Gollach, the tech-adept, had railed against leaving the servitors behind but Sebaton knew the predators that were hunting them – he suspected Varteh did too – and ended Gollach’s argument at the muzzle of his pistol. The cyborgs would only slow them down. Deployed this way, they might actually prove useful, obfuscating the trail and thus gaining the others vital time on their pursuers.

‘Not yet,’ Varteh replied. He battle-signed to the man alongside him. A mercenary – not ex-Army, but as he peeled off into the shadows in response to the ex-Lucifer’s command, he was obviously well versed in a soldier’s argot.

The other hired gun stayed at the back, behind Gollach. Sebaton knew the mercenaries’ names, but they were as inconsequential as the mud under his feet, now that he had what he’d come for. Even wrapped up in cloth, centuries beneath the earth, it felt warm under his arm and emitted a very faint resonance that slightly pained him. As soon as Sebaton realised that they had been compromised, they had fled. His masters would have to wait to learn of his discovery. So far away, in all respects not merely space, there was nothing they could do to aid him anyway. Besides, he knew what he had to do.

Duugan, one of Varteh’s men, a lean-muscled pugilist with a handle-bar moustache and neck tattoos, had spotted the hunters. He was good, a sniper by trade, but caught only the barest glimpse of the warriors converging on their position. They moved after that. Quick and fast.

It was Duugan who had peeled off from the main group, running point and scouting ahead to make sure they weren’t being encircled.

Trio, so named for the bionics that replaced three of the fingers on his right hand, brought up the rear. He was clean-shaven, and thinner-faced than Duugan, previous profession unknown. He was also the group’s pilot, but then Sebaton had that covered if needed.

‘How close, Trio?’ Varteh said into the vox. They’d ditched the rebreathers, Varteh and his men switching them for throat mics and comm-beads. Up here on the surface, they didn’t need the masks. They’d only hamper their senses and ability to communicate. Sebaton had removed his too, but kept it in case it proved useful later.

‘ Haven’t seen anything in the last eleven minutes, sir. Must’ve slipped them.’

‘We haven’t,’ said Sebaton. ‘They are closing on us.’

Varteh’s grim expression hardly inspired confidence. ‘I know.’

It wasn’t a sprint, the streets were too crowded and labyrinthine for that, but the sense of urgency made their flight seem faster. Every shadow held the promise of danger, every doorway or tunnel a freshly imagined terror. Even swaying cables and hanging strips of plastek became potential enemies, transformed by fear and the dark.

Though Sebaton did not necessarily consider himself a brave man, certainly not in the same way as a soldier, he was also not so suspicious that he jumped at shadows, but the quiet, rising tension was testing his fortitude.

It had nearly broken Gollach.

The thin, hunchbacked man was fading, unable to keep the pace. He was used to his workshop, comfortable with his machines and the isolation of that existence. In this life, physical exercise had been confined to scripting doctrine-wafers or light mechanical maintenance. A crook in his spine had developed as a result of constantly stooping over some engine or device. A bad decision – or decisions – along the line had thrust him into Varteh’s employ and turned him into a man so desperate that he had no choice but to step beyond the wreckage of his old life to try and build a new one. Clearly he hadn’t envisaged that part of that would involve running for his life in a strange city, on a world he did not know, from an enemy he could not see.

He kept grabbing his chest, so much so that Sebaton slowed down in case he suddenly expired.

Don’t be stupid. Just let him fall back, maybe buy some more time… Throne! When did I become this callous?

All of his life, or rather lives, Sebaton had done what was necessary to survive. He took what he needed from people and discarded the rest. There was remorse at first, some nightmares even, but that all faded in time and he had become aware of a void developing within him, a slow hollowing-out of his soul. Not literally his soul, of course – as such things were real and could happen – but rather a moral degradation which he didn’t know how to reverse. He had become nothing more than a tool, used at someone else’s bidding. No different to a hammer or a wrench, except more subtle and less obvious. Some would describe him as a weapon.

It was a little late for redemption now, but Sebaton slowed down anyway and urged Gollach to move faster.

‘Why are we running?’ Gollach asked, trying to keep his voice from trembling. ‘I thought this was an archaeological dig. Only of interest to scholars, you said. Who could be after us?’

Sebaton tried to be reassuring. ‘It would not help if I told you. But you have to keep running.’ He looked over to Varteh, who was getting farther ahead and seemed distracted by his vox.

‘How much farther to the ship?’ Sebaton asked, though he knew the answer to that.

Varteh didn’t answer straight away. Something was distracting him.

Sebaton grew insistent. ‘Varteh, the ship?’ He was close to abandoning these men and this pretence to strike for the vessel on his own when Varteh answered.

‘Can’t reach Duugan on the vox,’ he said.

‘Meaning?’ Although Sebaton already knew the answer to that as well.

‘Either something is baffling the signal, or he’s dead.’

‘ Oh fugging hell…’ Gollach murmured, stumbling. Sebaton caught his elbow, and righted him so he didn’t fall.

Varteh dropped back, less sure of pushing ahead so aggressively now Duugan was off-vox. ‘Those landers you saw in the sky,’ he asked Sebaton. ‘Is this them? Are they looking for that thing too?’ He nodded to the cloth-wrapped bundle under Sebaton’s left arm.

‘Not sure.’

That was a lie, but as he didn’t know who the ones in the landers were or what they wanted, there seemed no point in saying anything further.

‘Who are they, Sebaton? Duugan said they were massive, armoured to the gunwales. Are we running from what I think we’re running from?’

Sebaton didn’t see the point in lying further. These men in his service had earned some truth.

‘They’re Legiones Astartes.’

Varteh ruefully shook his head. ‘Fugging Space Marines? You whoreson. How long have you known?’

‘Ever since we arrived, it was a possibility they would follow after us.’

‘A possibility? What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

Sebaton was genuinely contrite. ‘I am sorry, Varteh. You don’t deserve this.’

‘I should shoot you in the leg right now, leave you and that–’ he gestured to the cloth bundle again, ‘–and make my getaway with Trio and Gollach.’

‘It won’t help.’

‘It’ll make me feel better, you fugging twist!’ He calmed down, compartmentalising his fear to a place where it couldn’t inhibit his ability to survive. ‘That thing you’re carrying, it’s important isn’t it?’

Sebaton nodded. ‘More than you know, and more than I could ever tell you.’

‘Who are you, Sebaton? I mean really?’

Sebaton shook his head, his rueful expression saying more about his troubled mind that any words ever could.

‘Truthfully, Varteh, I don’t know any more.’

The ex-Lucifer sucked his teeth, having reached an important decision. He stopped running. Sebaton slowed in turn and the others caught up.

‘Time to catch a breath, Gollach,’ he told the man, who seemed both glad and alarmed that they didn’t have to run any more. He sat down.

‘Are we safe?’ he asked in a breathless wheeze, glancing nervously over his shoulder.

‘We’ve lost them,’ Varteh lied, the truth of what he was really doing showing in his eyes and the slight, almost imperceptible shake of the head to Trio that Gollach would never see. He turned to Sebaton. ‘You go on ahead, switch with Duugan.’