Blood and death and bravery and reward and heroism and—

No expansion without equilibrium. No conquest without control—

Be a hero! Show the world! Show them you are your father’s son!

His grip tightened on the knife and he prepared to drag it sideways, seeing in his mind the ruby waterfall springing from the gash. The grey haired gue’la sensed what was coming, moaning low in his throat.

Time stopped. From somewhere nearby there came a flash of light and the hiss of a thousand serpents, wreathed in lightning. Kais paid it no attention.

There was a voice, shouting. It couldn’t drown the voice in his mind: Cut him cut him cut him!

The Mont’au devil bared its fangs triumphantly and shrieked. The blade bit.

A fist like a sky-blue meteor slammed into his helmet, lifting him off the ground. For the second time that rotaa the colour drizzled out of his eyes and he sagged to his knees, swallowed mercifully by thick, impenetrable sleep.

“Stop it!” the Ultramarine growled, more of his vast brethren bursting into existence with the crackling of teleportation energies behind him.

Constantine, shaking in horror, attempting to disentangle himself from the unconscious alien at his feet, fought for calmness.

“Stop what?” he quailed, quivering hands clamped to the wound on his neck.

The war. The fleet confrontation. The order to repel boarders. Everything!

Kor’vesa 66.G#77 (Orbsat Surveillance) chattered to itself, complex energistic movements inside its shell shuttling packages of information from data stream to memory core. A sequence of algorithms interrogated all incoming data for security breaches or hidden frequencies and wordlessly deposited the filtered remains into a carrier package reserved for the por’hui media. These developments would be considered high priority, the little AI quickly established, and sought to edit them into some sort of intelligible sequence.

The guns had stopped. The fighters and Barracudas had pulled back, redocking to fuel and make repairs. The fleets had regrouped: two shoals of sullen, scarred predators, called off by their respective alpha males.

Damaged hulls gaped and vented into the starlit void, scattered wreckage tumbling thickly in the nothingness.

A withering selection of message bands and tight-beam commstreams threaded from ship to ship within each fleet; to 66.G’s multifarious senses they were rendered as vivid as glowing plasma cords or superheated cables — a network of pulsing channels that conspired to drown each pack of vessels beneath luminous gossamer threads.

The largest commstream of them all, visible to three of the drone’s filter optics as a conical blast of green light, hung suspended between the Or’es Tash’var and the Enduring Blade.

A personnel shuttle left the tau fleet, enveloped in a solid phalanx of fighters. 66.G ran a routine scan, detecting seventeen distinct lifesigns aboard the central craft. One bore the unique energy signature of an ethereal, and in immediate response the drone’s stabilisers began to charge in anticipation of movement.

The Tash’var’s AI released a quick databurst to the various drones and computer controlled craft lurking at the periphery of the scene: negating directives designed to protect Auns at any cost, their guardianship uncalled for in this instant. 66.G’s engines returned to inertia without having fully powered up and, along with the silent swarms of other drones, returned to its lonely vigil.

Its various optic clusters tracked the personnel carrier carefully, internal processors exploring routes of action and possibility, until the bulbous vessel scooped itself inside the Enduring Blade’s cavernous forward hangar and the fighters broke away. The Aun’s lifesigns, thus shielded beyond the black vessel’s hull, blinked out.

Kais slept.

He dreamed, a little. It was not pleasant.

Constantine stood amongst the wreckage of his bridge and glared sullenly at a stack of viewscreens, distorted images jumping and crackling.

“Can’t you make them any clearer?” he snarled, venting his frustration upon the tech-priest manning the monitors. The robed figure scowled and shook its head.

The first screen showed a door, sliding open. They came aboard in a gaggle, different sizes and shapes and uniforms making them seem, from a distance, disordered and cluttered. Only when they began to walk, guided by a white-faced ensign in a singed, torn uniform, did their rigid efficiency become apparent.

The warriors, tan armour spotless and domed, asymmetrical helmets glaring beadily through emotionless optics, fanned out cautiously on either side. There were twelve in all, four on each phalanx wing and four others — sporting bulkier armour and longer, multi-barrelled weapons — who walked silently at the head and the rear of the group. Despite the polished hoof claws in the place of booted feet, their footsteps made little, if any, noise upon the slatted grating of the deck.

Following behind them came an extraordinary group. Walking with an easy, relaxed gait, peering around at the devastated innards of the Enduring Blade with undisguised interest, the next four specimens were taller and thinner than the warriors. Constantine watched their nonchalant progress with a frown, suspicious at their confidence. More even than their galling coolness, their bizarre clothing snagged at his attention. Had they not been xenogens, contaminating his ship with every step, he might even have laughed.

The fabric of their garments was unmistakably alien: strange two-tone material that caught the light with a subtle iridescence, revealing hidden colours and patterns with every new movement. The cut of the robes was stranger still: it was as though the makers had seen images of human Navy uniforms and attempted to emulate them, without fully understanding the significance of individual parts. One xenogen wore an exquisitely hung greatcoat with floral lapels, another a stylish silver jerkin with purple braids festooning the shoulders. One even sported a decorous face mask upon its brachycephalic brow, vaguely similar to a storm-trooper’s gas mask. The tallest of them (a female, he guessed, noting her narrow shoulders and slender legs), who walked with a confident stride and wore a domed hat above her grey face, was dressed tightly in a gaudy imitation of an officer’s jacket, complete with dangling jewels upon the left breast (easily mistakable for medals, from a distance) and diamond pips in the collar. Constantine shook his head, not sure whether to be revolted or amused at the inaccurate replication.

But behind them came the most astonishing figure of all.

Taller still, robes so white they seemed to glow, honour blade tapping out a steady rhythm as he walked, came the ethereal.

Constantine glanced to his side briefly, hoping to catch some indication of the Ultramarine captain’s reaction to these alien interlopers. The Marine’s grizzled features bent their full concentration upon the image, leaving Constantine unable to tell whether Ardias was impressed or disgusted or indifferent: he seemed to wear a perpetual grimace of disapproval that was as apparent now as ever.

The admiral had felt a small surge of terror and panic, at first, when he found himself in the presence of Space Marines, but professionalism was ingrained into his very mind and he’d quickly reminded himself that, technically, he out-ranked Ardias. Provided that the gargantuan warrior couldn’t see inside his chest at the racing heart therein, he was confident he’d preserved his aloof dignity. The Space Marine’s scowl of superiority, of course, wasn’t helping.