“Captain?” Tangiz voxed, staring at the auspex of his motion detector. “Something...”

“I have a contact also,” Iolux nodded, tilting his head to localise the sound.

“Give me a bearing, Tangiz.”

“Standby... It appears to be direct. Advancing along the corridor.”

“Not in the pipes?”

“Affirmative.”

“Range?” Mito raised his pistol and thumbed the activation rune on the hilt of his chainsword, blurring the teeth in a hungry smear of steel and a feral growl of energy. The others lifted their weapons, taking up firing positions.

“Twenty metres and closing.”

“I see nothing.”

“Detecting air movement.”

“Fifteen metres.”

“Nothing...”

“By the Raven, what is this?”

“Ten metres... Still closing...”

“There! I see it! At the corridor apex!”

Mito saw a flicker of movement and jerked his arm upwards to cover it. Whatever it was it was tiny — barely larger than one of the green carrion birds from Cortiz. It shifted along the ceiling of the tunnel, ducking through and between the coils of cabling and pipework with unreal precision.

“Servitor drone?” Iolux grunted.

“Too small. Too manoeuvrable.”

“Xeno.”

“Knock it down.”

Mito opened fire with a snarl, enjoying the shuddering recoil of the bolt pistol. A localised thunderstorm began as the rest of the squad joined him, barking weapons hurling smoke and flame tears into the corridor.

The small shape caromed and weaved, tumbling and dodging faster than any living thing could react. It swept from side to side, dipping low to the ground and then pirouetting upwards, coming to a dead halt, then streaking off in a random direction without appearing to accelerate.

The hallway surged. After ten seconds of the useless barrage the corridor was a wreck, shredded channels of bolter-craters spewing liquid metal and tight-knit cable-bundles, raising crumpled mountains across the walls and ceiling and gouging oceans from every surface. Melta ribbons left curious fronds of cooling metal-splash, smoke leeched from shredded bulkheads, strobing bolter fire sent flickering shadows capering and cackling across the devastation. It was madness.

Mito realised too late that the hovering object — whatever it was — had evaded every last shell, every last explosion and every last shimmering melta-stream. It moved impossibly, a tawny streak across the smoke and debris that anticipated and avoided every shot, drawing inexorably nearer to the Marines and the gateway that they guarded.

It barrelled from the smoke in a blur. Mito snarled in frustration and chopped downwards with the chainsword, putting all his energy and rage into that single arcing swing. And he would have made contact with the tiny drone, had it not chosen that exact moment to detonate.

Captain Mito of the Adeptus Astartes Raptors died in a haze of his own blood, howling in fury.

Kais dragged himself from the ruptured duct with a grunt and swung down into the corridor. Bits of grey-green armour, lined by slabs of flesh, littered the pulverised hallway. He clucked his tongue, impressed at the tiny drone’s destructive legacy. His circuitous journey through the ductway had led him, finally, to the doors of the vessel’s power core.

It had been a uniquely odd experience, deploying the little robot through an access hatch and feeding its non-sentient AI the simple commands it required. Kais had found it hard to not draw parallels between his own situation and the drone’s: both were mindless cogs in a rumbling machine, expected to do their duty without question or resentment. He almost envied the robot’s mindlessness. It could never be so tormented as was he.

“Breach doorway bulkhead, avoid damage.” As simple as that. Straightforward, unconflicting, uncomplicated and efficient. Everything he wasn’t.

Just as Lusha had watched his progress via the optics of his helmet, Kais could sneak inside the drone’s vision and ride, spellbound, as it lurked amongst the shadows of the corridors. It felt unusually like flying, and despite being curled foetally within a small duct nearby, Kais found it difficult to control the fluctuations of his stomach and balance as his vision recorded the dips and crests of the small machine’s progress.

And then the firefight! He’d never moved so fast, consciousness gyrating and corkscrewing with impossible precision, the drone’s sensors chattering and whistling in his ear as it estimated fire trajectories and ran the gauntlet. He’d barely even seen the Marines — just green smudges of reflected light and chattering gunfire, growing gradually nearer with each hectic manoeuvre. Contact severed with a static hiss as the faithful little drone completed its approach and triggered the high-density kles’tak explosives packed throughout its chassis. Nothing had survived.

The destruction was strangely comforting. If a drone, the very zenith of mindless obedience and preprogrammed faith, could be responsible for such destruction, then perhaps he — with his trail of bodies and bloodstained armour — wasn’t so far removed from the tau’va as he seemed.

The bulkhead leading into the engine room sagged pathetically, pulverised hinges twisted out of shape. He picked his way past the barbarised bodies and ducked between the hanging gates, ears assaulted by the full fury of the reactors within. Across the chamber, standing skeletally on fragile gantries and pulpits, twisted amalgamations of human and machine — more mindless constructs devoted to fulfilling their masters’ commands — twitched their limbs and glared at him through narrow focussing eyelenses. One of them chattered, like a ratchet joint on a battlesuit.

Kais felt the weight of the explosives secured in his shoulderpack. He raised his carbine and smiled, anticipating the destruction he would soon wreak.

Kor’o Dal’yth Men’he piloted his vessel with the consummate ease and confidence characteristic of his rank and caste. The Tel’ham Kenvaal swung in a balletic spiral, rolling onto its side like a whale and disgorging another withering salvo of plasma orbs, railgun shells and AI-piloted torpedoes.

His target moved far too slowly to evade the barrage, its harsh gue’la hull twisting in a last-ditch attempt to present stern before the payload imparted across its belly. Fire and debris vomited into the vacuum, building-sized blocks of masonry and metal tumbling endlessly away in a clutching halo of cable tendrils.

A torpedo alarm gonged serenely and Men’he tapped at a sequence of control drones almost without thought. Immediately a squadron of Barracudas broke off from the dogfight raging along the Kenvaal’s toroq-side hull and ghosted into the firing line to intercept. Nuclear blooms flourished and dwindled in a heartbeat as the missiles were efficiently hunted and crippled, kor’vre pilots chattering their shorthand command language across the squadron-comm. A solitary torpedo evaded their careful ministrations and Men’he rolled his eyes wearily.

“Chaff,” he grunted out loud, not for the first time.

A kor’el nearby nodded and tapped at her control console. “Of course, Kor’o.”

A swarm of blocky drones slipped silently from a hatchway beside the Kenvaal’s batteries and threw themselves at the torpedo. Whatever crude gue’la intelligence was directing the tumbling missile, successfully avoided two of the heat seeking machines before a third, random pulses of magnetic interference scrambling its guidance, flew serenely into its warhead. The detonation fell just short of the damage zone. Men’he breathed out, licking his dry lips.

A Mako-class warship — smaller and slower than the Kenvaal but bristling with railgun emplacements and arms-factories — breached the top of Men’he’s viewscreen and emptied a confetti of drone-piloted fusion capsules at the human vessel. Like swimming insect larvae, the bright pinpricks of light swarmed and circled around their victim, closing in on carefully selected targets before unleashing the actinic energies sealed within them.