Charred corpses filled the chamber, torn to shreds by the impact, and other bodies writhed and screamed in agony as flames consumed them. Solomon ignored them, already hearing distant crashes that told him the rest of his company were smashing through the hull of the vessel.

The warriors of the Second spread out as he saw movement at either end of the chamber, enemy warriors coming to repulse their attack. Solomon grinned as he saw that they were already too late. Flat bangs of bolter fire tore the defenders to their right apart, but an answering volley scythed from the opposite side, punching one of his warriors from his feet with a smoking crater in his chest.

Solomon turned his own bolter to face the new threat, and fired off a rapid burst of shots that sent a bizarre quadruped creature slumping to the ground. More shots and screams sounded, and within moments, the chamber was alive with booming gunfire and explosions.

'Gaius, take the right and secure it,' he said, moving off to the other end of the chamber as more of the ship's crew rushed to plug the breach in their vessel's defences. Solomon killed another enemy, this time seeing his target properly for the first time, as his warriors forced the enemy back in a crackling hail of bolter rounds.

Controlled bursts of gunfire cleared the entrances to the chamber of enemies as Solomon examined the corpse of one of the aliens. Gaius Caphen organised the Astartes to secure the chamber from counterattack, and ready it for the arrival of reinforcements.

The dead alien was a heavily muscled quadruped with ochre skin, scaled like a snake's, but harder and more chitinous. Portions of its limbs had been augmented with mechanised prosthetics, and its head was elongated. It appeared to be eyeless, its mouth a dark tooth-ringed circle filled with waving feelers. A bizarre armature was affixed to its back, connected via a series of looping cables to its spine and many fingered forelimbs.

The other dead creatures were of the same species, but others amongst the chamber's defenders were clearly human, their twisted bodies immediately recognisable despite the mutilations done to them by the breaching charges of the torpedo. That humans could fight alongside aliens was incomprehensible to Solomon. The very idea of such bizarre creatures working, living and fighting alongside pureblood humans, descended from the people of Old Earth, was repugnant.

'We're ready,' said Caphen, appearing at his shoulder.

'Good,' said Solomon. 'I don't understand how they could have done it.'

'Done what?' asked Caphen.

'Fought alongside xenos.'

Caphen shrugged, the movement awkward in battle plate. 'Does it matter?'

'Of course it matters,' said Solomon. 'If we understand what motivates someone to turn from the Emperor, then we can stop it happening again.'

'I doubt any of this lot has even heard of the Emperor,' said Caphen, tapping his boot against the charred body of a human soldier. 'Can you turn from someone you've never heard of?'

'They may not have heard of the Emperor, but that doesn't excuse this,' said Solomon. 'It should be self-evident that associations with alien filth like this can only end badly. It was our manifesto when we joined the crusade: suffer not the alien to live.'

Solomon knelt beside the dead man and lifted his limp head from the deck. His skin was bloody and his midsection had been burst open from the inside. His armour was an elaborate weave of kinetotropic mesh and energy reflective plates that had singularly failed to stop the brutality of a bolter round.

'Take this man,' said Solomon, 'the blood of Old Earth pours from his veins, and but for his associations with aliens we might have been allies in furthering the cause of the Great Crusade. All this killing is a terrible waste of what might have been, of the brotherhood we might have forged with these people. But there can be no equivocation in the fight for survival, there is only right and wrong.'

'And he chose wrongly?'

'His commanders chose wrongly, and that is why he is dead.'

'So are you saying that it's his commanders who are to blame, and that we might have been friends with this man if circumstances had been different?'

Solomon shook his head. 'No. Such evil can only succeed when good men stand by and allow it to. I do not know how the Diasporex came to be integrated with aliens, but if enough people had stood against the decision it could never have happened. Their fate is their own and I feel no remorse in killing them. All warriors who follow their leaders' orders must carry the weight of it also.'

Gaius Caphen said, 'And I thought Captain Vairosean was the thinker.'

Solomon smiled and said, 'I have my moments.'

Before he could say anything further, a voice in his helmet said, 'Captain Demeter, is the landing zone secure?' and he straightened as he recognised the voice of his primarch.

'It is, my lord,' said Solomon. 'Stand ready, I shall be with you directly,' replied Fulgrim.

Though the Diasporex were trapped between the Carollis Star and the combined Imperial fleets, there was yet the will to fight, and while the command ship still lived, there would be no easy victory.

More and more of the solar collectors were exploding as their escorts were stripped away, crippled and sent spinning down into the star. Some smaller vessels slipped past the Imperial cordon, but they were an irrelevance next to the larger battleships that still fought with undimmed fury.

The Pride of the Emperor did battle with tactics straight from a naval strategy textbook, Captain Lemuel Aizel commanding with methodical precision if not flair. The rest of the Emperor's Children fleet followed his example and engaged the foe in perfect attack patterns, destroying the enemy in efficient, elegant dissections.

In contrast, the ships of the Iron Hands fought like the Iron Wolves of Medusa, tearing their enemy apart in daring hit and ran attacks that saw them destroy many more vessels than the ships of the Emperor's Children.

Through the heart of the firestorm, the Firebird soared like the most graceful of birds, its fiery wings leaving vortices of flaring gasses in its wake. Like a twisting comet trailing streamers of flame behind it, the assault craft seemed to glide easily through the explosions and streaking lines of deadly gunfire that painted the raging inferno of the star's corona.

As though realising the danger the fiery assault craft represented, a pair of Diasporex cruisers altered course to intercept it, and as the web of guns and lasers tightened around the Firebird, its doom seemed assured. The primarch's craft twisted desperately to avoid the storm of fire, but it was running out of room, and each explosion burst ever closer to it.

Even as the cruisers closed in to unleash the coup de grace, a monstrous shadow enveloped them, and the Fist of Iron sailed between them, a series of ruinous broadsides rippling from its dozens of gun decks. At such close range the results were devastating. The first cruiser was torn apart as a chain reaction of explosions bloated its superstructure from within, and it broke up in a shower of burning plasma and foaming oxygen. The second ship survived long enough to return fire at the Fist of Iron, killing hundreds of its crew and inflicting terrible damage on Ferrus Manus's flagship, before it was crippled by a second broadside that obliterated it in a huge explosion.

Saved from destruction, the Firebird hurtled through the crucible of battle towards the hybrid command vessel that Solomon Demeter's warriors had secured. Close in defence turrets desperately tried to engage the Firebird, as though the vessel's crew sensed that their doom came towards them on these wings of fire, but none came close to Fulgrim's craft, such was its deadly grace and manoeuvrability.