'Then you've never seen the sea?'

'I've never seen the sea,' agreed Ostian, feeling foolish for admitting such a thing.

'Oh, my dear boy!' said Serena, looking up from her sketchpad. 'We shall have to see about getting you down to the surface once the fighting is done!'

'Do you think that would be allowed?'

'I should bloody well hope so,' said Serena, ripping the page from her sketchpad and throwing it angrily to the floor. 'A very select few of us were allowed down to the surface of Twenty-Eight Two, and it was a magnificent place: snow covered mountains, continents of forests, and lakes the colour of a summer's morning, and the sky… oh the sky! It was a wondrous shade of cerulean blue. I think I loved it so much because it was how I imagined Old Earth might once have looked. I took some picts, but they didn't really capture it. Shame, really, as I'd have loved to have been able to mix it, but I couldn't manage it.'

As Serena spoke of her failure to mix the colour, Ostian saw her surreptitiously pressing the tip of her quill into the flesh of her wrist, leaving a tiny weal of ink and blood on her pale skin.

'I just couldn't get it to work,' she said absently, and Ostian wished he knew how to stop Serena from hurting herself, and to see the value in what she did.

'I'd like you to show me the surface of the planet if possible,' he said.

She blinked and smiled at him, reaching up to press her fingertips against his cheek.

Gaius Caphen ducked below the screeching attack of a Laer warrior and drove his chainsword into its guts, ripping the weapon free in a spray of blood and bone. Fire billowed around them from the shattered remains of a pair of Stormbirds that lay smouldering in the ruins of a Laer burrow complex.

The crew and passengers had died in the crash and the violence of the impact had almost toppled a rearing spire of twisted coral. It had only taken a handful of grenades lobbed into the shattered base of the tower to complete its destruction and bring it thundering to the ground. Marius Vairosean wanted them to mark their position, and if he couldn't see that then they were as good as dead.

He and his squad had fought through the Laer burrow complexes as Captain Demeter had ordered, but the aliens had anticipated the flanking manoeuvre. Every burrow held a pair of monstrous alien warriors poised to slither from hiding to kill in a frenzy of flashing blades and energy bolts.

The fighting had been close and brutal, no room for skill or artistry, and each screeching snake-like warrior had pounced into their midst, where all that separated the living from the dead was luck. Caphen bled from a score of wounds, his breathing ragged and uneven, though he was determined not to let his captain down.

Sounds of desperate fighting came from all around him, and even as he watched, more Laer warriors spat from their burrows like coiled springs, deadly bolts of energy slicing through the air towards them. Coral and fragments of armour ricocheted around him.

'Squad, make ready!' he shouted, as another trio of Laer appeared behind them, weapons spitting fire and light. Screams sounded from nearby and he raised his bolter to fire on this new threat when the ground shifted violently underfoot and the entire atoll took a sickening lurch downwards.

Gaius dropped to one knee, grabbing onto a nearby spur of coral as more Laer emerged from burrow holes. A spray of bolter fire from above him cut one practically in two, and it thrashed in pain as it fell. Deafening reports echoed, and the Laer that had been set to overrun them were obliterated in volleys of precisely aimed gunfire.

He looked up to see where the shots had come from and laughed in relief as he saw a host of Astartes dropping from above, the trims of their shoulder guards marking them as warriors of Marius Vairosean's Third Company.

The captain himself dropped down next to Caphen, the muzzle of his bolter flaring as he gunned down a Laer warrior that had somehow survived the initial volleys.

'On your feet, sergeant!' shouted Vairosean. 'Which way is Captain Demeter?'

Caphen pushed himself erect and pointed towards the end of the street. 'That way!'

Vairosean nodded as his warriors cut down the last of the Laer defenders with grim efficiency.

'Then let's go and link up with him as ordered,' said Vairosean.

Caphen nodded and followed the captain of the Third.

Another six of his warriors were down, torn apart by the energised blades of the Laer or with whole segments of their bodies rendered molten in the furnace heat of their ranged weapons. Solomon was beginning to regret casting off his helmet with such a cavalier disregard for communication, knowing that now more than ever he needed to know what was happening elsewhere on the atoll.

He had seen no sign of Sergeant Thelonius or Gaius Caphen's flanking forces and though the warriors of Goldoara had attempted to punch through to them, they were not equipped with the weapons to fight in such brutal close quarters and had been forced back by the Laer.

They were on their own.

Solomon drove his sword through the stretched mandibles of a Laer warrior, the blade punching out through the back of its skull, and felt himself being dragged down by its weight. He fought to withdraw the blade, but its madly whirring teeth were lodged in the dense bone of the alien's skull.

A screeching cry of pleasure sounded nearby and he dropped flat as a searing bolt of light flashed over him and gouged a furrow in the ground. Solomon rolled as the Laer slithered over the bodies of its fellows with horrifying speed and launched itself towards him. He rolled onto his back and hammered his feet into its face, feeling is mandibles snap with the impact.

The alien reeled, its whipping tail thrashing on the ground and a cry of pain gurgling from its ruined mouth. The sound of bolter fire echoed through the plaza as Solomon scrambled over the uneven ground and smashed his fist into the Laer's face. The force of the blow burst one of its eyeballs and drew another screech of pain from it. His other fist slammed into its armoured chest, the bloodstained metal buckling under the assault. It spat a froth of hot blood and mucus into his face and he roared in anger, a red mist of fury descending on him as he grabbed its glistening flesh in both hands and slammed its head into the ground.

The creature kept up its keening screech and Solomon slammed its head into the ground again and again. Even when he was sure the creature was dead, he kept pounding its skull until there was nothing left but a ragged mess of sodden skull and brain matter.

He laughed with savage joy as he picked himself up from the ground, his armour covered from head to toe in the dark blood of the Laer. He staggered over to the first alien he'd killed and wrenched his sword clear as the noise of bolter fire intensified. It took a moment before the fact that he and his warriors had run out of ammunition could penetrate the red fog that had engulfed him as he fought the Laer.

He turned to the source of the gunfire and punched the air as he saw the unmistakable form of Marius Vairosean leading the warriors of the Third into the plaza with merciless perfection. Gaius Caphen fought alongside him and the Laer reeled from this fresh assault, their ranks thrown into disarray as Marius's warriors cut them down.

Seeing their fellows, the Second redoubled their efforts, and tired limbs fought on with fresh strength. The Laer attack faltered and even though their features were utterly alien, Solomon could see the paralysis of indecision tear at them as they realised that they were surrounded.

'Second, with me!' he shouted and set off in the direction of his fellow captain. His Astartes needed no further encouragement or orders, falling in behind him to form a fighting wedge that carved through the stunned Laer like a bloody knife.