more grave. People started to take notice. The rumours reached the ears of the Administratum.

Pirate craft and private launches had been sighted sneaking guiltily around the Lakonia system. The star fort’s human traffic was conducted under the strict condition that all prisoners were to be sold on only to Imperial authorities; allowing private concerns to purchase such a valuable commodity from under the noses of the Imperium was not to be tolerated.

And there was worse. Mutants, they said, who were barred from leaving their home world, were bought and sold, and the cream skimmed off to serve the Van Skorvolds as bodyguards and work-teams. There were even tales of strange alien craft, intercepted and wrecked by the sub-sector patrols, whose holds were full of newly-acquired human slaves. Corresponding gossip pointed darkly to the collection of rare and unlicensed artefacts maintained by the Van Skorvolds deep in the heart of the star fort. Trinkets paid by alien slavers in return for a supply of broken-willed humans? It was possible. And that possibility was enough to warrant action.

Matters pertaining to the star fort fell under the jurisdiction of the Administratum, and they were concerned with keeping it that way. The Van Skorvolds had been immensely successful, but the persistence of the rumours surrounding them was considered enough to constitute proof of guilt. The accusations of corruption and misconduct indicated that the control of the prisoner-trade lay in the hands of those who broke the Imperial law, and so it was deemed necessary that the Administratum should take control of the star fort and its business.

The Van Skorvold siblings were not so understanding. Repeated demands for capitulation went unanswered. It was decided that force was the only answer, but that an Arbites or, Terra forbid, an Inquisitorial purge would do untold damage to an essential and profitable trade. The flow of workers and raw servitor materials was too important to interrupt. It had to be done as discreetly as such things can be.

In the decades and centuries to come, Imperial history would forget most of these facts when relating the long and tortuous tale of the Soul Drinkers. Yet nevertheless, it was there that the terrible chain of events began, in the drab dusty corridors of the Administratum and in the decadent hearts of the Van Skorvold siblings. Had the Van Skorvolds picked a different trade or the Administratum persisted with negotiations and sanctions, a canny scholar might suggest, there would be nothing but glory writ beside the name of the Soul Drinkers Chapter. But, as seems always the case with matters so delicately poised, fate was not to be so kind.

‘Everywhere… fraggin’… everywhere…’

‘…crawling all over the sunside… armour, guns… monsters, all of them…’

On board the Imperial battle cruiser Diligent, the transmissions from the Van Skorvold star fort were increasing in number and urgency. The tactical crews clustered around the comm consoles on the bridge were tracking a dozen battles and firefights, as a small but utterly ruthless force cut their way through the mutant army of the Van Skorvold cartel.

They were the sounds of panic and confusion, of death and dying and shock. There were screams, sobs, orders shouted over and over again even though there was no one left to hear them. He could hear them fleeing – they were the sounds of bolter shells thunking into flesh and chainsword blades shrieking their way through bone.

They were also the sounds of Iocanthos Gullyan Kraevik Chloure getting rich. It wasn’t about that, of course – it was about safeguarding the economic base of this sector and rooting out the corruption that threatened Imperial authority. But getting rich was a bonus.

And, of course, most of them were only mutants.

Consul Senioris Chloure of the Administratum could see little evidence of the carnage within the star fort through the viewscreen that took up most of the curved front wall of the Diligent’s bridge. Magnified inset panels appeared in the corners to pick out something the cogitators decided was interesting – plumes of escaping air and squat ribbed cylinders of large ship-to-ship assault pods emblazoned with the golden chalice symbol of the Soul Drinkers Chapter.

Space Marines. Chloure had spent decades in service to the Imperium and yet he had never seen one, confined as he was in the drudgery and isolation of the Administratum. Grown men talked of them like children talk of heroes – they could tear men apart with their bare hands, see in the dark, take las-blasts to the chest without flinching, wore armour that bullets bounced off. They were three metres tall. They never failed. And yet Consul Senioris Chloure, in charge of the mission to cleanse and seize the Van Skorvold star fort, had managed to engineer their presence here and let them do the job for him. Chloure had a three-cruiser battlefleet supported by one Adeptus Mechanicus ship, and if he played this right, he wouldn’t have to use them until it came to cleaning up.

There was a moment of gloom as the screens and lights on the bridge dipped to acknowledge the figure arriving on the bridge. Chloure looked down from the observation pulpit to see Khobotov, archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, enter flanked by an honour guard of shield-servitors, another gold-plated microservitor scurrying in front paying out a long sea-green strip of carpet for the magos to walk on. Three or four of those damned sensor-technomats droned in the air on hummingbird wings, trailing wires like cranefly legs – Chloure hated them, their chubby infant bodies and glazed cherubic faces. They were sinister in the extreme and he felt sure Khobotov affected them to inflict uneasiness on whoever had to meet him.

Chloure had spent long enough in the Administratum – that huge and complex institution which tried to smooth the running of the unimaginably vast Imperium – to know the value of politics. The Adeptus Mechanicus had wanted a part in the subduing of the rumoured heretics of the Van Skorvold cartel, and the representative they sent to join the battlefleet was Archmagos Khobotov and his ship, the 674-XU28.

Chloure had been willing to suffer Khobotov’s inclusion in the mission to grease the wheels between the Administratum and the Mechanicus, but he had begun to wish he hadn’t. The Mechanicus was essential to the running of the Imperium, constructing and maintaining the arcane machinery that let mankind travel the stars and defend its frontiers, but they were so damn strange that their presence sometimes made Chloure’s stomach churn. The 674-XU28 was almost entirely silent, so the first warning crews had that Khobotov was paying them a visit was usually when the archmagos swept onto the bridge.

Chloure rose from the pulpit seat, smoothing down his black satin greatcoat. He took the salute of Vekk, his flag-captain, as he trotted down the main bridge deck with its swarms of petty officers and lexmechanics. Khobotov himself was a complete enigma, swathed in deep green robes with ribbed power cables leading out behind him from beneath the hem. Tiny motorised sub-servitors held the cables in silver jaws and whirred around, keeping the cables from snagging on the rivets and consoles jutting from the deck of the Diligent’s bridge. This caused the cables to slither like long artificial snakes, which was another thing that struck Chloure as gravely unpleasant.

He supposed he should be grateful it was the Mechanicus who had insisted on coming along. The puritans of the Ecclesiarchy or inflexible lawhounds of the Adeptus Arbites would have been more hassle and less use.

Chloure did what the Administratum had taught him to do many years before – grin and bear it, for the good of politics.

‘Archmagos Khobotov,’ he said, feigning camaraderie. ‘I trust you have heard the good news.’ One of the technomats buzzed past his head, a leathered tome clutched in its dead-fleshed hands, and he resisted the urge to swat it away.

‘Indeed,’ replied Khobotov, his voxed voice grinding from within his deep green cowl. ‘It is of concern to me that neither your crew nor mine detected their approach.’

‘They have fine pilots, as does any Chapter. And I hear this is the Soul Drinkers’ speciality, rapid ship-to-ship swashbuckling and all that. I’d wager the Van Skorvolds didn’t realise they were coming either.’

‘Hmmm. I take it this indicates your intelligence was accurate regarding the artefact’s location.’

‘We’ll see soon enough. Hopefully by the time they’ve finished our Guardsmen will only be fulfilling an occupational role. Save us assaulting the place ourselves.’ Chloure remembered he was still maintaining a big false smile, and hoped the conversation would be over soon.

‘My tech-guard would have been willing to take part in a landing action, consul.’ If Khobotov had taken any offence it was impossible to tell. ‘My forces are compact and well-armed. But yes, for them to attack would have yielded casualties amongst my resources that could be used profitably elsewhere.’

‘Yes. Good.’ Chloure wished he could see the archmagos’s face – was he smiling or glowering? Then it occurred to him that the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus were notorious for the levels of bionic augmentation and replacement they indulged in, and that there was no telling if there even was a face under that cowl. ‘I shall… keep you updated.’

‘There is no need. My sensors and tech-oracles are far superior to yours.’

‘Of course. Good.’

Archmagos Khobotov swept around and led his unliving entourage off the bridge, doubtless towards the command crew shuttle bay where he would return to the 674-XU28. The rust-red Mechanicus craft was designated as an armed research vessel, but it was a damn sight bigger and more dangerous than it sounded. Within the hold was a regiment of tech-guard, although it looked like there was room for a lot more.

Had it come down to it, it would have been those tech-guards now piling into the Van Skorvold star fort alongside the Imperial Guard units transported by the rest of the fleet. Stationed on the cruiser Hydranye Ko there was a below-strength regiment from Stratix, the 37th, most of them mother-killing gang-scum who joined up for no better reason than that it would get them the hell off Stratix. The second cruiser, the Deacon Byzantine, contained elements of the Diomedes 14th Bonebreakers and, owing to an administrative error, a strike force of assault and siege tanks from the Oristia IV Armoured Brigade. The Diligent itself contained a regiment of Rough Riders from the plains of Morisha, deeply unhappy at being separated from their horses who were wintering several systems away.

Three cruisers, not of the highest quality but recently refitted and with well-drilled crews. It wasn’t much compared to the immense battlefleets that scoured the void in times of crusade or invasion, but it had been all Chloure could muster through string-pulling and favour-calling in a short period of time. He had to secure the star fort and its lucrative trade before some other Imperial authority came sniffing around. And if it paid off he would be in charge of the star fort for the rest of his life, content and comfortable, as a reward for the seemingly endless drudgery he had undergone, pushing papers and running errands in the Emperor’s name.

And now it seemed the Guardsmen and tech-guard would be more than enough, for his biggest gamble had paid off. The information that the Soulspear was on board the star fort had travelled exactly as he hoped it would, straight to the ears of the Soul Drinkers Chapter. Judging by the displacement of the small Astartes fleet anchored on the far side of Lakonia and the number of corvus assault pods, their number was estimated to be above three hundred.

Three hundred. Smaller Marine forces had conquered star systems. Of course, officially their presence here was fortuitous and Chloure didn’t have the authority over them that he did over the battlefleet. Space Marines were famous for their autonomy. But the Soul Drinkers were so honour-bound that their reaction to the information on the Soulspear could be predicted exactly. Chloure had known they would ignore his fleet and make their own attack, sweeping through the star fort as they searched for their antique trinket. When they found it they would leave as quickly as they had arrived, leaving the star fort filled with bodies and ripe for occupation by the Guardsmen.

Warming as these thoughts were, Chloure couldn’t stop his skin from crawling as Archmagos Khobotov’s technomats droned past. Soon the star fort would be taken in the name of the Administratum, the risk would be over, and his future would be secure. And he wouldn’t have to talk to that Mechanicus spectre again.

Yser had hidden as soon as the first shooting started. At first it had been relayed over the cull-team’s communicators – scratchy, distorted screams and dull crumps of bullets spattering into flesh. There was confusion and anger, but for a change none of it was directed at Yser or his flock. Something new had appeared, something terrible. Giants, they said. Giants in armour, with guns and swords, swarming without number from the sunward side of the star fort. They were everywhere at once.

Yser peered between the mouldering packing crates where he had hidden in the corner of the maglev terminus. He had hoped to steal some food from the lumbering supply carts as they hummed down the maglev rail towards the heart of the star fort, but the cull-teams were out and he had been cornered. He had felt sure they would take him this time – they were brute-mutants, afflicted with a semi-stable strain of uncleanliness that let their muscles bulge out of control. They stomped across the sheet metal of the maglev deck, beetling eyes peering into the shadows, shotguns and spearcannon clutched in their massive paws. Yser hadn’t minded that much – it was a worthy way to die, trying to keep his flock alive, striving to continue the dutiful worship of the Emperor. What else did he have?

Then the reports came in. Word was that Mirthor was down, which was in itself impossible – the Van Skorvolds had appointed Mirthor the chief of their close-knit mutant bodyguard solely because it was reckoned absolutely nothing could kill him. He was an immense horned monster, twice the height of the tallest man, and yet they said he was dead, cut to pieces by armoured giants who bled from the shadows and had the spirits of vengeance on their side.

Impossible. But for Yser to have gone from violent petty thief to a priest ministering to the faith of a flock of escaped slaves was also impossible. Yet Yser had done it, praise to the Architect of Fate. Yser wondered if there was a miracle unfolding in the depths of the star fort – or, indeed, if the Emperor would let him live long enough to see it.

The brutes began to select fire points as the reports put the attackers closer and closer, and suddenly the crump of gunfire was real, echoing from the cargo ducts and recycler shafts snaking away from the terminus.

More arrived. Danvaio’s lot, mostly with minor mutations that made them ugly and bitter, and a bunch of unaltered humans from the dock work-gangs in the dark green uniform of the Van Skorvold army. Yser could hear the voices ugly in their throats – they had tooled up with whatever weapons they could find and mustered here, because the attackers were heading this way and they were damned if that bitch Veritas Van Skorvold was going to have their heads because they ran instead of fighting.

They were still arguing over what to do when an explosion ripped into the side of the great maglev platform.

Yser reeled in shock and slumped onto his back, ears screaming, a white patch blotting his vision. As it cleared he could see the wash of blood spattered over the platform where Danvaio’s mob had caught the worst of it, their incomplete bodies slumping over the plasticrete rubble.

And he saw them. Clad in purple trimmed with bone, holding heavy squat guns or whining chainswords almost as long as Yser was tall. He thought there was some trick of the light, but no, these men really were that tall – they topped out as tall as the bigger brutes, and their armour gave them immense bulk. There were a dozen of them perhaps, sprinting across the terminal space to rush the makeshift defences. Someone fired back but the few shots that hit spanged off their armour. Guns opened up in reply and tore through plasticrete and flesh alike, a half-dozen normals shredded in a second.

He had seen them before, in the waking dreams when the Architect had first come to him and answered his plight. They were His chosen, the warriors of justice, whose unending battle would redeem humanity’s sins and lay the foundations for His great plan. Could it be? He had thought it a legend, something that would come to pass long after he had died. Was it happening now? Was the Architect of Fate really sending his warriors here, to save Yser’s flock?

More of them were pouring in at a sprint as the first wave slammed into the defenders, mutant and normal alike sliced or riddled with explosive shells. The warriors dived over barricades into the teeth of blades and work-axes. Amongst those now arriving was one without a helmet, shaven-headed with a battered, yet volatile face, around whose skull played a blue-white corona echoed by that around the top of the mighty staff he carried. The chalice symbol on the shoulder pad of every man’s armour was echoed on this warrior, but chased in gold. Sparks flew as his feet hit the floor and he raced with his brothers into the fray.

As Yser cowered he saw more and more mutants pouring from the maglev tunnels. He knew the voice of Veritas Van Skorvold herself would be stinging the ears of those with communicators, demanding they make their lives worth something by giving them to defend her star fort. He saw crews from the hunt gangs, who tracked runaway slaves through the star fort with their stalked eyes or sensitive antennae, running right into the teeth of the warriors’ gunfire and being shredded to bloody rags. He watched the bare-headed warrior raise his staff and unleash a storm of power, which coalesced into shadowy shapes that descended on the hordes of arriving mutants and put them to flight.

Yser had never seen such slaughter. Those of his flock who had been caught by the cull-teams had been surrounded and butchered or killed while they slept, and Yser had seen many of them die – and now it seemed they were being paid back a thousandfold by the righteous warriors of the Architect of Fate. It was the deliverance of justice as Yser had dared to believe it would be, swift and merciless. The screams of the dying and the stench of blood washed over his hiding place, and when he dared peek out again he could see mountains of mutant corpses piled up against the maglev platform. The warriors, not pausing to gloat over the dead, moved swiftly on into the maglev tunnels, the bare-headed one shouting orders. Yser caught his words – they were to press on, strike fast before the defenders could get properly organised and meet them a third time, find the objective and link up with their brothers.

Then they were gone, leaving only the dead.

The educated guesses had been correct. The maglev line led deep into the star fort, past cavernous generatoria and parasitic shanty-towns, right onto the doorstep of the shell. Mutant strongpoints dotted the square-sectioned maglev tunnel, but the energy weapons to the fore had cracked open gun emplacements and grenades had blown apart huddling bands of mutants. Some had communicators, and the Space Marines on point had reported a screeching female voice yelling orders through the headsets.

The Soul Drinkers had kept moving, posting pickets to guard the route into the heart of the star fort as the Chapter serfs moved in behind the Marine spearhead. With the mutant army scattered and broken, the Soul Drinkers had passed through the increasingly intact command sector of the ancient orbital defence platform, and reached the shell.

It was thirty-nine minutes since the attack had begun.

Sarpedon checked the vox-net for Caeon’s progress. The larger force of Soul Drinkers had advanced on a broader front, for primary objective one was believed to be located in the Van Skorvolds’ lavish private quarters – four floors of garish decadence that were well-defended and had required an assault from many angles. There were injuries, some disabling, but no deaths. Caeon had thrown a ring of Marines around the private quarters and was in the process of squeezing the defenders – fewer mutants, and more well-armed mercenary guards – to death inside.

Good, then. Caeon would get the job done – he was an experienced and trustworthy commander. Sarpedon himself, with what was his first true command, could concentrate on his own part of the mission. The part that concerned primary objective two.

Sarpedon watched the dozen-strong work-serf gang hurrying past, one of them carrying a needle-nosed melta-saw. They were some of the thousands of Chapter serfs maintained by the Soul Drinkers for tasks too menial for the Space Marines themselves. They were stripped to the waist and covered with a sheen of sweat from their work rapidly shoring up the assault pod breaches, and from the quick march along the trail of destruction the Soul Drinkers had blazed before them.

The serfs passed into the Marine perimeter – fifty of the Imperium’s finest warriors had formed a cordon of steel around the exposed section of the shell. The rest of Sarpedon’s hundred-strong command either formed rings of defence further out or were organised into hunting parties to eliminate knots of mutants skulking nearby.

There had been casualties – the sheer numbers of the opposition had made it inevitable – but every one hurt when each Space Marine was so valuable. Koro and Silvikk would never see another dawn, and Givlor would be fortunate to survive, his throat transfixed by a metre-long speargun bolt. There were scores of minor injuries, fractures and lacerations, but a Space Marine could simply ignore such things until the mission was finished. It had been cold and fast. Chapter Master Gorgoleon himself would be proud.

Sarpedon watched as the serf gang prepared to bore a hole in the shell. The exposed section of the shell was surrounded by crudely wired data-consoles, charts and maps, detritus of the Van Skorvold business. Doubtless the Administratum would make much of the information in the scattered files and cigitator banks, but Sarpedon cared nothing for it. Once the Soul Drinkers had secured Objective Ultima they would leave this place and let the Imperial battlefleet outside take it over and do what they willed.

There was one way into the one-man command module housed within the shell. It was sealed, and Sarpedon knew it would take time to crack the encryption locks. That was why they had brought the serfs.

One of the work-serfs, his arms replaced with articulated tines to fit the melta-saw, hefted the huge cutting device and let a thin superheated line bore into the smooth metallic surface of the shell. Slowly a red tear dripping with molten metal was scored across the metal as an entrance was carved.

The work-serf strained to drag the cutting beam the last few centimetres, black smoke coiling from where the bionics met his shoulder. The Chapter apothecaries and serf-orderlies often practised cybernetic surgery on the work gang augmentations, and they weren’t always of the highest quality. But they sufficed here, for a large section of the shell wall fell away with a loud clang.

Sarpedon stepped forward, projecting a crackling aura of power around his head. It was a simple trick, but it worked surprisingly well in cowing the weak-willed. Several of Givrillian’s Marines followed him in.

Inside, the shell was clean and well-kept. It was small, enough for one or two men, but it had been stripped of the command mind-impulse units and cogitator readouts, and kitted out as a luxurious bedroom. There was a four-poster bed, deep carpets, and a dressing table with a large mirror that doubled as a holoprojector. Antique porcelain decorated the shelves running around the room, and several original paintings lined the walls, along with a finely-decorated sword that had almost certainly never been drawn from its scabbard. It was evidently intended to ensure the notable forced to shelter here did so in the comfort he was accustomed to.

That notable lay cowering on the bed, trying to hide under sheets although he was fully clothed in a powder blue velvet bodysuit with gold lace trimmings. His periwig had fallen off and lay beside the bed. His face was thin and youthful, with a weak chin, watery eyes and lank blond hair dusted with powder. A faint odour of urine rose from him, plain to Sarpedon’s enhanced senses.

Primary objective two: Callisthenes Van Skorvold.

Sarpedon was a transmitting telepath, not a receiver – a rare talent, and one that was of little use in dragging thoughts out of a man’s mind during interrogation. But Sarpedon suspected he would not need such trickery here in any case.

‘Callisthenes Van Skorvold,’ he began, ‘doubtless your crimes against the Imperium are many and grave. They will be dealt with later. For now, I have but one question: Where is the Soulspear?’

Halfway across the star fort, amongst the tapestries and chandeliers of the garish inner sanctum of the Van Skorvold cartel, Commander Caeon’s force closed in on primary objective one. The assault had been near-perfect, storming the hastily prepared defences of the Van Skorvold private chambers from a dozen directions at once, isolating pockets of defenders and annihilating them with massive firepower or lightning assaults before sweeping on to the next opponents.

Hard, fast, merciless. Daenyathos, the philosopher-soldier of Chapter legend, might have written of such an assault when he laid down the tenets of Soul Drinker tactics thousands of years before.

Bolters blazed their way through the last few chamber guards. The guards were professionals, picking defensive points with care and trying to relinquish them in good order when they had been overwhelmed. But their quality as soldiers meant only that they were compelled to die to a man in the teeth of Caeon’s advance.

Commander Caeon strode past Finrian’s tactical squad, whose two melta guns had burned great dripping holes through the partitions between the drawing rooms, audience halls and bedchambers. His feet crunched through the glass of the shattered chandelier and the splinters of priceless furniture the defenders had tried to use for cover.

All around smoke coiled in the air and flames crackled around the wooden panelling. The opulence of the chambers was in ruins, strewn with bodies and riddled with bullet holes. The Soul Drinkers were rising through the gunsmoke as the echoes of bolter fire died away, sweeping the muzzles of their guns across the bloodstained corridors and hunting for survivors.

‘Clear,’ came Finrian’s voice over the vox, as twenty sergeant’s icons flashed in agreement on Caeon’s retina.

Caeon was an ancient and grizzled man, three hundred years old, and he kicked the bodies of the fallen guards aside with the contempt appropriate to a Space Marine hero. He had fought some of the sharpest actions in the recent history of the Soul Drinkers and taken trophies of the kraken, the ork, the Undying Ones and a dozen other species besides. He peered through the wreaths of bolter smoke, searching for primary objective one.

A couple of parlour slaves were wandering about stunned, ignored by the Marines. A thin, aged woman whimpered as she stumbled over the wreckage, seemingly oblivious to the two hundred-strong Marine force stalking through the area. A pudgy child scampered here and there, as if trying to find a way out. A couple of others were huddled in corners, seemingly catatonic. They barely registered with Caeon.

The place was desolate. There were no reports of the objective being sighted, and he was running out of time. He wanted to secure his goal and get off the star fort before he had to deal with the Administratum minions who considered themselves to be in charge here. He wasn’t about to waste time having his Marines chase around like children.

There was a sharp pain in his leg, where the greave met the knee armour. He thought it must be one of his older war wounds, of which he had a score – but glancing down, he saw the pudgy bat-faced girl withdrawing her hand, something long and glinting in her palm.

How had she crept up on him? A child! A heathen serving-girl! He would never hear the end of it – not to his face, of course, but every Marine would know…

He knocked her flying with a backhanded swipe, but though she landed hard she sprang up again, her ugly little face filled with hate.

‘Filth! Hrud-loving groxmothers! This is my business! Mine! How dare you destroy what is mine?’

The pain in Caeon’s leg hadn’t gone. It was a spreading heat winding its way deep down into the muscle.

One of Finrian’s Marines – Brother K’Nell, the bone and purple of his armour blackened with melta-wash – grabbed the child by the arm and held her up so she dangled, squealing. The thing in her hand was a heavy ring, chunky gold with a thin silver dagger jutting from it. ‘Digital weapon. Xenos, lord.’

A needler. The child had a digi-needler. Where the hell had she…

‘Butchers! Bilespawn! K’nib-rutting gorebelchers! Look what you’ve done!’

The pain had turned cold and Caeon felt himself beginning to sway. He had passed out from massive wounds on the battlefield more than once, but this was different. This time, he wasn’t so sure he would get back up.

Before the eyes of Finrian’s squad Commander Caeon’s massive frame teetered like a great felled tree and slammed to the ground.

‘Ninkers! Thug-filth! My home! My life!’ screeched primary objective one, Veritas Van Skorvold.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2002.
This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Maria Zolotukhina.

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ISBN: 978-1-80026-650-6

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* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.