A young Preafect went down behind her, an elbow catching him squarely in the face. His partner — an older vindictor with a well-polished punctiliousness about him — decided to forgo the non-lethal approach and raised his shotgun. She blasted him with a messy crackle of astral energy and resisted the urge to grab for his gun as she passed. Being armed was a sure way to get oneself shot.

At the penultimate level, leaving behind her a scattered trail of bewildered aides and psychically-battered Preafects, whichever security-servitor was coordinating the ''emergency'' presented the result of its labours: a ten-strong block of Preafects, fully armoured, which let rip with a salvo of shotgun fire in the tight confines of the stairwell at the very instant she rounded the corner. It was only the premonitionary flicker of imminent obliteration that flashed through her secret senses that compelled her to skid to a halt, leaping back in the direction she'd come, and even that wasn't quite fast enough. A thick wall of leadshot snagged at the edge of her shoulder as she vanished, spinning her in her place and dropping her to the floor, crying out.

Hot blood warmed her arm.

Heavy footsteps clumped down towards the corner and she mustered what little energy she still had to prepare another psychic strike. But then shouted commands and the heavy clanking of armoured bodies rose up the stairwell from below, the first of many vindictors pounced around the corner with gun bared, and she realised with a particularly foul curse that she was utterly outnumbered.

'Macharius Gate...' she mumbled, unable to think of anything else to say, as the first of several dozen shotgun muzzles nudged against her skin. 'Macharius Gate, you bastards...'

'What about the Macharius Gate?' a voice said, from above. She felt a flutter of recognition at the dry tones, and looked up with the first stirrings of hope. The Preafects inched aside to allow a plainly dressed figure past.

'Orodai!' she exclaimed.

'Commander Orodai,' he corrected, expression none-too-impressed to see her. 'What are you doing here, girl?'

'Delivering vital information on behalf of the Inquisition.' He sighed.

'Miss Ashyn, the last I heard was that you had been ejected from that body for gross insubordination. Your former colleagues visited me. They were very keen to impress upon me what to do if you were found.' I'll bet they were, the bastards. One of the Preafects racked his shotgun, pointedly. 'Commander,' she hissed, heart throbbing so hard she could barely hear her own voice. 'You know as well as I do that Kaustus is making a mistake.'

'Have a care, girl. An outlaw is hardly in the position to disparage an inquisitor.'

'For the Emperor's sake, Orodai! The inquisitor's a fool! A warp-damned fop more troubled by the governor's treasures than the danger in this hive!' Orodai glared at her, working his jaw. Which way will you go, you efficient little bastard? Slowly, eyes narrowed, Orodai reached into his belt and lifted his pistol, training it upon Mita's head. Her heart fell.

'Dismissed,' he barked to the Preafects. 'I can handle this whelp.'

The vindictors vanished without complaint. Orodai waited until they had all gone, until the echoes of their clattering strides had faded, before re-holstering the pistol.

Mita frowned. 'I... I don't understand...'

'It does not do to discuss politics in public, girl. Walls have ears.'

'I... I...'

'I'm assuming you've come to me for a reason. I'm no more a fan of the Inquisitorial bastard than you, but then the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Particularly when she's a warp-piss witch who lost a squad of my best men.'

Mita suffered the chide with good grace, refusing to rise.

'I know where you can find him.'

'Who?'

'You know who. The Night Lord. The Chaos Marine. The beast that's made a mess of your pretty littlie city.'

He shook his head. 'Still you insist upon that notio—'

Her mouth fell open. 'How can you doubt it?' she stormed, outraged. 'You must have seen the hijacked broadcast!'

'I did. All I saw was a pair of red eyes.'

'Don't be a fool! Why deny it to yourself? There's a warp-damned Traitor Marine loose in your city, Orodai, and I can tell you where it is! Are you so thick-skulled that you'll refuse to hear it?'

He sighed, and when he spoke his voice was calmer, quieter: thick with exhausted frustration.

'Child, whether the creature is real or not is irrelevant. All we know is that someone — something — has formed an army in the underhive.' He raised an eyebrow at her stunned expression and half-smiled. 'The Inquisition isn't the only body that has its spies, girl. So you see, you really have nothing to offer me. We already know where your... "beast" resides, whatever it is. But to attack it in its own lair would be fo—'

'Not there.'

'What?'

She allowed a smile to curl her lips, the throbbing of her bloody shoulder rescinding to nothing.

'He's leaving his lair,' she said. 'He has an appointment. The Macharius Gate, Orodai. That's where we slay the dragon.'

The Macharius Gate was a place of unlikely amalgamations: where the trappings of the rich punctured the realm of the poor, a jewelled knife sinking through tumorous flesh.

Pressed against the inner shell of the hive at its southernmost point, rising and falling no further than a single tier, it was, to the city's aristocracy, a means of escape. Oh, there were starports elsewhere in the hive, and other doors leading to the frozen exterior pocked its rim like airholes, but such outlets were the remit of peasants and workers — inelegant drawbridges and sphincter-portals leading to loading bays and vehicle silos. They were rarely used: who, after all, would choose to venture into the frozen wastes?

But the Macharius Gate — that was a more civilised affair. Slipping into its cambered ceiling, descending in the shadow of the colossal snowgate doors, a tangle of stairwells and plungeshafts tumbled from above, thick with ancient elevators and gearlifters. A single broad illuminator, affixed to the ceiling by a steel cord, smeared its unkind luminosity across all below, flickering with whatever tenuous energy fed it. Here the aristocrats could slip down from their distant pinnacles, unburdened by the unpleasant need to mingle with lesser populations as their descent progressed.

To each noble house its own shaft, and to each the opportunity to travel secretly to this seedy place, as desire dictated. Here the opulence of Steepletown collided with the filth of the first tier: tapestry-hung reception booths mouldering, elegant brass instrumentation pilfered and sold on down the years, leaving now a hotchpotch of exquisite craftsmanship and improvised squalor. Staffed only by a squad of militia auxiliaries — fat part-timers recruited from the local habs who lolled uncomfortably, unshaven faces incongruous with the bright uniforms they'd been given to wear — the gateroom could hardly be considered impregnable. Perhaps, bored and pampered in their spires, the nobles who frequented this peculiar place enjoyed the fact of its relative unsafety? Perhaps they thought it exhilarating?