Lemuel exchanged a worried look with Camille.

“That could be difficult,” he said.

“I know, I’m not making any sense,” said Vithara, “but she said that she wanted to leave Prospero with her friends.”

“And she told you this?” asked Camille, enunciating each word carefully so there could be no misunderstanding. “ Aftershe died?”

Vithara’s face was a mask of indecision and incomprehension.

“I believe so,” he said. “I dreamed of Kallista last night, you see. She was sitting beside me in Fiorento Park and we watched the sunshine on the lake. We didn’t say anything, we just held each other. When the reveille bell woke me this morning, I found a note beside my bed telling me to be at the landing platforms at this exact time. I don’t remember writing the note, even though it was in my handwriting, but it was obviously Kallista’s words. She wanted me to be here, and she wanted me to give you this.”

Vithara accepted a pale blue ceramic jar from one of his soldiers and held it out to Lemuel. Simply crafted, it was an urn in which one might keep a beloved family member’s ashes.

Lemuel took the jar and smiled and said, “You know, I believe you are absolutely right. Kallista did come to you last night, and since I am her friend, I will honour her wishes.”

“Then you think she really came to me last night?”

“I do,” said Lemuel, his own grief eased by the notion. “I really do.”

Vithara saluted Lemuel and said, “Thank you, Master Gaumon. I’ll miss Kalli, but if this is what she wants then who am I to deny her?”

“You are a very noble man,” said Camille, stepping forward and planting a soft kiss on his cheek. “I see why Kalli liked you.”

He smiled and nodded towards the crew compartment of the lighter, where an exasperated deck hand waited to close the hatch.

“You’d better go,” said Vithara. “You don’t want to miss the Cypria Selene’s launch. After all, time and tide wait for no man.”

“Indeed they do not,” said Lemuel, shaking Vithara’s hand. The servitors loaded the steamer trunks into the lighter as Mahavastu climbed down from his palanquin. Camille guided the venerable scribe onto the lighter as Vithara led his men from the landing platform.

Lemuel followed his friends onboard. As the hatch slid shut behind him, he had what he knew would be his last sight of Prospero.

He was wrong about that.

THE C YPRIA S ELENEweighed anchor on schedule and eased clear of her berth with smooth grace. Silver jibs jutted into space from the central hub of the orbital docks, the space around it thick with manoeuvring warships. Thousand Sons battle-barges slipped their moorings and set sail for the outer reaches of the star system, and squadrons of strike cruisers flocked around them as they departed Prospero.

To coordinate so large a ballet of ships was no small feat. The Photepled an armada of ships with the power to level planets to the furthest edges of the star system, while the Ankhtowe, Scion of Prosperoand the Kymmeruassumed equally-angled vectors, leading fleets to the corners of the Thousand Sons’ domain.

The order to disperse the fleet had come with the highest alert prefixes, and the four battle groups made best speed for their destinations. None of the captains knew the nature of the alert, but all had been given strict instructions not to unlock their orders until reaching their assigned coordinates.

That such orders left Prospero dangerously undefended was clear to every shipmaster, but none dared disobey a direct command from the primarch himself. Whatever the purpose of this dispersal was not for them to question. Their only duty was to obey.

Military traffic took precedence over civilian vessels, and it took six hours for the Cypria Seleneto work its way up the queue of ships awaiting a transit corridor. Eventually, the vessel’s Master Steersman was able to pilot his way towards clear space and open up the plasma drives to take his vessel towards the coreward jump point.

From there, warp-willing, it would be a three-week journey to the Thranx system.

THE ANGLE OF launch had been good, and instead of taking four days to reach the coreward jump point, Cypria Seleneachieved the necessary safe distance from the Prosperine star to safely activate its warp drives in three. The vessel’s Navigator confirmed the warp-currents in the realm beyond were as calm as he had known them, and the Master of Cartography ran a final positional check before passing his jump calculations to the Navigator’s module.

In the ship’s observation dome, Lemuel and Mahavastu chatted about where they next planned to visit, while Camille and Chaiya held hands as they listened to the toneless jump countdown through speakers set into the wood-panelled walls.

Set high on the rear quarter of the Cypria Selene, the dome provided a commanding view over the vast superstructure of the mass-conveyer. Its hull stretched away from them for sixty kilometres, ending in a blunt wedge of a snout. For a vessel intended to carry vast quantities of war materiel, troops and bulk items of warfare and compliance, it was handsomely appointed.

The four of them had settled into ship-board life with ease, and the cabins they had been assigned by the misdirected clerk were clearly intended for highborn passengers.

“Give or take, you should be on Terra inside two months,” Lemuel told Mahavastu. “You’ll be back in Uttarpatha, cataloguing old records recovered from beneath the ruins. I hear they’ve finished collating the datacores of NeoAleksandrya, but there’s bound to be more. They’d be mad not to want your help.”

“Perhaps,” agreed Mahavastu, leaning heavily on an ebony cane with a golden pommel inset with a jade eye. “Though I fear I may be too old for such excitement.”

“Nonsense,” said Lemuel. “There’s life in you yet.”

“You are kind, Lemuel,” said Mahavastu, “but I think perhaps I will instead concentrate on my memoirs. What I can recall of them.”

“I would be happy to read them.”

“Happier than I shall be to write them, I feel.”

Lemuel didn’t reply, but simply smiled as Camille and Chaiya joined them at the edge of the observation dome. Perhaps sixty people had come to watch the ship translate into the warp, either curious to see how so enormous a vessel could travel between the stars or eagerly fearful to look into the mysterious realm of the warp.

If only they knew,thought Lemuel. They would put out their eyes rather than look into a place of such dreadful power.

“Almost away,” said Camille.

“Yes,” said Lemuel, nodding towards the glass dome as the countdown reached one minute. “Part of me is almost sad.”

Aerial-like vanes extended along the entire length of the vast ship, causing the view to shimmer as void barriers powered up in preparation for the jump.

“Won’t be long now,” said Camille, taking Lemuel’s hand.

“And then this will all be over,” said Lemuel.

The count had reached thirty-three seconds when the alarms sounded.

The automated voice was cut off by a burst of shrieking static. A series of emergency lights flooded the interior of the dome with a red glow.

“What’s happening?” cried Mahavastu.

Lemuel had no answer for him, but was spared from admitting his ignorance by an explosion of shimmering, ghostly light off the Cypria Selene’s starboard bow. As though a yellowed fang had torn a terrible wound in the fabric of reality, a blooming froth of light spilled out and illuminated space around the mass-conveyer. It tore wider and wider, blistering streamers of unlight weeping from the wound like blood on a shroud.

Vast forms moved in the swirling vortex, shaped like gutting knives.

The first was a lean, feral-looking warship; its flanks slate-grey and brutally punctured with gun batteries and torpedo launchers. Its prow was shaped like a ploughshare, but this was no peaceable vessel, it was a ship of war.