His troubled thoughts were shattered by Udas, calling after El’Lusha. “Shas’el?” the general barked. “What’s the infantry situation?”

“Not good, O’Udas. We’re diverting all units to the central promenade — the gue’la are making a last stand.”

“Can you spare any to guard the bridge?”

“I wouldn’t like to. We’re not out of trouble yet.”

“Very well.” The general fidgeted with the single braid of hair hanging over his shoulder, deep in thought. He fixed El’Lusha with an inquisitive, if troubled, gaze. “Tell me... Where is La’Kais?”

They were a magnificent sight, Ensign Kilson thought (with, he admitted, a healthy twinge of fear). Clambering aboard the grid plate at the centre of the tech shrine, easing their way between resonating coils of copper viscera — they were enough to leave him staring dumbstruck, mouth hanging open.

Their enormity was, in itself, daunting. Half as tall again as an average man, they hulked above all the personnel around them, grey-green armour plates glinting dully in the light. More striking even than their appearance was their reputation: warriors such as these saturated the legends of the Imperium with tales of glory and honour and valour. They were avatars of humanity’s magnificence, living weapons designed solely to serve the Emperor’s guiding light.

Kilson had never imagined in his wildest dreams being so close to a Space Marine that he could almost touch its articulating armour segments, feeling the vibrations of its colossal strides running through the deck beneath his feet. To see even one of the legendary figures in an entire lifetime was considered extraordinary. To escort a full squad, across four decks and two vertices of a battlecruiser, no less... it was beyond incredible.

The chamber he’d led them to, a cavernous hangar with floating glow-globes and buttressed walls, was alive with the cloying emissions of two incense drones, circling one another in the shadows high above. A trio of tech-priests, sinister figures peering out beneath heavy cowls, chanted litanies from a pulpit nearby Arranged with sprawling organic randomness at one end of the hangar, the strangest machine that Kilson had ever seen thrummed with barely restrained energy. Its looping coils and copper ducts reached a higher resonance and Kilson felt sure the air itself had begun to shiver.

He’d been astonished at how enthusiastically the squad — a brother-sergeant and five Marines of the Raptors Chapter — had volunteered for the mission. On the admiral’s orders he’d visited the isolated section of the vessel where they were quartered, mind awash in excitement and trepidation. He’d not been allowed entry into the vaulted hallways and chapels of their habitation, of course (the very thought of desecrating those purified chambers was insane), but his stammered vox call across the internal comm had been answered almost immediately.

They’d come stamping along the deck like ancient giants, red eyeplates glowing, titanic frames easing forwards in a chorus of voices requesting information. With their helmets cradled uniformly in their left arms, Kilson had taken the opportunity to compare the exteriors of the armoured giants with the all too human, almost frail-seeming faces peering from within. Not that their features betrayed any fragility, of course; their dark expressions put him in mind of starving men, reacting to the promise of food.

He’d done his best to satisfy their curiosity, though they spent much of the journey to the tech bay in vox-communication with the admiral, clarifying their mission. He’d caught a snatch of their rumbled conversation as he led them along the secured corridors of the ship’s core (hastily cleared of ratings scum by a small horde of armsmen). They’d seemed eager for action.

At one point they’d passed through a crewspace where someone had daubed red graffiti across the tarnished bulkhead, an illiterate splatter of paint.

THEY iNSiDE AMUNG. ALL DiE!!

“Ensign,” one of the Marines had barked, gauntleted finger jabbing in his direction, then gesturing at the inscription. “What is this?”

“J-just nonsense, my lord. Ratings gossip. Superstition, you understand.”

“Explain.”

He swallowed, throat dry. “There’s talk of... uh... things, sir. Aboard the ship.”

“What ‘things’?”

Kilson shrugged helplessly, cheeks burning. The Marines exchanged glances, faces invisible behind glowering eyesockets.

“Lead on,” the sergeant growled.

And now, four decks and two vertices later, Kilson was forgotten by them — a brief insect guide that had fulfilled its purpose and vanished. He lurked in the doorway of the tech bay and watched the priests fussing around the energy grid.

As they worked, the Space Marines replaced their helmets and linked arms, bodies swaying almost imperceptibly in time to some unknown purification prayer or litany. Kilson found himself wishing that they’d share its comforting verses with those beyond their circle of internal communication. Despite the awe and fear he felt, he was quickly finding an urge growing within himself to cherish every moment of their presence, as if somehow their unmistakable righteousness and purity might rub off, even on one so humble as him.

“The locarus has a deployment solution,” a priest hissed, studying a complex arrangement of brass-bound gauges. “Omnissiah be praised.”

“Begin,” another barked, his cassock marking out his seniority, tracing a complex shape in the air. A group of servitors began opening valve wheels, atrophied muscles bunching at the command of their unthinking logic engine minds.

“The fixation target is acquired,” the first priest intoned. “All is ready.” The trio of chanting acolytes raised their voices higher, sonorous mantras ringing throughout the echoing cavern. The thrumming of the copper coils became almost unbearable, and Kilson clamped his hands over his ears in pain.

“Now,” the senior priest demanded, striking his censure against a plated duct in a flurry of incense. An inhuman howl consumed the chamber.

“For Corax and the Emperor!” the brother-sergeant roared through his helmet speakers, startling Kilson.

The incense danced, sparks drizzled from the air, the Marines clashed their weapons together with a roar and—

And a perfect orb of light flickered into existence, flared more brightly than Kilson’s eyes could stand, and vanished. The Space Marines were gone.

Something moved further ahead.

A piece of shadow detached from the smoothness of the duct, oscillating slowly into a new position. Kais tensed, raising the carbine. The tight confines of the crawl tube made the simplest movements a process of contortions and cramping muscles. The object shifted again. It flitted from shadow to shadow, hovering off the ground in the rounded cavity peaking the duct. It came to a halt and blinked a green light.

Kais relaxed.

“Kor’vesa?” he whispered. “Identify and report.”

The green light winked out.

Kais tried again. “Drone? What’s your status?”

The shape clicked: a slow reptile rattle, building in volume. Two bright points of light, like eyes, fixated on Kais and flicked off and on.

Then the thing was rushing forwards, breaking from the cover of the shadows with the hiss of displaced air. Light fell across it like a blade and Kais saw it fully, gasping: This was no efficient tau drone, perfectly engineered gravitic stabilisers allowing unrestricted and silent manoeuvrability.

It was a gue’la head.

Disembodied and cadaverous, frail skin necrotic and sallow, pitted with maggotlike extrusions of circuitry and cabling. Its ancient lips, long since desiccated by age, were peeled back in a papery sneer to reveal the gap-toothed gums below, a network of bloodless flesh and exposed bone. From its abortive neck a thrumming anti-gravitic drive held it aloft. The ghoulish machine’s jawbone ratcheted open with an audible crack, hanging monstrously in a silent shriek. A gun barrel, hidden in the leering maw, briefly reflected an overhead light.