Flames still trailed from its wings, and Solomon smiled, knowing it was no accident that the primarch had decreed that mis attack should be launched at night. The flickering red glow of the flames was reflected in the crew's faces, and Solomon was once again seized by the certainty that something terrible was going to happen.

Not just to him, but to his entire Legion.

Solomon's gut tightened as the Stormbird suddenly veered to one side and he heard the pilots swear. A thudding impact struck the side of the Stormbird, and Solomon felt a sickening lurch as the mighty craft dropped through the sky.

His mind filled with thoughts of the yawning abyss of the world sea below, remembering the battles he had fought beneath its empty darkness and having no wish to revisit that cold, subterranean world.

'Port engine's on fire!' shouted the pilot. 'Increase power to the starboard engine.'

'Stabilisers are gone! Compensating!'

'Cut off the fuel feeds from the wing and get us level!'

Solomon gripped the edge of the door as the Stormbird swung wildly to the side. The crew issued orders to one another and attempted to stabilise their flight. Emergency lights flashed across the command console, and Solomon could hear the warning klaxon of the altimeter. Though he could hear the strain in the pilots' voices, Solomon also heard their training and discipline as they went through the emergency procedures with determined efficiency.

Eventually the gunship began to level out, though angry lights still blinked and the altimeter klaxon still sounded.

A palpable sense of relief filled the flight compartment and Solomon began to ease his grip on the edge of the door.

'Well done, people,' said the pilot, 'we're still flying.'

Barely a moment later, the entire left side of the Stormbird erupted in flames. Solomon was hurled to the deck and a seething wall of flame lit up the sky. The glass of the cockpit disintegrated and flames boiled into the gunship.

He felt the heat on his armour, but it could do him no harm, though scads of burning fuel dribbled from the plates of his legs and arms. The roaring of the wind filled his senses as the gunship spun, cold air roaring through the stricken Stormbird and howling in his ears.

Miraculously, the co-pilot was still alive, though his flesh was horribly burned and his skin was on fire. Solomon knew there was nothing to be done for him, and the wounded man's cries of pain mingled with the wind as they spiralled downwards to destruction.

Solomon saw the black wall of the ocean rushing up to meet him and cold, wet darkness swallowed him as the Stormbird smashed into the water.

Screaming from the coral towers filled the air, more strident than Julius remembered, and he was struck by the notion that the atoll was shrieking in anger. The last of the Laer defended this place, but if there was any desperation or fear in them, they didn't show it. These alien warriors fought as hard as any they had killed in this campaign.

The Stormbird had barely touched down when Julius and Lycaon had led the warriors of the First onto the atoll, the monstrously thick plates of their Terminator armour reflecting the firelight of battle.

The sound of screams and gunfire and explosions filled his senses, though his armour protected him from the worst of it. Emperor's Children spread out around him without needing any orders, and he knew that the exact same scene was being played out at hundreds of other locations throughout the atoll.

Alien gunfire reached out to them, but what had carved through Mark IV plate barely scratched Terminator armour.

If only we had more of these, this war would have been won long ago, thought Julius, but the general issue of Tactical Dreadnought armour had only just begun and only a very few units had the correct training to make use of them.

'Forward,' ordered Julius, as his warriors fell into position behind him. The Terminators moved off in a phalanx, bolters and inbuilt heavy weapon systems ripping apart any Laer that stood in their way in a flurry of broken bodies and pulverised coral.

The forces of the Emperor's Children had surrounded the temple like a closing fist, and would now crush the last of its defenders.

Flames leapt skyward as strafing gunships sawed towers apart with high explosive shells and provided support for the ground troops. Heavier transports were even now inbound with armoured units: Land Raiders, Predators and Vindicators.

Heavy footfalls pounded through the battle, and Julius saw Ancient Rylanor smash through a wall of coral that had served as a barricade to a group of Laer warriors armed with a high-powered energy weapon. A lance of green energy speared into the Dreadnought's sarcophagus, and Julius cried out as he saw the damage, but the mighty war machine shrugged off the impact. Rylanor picked up the nearest Laer warrior and broke it in two in his monstrous fists as gouts of yellow fire from his underslung weapon burned them from their cover.

Julius and his warriors finished the job, sending a hail of shells tearing through the burning corpses of the aliens.

'My thanks for your assistance,' said the Dreadnought. 'Though it was not needed.'

Sudden orange light bathed the battlefield in a hellish glow as the Firebird screamed overhead, Fulgrim's attack ship taking him to the very heart of the battle, to the temple of the Laer.

'Come on, Lycaon!' shouted Julius exultantly. 'We follow the Firebird! '

On the southern spurs of the atoll, Marius Vairosean was finding things much tougher than the captain of the First. Too many of his gunships had been shot down and he knew he was dangerously below the strength the primarch had decreed necessary to seize his objectives. The Laer fought with a hitherto unseen ferocity, their slithering bodies coiling over one another as they rushed to engage his warriors.

A musky fog enveloped the far reaches of coral burrows, and Marius thought he detected a faint reddish tinge to it. Was this some form of gas weapon? If so, it was wasted against the Astartes, for their armour was proof against such primitive weapons.

The screaming of the towers was quieter in this part of the atoll, for which Marius was profoundly grateful. How the Laer could live under such conditions, surrounded by an excess of noise and colour, thankfully confounded him. To understand the ways of the alien was a dark path that he had no intention of following.

'Support squads forward!' he ordered. 'We need to forge a path quickly. Our brothers are depending on us and I won't have the Third found wanting!'

Astartes carrying heavy weapons took up positions in the ruins of coral towers and a heavy barrage snatched at the fog, the thumping of heavy-calibre shells forming a dense roar in Marius's skull.

With suppressing fire laid down, he knew it was time to launch an assault while the enemies' heads were down. Though he disapproved of Solomon's reckless ways, sometimes you had no choice but to go up the centre.

'Kollanus squad! Euidicus squad! Front and centre!'

Julius smashed a Laer warrior to the ground, the energy field wreathing his massive gauntlet ripping through its silver armour and snapping its snake-like body virtually in two. He and his Terminators were punching a hole clean through the defences of the Laer, having only left a single warrior in the care of the Apothecaries. Though the fighting had been hard, the protection offered by Terminator armour was prodigious, and Julius had revelled in the sensation of power it conferred. To walk through the fire unscathed was what it must be like to be a god, though he chided himself for such a ridiculous thought.

The Firebird had touched down a kilometre ahead of them, but from the reports he was hearing over the vox, it sounded as though the resistance of the aliens guarding the temple was fierce. The warriors of the First were not fast, but their pace was relentless and with the support of Ancient Rylanor, they were able to push their way through without difficulty.