The Greater Good

TWELVE

I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t hesitate at that moment, but in truth I had no option but to charge ahead regardless. There were too many cogboys cluttering up the corridor for any sign of faltering resolve on my part to go unnoticed and, to compound the issue, I’d said in so many words that I meant to protect Dysen from the genestealers. Whether or not the tech-priest had recorded or transmitted the conversation, it was out there among them, no doubt being passed from one to another in excited snatches. So yet again I was committed to a course of action that ran directly counter to all my instincts, as a glib excuse intended to keep me out of trouble rebounded to bite me on the arse. Besides, getting to the hangar, and through it to safety, meant facing whatever awaited us ahead whether I liked it or not, and at least it sounded as though I’d have some skitarii to hide behind this time, instead of playing ’nid bait on my own.

The wide, high doorway to the hangar was open, and once again my nostrils were assaulted by the sulphurous reek of the outer air, so strong that it even overpowered Jurgen’s distinctive odour. That meant Dysen’s shuttle must already have arrived, descending on the lift from the landing pad and admitting a tranche of the all but unbreathable outer air along with it.

We’d almost reached the gaping entranceway when a crimson-uniformed skitarii cannoned through it, propelled by the genestealer which was trying to gnaw his face off. Blood and less identifiable fluids were seeping through wide gashes in his body armour from wounds which would have felled a normal man, but he was still fighting fiercely, his heavily augmented body soaking up the kind of punishment only a Space Marine could normally have withstood. The pair of them rebounded from the opposite wall, leaving a dent in the polished metal surface, and waltzed towards Jurgen and I, so engrossed in their private struggle that they were probably equally oblivious to our presence.

Reacting instinctively, my duellist’s reflexes cutting in without conscious thought, I pivoted to avoid the intertwined antagonists and struck at the genestealer’s back with my chainsword. The whirling blade cut deep, spraying the damaged wall with fragments of chitin and viscera. Taken completely by surprise, the abominable creature turned and snapped at me, its razor-edged fangs clashing together close enough to have taken my arm off, if I hadn’t stepped back to open the distance a little. The beleaguered skitarii rallied, taking advantage of the ’stealer’s moment of distraction to smash his forearm into the side of its head, laying it open with the serrated blade inlaid along its length. Partially stunned, the hideous creature loosened its grip on him, raising its neck to strike with its fangs, like a serpent. Seeing my chance I stepped in again, severing its spinal column with a precise horizontal swipe.

Roaring with rage, the fleshly parts of his face engorged and almost as red as his uniform, the skitarii seized both sides of the purestrain’s head between his hands and twisted. With a hideous ripping, crunching sound, remarkably similar to that produced by Jurgen and a plate of seafood, the ’stealer’s head came clean away from its body.

After regarding his grisly trophy for a moment, the skitarii threw it aside and strode towards me, trampling the body of his fallen foe underfoot as he came. His face was still contorted, even more marginally human than a soldier of the Adeptus Mechanicus normally looked, and I began to feel concerned for my own safety. He was out of his head on ’zerk[82], or something very like it, and probably in no fit state to distinguish friend from foe, or even care. Then, almost at the last minute, I recognised the patchwork of augmetics encrusting his face.

‘Centurion Kyper, report,’ I rapped out, in my most commanding manner, pleased to note out of the corner of my eye that Jurgen’s lasgun was levelled at him. I hoped he wouldn’t have to use it, but if it meant me staying in one piece, I’d let him gun down the skitarii officer in a heartbeat, and worry about the political implications later.

But, to my relief, Kyper’s eyes began to clear, a vestige of understanding returning to them almost at once.

‘Commissar Cain,’ he grated out. ‘You are welcome. Plenty of ’stealers still to kill.’ The fires of drug-induced frenzy began to blaze up in him again and he turned back towards the fray, evidently determined to make a start on the job as quickly as possible, completely undeterred by the fact that he was leaking vital fluids like a corroding tap.

‘Is the Magos Senioris safe?’ I asked urgently, before the tidal wave of bloodlust could sweep him too far away for rational discourse.

‘He is,’ Kyper confirmed, then leapt back into the fray, apparently intent on ripping the next ’stealer unfortunate enough to cross his path limb from limb[83]. That was something, anyway; if Dysen was still in the hangar, his shuttle must be too, and there was still a chance I could use both to get my own miserable carcass to safety. An optimistic thought which lasted all of the next two or three seconds, at which point I got my first clear sight of the battle raging within the landing bay.

‘Hybrids!’ Jurgen said with loathing, directing a stream of lasgun fire at a hunched, three-armed monstrosity hefting the hellgun it had just taken from a dying skitarii, with every sign of being able to use it, an impression it confirmed a moment later by turning it on us. The hail of high energy las-bolts went wide, however, and before it could rectify its mistake, my aide’s superior marksmanship took it down with a clean shot to the head.

‘Several,’ I agreed, spotting more of the semi-human abominations, with a growing sense of puzzlement. Genestealers were common enough in the front ranks of a tyranid invasion, but I’d never heard of them being accompanied by their cross-species offspring before. They only appeared after implanted victims of the brood mind had been embedded in a world’s population for at least a generation. But there had been no reports of the kind of social turmoil which would point to a genestealer cult being active on Fecundia, and in any case, among so heavily augmented a population, I’d have expected them to find slim pickings indeed.

Then another bounding purestrain tried to take my head off with a swipe from its fearsome talons, and I had no more time to mull the matter over. Diving aside in the nick of time, I cut at its neck, being rewarded with a gout of noxious fluid before Jurgen brought it down with another burst of lasgun fire.

‘Over there, sir,’ my aide called, and through the maelstrom of running, shooting, slashing figures, all of them inhumanly fast and lithe, whether augmented human or xenos abomination, I caught sight of Dysen and his bodyguards at last. They seemed to have had the same idea as I’d had, attempting to punch through the melee to the shuttle which had brought them here, but they weren’t getting very far. The majority of the ’stealers and their progeny were clustered under the spread wings of the great transport vessel, still resting on the lift which had brought it below, like a brood of chicks seeking the protection of its parent. The sheer press of their numbers was effectively cutting the tech-priest and his party off from it, which meant there wasn’t much chance of me getting aboard unshredded either.

‘What’s going on?’ I yelled, as our hacking, slashing, and

las-bolt-punctuated progress brought us within earshot of the Magos Senioris at last. ‘Kildhar had only just told us you were coming, then all hell broke loose!’ I’d made for him as soon as my aide pointed him out, of course, partly to look as if I was trying to make good on my ill-advised boast, but mainly because putting a party of heavily-armed skitarii between me and the ’stealers seemed like my best chance of getting out of here with a full complement of limbs.

‘Then you know as much as I do,’ Dysen said, remarkably testily for a man who was supposed to be above such petty human traits as an emotional reaction to stress. But then I don’t imagine his ordered, rational world had ever been rocked quite so much before.

I shot a purestrain which had just counted out another of the skitarii, clambering over the corpse of its victim in its eagerness to get to Dysen, taking it in the throat as it hinged its jaws impossibly wide in the disconcerting way such creatures do. It collapsed across the body of its final victim, twitching and gurgling its last, although I’m bound to admit the kill had been a lucky one, and probably wouldn’t have taken place at all if it hadn’t taken a battering from the skitarii before my turn came around. ‘Persistent, aren’t they?’ I said, feeling a show of insouciance would go down well if anyone was recording this scrap for posterity[84].

‘My gratitude, commissar,’ Dysen said, ducking behind what was left of his escort with prudent alacrity. ‘I was informed you were on your way, but feared you’d perished.’

‘I was thinking the same thing about you,’ I riposted. Apparently my conversation downstairs[85] had indeed been passed on by whatever arcane means the cogboys used to keep in touch with one another. I indicated the shuttle. ‘We need to get you back aboard, and out of here. Is there a safe haven the tyranids haven’t landed near yet?’

‘There’s been no landing,’ Dysen said, sounding as confused as his implanted vox-coder would allow. ‘Not so much as a single spore.’

‘Then where the hell have all the ’stealers come from?’ I demanded. The xenos began to pull back, towards the shuttle on the lift platform where so many of them had already taken refuge. The skitarii rallied, harrying them from all sides with hellgun fire. Most of the hybrids had managed to scavenge weapons of their own by now, and replied with alacrity, but with far less accuracy or effect.

‘I have no idea,’ Dysen said, his even mechanical tone somehow managing to convey that this was a state of affairs he was far from happy with, intended to rectify at the earliest opportunity, and that if anyone was responsible for the creatures being able to infiltrate the shrine they were in for a far from merry time. ‘They attacked the hangar as soon as we disembarked.’

‘I see,’ I said, sending a couple of las-bolts after the disengaging brood, the palms of my hands tingling as they always did when my subconscious started jumping up and down, yelling, in an effort to get my forebrain to recognise looming catastrophe when it saw it. Something really wasn’t right about the ‘stealers’ tactics.

‘We’ve got ’em on the run, at least,’ Jurgen said, snapping a fresh powercell into his lasgun. He glanced at me. ‘Last one, sir. Then I’m down to the bayonet.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Kyper interrupted, trotting across to join us, looking more like a carcass stapled together with augmetics than ever; when he finally ran out of combat drugs, he was going to drop like a puppet whose strings had been cut. But at least he was in the right place to be put back together, I supposed. ‘They’re going to ground in the shuttle. If we send in the heavy flamers, we’ll get the lot.’

‘Oh, Throne,’ I said, the coin dropping at last. Retreating ’stealers never congregated in the middle of an open space, they always ran for cover in the shadows, from where they could mount another ambush. ‘They’re not going to ground!’ I pointed to a couple of perfectly human-looking figures in the middle of the pack, one wearing a torn and ragged flight suit. ‘They’re planning to fly out of here!’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Dysen said. ‘Genestealers aren’t capable of operating complex mechanica. Piloting a shuttle requires dexterity and intellect.’

‘Which their hybrids possess!’ I practically screamed at him. I’m no expert on the subject, but I’d encountered enough nests of the pernicious creatures to know that, after a few generations, some of their offspring are all but indistinguishable from humans[86]. ‘Besides, they’ve implanted the pilot!’

‘How can you tell?’ Kyper asked, in what seemed like honest confusion.

‘Because he looks like he’s bladdered,’ Jurgen supplied helpfully, ‘and cogboys don’t drink.’ As if to underline his words, the pilot stumbled, clutched at the arm of the nearest multi-limbed horror to steady himself, and staggered on, leaning against it for support, looking remarkably like a couple of Guardsmen determined to sample every bar in town before their two day pass expires.

‘The brood mind is still trying to integrate him,’ I explained, rather more diplomatically, ‘which is why he seems so disorientated. In a short while, even his closest friends won’t notice anything out of the ordinary.’

‘He hardly seems in a fit state to fly,’ Kyper said, undeterred. ‘And our heavy combat servitors will have scoured the vessel long before he is.’

‘He doesn’t have to be,’ I explained, as though to a child. As if to underline the urgency of the situation, a thin wisp of sulphurous vapour drifted in though the open hangar roof, and I watched it coil around the supporting girderwork with distant fascination, as though seeing the future of this world in microcosm. If the brood escaped from here, they’d go to ground, spreading their taint until everything was enmeshed in their toxic grip, waiting for the day they grew strong enough to challenge humanity for the mastery of Fecundia. ‘The brood mind has access to all his knowledge. One of the hybrids can fly the ship.’

‘It seems you’re right,’ Dysen said, to my surprise. ‘One of them is now seating itself on the flight deck.’ Emperor alone knows how he could tell that[87], but I was happy to take his word for it. Any doubts I might have had about his veracity were rapidly dispelled by the rising scream of the shuttle’s engines as they powered up for take-off.

‘Then there’s no time to lose,’ Kyper said decisively, rallying what was left of his men with a rapidly modulated squeal of high-pitched gibberish which made my teeth ache. ‘We must assault before they leave the ground.’ He turned to me, and for a heart-stopping instant I thought I was going to be invited to lead this suicidal charge down the maw of the enemy. ‘Commissar, I must ask you to ensure the safety of the Magos Senioris.’

‘I’m gratified by your confidence,’ I said gravely, careful not to say anything that sounded like a guarantee. For once I wasn’t going to have to work at extricating myself from the sharp end, and I took a moment to savour the novelty.

In another moment they’d gone, charging towards the shuttle with all the finesse of a mob of orks, but I couldn’t deny they looked well nigh unstoppable. The brood mind clearly disagreed, though, as a flood of enraged chitin boiled out of the open boarding ramp, meeting them head-on in a clash which seemed to shake the very walls.

‘Why don’t they just take off?’ Jurgen wondered aloud as battle was joined anew, with inhuman ferocity on both sides. Talon against chainblade, las-bolt against fang, the eventual winner anybody’s guess. Watching the intricate dance of that lethal melee, I could only be thankful that this time I’d been left on the sidelines. ‘They were all aboard and ready to go.’

‘A good question,’ I mused, my palms tingling again. We were missing something, I was sure of it. Then a flash of movement caught my eye, and I whirled to face the door. ‘And one with a bloody bad answer!’ Which I should have expected. After all, I’d heard firing elsewhere in the building on my way up here. If I’d thought about it at all, other than simply trying to avoid it, I would have assumed it was just a handful of stray ‘stealers like the ones Jurgen and I had encountered being tidied up by the skitarii, but this was something far worse.

‘That’s the broodlord,’ Jurgen supplied helpfully, as if I hadn’t recognised the terrifying apparition at once. I’d faced another just like it in the catacombs beneath Gravalax, and it would have been the end of me if Jurgen hadn’t barbequed it with the melta, which was currently tucked away somewhere in the nest of clutter that constituted his quarters aboard the flagship. No point bemoaning its absence though, I might as well wish for a Leman Russ or Space Marine Dreadnought to hide behind. We’d just have to make do with what we had, and, if all else failed, make sure it got to Dysen before it reached me.

‘Explains what they were waiting for,’ I agreed, making the best show I could of readying my weapons. The monstrous creature prowled into the hangar, looming over its progeny and the beleaguered defenders alike, half again as tall as any of them. Like the purestrains, all six of its limbs were tipped with talons capable of ripping through ceramite, and its tail was barbed, scything deep gouges in the floor and walls as it lashed to and fro. Its head turned slowly from side to side as it advanced, as if sniffing the air, although that seemed like a quick route to asphyxiation so far as I could see. Then it broke into a loping run, bounding towards the shuttle, seemingly indifferent to the fate of its broodmates.

‘Stop it!’ Dysen bellowed, his usual flat monotone boosted by some kind of implanted amplivox, which I presume he’d activated so I could hear him clearly over the din of the battle taking place around the boarding ramp[88]. Unfortunately the broodlord heard him too, and turned aside, bearing down on us like death itself coming to claim my very soul. Why it would have bothered with us, instead of making directly for the shuttle and safety, I have no idea: perhaps it just feared a flank attack, and was intending to take us out of the equation first, or perhaps the last few moments of the purestrains we’d killed in the corridor were still echoing round the brood mind, prompting it to take posthumous revenge on their behalf[89].

I tried to move as the hideous thing charged straight at me, its jaws agape, affording me far too good a view of the teeth poised to bite off my head with a single snap, but my limbs refused to obey. I’d been transfixed by terror before, of course, so often that the sensation had almost come to feel comfortably familiar, but it had always been momentary. My sense of self-preservation had kicked in again within an instant, reflex and the instinct to survive urging me into motion. This time, however, I remained paralysed, my eyes locked on those of the creature before me, overwhelmed by the utter futility of attempting to oppose it.

‘Nice big target, anyway, sir,’ Jurgen said cheerfully, opening fire on full auto, seemingly unworried by his rapidly-draining powerclip. And why would he be? If we didn’t bring the hideous killing machine down in the next few seconds, we’d be too dead to care about conserving ammo, and any we had saved would be of no further use to us anyway.

Something about his voice snapped me out of my stupor, and I rattled off a series of shots from my laspistol, wondering what in the name of the Throne had got into me[90]. We might just as well have been shooting at a Baneblade for all the good our las-bolts did this time, however, succeeding in nothing more than adding to the already impressive collection of cauterised craters pocking the surface of its thick natural armour. (If anything about so vile a piece of tyranid selective breeding could ever be described as ‘natural’.) I threw myself aside as it took a swipe at me with its abdominal scything claws, and parried the blow with my chainsword, which was almost swept out of my hand as a consequence. I rode the blow, rolling desperately clear as the patriarch turned to follow me, which, perhaps fortunately, took it away from Dysen. Right at that moment I’d have had no objection at all to the ghastly creature chewing a few lumps out of him, but in retrospect the consequences for the already shaky alliance I was supposed to be holding together would not have been good.

‘Krak grenade!’ I called, hoping Jurgen had more than the one he’d already used, but my aide shook his head regretfully.

‘None left,’ he called back. ‘Got a couple of frags though.’ Which would do as much harm to me as the scuttling horror I was fighting for my life against, and we both knew it. He shook his head ruefully. ‘Never thought we’d need armour-piercing.’

I looked desperately around for help. The skitarii had troubles of their own, and weren’t about to come to my aid, that much was clear. There were noticeably fewer of them in the melee round the shuttle ramp than there had been a moment ago, although there was a gratifying number of genestealer cadavers there too. The fight for the landing pad had developed into a grim game of attrition, with too much at stake for either side to stop short of complete victory or annihilation. I parried another pair of swipes from the broodlord’s scything claws, one after the other, backing desperately away from the implacable killing machine.

Then a familiar odour materialised at my shoulder, followed by the welcome sight of Jurgen raising his lasgun to spit another stream of fire in its hideous face. Hardly had he squeezed the trigger, however, doing little more than making our monstrous adversary flinch, than the powercell ran dry. ‘Duck!’ I yelled, in the nick of time, and he did so, evading the clashing jaws by what seemed no more than a handful of centimetres.

I looked round desperately for some way out, or, failing that, some means of distracting the creature, and my eye fell on the Magos Senioris, doing his utmost to look as inconspicuous as possible for someone swathed in a gold-embroidered, vivid crimson robe. He’d gone to ground behind a bank of switches and dials, from which thick, insulated cables ran towards the lift, and the germ of an idea began to form. ‘Dysen!’ I yelled. ‘Can you close the roof from there?’ If something happened to prevent the lift from rising, the ’stealers would be forced to break off, either piling aboard the shuttle before it was too late, or diverting their attention to deal with the new problem; which would be hard luck on Dysen, I suppose, but at least the skitarii would be able to give watching his back their full attention again.

‘That would mean overriding the blessed safety protocols,’ Dysen protested, his expression resembling an ecclesiarch who’d just overheard someone suggesting that perhaps Horus had been a bit misunderstood. ‘Without proper tools, incense or unguents!’

‘Does this seem particularly safe to you?’ I called back, hacking desperately at the thorax of the broodlord, doing little more than scratching a gouge in the thick chitin which protected it, and the tech-priest nodded briskly.

‘Your logic appears sound,’ he conceded, exuding a tangle of mechadendrites from somewhere under his robe and plugging himself into the controls. Short as the conversation had been, it had distracted me at a crucial moment. I just had time to register Jurgen’s warning shout, when a huge, taloned hand shot out and made a grab for me. I evaded frantically, almost making it, but the clutching fingers grabbed the hem of my greatcoat, yanking me upwards with an audible ripping of cloth.

I hung there for a moment, kicking and wriggling and making random swipes with my chainsword, hoping to at least fend off a strike from the huge claws which I knew for certain would disembowel me. Then the overstressed stitching gave way. I plummeted a couple of metres to the metal floor, landing hard despite instinctively exhaling and going limp to cushion the blow, and looked up, half dazed, to see a huge mouth ringed with razor-sharp teeth descending far too fast to have even the faintest hope of avoiding. Nevertheless, I tried, scrabbling frantically backwards, raising my chainsword instinctively.

‘Commissar! Stay down!’ a new voice called, deep and resonant, and loud enough to echo around the vast chamber. Before I could even think of mustering a reply, let alone raise my head to see who had spoken, the unmistakable roar of a bolter deafened me. The broodlord’s thorax erupted into a swamp of offal as a hail of explosive bolts tore into it, ripping its left-hand scything claw clean off, and it leapt back, away from me.

I sometimes feel as though my entire life has been nothing but a succession of mostly unpleasant surprises, but even as inured as I was to the unexpected, I must confess to having been taken aback by the sight of my deliverer. A Space Marine in Terminator armour was plodding into the hangar, the storm bolter in his right hand still smoking from the discharge which had so discouraged the genestealer patriarch. Twin rocket pods were mounted above his shoulders, and he turned towards the melee with calm deliberation. ‘Skitarii, disengage!’ he called, his voice carrying easily over the din.

‘That’s one of the Reclaimers,’ Jurgen said, as though the Adeptus Astartes’ sudden appearance was in no way remarkable.

I nodded, having recognised the yellow and white heraldry with which I’d become so familiar on our ill-starred voyage in pursuit of the Spawn of Damnation as soon as I’d seen it. ‘I should have realised,’ I said. ‘We saw the artefacts from the space hulk downstairs. Who else could have brought them here?’

‘Who else indeed?’ the Space Marine said, casually reminding me of their preternatural hearing, and discharged a rocket towards the greatest concentration of genestealers, while the surviving skitarii scattered in response to his order. It detonated in the centre of the group, scything down a handful of the loathsome creatures in a burst of shrapnel, and he began to follow up, dropping the survivors with quick, precise bursts of bolter fire.

‘Interface engaged,’ Dysen said, reminding me of his presence, which, under the circumstances, had rather slipped my mind for a moment or two. With a loud clunk the roof above our heads began to grind, painfully slowly, closed.

‘Excellent work,’ I encouraged him, wondering if the gap would close fast enough. ‘Can they still raise the platform?’

‘Of course not,’ Dysen assured me, still basking in the flattery if I was any judge. For all their prattle about being above mere human reactions, the average tech-priest has always been remarkably susceptible to it in my experience. ‘They’ll never be able to get off the ground now.’

Which was tempting fate, if ever I heard it. With a banshee howl almost loud enough to drown out the screaming engines, the wounded broodlord charged forward like a Khornate berserker, scattering the reforming skitarii, who, to my relief, were once again screening the Magos Senioris and myself from any further harm. It thundered up the ramp, pursued by another burst of bolter fire from the Terminator, which made a satisfactory mess of the genestealer stragglers, but failed to inconvenience its primary target any further. The shriek of the engines rose another octave in pitch, and, to my horror, I saw the shuttle begin to rise from the surface of the pad.

‘They’ll never make it,’ Jurgen observed, as though offering an opinion on the outcome of a finely-poised scrumball match, his eyes flickering between the slowly ascending shuttle and the incrementally narrowing gap in the ceiling.

‘If that thing crashes in here, neither will we!’ I said, gesturing urgently towards the door. ‘Magos, can you disengage from the controls?’ Not that I cared particularly, but it looked good to ask.

‘The process is now irreversible,’ he assured me, the mechadendrites disappearing back into the recesses of his robe as he spoke.

‘Then let’s move!’ I said, suiting the action to the word, and running for the doorway as fast as I could, trying to look as though I was taking point in case there were any laggardly genestealers still about who might have missed the bus. The others were hard on my heels, the skitarii forming up around Dysen again, who showed a remarkable turn of speed for someone so weighed down with all the scrap embedded in him.

By the time we’d made it to the corridor, the gap in the roof was noticeably smaller than the length of the shuttle, which seemed to be fluttering around the hangar like a bird trapped inside a room.

‘We have them,’ Kyper said, with what sounded like vindictive satisfaction, despite the lack of inflection in his artificially generated voice. He and the skitarii levelled their weapons[91], clearly anticipating a stampede from the shuttle as soon as it grounded, and determined not to let any of the ’stealers find their way back inside the shrine.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, as the pilot pulled the shuttle’s nose up, and triggered the main engine. A backwash of heat roiled across the floor, knocking the skitarii who’d been incautious enough to take up position opposite the gap in the wall from their feet, and charbroiling the scattered cadavers around the empty landing pad. The solitary figure of the Reclaimers Terminator remained standing, however, the searing wind appearing not to inconvenience him in the slightest, detritus and body parts swirling about his impassive form. ‘It’s just going to make it.’ And, indeed, it looked for a moment as though the almost suicidal gamble was about to pay off. The shuttle was practically standing on its tail, accelerating upwards through the narrowing aperture, but there still seemed to be a metre or so of clearance around its reduced profile.

The Terminator thought otherwise, however. The missile pods above his shoulders elevated to track the fleeing target, and a flurry of rockets streaked through the air, impacting on the main engine and the fuselage around it.

‘Take cover!’ I yelled, quite unnecessarily under the circumstances, and threw myself flat behind the comforting solidity of the wall. The rear half of the shuttle exploded, a sheet of vivid flame boiling like an incandescent thunderhead across the hangar, and the entire vast building seemed to shudder around me. Searing heat and a hurricane force wind blasted down the corridor, whirling loose equipment, wall panels, and a couple of stray servitors away with it, then the blazing fuselage crashed back to the hangar floor, shaking the walls once again with the impact.

Klaxons began to blare, and fire retardant foam began to issue from concealed nozzles, drizzling down on the inferno below like a thick, sticky snowfall. Specialised servitors activated, sallying forth from their niches to battle the flames, directing jets of the stuff into the hottest patches.

‘That’s put paid to ’em,’ Jurgen said, with mordant satisfaction. I began to nod my agreement then froze, the gesture half-completed. Unbelievably, something was moving in the heart of the blaze, half-concealed by the leaping tongues of fire, the dense clouds of smoke, and the blizzard of foam. Something moving towards us with evident purpose.

My hand fell to the laspistol I’d just shoved back in its holster – although what good it could do against something capable of surviving a crash like that was beyond me – but before I could draw it, and make an utter fool of myself in the process, the smoke cleared a little and I realised it was the Terminator, plodding clear of the catastrophe he’d caused, parting the flames like a curtain before him. I craned my neck upwards, fixing my eyes on his helmet, nestled below the raised, hunched shoulders of the bulky armour. A moment later the faceplate hinged open, revealing its occupant, who extended a huge armoured gauntlet, large enough to have crushed my ribs with a single squeeze.

‘Commissar Cain,’ he rumbled, in the deep, resonant tones of a typical Adeptus Astartes. ‘An honour to meet so staunch a friend of our Chapter.’

‘The honour is mine, to have served alongside it,’ I lied shamelessly. ‘Though I must confess to finding your presence here something of a surprise.’

Before he could reply to that, another voice broke in, which, in its own way, took me equally aback.

‘Brother-Sergeant Yail,’ Kildhar said, trotting down the corridor towards us, her red robe flapping with the agitation she was failing so dismally to conceal. ‘Have the specimens been successfully reacquired?’ She glanced at the furnace beyond the door, and her shoulders slumped. ‘I see not.’

‘Specimens?’ I looked at her, then back to the hulking Space Marine, who wasn’t exactly looking shifty, but rather gave the impression that he would have been if the ability to do so hadn’t been genetically engineered out of him. ‘I think you’ve got some explaining to do, magos.’