To all the Guardsman Hawkes out there and the idea of getting a second chance. Don't waste it.

The electro-candles in the astropaths' chamber were kept dim, though its occupants neither cared nor were aware of their surroundings, their eyes long since burned from their sockets. The aroma of sacred incense filled the chamber, the quiet hum of machinery and the scratching of a score of tonsured quill-servitors the only sounds.

The servitors sat facing each other in two rows, hunched over gnarled lecterns, their ink-stained fingers darting across parchments as information poured into what remained of their minds and out through their calloused hands. Behind each servitor stood an angled, brass capsule, sparkling like a gleaming coffin. Golden wires trailed from each one's frosted surface and ribbed cabling snaked from their sides, running in long lines along the chamber's edge.

A hunched figure, swathed in the red robes of the Adeptus Mechanicus with gold lettering stitched along the hem made his way slowly along the stone-flagged nave towards the chamber's end, pausing every now and then to peruse the elegant scriptwork of a servitor. Shadows hid the adept's face, the telltale gleam of bronze all that was visible beneath his thick hood. He stopped beside the furthest servitor, examining the expressionless features of the lobotomised slave. Its quill hand was making quick, angular patterns over the page.

He moved past the servitor, coming to stand before the golden coffin device behind it. A coiled bundle of fine wires trailed from the top of the coffin to a series of plug-in sockets drilled in the back of the servitor's skull.

The adept wiped a black-gloved hand across the glistening surface of the golden coffin and stared through a misted glass panel. Inside, a young female astrotelepath lay recumbent, her emaciated body fitted with transparent cables that fed her nutrients and chemical stimms, and removed her bodily waste. Like the quill-servitor, she was eyeless, her lips moving in a soundless whisper. The telepathic message she was receiving from half a galaxy away passed from her to the quill-servitor along psychically-warded cables and thence to its wiry fingers, where the message finally became tangible on the blessed parchment.

The adept removed a small vial of amber liquid from beneath his robes, easing past the girl's prison and kneeling beside the massed rows of pulsing cables attached to its rear. He picked through a handful of tubing and sorted through it, at last finding the one he sought. He disconnected the nutrient tube from the back of the girl's capsule and broke the seal of the vial, careful not to allow any of the liquid to touch him.

The adept held up the disconnected pipe, gruel-like nutrients oozing from its end, and emptied out a portion onto the floor. He carefully poured the vial's contents into the pipe, allowing it to seep into the colourless jelly before reconnecting the pipe to the capsule. Satisfied, he stood and returned to the nave as the amber liquid began working its way around the chamber, flowing through the nutrient pipes to each of the astropaths' capsules.

Swiftly he made his way to the chamber's door, pausing as he opened it to listen.

He smiled beneath his hood as, one by one, the scratching of quills was silenced.

The Emperor damn Major Tedeski's soul to the warp, thought Guardsman Hawke bitterly as he huddled closer to the plasma wave generator that provided what little heat there was in the cramped surveyor station. With no small measure of glee, he imagined putting a las-bolt into the back of his company commander's head as he stalked up and down the ash-coated esplanades of Tor Christo.

One thing! Just one little thing and Tedeski had busted them from a cushy little number up on Tor Christo, free from interfering officers, to this damn place!

He glanced without interest at the sensor display before him, noting with boredom that - surprise, surprise! - there was nothing happening outside.

As if anyone in their right mind would want to try and attack Hydra Cordatus. A single crumbling citadel on a damned dusty rock, bleaker than a killer's heart, with nothing of remote interest to anyone. Least of all, Guardsman Hawke.

People didn't come to Hydra Cordatus voluntarily: they ended up here.

He sat inside the cold, cramped confines of one of the sixteen mountain surveyor stations that ringed Jericho Falls spaceport, the one lifeline this place had with the outside world. The machines housed here constantly swept for the approach of any would-be attackers. Not that there ever would be, even if they knew about the citadel.

It was a nightmare detail to be posted here and everyone knew it. The heaters barely worked, the deafening roar of the scouring wind as it howled down from the high peaks was maddening, there was nothing to do and the sheer boredom could drive even the strongest willed to despair. The only thing there was to do was watch the machines and report the odd spike on the display slate.

He cursed his foul luck and went back to imagining new and inventive ways of busting Tedeski's head.

Sure, so they had turned up for duty pretty badly hung-over. Well, probably still drunk from the night before, truth be told. But it wasn't as though there was anything else to do on this Emperor-damned rock. It wasn't as if they'd been entrusted with some kind of top-secret, highly important mission. They were just on the early watch before changeover. By the Throne, they'd turned up for duty drunk before and had never had any problems.

It was just bad luck that Tedeski had pulled an alert drill that morning and the three of them had been caught sound asleep on the Christo's walls. Bad luck as it was, they counted themselves lucky they hadn't been caught by Castellan Vauban.

They'd received a roasting from Major Tedeski, and here they were: stuck in the mountains in a rockcrete can, looking for enemies who would never come.

He sat alone for now. His two companions in misery were out in the dust-stained rocks, some hundred metres in front of the post. He rose from beside the ineffective heater, stamping his feet and slapping his arms around himself in a futile effort to warm up, then stepped closer to the rockcrete walls of the miniature bunker. He peered through what were - laughably - named vision blocks, over the stubby firing grip of the rear assault cannon, to see if he could spot either of his two fellow victims of Tedeski's wrath.

After a few minutes he gave up in disgust. He couldn't see a fragging thing through the swirling dust. They'd be lucky if they found anything in that grey soup. One tiny spike had registered on the display and they'd drawn straws to see which lucky pair would venture outside and check it out.

Thank the Emperor he'd cheated and didn't have to leave the meagre warmth of the post. The others had been gone for nearly half an hour and he realised it was about time he checked in with them. He thumbed the dial on the vox-panel, 'Hitch, Charedo? You two find anything out there?'

He turned the dial to ''receive'' and waited for a response.

The white hiss of static poured from the battered vox, filling the surveyor station with a haunting, empty noise. He turned the dial again, staring through the vision blocks and fingering the trigger guard on the assault cannon.